Inside The Lords - bills, banks and bans

Claire Fox reports from a week in parliament, with debates on migration, bank accounts being cut and the Online Safety Bill.

Inside The Lords this week has been busy. The chamber has been animated by the Illegal Migration Bill, with Lords winning amendments at report stage to scupper the Bill. Regardless of my feelings on the government’s plans (I’m not a fan, to say the least) it is a popular piece of legislation on an issue that people care about. Unfortunately, the Lords have used the High Court’s decision that the Bill is unlawful to glory in their ability to shoot it down. So far, my approach has been to raise a few issues, but not join in the undemocratic attempts to thwart the government. However, when I heard fellow Lords saying that they were opposing the Bill simply because they trusted the law courts more than the government, I was so enraged by the antidemocratic nature of the debate that I voted in support of the government.

Elsewhere, there is a lot of concern about the controversy of banks cutting people off. While Nigel Farage’s claims have raised some awareness about this, it would be wrong to think that his is the only case. In fact, back in January I raised the problem of banks picking and choosing which ‘values’ their customers have to embrace in order to be allowed access to services:

Indeed, the government knows that this is an issue, we talked about it at length in relation to the Financial Services and Markets Bill:

If you ever needed an example of banks being inappropriately politicised, take the Bank of England who made a series of announcements for pride month about, for example, their stance on ‘birthing people’. (As it happens, I made a mistake in this week’s Inside The Lords and refer to the bank as the Church of England - perhaps that is telling.) It’s utterly ridiculous that this institution, which had no problem with creating money, or maintaining artificially low interest rates leading to inflation, but seems to consider its priority being an adequate trans ally to fit Stonewall’s demands. I mentioned this lack of ambition to grow the economy in the Lords last week:

Then there is the Online Safety Bill, which is ongoing - and while I’m one of the very few peers willing to speak out in favour of free speech, I will continue to do so. Twenty per cent of the Bill is related to harms to children, but the other 80 per cent is all about controlling what adults can and cannot say online. This is a dangerous piece of legislation - encryption is on the line, privacy, free speech and the ability of the public to debate and discuss political ideas. We need a public outcry against this assault on our freedom and agency, because it will never happen in the Lords.

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Here are some clips of speeches I made in relation to the Online Safety Bill from last week: