Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, then Leader of the House of Lords, May 2022 (Credit: House of Lords / Photography by Annabel Moeller)

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The House of Lords will always be steeped in its history and traditions, which remains important as it continues to modernise. When it comes to representation and strides towards diversity, however, progress remains slow. Out of 849 peers, 274 are women – around 32 per cent of total membership. This compares to 40 per cent of women sitting on the green benches.

Although in the minority on the red benches, women are achieving great things in the Lords and deserve to be given more airtime to highlight the difference they are making. This is where Her Voice in the House, a new podcast spotlighting female peers is unashamedly determined to shine a light. 

Peers in general are often misrepresented as ermine-wearing, Champagne-sipping individuals

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In their own words, peers are lifting the lid on their work in the Lords and beyond, diving deeply into the issues they’re championing. They’re sharing their journey to the red benches and discussing how others can play their part in British democracy.

The public and Members themselves are very clear: female Peers are misrepresented on two counts. First, the media often do not fully cover the work of the Upper Chamber or the debates that go on within it. Secondly, peers in general are often misrepresented as ermine-wearing, Champagne-sipping individuals, out of touch with the real world. Indeed, a number of the podcast’s guests have said these characterisations have been directly levelled at them by the public.

This assumption could not be further than the truth, and through the interviews being broadcast we’re seeing the hard work, often into the early hours, that peers are doing. On important issues like early years support, violence against women and girls, the future of farming and government efficiency, female peers are working hard to make a difference. It’s time that those outside the Westminster bubble have the opportunity to hear their stories and learn from their experiences. 

The red benches are packed full of knowledge and expertise. Scientists, businesswomen, lawyers and leaders – women who have served at the top of their professions and continue to shape our country and create a lasting legacy.

Interviewed by Laura, I was pleased to share my experience of how I dealt with two of our country’s most recent challenges as leader of the House of Lords – Brexit and Covid, as well as my approach to leadership.

Women have helped to shape the Lords as a place of many ‘firsts’. Through these podcasts, many of them have shared their thoughts on shaping history – the first female leader of the Lords, the first female Lord Speaker, the first female civil service commissioner and the first female chair of the NFU. Recording their accounts is an important step in preserving for current and future generations their recollections and advice as part of our nation’s history. 

As democracy faces challenges from populism and division, it is vital that our political institutions not only represent the electorate but also demonstrate how they are doing so in our collective goal to inspire the next generation of public servants. This is particularly important to inspire more women to get involved in public life and perhaps stand for political office.

It’s our hope that Her Voice in the House will play its part in doing this, strengthening public debate and spotlighting the House of Lords as an institution that is vital to British public life and all of our futures.

Baroness Evans is a Conservative peer and Laura Emily Dunn is a political consultant and host of the ‘Her Voice in the House’ podcast

Dr Austen Morgan is a barrister at 33 Bedford Row Chambers.  He is the author of: Pretence: why the United Kingdom needs a written constitution, London 2023.

With US launching attacks on Iran, the crisis over Diego Garcia – the formally joint UK/US military base on the Chagos Archipelago, part of our overseas territory or colony (the British Indian Ocean Territory [‘BIOT’] established in 1965) – is becoming global.

The argument over Britain not allowing its use to the US for the initial airstrikes last weekend has amplified it.

When the UK granted Mauritius its independence eventually in 1968, the country’s leaders – in return for financial payments – agreed to the hiving off of BIOT.  That did not stop Mauritius’s later leaders playing the decolonization card: the February 2019 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (which did not bind the UK); and the May 2019 resolution of the UN general assembly (which is not part of international law).

Prof Philippe Sands KC of Matrix chambers represented Mauritius over the years.  His head of chambers became Richard Hermer KC, now the attorney general.  And the latter had been led, at Doughty Street chambers, by Keir Starmer KC, the just about hanging on prime minister.  These three musketeers share a – incorrect – view of the rule of law as dominated by  international lawyers and judges.

It was the labour government of Harold Wilson which ordered the expulsion of the Chagossians from the Archipelago (1968-73), to the Seychelles and to Mauritius, where they were treated badly (as I learned on a visit in 2023).  Many of the Mauritian Chagossians now live as British citizens in Crawley, near Gatwick.

Supporters of the Chagossians, those who believe in the rule of law, and those concerned with international security (particularly the threat of growing Chinese influence in Mauritius), have had to contend with Jonathan Powell, now the national security adviser in the cabinet office, and a Sinophile, the architect of the May 2025 – leaseback – UK/Mauritius treaty, which is mercifully well and truly stalled in parliament.

Faced with a fickle and unpredictable Donald Trump, who is being pushed hither and thither whilst pushing back himself, opponents of the current labour government’s Chagos sellout would be advised to concentrate upon three legal issues.

First, the direct action by Misley Mandarin, the unrecognized first minister of the Chagos, in settling on L’Île du Coin (120 miles from Diego Garcia).  Sir Keir issued a removal notice within 24 hours, and the Chagossians secured an interim injunction from the BIOT chief justice, James Lewis KC, a London barrister.

A claim is waiting to be made in the administrative court in London, against the second threatened expulsion of Misley Mandarin’s elderly father, under whatever basis the government is relying.  This will involve questions of international law, turning on the British passports of the occupying Chagossians on sovereign UK territory.

Second, the 1966 US/UK agreement, which established the Diego Garcia base (and on which the UK must rely in an English court): including, in clause (2), ‘those administrative measures that may be necessary to enable any such defence requirement to be met’, subject to seemingly the duty of the commissioner of the territory to take account of ‘the welfare of the inhabitants’ but only ‘in emergency circumstances requiring temporary use of an island or part of an island’.

It is clause (1) which should interest the US the most: ‘The territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.’  That is what the UK promised in 1966.  And the US is entitled – under the 1969 Vienna convention on the law of treaties – to rely upon that permanent feature.

President Trump, therefore, has to do nothing but rest on these legal laurels.  Under the Jonathan Powell scheme, he would have had to have agreed to delete clause (1) of the 1966 agreement.

And third – a point well spotted by English supporters of the Chagossians – the 1983 UN convention on the law of the sea (or ‘UNCLOS’).  In 2010, Philippe Sands had represented Mauritius in an arbitration against the UK’s marine protection area around the Chagos Archipelago.  He succeeded in part, but the award included that the arbitrators did not have the power under UNCLOS to determine sovereignty.

Nevertheless, when David Lammy, as our hapless foreign secretary, being forced to concede that the international court of justice had only produced an advisory opinion, the scare was raised about a second (hypothetical) judgment, from this time the international tribunal for the law of the sea.

Section 2 of UNCLOS defines the concepts limiting territorial seas.  But article 298 comprises ‘optional exceptions to applicability of section 2’.  Paragraph 1 reads: ‘When signing, ratifying or acceding to this Convention or at any time thereafter, a State may, without prejudice to the obligations arising under section 1, declare in writing that it does not accept any one or more of the procedures provided for in section 2 with respect to one or more of the following categories of disputes’.

Sub-paragraph (b) includes ‘disputes concerning military activities, including military activities by government vessels and aircraft engaged in non-commercial services…’.

In conclusion, the focus should be on legally challenging the second labour expulsion of the Chagossians.  And, as regarding the ninnies in our foreign policy establishment (frightened no doubt by the seemingly all powerful attorney general), the UK should execute a declaration that the joint Diego Garcia military base does not fall under UNCLOS.

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.

 A war of choice, fought from the air, of contested legality but undoubted legitimacy. A successful military mission, highlighting the utility of force. A United States-led conflict, avoiding boots on the ground, intending to effect political change from 30,000 feet.

Is Iran 2026, Kosovo 1999 2.0?

The bloody century’s brief, last war underlines the fluidity of international law. Many of the 1.6million people living in Kosovo today are grateful that Britain and NATO intervened decisively on their behalf, as lawyers quibbled from the sidelines.

The Kosovo war had its roots in the post-Cold War break-up of Yugoslavia, which had resulted in four years of ethnic conflict, primarily between rival factions in Bosnia. The impotence of the United Nations-led peacekeeping effort was underscored by ethnic cleansing on Western Europe’s doorstep, the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.  It came a year after the genocide in Rwanda, in which 800,000 died.

This week the current can’t do Labour Prime Minister has consigned Britain and the Armed Forces to being bystanders. What a sorry contrast to another Labour PM who believed in Britain taking a global lead.

Tony Blair was clear that Britain’s Armed Forces should be deployed on humanitarian grounds; “saving strangers”, as one commentator described it. From 1997, British foreign policy, along with the national interest, would also include an ethical dimension. Blair stated traditional foreign policy was “flawed and out of date”.

In a speech on the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the Defence Secretary George Robertson confirmed Britain’s military would not only be  more mobile, better manned, better supported and equipped, but “better able to act as a force for good in the world.” This would be tested months later in Kosovo.

In 1998, tensions grew between Serbia and Kosovo, its semi-autonomous enclave with a majority ethnic Albanian population. Violence escalated between Serb militias and the Kosovo Liberation Front, reflecting by the January 1999 Račak massacre in which 45 civilians were executed. Fearing ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of Kosovars fled their homes.

Blair demanded a military intervention to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and “set about trying to build a consensus for action”. He argued that the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic would continue to act with impunity because of the previous failure of will by the West to intervene in Bosnia.

Unable to build a coalition to commit ground troops, Blair persuaded the Clinton administration and many European leaders to back an air campaign.

NATO’s Operation Allied Force began on 29 March 1999. By then, an estimated 350,000 Kosovars were displaced. It ended on 10 June. More than 38,000 sorties were flown, almost 10,500 of them strike sorties against Serbian targets.

The campaign achieved its objectives: Serbia’s forces withdrew from Kosovo, Kosovar refugees returned, Belgrade surrendered control over the enclave and KFOR, an international security presence, moved in. It was a triumph of strategic air-power.  Contrary to PM Starmer’s assertion at Wednesday’s PMQs, Kosovo highlighted that major political change can be brought about from the skies.

Have American military decision-makers studied Kosovo before Epic Fury? If so, they will be aware of the negatives. Allied Force was expected to last three days. Collateral damage included 87 civilians killed in a refugee camp and a strike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. With Serb civilians wearing bulls-eye targets gathering in the capital, Serbia did not lose the battle for public opinion across Europe.

As the conflict continued, Blair proposed the “Doctrine of the International Community”. It suggested five guidelines before military intervention. Similarly in 2001, the UN’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine set out the duties of individual states and of the international community to prevent four mass atrocity crimes.

Today, Tony Blair might suggest that Operation Allied Force could be judged illegal but legitimate. It averted a humanitarian catastrophe. Alas, another war – Iraq – still mired in the quagmire of contested international law and just war assessments, casts too large a shadow for either his views or his record to be assessed objectively.

Since 1979, the theocratic regime in Iran has brought global instability and internal tyranny. In 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests, women’s eyes were specifically targeted, a horror repeated in January’s protests in which an estimated 30,000 were killed. On Monday, President Trump described Epic Fury in moral terms: a “righteous mission”.

In the 1990s, against a background of a new world order, globalisation and the “CNN effect” giving new insight into human suffering, international law in relation to military intervention was questioned, notably by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Which should prevail: state sovereignty or the interests of international peace and security?

If, as is said, war is too important to be left to the generals, it should never be left to the lawyers.