Deckchairs on Brighton pier (Alamy)

3 min read1 min

My home village of Great Bentley was five miles from Brightlingsea, and I spent seven years at school in Clacton. I couldn’t wait to escape… to Brighton.

A few years after leaving Sussex University, I became leader of Brighton and Hove council – a job I loved and did for 13 years. In the 70s and 80s, like most UK seaside towns, Brighton had all the feel and reality of decline. Playwright Keith Waterhouse once characterised it as having “the air of a town that is perpetually helping the police with their inquiries”.

The struggles of coastal communities are linked to their peripheral nature and the erosion of Britain’s industrial base

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Today, Brighton is often held up as the UK’s most successful seaside city, one that others seek to copy. The sad truth is that few have succeeded in replicating its revival.

Back in 2019, I chaired a groundbreaking House of Lords inquiry, The Future of Seaside Towns. Our report found poor health outcomes, lower educational attainment, weak transport links and fragile digital connectivity. Business formation rates lagged behind national averages. Public and private investment were both thin on the ground. These communities also experienced the flight of the professional middle classes, which reduced the services of bankers, accountants, lawyers, doctors.

Broadly speaking, the struggles of coastal communities are linked to their peripheral nature and the erosion of Britain’s industrial base.

The attractiveness of the coast remains, of course, as does the love affair with seaside attractions. Nowhere in Britain is further than 70 miles away from the coast, and 36 per cent of us live within five kilometres of the sea.

So, what does a successful seaside look like? How do we restore pride and identity to these wonderful, quirky communities?

Brighton offers some pointers. In the 50s, it was a semi-industrial town with specialist engineering, a major locomotive works and a large factory-based workforce. Alongside that sat a thriving holiday trade: B&Bs, prestigious hotels and a reputation for the salty and saucy.

By the 1970s the factories had closed, the loco works were gone, and the holiday trade was shrinking. Brighton had the look of the seedy and rundown about it. Its recovery in the 80s and 90s was built around the knowledge economy, conferencing, the arts and latterly the digital economy. Today, its universities and colleges are home to 35,000 students, and the arts, cultural and digital economy has led to it having one of the highest business start-up rates outside London. Brighton now has the highest disposable income growth rate in the UK.

As a prescription, Brighton’s route to regeneration cannot be universal, but some of the elements are transferable. Margate, Bournemouth, Folkestone and parts of Cornwall have used this formula to renew and reinvent. Coastal communities should improve transport and digital connections, seek a mix of public and private investment, and put money into the arts. They should develop a learning culture, a knowledge economy (HE and FE) and make sure clear and decisive political leadership is built around a strong vision for place.

Our 2019 Lords report argued that government has a decisive role in shaping successful coastal futures. But we found a bewildering patchwork of funding streams and too little capital for long-term infrastructure renewal. When we revisited the issue in 2022, little had changed.

We argued then for a voice in government – a seaside or coastal minister – to focus Westminster’s thinking and produce a more coherent strategy for regeneration. That need has not gone away. Coupled with a strong devolution settlement, this would enable the left-behind places to tend the constant garden that is regeneration and renewal. 

Lord Bassam is a Labour peer

A drum ready to be disposed of at the Low Level Waste Repository

The UK has benefited from nuclear technologies for decades. Powering homes, supporting industry and enabling life‑saving medical and research applications. With those benefits comes a responsibility that Parliament rightly scrutinises: radioactive waste must be managed safely and securely, and in a way that represents value for the public purse over the long term.

That is the core purpose of Nuclear Waste Services (NWS). Created to bring together the UK’s leading radioactive waste management capabilities into a single organisation, NWS supports the safe treatment, transport and disposal of radioactive waste and helps ensure the UK has a credible, permanent “end point” for the most hazardous materials

NWS – providing solutions

NWS specialises in the management, treatment and disposal of radioactive waste produced by nuclear technologies in the UK. We are part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) group, the public body responsible for cleaning up the UK’s historical nuclear sites.

Our goal is simple: to ensure all categories of the UK’s radioactive waste are managed safely, securely and sustainably.

We provide practical waste solutions – assessing, packaging, transporting and managing radioactive waste using innovative approaches that prioritise sustainable outcomes.

Our solutions include disposal through operating the existing Low Level Waste Repository in Cumbria to planning for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) for the most hazardous radioactive waste.

Since the mid-1980s we have worked with organisations across the UK that produce radioactive waste to help ensure that the waste being produced now is suitable for geological disposal

From design to disposal

With new nuclear recognised by Government as essential to the UK’s low-carbon energy mix and energy security, the ability to manage radioactive waste safely – today and for future generations – has never been more important.

It is vital that new build reactor design consider decommissioning from the very outset. An assessment process has been put in place to scrutinise new nuclear power plant designs and assess their acceptability for use in Great Britain.

NWS – with a remit extending well beyond managing legacy waste – is playing a pivotal role ensuring that during plant design, construction and beyond, developers have clear and credible plans for the safe and permanent disposal of the waste their facilities will produce.

In addition to receiving the most hazardous legacy waste, the GDF will accept waste arising from new plants, so at NWS we must ensure it is compatible with final disposal in the facility.

Diverting waste from disposal

Our role spans the full waste lifecycle. We assess waste, advise on the most sustainable management route, and apply innovative treatments to reduce its volume or radioactivity wherever possible.  Our partnership with the Chartered Institute of Waste Management increases trust and credibility of the solutions we provide.

Around 15 years ago, the default approach for low level waste was disposal at the Repository on the West Cumbrian coast. Waste was placed in expensive steel containers and permanently disposed of.

If that approach had continued, the UK would have needed a new low level waste repository at significant cost.

Instead, the NDA introduced a new strategy based on the waste hierarchy: avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle and only dispose as a last resort, delivered by a new centralised waste services capability.This work has been making significant savings to the taxpayer, made great efficiencies in our waste disposal management, avoided the unnecessary use of higher‑cost disposal facilities and helped speed up decommissioning.

A step change in how waste is managed across the nuclear sector now exists. Over the past decade, we have increasingly adopted alternative treatment routes such as incineration, permitted landfill for lower-activity waste, super-compaction, and metal decontamination for recycling.

These approaches deliver both environmental and economic benefits. Diversion is typically more cost-effective than disposal, and techniques such as surface treatment allow contaminated metals to be cleaned and safely reused.

In practice, that means expanding the range of treatment routes used across the UK, so that suitable waste can be diverted away from disposal. By re‑using or recycling where possible, we now divert 98% of waste away from disposal at the Repository site. In the past year alone, this approach has saved nearly £60 million and more than £900 million over the past decade; money that can be redirected to hazard reduction and decommissioning priorities. Waste management is a lever that can accelerate clean‑up and reduce long‑term liabilities. When we avoid unnecessary disposal, we protect constrained national capacity, improve efficiency across the system and help ensure public money is spent once and spent well.

Going further

Building on our success in diverting lower activity waste from disposal, we are now exploring whether similar principles can be applied to some wastes currently in storage and destined for deep geological disposal in a GDF.

Through research and trials, we are examining whether innovative treatment methods could reduce the volume of certain lower activity wastes that would otherwise require disposal underground. These trials will inform decisions on the most sustainable techniques to apply in the future.

This work does not remove the need for a GDF. A GDF remains the safe, secure and long-term solution for the UK’s most hazardous radioactive waste. However, by reducing volumes where it is safe and appropriate to do so, we can maximise value and support delivery of the NDA mission.

Our work accelerates decommissioning while ensuring waste is managed in the most sustainable and cost-effective way possible.

Through collaboration with customers and the supply chain, and with a clear focus on innovation and delivery, we are making nuclear waste permanently safe, sooner.

Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir has authorised residents of Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) and Kfar Saba (Kafr Saba) to carry firearms. Meanwhile, the illegal terrorist state is calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah and Hamas. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Israel is making it easier for Israeli Jews to kill Palestinians and any non-Jewish person they want to. A nation of bigoted sociopaths. https://t.co/UcmOtTHA1J

— Carolyn Hinds 🇧🇧 #FreePalestine #CongoInCrisis (@CarrieCnh12) March 11, 2026

Israel furthering apartheid

Residents of 41 Jewish neighbourhoods in the city can now apply for a licence to carry a gun.

Of course, Muslim residents of Jerusalem are not able to carry guns. There’s a word for that.

If you live in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, you are now eligible to receive a gun permit.

If you live in a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem, you are not eligible.

Not so complicated after all, it’s called apartheid https://t.co/hK4WXLvz0h pic.twitter.com/mln6JNpZM7

— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) March 10, 2026

Terrorist Ben Gvir claimed that during the war and Ramadan, Jerusalem residents have a “basic right to defend themselves”

But the existing gun holders already cannot tell the difference between a legitimate military target and a toddler.

300,000 extra guns in the hands of genocidal maniacs (who dont know how to shoot) …. The existing gun holders cant tell the difference between a baby and a uniform https://t.co/AwMGWJflwz

— addie lambert (@addielambert) March 10, 2026

Previously, Israeli police investigated Ben Gvir’s office for illegally approving gun licenses.

Effectively, 300,000 illegal Israeli settlers will now be walking around armed. Obviously, the announcement is raising concerns about safety and domestic violence.

But importantly, Israel has regularly called for the disarmament of Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah.

But why should they, when Israel is actively arming its illegal settlers?

In recent weeks, Israeli settlers backed by the IDF have terrorised Palestinians in the West Bank. This included settlers murdering a Palestinian-American man.

You can have a gun in Jerusalem.

But you have to be Jewish.

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Read that again.

Yep – guns based on religion. And this is as Jewish terrorist gangs are murdering families every day.

Blatant and sickening apartheid.

We must not play Israel in football and normalise this. https://t.co/xWWimntnwy

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— Daniel Lambert (@dlLambo) March 10, 2026

In total, Israeli settlers have murdered six Palestinians across the West Bank over the past 11 days, according to the United Nations.

But even before Israel’s unprovoked attacks on Iran, settlers were already terrorising Palestinians. In 2025, illegal settlers injured more than 830 Palestinians.

You know why they weren’t allowed guns before, because they’d just loot and shoot each other too. He knew his people are lunatics, but now he wants to unleash that hell onto already suffering Palestinians https://t.co/jcDesm4MSV

— humanity 22 (@humanitifirst) March 11, 2026

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One rule for them…

But all of this is incredibly two-faced – seeing as though Palestinians, Iranians, and Lebanese people are not allowed to defend themselves. And, if they dare do so, the West labels them as terrorists.

Most of the West has labelled Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”. And Israel has repeatedly called for both to disarm and disband.

But both literally only exist because of Israel’s repeated invasions of sovereign nations.

Hezbollah was formed in 1982 after Israel illegally invaded Lebanon. 

Hezbollah’s main foundational goal was to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The group’s resistance to Israeli occupation was instrumental in the IDF leaving Lebanon in 2000, after 18 years.

Similarly, Hamas’s goal is to:

liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.

Hamas was founded in Gaza in 1987 shortly after the start of the first Intifada, an uprising against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The group holds armed resistance to occupation as one of its founding principles, with its 2017 Document stating:

Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws.

And Hamas is correct in its interpretation of international law.

Armed resistance is not illegal under international law. A United Nations General Assembly resolution states:

The General Assembly,

Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;

Israel and the West have labelled both Hezbollah and Hamas as ‘terrorist groups’ and called for their disarmament – when they’re only defending the land they are native to.

Meanwhile, the same entities don’t question Israeli settlers carrying guns to terrorise indigenous people. The same people who have no historical ties to the land are mainly allergic to olive tree pollen, and whose government has banned them from taking DNA tests to prove their ancestry.

Featured image via Sky News/YouTube

Save Our Democracy rally in Parliament Square | Image by: Mark Kerrison/Alamy Live News

4 min read33 min

As both Houses are preparing to discuss election issues at national level, a fairer system for election to the House of Commons should be a priority.

I left behind my support for pure first-past-the-post (FPTP) in 1988 – and am seeking to obtain party representation broadly in line with votes cast. It can be done with minimal change to the current electoral system.

In principle we should make use of one vote for individual party candidates for two purposes: once for the election of a candidate on a constituency basis and again for the political party on a regional basis. A Mixed-Member Proportional System created from one vote with two values.

The ballot paper would be exactly the same as at present. The voter would mark an ‘X’ against a single candidate for a constituency Member. The votes for parties would be aggregated on a regional basis so that regional Members would be designated from the highest runners up. Direct constituency Members would dominate the parliament in the order of about five to one compared to regional Members.

Such a process requires every Member of the Commons to stand for election in a constituency. No need for party lists. By-elections can easily be accommodated.

It allows maximum voter control. All Members would carry out constituency duties no different to the variety of work as at present.

It removes the temptation for tactical voting and the use of quotas or thresholds.

Tiny parties or splinter groups from main parties do not get a look in.

Maintaining devolution, the UK would be divided into single seat parliamentary constituencies as at present. If, say, the Commons remains around 650 Members then a split of 500 for constituency seats and 150 for regional seats could allow for a broad connection between votes cast for political parties.

Using the one ballot obviates the need for long essays explaining changes to voting.

Such a process requires every Member of the Commons to stand for election in a constituency. No need for party lists

Yes, the 500 constituencies would be a bit larger than at present. The remaining 150 would be the highest runners-up candidates on a regional basis.

Assuming the UK would be split into (say) 10 regions to contain 50 constituencies, there would then be an additional 15 regional Members.

Obtaining the regional Member from the same ballot paper has many advantages. All Members have to be on a ballot paper. The highest runners-up would form the regional Members. If one party won all the constituencies in a region then the highest runners-up would all come from other parties.

All Commons Members will have faced the electorate. Some of the regional runners-up could well have higher votes than constituency Members elsewhere. Today there are many existing Commons Members sitting in Parliament with less votes than runner-up candidates in other constituencies.

While no threshold is needed it would be a requirement that no runner up candidate would qualify unless their registered party had won at least one direct constituency. This elevates the role of representation of communities.

Tactical voting as of today would deny a party the chance of regional Members. So the electorate are for the first time encouraged to vote for what they want as a first priority.

One vote with two values dilutes pure FPTP.

A practical diluted FPTP is far better than an impractical pure proportional representation (PR) system.

Some years ago I put such a plan to Labour’s Plant Commission into electoral reform. After some discussion and ironing out of detailed issues it almost obtained a majority.

I do believe it can accommodate the world we live in today with different numbers of registered parties and a different number of candidates.

It puts the electorate in charge.

Lord Rooker is a Labour peer

Pro-assisted dying campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament, September 2025 (PA Images / Alamy Live News)

4 min read6 min

Views are often shaped by personal experience, such as the death of a loved one, or by religious belief. It was the former which led me to confess in the Lords Chamber that, if the proposals in the assisted dying bill amounted to the ‘loaded gun’ with which it was equated by Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, I would have been prepared to fire it at my mother, so great was her agony as she begged for help in the final hours of her protracted death.

I was a strong supporter of the bill but my speech was followed by one from Baroness Grey-Thompson, who opined that “the bill that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is proposing is simply not fit for purpose”.

This could have been one of several recent Fridays in Westminster – but it was actually July 2014, and that bill was stymied by the general election the following year. Since then, many other countries have embraced the concept of assisted dying, yet the UK is about to flunk another attempt to change the law on this subject. This time, with some of the same peers participating and deploying the same arguments, the ultimate victim could be the House of Lords itself.

Respect for politics and politicians, already meagre, has been further eroded by the continuing fallout from the Epstein saga. An Upper Chamber stuffed with people born into a tiny sub-stratum of society, chosen by the Church of England or anointed by the leaders of political parties, was never easy to justify in a modern democracy. Finally ditching the hereditary element might once have been enough to temporarily appease those demanding change but the controversy over its handling of the assisted dying bill has put the institution in real jeopardy.

Since 2014, public opinion has moved steadily in favour of offering dying people a chance to end their lives in the way they choose. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill improves on previous efforts in this area and has been passed by the elected House of Commons. The role of the Lords, as its members keep saying, is to scrutinise and improve legislation, employing the extensive and hugely varied expertise its members can bring to bear. But it stretches the bounds of credibility to argue that this is all that has happened when a short bill has been subject to 1,253 amendments. 

The protracted and repetitive speeches these have produced, rendering it impossible for the bill to come close to meeting a workable timetable, have raised doubts as to whether self-regulation is any longer workable. If it looks like a filibuster, sounds like a filibuster and has the same effect as an intentional filibuster, then people will conclude that it is just that. And a House that cannot prevent such behaviour killing a bill that has the support of the elected members and the public is simply not fit for purpose. Rather than be an effective scrutineer, the Lords has allowed the personal prejudices of a few to thwart the wishes of the many.

The bill is not perfect: such legislation could never cater for all eventualities, and some opponents have proved hugely imaginative in positing extraordinary situations with which any new ‘assisted dying regime’ might have to contend. Others have sought to impose such conditions and demands that it would be impossible for any really sick person to comply, let alone the terminally ill. Cries for yet more ‘safeguards’ ignore that, currently, there are no real protections to stop grasping relations from encouraging a trip to Dignitas or suggesting that the patient should forgo further life-preserving treatment. 

Meanwhile, people who are close to death and desperate to have some control over the manner and the timing of their exit continue to be deprived of even that option.

Baroness Wheatcroft is a crossbench peer