Highlights

This is the original, longer, version of a speech I was due to give in the House of Lords on 1 May 2025 but which had to be redacted due to time constraints. The speech given is described in Hansard My Lords, It is with a heavy heart that I rise to speak today. Heavy, because the legislation before us cuts to the very fabric of our democratic society — a society built on freedom of thought, parental responsibility, and the rights of citizens not to be monitored by an overreaching state. Our forebears fought two world wars, at unimaginable cost, to secure the freedoms we now risk so casually throwing away. They fought to defeat totalitarian ideologies that sought to control not only public life but private conscience — and, crucially, the upbringing of the next generation. They knew, as we should know, that the surest route to tyranny is to hand the state unchecked power over the education of children. It is a ...