Football Governance Bill [Lords]
Order. First, I am not. Secondly, the Secretary of State came very close to unparliamentary language in accusing another hon. Member of hypocrisy; I am sure she did not intend that.
Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,779 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
Order. Having lowered the temperature, I trust that I can now rely on the shadow Minister to maintain the lowered temperature. If not, I might have to intervene.
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Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1
The Post Office Horizon scandal has often been compared with the contaminated blood disaster. By coincidence, this very afternoon the relevant all-party parliamentary group, led by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford), has been having a meeting with the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. Even if the Minister does not go all the way with Sir Wyn Williams’ suggestion that there might be a standing body responsible for delivering compensation, will the Government look at the experience of the compensation body for that scandal rather than allowing separate disasters to be compensated for in separate stovepipe arrangements?
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Points of Order
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I met Lord Tebbit only shortly after he had stepped down from this House, but even at that stage of his career he still had the inherent kindness and commitment to come to my constituency to support a relatively new Member of this House. Courage and commitment really are what encapsulated his character. He proved that when serving his country in the inherently dangerous role of a Royal Air Force pilot, and he proved it further in achieving something that Prime Ministers alone might have failed to have achieved in tackling the abuse of trade union power by unrepresentative militants. Trade unions are much more representative of their memberships today thanks to what he did. As we have heard, Lord Tebbit proved his courage and commitment finally in his devotion to his wife, who was grievously injured as a result of a terrorist campaign, the aftermath of which our legal system to this very day still finds difficult to cope with. Altogether, he served his country magnificently, and he was a role model of integrity and courage that people can admire, even if they do not necessarily subscribe to everything in which he believed and for which he campaigned.
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Points of Order
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I started working as special adviser to Norman Tebbit in the Department of Trade and Industry on the Monday morning after the Brighton bomb. For those first few weeks, I went to visit him with members of his private office in Stoke Mandeville hospital. The reason why he was in that specialist unit was that, while he was badly injured, he wanted to be nearby to his wife. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) was completely right: he gave tremendous service to this country, but he felt that his first duty had to be to look after his wife. It was a terrific loss to my party and to the country when he felt that he was no longer able to serve in government because of the need to care for Margaret. Had that not happened, he might well have become Prime Minister. He was a remarkable person whom we will miss greatly. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has helped to put his service on the record.
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Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools
Order. That was either several interventions or a speech, neither of which is permissible. I urge all participants to keep interventions brief.
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Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools
For the assistance of Hansard, I point out that the right hon. Gentleman was holding up a pen and paper.
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Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools
The right hon. Member for East Hampshire, who moved the motion, has the right—if he wishes it—to wind up the debate, and he has about 20 minutes in which to do so. He is, however, under no obligation to use all or any of that time.
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Down’s Syndrome Regression Disorder
I remind all colleagues that they should continue to stand if they wish to be called.
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Down’s Syndrome Regression Disorder
Three Back Benchers are seeking to speak. I hope it will assist colleagues if I say that I intend to start calling Front Benchers at about 5.08 pm.
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Down’s Syndrome Regression Disorder
I add my thanks to all who participated. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Down’s syndrome regression disorder research.
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Road and Rail Projects
The Secretary of State has made reference to those areas of the country that wanted transport infrastructure projects and have not got them. May I ask her to spare a thought for those places that have got transport infrastructure projects that they do not want? She knows that High Speed 2 passes through my constituency but delivers no benefit to the people I represent. In future rounds of consideration for rail and road projects, will she consider giving priority to those places that are suffering in that way, but which have a real need for other types of transport infrastructure that perhaps they deserve as compensation?
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Government Resilience Action Plan
It is vital that we exclude equipment from companies covered by the national intelligence law of China from being used in surveillance equipment on sensitive Government sites. Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster update the House on the progress made in doing that?
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Road and Rail Projects
The M54-M6 link road in my constituency is something that my constituents and I have long campaigned for, because many residents in the villages of Featherstone, Hilton and Shareshill are currently affected by traffic trying to link on to the M6, which has an impact on people’s lives. Can the Secretary of State assure us that everything will be done to ensure that the scheme moves quickly and is built as swiftly as possible?
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Road and Rail Projects
For 30 long and weary years, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) and I have campaigned for a through-train from Grimsby, which would stop at Market Rasen and end up in London. We have been made numerous promises by Network Rail, which is now saying that the platform is too short, that a bridge needs to be built, and that it will cost £25 million—the usual negativity. The Secretary of State is a feisty Minister. I promise her that if she gets us our train, I will campaign for it to be renamed the “Heidi Alexander, Heroine of Lincolnshire”.
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Points of Order
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to make a brief point of order following the sad death of Lord Norman Tebbit last night. I feel particularly touched by it because I served with him in Parliament between 1983 and 1992, and I suppose I am one of the last Thatcherites left standing here. To us, he was an icon of everything we believed in about small government and deregulation. He was the original Brexiteer and the original campaigner against woke. He had an extraordinary ability with words. He came from humble backgrounds and summed up everything that we believed in by pulling himself up and achieving greatness. I do not want to end on a political note; what I really want to end on is a personal note. I know that he had a reputation as a hard-hitting politician, but above all he was a supremely kind man. He was kind to us younger Members of Parliament. When Mrs Thatcher resigned, I remember sitting in the Tea Room and asking him if he would stand as leader of the Conservative party. To my regret, he felt that he could not. The reason why was those awful events in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in 1984. He showed tremendous courage and stoicism. Above all, although he led our party to victory as chairman in the 1987 election, he refused high office because he wanted to look after his wife Margaret. He devoted his whole life to her in terms of love and devotion as after those terrible events she was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. It is a great honour and delight in this short point of order to pay tribute to my friend Lord Norman Tebbit.
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Government Resilience Action Plan
Will the preparations take into account the lasting, disastrous consequences of lockdown, and the blithering absurdity of face coverings?
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Road and Rail Projects
How can I possibly welcome the Secretary of State’s statement when, by her own admission, she has cancelled the A12 widening scheme and said nothing about the dualling of the A120 between Braintree and Marks Tey? How does she intend Braintree, Colchester and Tendring to deliver the massive new housing targets imposed by the Government with no new road or rail infrastructure at all?
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Road and Rail Projects
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In my 33 years in this House it has always been the practice that a statement of this nature would be made alongside a White Paper, which would be available in the Vote Office to Members as soon as the Secretary of State sits down. There is no White Paper in the Vote Office to explain the detail of the Government’s decision making. Is there anything you can do to elucidate from the Secretary of State whether a White Paper will be forthcoming and when that will be?
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Crown Court Backlog
The rise in the Crown court backlog in 2024 was 7,051 additional cases; that is 588 extra cases on the backlog every month. The figures for March 2025 show an additional rise over three months of 2,300; that is 769 additional cases on the backlog every month. Not only is the position getting worse under the Lord Chancellor’s leadership, but the rate at which it is getting worse is increasing. Can she explain to the House why the rate is getting worse, and why, when in November the Lady Chief Justice offered 6,500 additional sitting days, she did not accept every single one of those?
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Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1
This Minister well knows that, across the House, many colleagues for years now have raised deep concerns about what happened. I raised it myself on 10 June 2020, 5 October 2020, 27 April 2021 and 15 December 2021. Many colleagues years and years ago were citing the monstrous injustice and grotesque breach of human rights and civil liberties of our fellow citizens, but it took the ITV drama of 1 January 2024 for the earth to move. That rather begs the question: what is the point of Parliament and its elected representatives? Is it not about time that the institutions of the state got out the handcuffs and held the tax-funded villains who perpetrated this monstrous injustice to full and total account?
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Prison Officers: Terms and Conditions of Service
There has been a spate of attacks on prison officers in recent months by Islamist terrorists. One study even revealed that terrorists inside prisons are teaching organised criminals how to make bombs. It has got so bad that former governors believe that the threat posed to frontline staff by radicalised Islamists is now intolerable. Can the Minister tell us what his assessment is of the threat from Islamist gangs, and what on earth he is doing about it?
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Grooming Gangs: Criminal Justice System
Sohail Zaffer raped a child. He received 42 months. Manzoor Akhtar raped a child. He was sentenced to four and a half years. Ramin Bari was convicted of four rapes. He got just nine years—just two years per rape. These men were sentenced, but not punished. Does the Justice Secretary think these sentences represent justice? If she does not, like most people in this country, will she change the law so that rape gang perpetrators receive full life sentences?
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Topical Questions
In the year since Labour took office, can the Justice Secretary tell us how many individuals have been prosecuted for smuggling people in on small boats?
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Topical Questions
I asked the Justice Secretary a very simple question about one of the biggest challenges facing our country right now, and the whole House can see that she did not have a clue. This is about not just the pathetically low levels of prosecutions under her watch, but the fact that she has waved through guidelines to shorten sentences for immigration offences. Under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the most serious offence for facilitation carries a life sentence, but she is watering that down to between 10 and 16 years. Instead of smashing the gangs, she is slashing the sentences. Why will she not do something for once and stop this?
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Road and Rail Projects
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, but I am really disappointed that the TavyRail scheme has received a red light. We have heard quite a lot about the investment in Devon and Somerset. The Government are delivering a huge amount of investment in Plymouth, which is welcome, but without a rail link between Tavistock and Plymouth that can continue further into my constituency at Ivybridge, I struggle to see how the investment in defence and housing will be fulfilled. Given that the Secretary of State is committing at least £725 billion for infrastructure over the next decade, I would be interested to know why she could not find £1.5 million to fund the business case for TavyRail.
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Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition. The draft order makes modest technical changes to the administration of the energy company obligation scheme, and we will not press it to a vote today. We agree that it is important for low-income households to get the help they need to save money on their energy bills and escape the hardships of fuel poverty. However, Ministers should reflect on how their policies are making energy more expensive for everyone by increasing dependency on costly and unreliable renewables. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, environmental levies will increase from £9.9 billion last year to £14.8 billion by 2030. That is a result of policy choices made by this Government, and the cost will inevitably fall on the vulnerable and make fuel poverty harder to escape. Last week, I raised with the Minister Labour’s claim on social media: “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. Will she accept that that was wrong, because that fall in prices was driven by reductions in wholesale gas prices? The Government are trying to take the country off gas, while policy costs imposed by Ministers are actually increasing. She disassociated herself from those social media posts last week, so—
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Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025
I will just invite the hon. Lady to look at the bigger picture. Manufacturing jobs are being lost because of high energy prices driven by Government policy, the costs of which are increasing, so I invite the Minister to respond to my question. Instead of allowing policy to run faster than the technology will allow, Ministers should focus on how to make energy cheaper and more reliable. That is the real pathway to fighting fuel poverty.
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Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025
If it was clear for such a long time that infrastructure needed to be improved and that the right way to do that was increasing levies on bills, why was that not in the Labour manifesto? Why did the Labour manifesto instead promise that bills would be £300 a year cheaper?
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Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I knew as soon as my brilliant and learned right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) secured this debate that it would be well worth attending and very interesting, and it has proved to be exactly that. It builds on important work that has already been done by POST and Ofsted, as well as by the DFE officials who wrote the recent guidance, and it further increases the level of public debate and improves our knowledge. I would echo a lot of what other Members have said about the pros and cons, the opportunities and threats, because there is a delicate balance between those things. We heard really good speeches from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Swindon North (Will Stone), as well as a brilliant intervention from the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm). There was a particularly good and thoughtful speech from the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), with which I agreed 100%, as indeed there was from the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin). Of course we want students to learn about AI and how to use it effectively. It is a very effective research tool in the right hands. On the other hand, we want them to understand that it is not always right, despite its godlike quality and the incredible smoothness with which it lies. We must also teach them to understand that it is not a substitute for original thinking. They must have the ability to do their own research. We must avoid having cardboard cut-out students who regurgitate a particular way of framing issues. We heard from the hon. Member for Guildford about the MIT study that used brain measurement experiments to show a decline in critical thinking. Of course, this debate is nested in a wider debate about the use of screens and technology by our students and educators, and that study reminds me of a similar one, which discovered that a student’s simply having a smartphone on them reduced their retention of information from an educational video. The effect of these things can be quite subtle. It was not being on the phone, but just having it on them that reduced their attention. The wider rewiring of childhood and of the student experience is operating on several levels, of which AI is just one. According to a study by the Higher Education Policy Institute, more than half of HE students now use AI to help write essays—I suspect that figure is rather higher by now. One vice-chancellor I spoke to said that he thought we would end up going back to more handwriting in exams to avoid cheating, which is now incredibly present. I was amused by a social media post the other day that said, “Lots of discussion about how on earth we will spot AI cheating,” with an image of an essay that began with the wonderful words, “I cannot help you to write this assignment. It would be wrong of me to do so.” It had clearly been written by a very honest AI, but it had been handed in by the student none the less. It is perhaps more important than ever that we teach students to understand what is real and not real in the online world. There has recently been discussion about a new band called The Velvet Sundown. Sir Jeremy, I cannot quite place when you came of age—perhaps somewhere between the new romantics and the grunge period. I will not assume where you stand on that spectrum, but this band sounds a bit like a mashed-up version of Creedence Clearwater Revival. It sounds okay—it is not bad—but it is very derivative, and all the pictures of the band look kind of AI-y. However, the band denies it. The interesting thing about the episode is that it is not possible to say definitively whether it is real or not—and there will be many such cases, some of them very important. We see AI-generated images from the middle east; people are told that things have happened when they may not have happened. We see fake bot accounts playing a role in our politics. A surprising number of accounts in the UK suddenly disappeared during the recent Israeli strikes on Iran. What does that tell us about the interference in our democracy empowered by AI? Of course, there are opportunities in students’ use of AI, but there are also risks. There are important benefits from learning to handwrite. A surgeon I spoke to recently talked about his worries about the future, with fewer children learning the fine motor skills that are learned with handwriting. Let me turn to educators’ use of all this. It is very exciting. If someone had asked me 15 years ago about AI in schools, and technology in schools and universities more generally, I would probably have been unabashedly, straightforwardly enthusiastic. The attractions are obvious, whether for the production of lesson plans, the personalisation of learning, the translation of languages, the avoidance of marking and repetitive work or the reduction of workload, which is crucial for teacher retention. It is all very exciting, but of course there are risks, which have been illustrated well in the debate. I am excited by some of the models that bring human judgment together with AI. It is probably slightly invidious to single out a particular group, but No More Marking is an interesting model. It is doing lots of things that bring together teacher judgment and AI tools. It talks about “human in the loop” models, and that is potentially the way that these things will need to move forward. Of course, we have also heard about the difficulties of assessment in the new era. We have talked a bit about the dangers of AI use in exams in which computers are used. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire talked about the quaint language in the legislation, which refers to “word processors”. Perhaps word processors are exactly what we need. For those who really need it, we should dig out some of those things from the ’80s and ’90s that can do nothing other than function as a typewriter. However, it is not just about exams. The interim curriculum and assessment review included a suggestion that we might have more coursework, but while there was always scope for cheating and social biases in coursework, those dangers have increased. I think that Becky Francis, who is running that review, is conscious of the risk. I share my right hon. Friend’s scepticism and concern about the move to an all-online examination system, and the way that would iterate back through our school system. I think that is a very dangerous way to go. The Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, brilliantly explained some of the wider concerns about cognitive and attention damage caused by some of these tools. There is a famous philosophy experiment by John Searle called the Chinese room. He talks about what machines do and do not experience, and what they can and cannot do. In the experiment, Chinese characters are fed into one end of a box, somebody looks them up in a table and feeds Chinese characters out of the other end of the box, and nothing is truly understood inside the box; it is just inputs and outputs. In a sense, we run the risk of putting all our children in the Chinese room, where they are set a task, perhaps even using AI, they go away and use AI to find a plausible answer for their coursework, exam, homework or whatever, and the real cognition—the real learning—does not happen in the middle of that process. We have also talked about some of the other risks, and that brings me to the final thing that I want to talk about: the fact that this debate is nested in a wider set of discussions about screen time, social media and students’ relationship with technology, all of which are magnified by AI. I will not relitigate the discussions we have had with the Government about our case for a complete ban on phones in our schools. I think that the AI dimension makes the argument stronger. AI makes some of the issues about deepfake porn and intimate image abuse even more acute than they already were, but this thing about cognition and AI that we have talked about is also an issue about technology more generally. It is known that people understand better and take in more information from material written on a piece of paper than that on a screen. There are wider issues, to which I have already referred, about what the excessive use of technology does to a person’s ability to take on board information—and, indeed, to present it. Recently, the DFE surveyed last year’s GCSE students and their parents about the things they wanted students to have done more of at school. One of the things at the very top of the list was presenting information, public speaking and marshalling an argument. That is one of the great 21st-century skills—it is what we are all doing now. I pity the wonderful and long-suffering people who write Hansard, because my speech today consists of a series of scrawls and arrows; it looks like a Jeremy Deller painting, and they will never decrypt it. The ability to put together an argument, and not just to use Ctrl+V and Ctrl+C, is one of the critical skills of the 21st century. It is vital that we do not drift into a world in which we do not learn those skills because we outsource our thinking to an outboard motor in the form of AI. I hope I have brought out some of the pros and cons in this important debate. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said at the very start, this is not an issue on which there is a great degree of partisan conflict. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about how we can make the best of these exciting new technologies and avoid some of their downsides.
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Road and Rail Projects
Obviously, the Secretary of State has an open invitation to visit Crowborough and Wadhurst stations.
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Road and Rail Projects
“Your Department”—anyone would assume that I was running Transport. I was a Minister in that Department once, but not any more. I call the Secretary of State.
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
I call the shadow Minister.
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
Order. We do not need any more of that disruption.
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
Well, it will be for you. I know who you are. [Laughter.] Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
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Crown Court Backlog
One of the most important things we can do, as the Lord Chancellor seems to indicate, is reduce the number of cases going into the system by reducing reoffending where possible, including intergenerational reoffending. Given that 65% of boys with a parent in prison will go on to offend, what steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the children of prisoners are properly identified and supported, so that they do not become the next generation of people in prison?
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Road and Rail Projects
The largest road programme in the UK is the lower Thames crossing from Tilbury to Gravesend. It is now scheduled to cost about £10 billion, and the Government say that 90% or more of that will be funded from the private sector. I asked the Secretary of State last month on the Floor of the House which institutions exactly are going to finance that, and she replied, in essence, “I’ll get back to you.” So can I ask her again, because the longer the Government refuse to answer this question, the more sceptical people in Essex and Kent will become about whether that much-needed, vital strategic link is ever going to get built at all?
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
I also put on record my thanks to Lord Tebbit for his life of service to both our country and our party. He will be dearly missed by us all. In opening today’s proceedings, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is a privilege to speak on Report for the countless fans who fill the stands week in and week out, wear their club’s shirt with pride and keep our clubs alive, come rain or shine. I put on the record my thanks to all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions in Committee, and to everyone who has engaged with the process outside of Westminster. For all the high talk of regulators, quangos and corporate structures, let us never forget that football in this country is not an industry dreamed up by officials on neat PowerPoint slides or Excel spreadsheets, but a living tradition that is part of who we are and part of the fabric of our nation. That is precisely why we must be so careful now: because this Bill, well-intentioned though it may be, risks replacing one danger—a minority of reckless owners—with another, namely reckless political interference that risks the independence of sport. This Bill, which wants to tackle cowboy owners, comes from an incoherent Government under investigation for appointing a Labour crony to be the new sheriff of football, and from a Department that has seen the Whip resign since the last meeting of the Bill Committee. We really are in “The Thick of It”.
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Football Governance Bill [Lords]
As the shadow Secretary of State says from a sedentary position, “You’ve messed it all up”, and I am sure that does not apply just to football. Before I move on to our amendments, it is worth reminding ourselves how we got here. English football was not invented by corporate lawyers or politicians. Its origins are in the history and soul of communities across our country. It is the same spirit that today sees parents across the country drive through wind and rain on a Sunday morning so that their child can run out in their local club colours. It is a spirit that does not appear on balance sheets, but without sustainable finances there is no football at all. Sadly, we have all seen those cases where financial mismanagement and reckless spending have seen clubs and fans damaged. That is why the Conservatives put fans first by launching the independent fan-led review of football governance, which focused on the long-term sustainability of the game. We support better fan engagement, respecting the heritage of our clubs and strengthening ownership tests to help prevent the issues we have seen at the likes of Bury, Charlton and Reading. The fan-led review stated that this area of regulation should in time be returned to the Football Association and leagues. Having spoken to many football fans across the country and also in my constituency, I can say with confidence that they would agree with that even more now that Labour is trying to directly interfere in English football by appointing a Labour crony. During the passage of the Bill, we have heard from the FA and the Premier League that they are concerned by regulatory scope creep, and we have sought in our amendments to push back on the tentacles of this socialist state seeking to strangle with red tape our beautiful game—this great British success story, which attracts millions of fans around the world and contributes £8 billion to our economy each season. Our amendments would prevent the Secretary of State from expanding the leagues in scope of the regulator under clause 2 without the approval of Parliament. We must give clubs certainty and prevent Whitehall empire building. We must also have transparency about how much these new regulatory burdens are costing clubs and ticket prices, both today and in the future. That is why we have tabled amendments 1, 2 and 28. Every pound spent on new compliance staff is a pound not spent on grassroots players, stadium maintenance or affordable ticket prices. Every new bureaucrat is another tenner on a family’s matchday cost. In the end, the fans pick up the tab, just like always. The Government’s impact assessment suggests that these costs will be more than £125 million, with smaller clubs expecting a bill of up to £47 million. We know that many smaller clubs will have no choice but to pass that cost on to fans, and the Government and their regulator must be honest about that. Members can help limit those additional costs by supporting our amendments 22 and 23, which would limit the size of the Government’s new regulator and cap the pay of the chief executive at the same level as the Prime Minister. The Government state that they want their regulator to be light-touch, but they vote against limits being placed upon it. That leads to the question: why are they saying one thing while doing the opposite in Westminster? Is it because of inexperience, or is the truth that this is yet another example of jobs for the boys, to the cost of fans? That is why we have tabled amendments that would limit political interference in the independence of sport. We believe that fans should be consulted on any political statements made by clubs. Football clubs must not be mouthpieces for whichever fashionable cause of the time, and we believe that politics should be kept out of sport wherever possible. When a club speaks, it speaks for its fans and the local community. If it wants to do that on matters far beyond football, it should ask those fans first.