The Lord Balfe
Conservative
Member of the House of Lords
M
Lord Balfe's full title is The Lord Balfe. His name is Richard Andrew Balfe, and he is a current member of the House of Lords.
Allowance claims · 2026
Data not yet released for 2026 — the Lords Finance Office publishes monthly CSVs ~6-8 weeks after month-end.
Lords votes · 2026
162 divisions
17 Content(10.5%)
0 Not-Content(0.0%)
145 didn't vote(89.5%)
2026-01-12
Content
201–169
Content
Source: lordsvotes-api.parliament.uk. "Result" shows the headline
Content vs Not-Content tally (including tellers). The Lords doesn't
publish a "didn't vote" attendance roll like the Commons, so the
figure above conflates absence with abstention.
Recent Hansard contributions · latest 25
2026-05-20
Supermarkets: Voluntary Price Caps
My Lords, 50 years ago I was working in the retail sector when the right honourable Baroness Williams, who was a Member of this House some time later, was the Minister for food prices. At the end of her term of office, she admitted that it was a hopeless
2026-03-17
Plan 2 Student Loans: Repayment Terms
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ease the repayment terms of Plan 2 student loans.
2025-10-31
Ukraine
My Lords, I will start with the one uncontroversial thing I am going say, which is to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Barrow. I look forward to his contribution, particularly in view of his past career.
I am speaker number 28. With the exception of my go
2025-10-22
Drink-Drive Limit
My Lords, I am told that the programme for drug testing on drivers is in serious disarray, with many people’s samples not being tested. Has the Minister considered using breath as well as blood tests, and can he look at sorting it out? I am told that the
2025-10-13
Chinese Espionage: Parliament
My Lords, I remind the Minister of the old Foreign Office dictum that we have no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests. It is in our permanent interest not to fall out disastrously with the biggest country in the world. We have
2025-09-10
Sickness Benefits: In-person Interviews
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to reinstate in-person interviews for all applicants for sickness benefits.
2025-09-10
Sickness Benefits: In-person Interviews
I thank the Minister for her Answer. This problem goes back a long time. I saw in the Times on 28 June that assessors in the department are apparently paid a bonus on interview numbers—the higher the number, the higher their bonus. This may or may not be
2025-09-03
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I will probably not find a lot of favour on this side with what I am about to say. I remind the House that I am the honorary president of BALPA, the pilots’ union, a union that does not go on strike and does not regard militant industrial actio
2025-07-23
Employment Rights Bill
BALPA, the union of which I am president, does all those things without a political fund.
2025-07-23
Employment Rights Bill
We were.
2025-07-23
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, it will probably not surprise noble Lords that I support the amendment. This situation has cursed the whole of the trade union movement’s relations with the Labour Party for far too long. As some of you will remember, I am the president of BALP
2025-07-21
Employment Rights Bill
Maybe I could say what I think the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, was going to say. The workplace is not necessarily quite as put. Both my grandmothers were businesspeople in their own right, with small businesses. The one we always call my English grandmother—
2025-07-21
Weight Loss Medication
My Lord, one of the problems we have is that a number of medicines that are available privately are not available on the NHS. I am thinking in particular of medicines for prostate cancer. I happen to know that the DHSC is currently looking at a regime fo
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for giving us the opportunity to debate this injustice. We both serve on a committee with the justice unions, as they are called. I recently succeeded the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, as the Conservative vice-p
2025-06-05
Ukraine: UK Security Guarantee
My Lords, it may be unpopular, but the Russians do actually believe they have a case. If we are going to get peace, we have to get a neutral arbiter in there to try to start negotiations. The word that is missing is “Europe”. What are the Government doin
2025-06-03
UK Nuclear Deterrent
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that it is an independent nuclear deterrent, or is it tied in? Would it work if we did not have support from the United States? One of the problems that we have had in the past is that it has not been an independent nuc
2025-06-02
Allowances
My Lords, I support this Motion. I have a very simple question for the Leader. Bearing in mind what happened during the period up to 2009, have the usual channels thought carefully about what the phrase
“where it is necessary to do so”
means? Will
2025-05-20
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech, but I am probably fairly unique in this House in that I was brought up in a children’s home. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who is not in his place, and I have a joke that he got to prison an
2025-05-20
NHS and Care Volunteer Responders Service
My Lords, I in no way denigrate volunteers, but can the Minister confirm that when a volunteer in a hospital comes across information about patients it has the same level of confidentiality as it would if it had been found by a member of staff, and that
2025-05-15
Pensioners: Shoplifting
My Lords, I note that the Minister is about to have a meeting with a group of people dealing with this issue. Can he assure me that the trade union movement will be involved in that? I spent some time working for the Co-op many years ago. It is very frig
2025-05-14
Mansion House Accord
My Lords, having spent much of my life as a pension fund trustee, I am aware that this is not a new proposal. Can the Minister give us an undertaking that voluntary will not precede compulsory? What pension fund trustees are concerned about is being orde
2025-04-29
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to address a quorate meeting of the TUC General Council. I should declare an interest at the beginning: I am the honorary president of BALPA, the British Airline Pilots Association, a union that covers all the people who
2025-04-22
Cambridge South Station: Car Parking
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer and point out that, as he says, this is next to the medical campus, which is an ever-expanding area with an ever-expanding need for transport. At the moment, there appears to be no parking provision for disab
2025-04-22
Cambridge South Station: Car Parking
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have had discussions with Network Rail about the provision of car parking spaces at the new Cambridge South station.
2025-03-27
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I place on record my thanks to the four maiden speakers and to the three former TUC general secretaries who have joined us for this debate, not to mention the last speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Prentis, whose union was always very helpful to me
Source: hansard.parliament.uk via hansard-api. Snippets shown
verbatim from the search API; click any debate title for the full record.
Register of Interests · 3 entries on file
Declarations under the Lords Code of Conduct. Free text — no monetary values, no hours worked. A declaration that an interest exists, not a claim about its size.
Category 2: Shareholdings etc. (b)
-
Unilever plc (consumer goods)
registered 2024-08-02 · amended 2025-04-05
-
GSK plc (pharmaceuticals)
registered 2024-05-31 · amended 2025-04-05
-
AstraZeneca (pharmaceuticals)
registered 2024-04-29 · amended 2025-04-05
Source: UK Parliament Members API (Lords register). Refreshed weekly.
Read the full
Lords Code of Conduct
for what each category covers and the disclosure thresholds.
Party history
2013-09-19 → present
Conservative
current
Government posts
None recorded.
Opposition posts
None recorded.
Committee memberships
2015-06-12 → 2017-04-27
EU External Affairs Sub-Committee
2017-06-27 → 2018-06-12
International Relations and Defence Committee
Contact
Parliamentary office
richard.balfe@parliament.uk
020 7219 8710 · House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW
020 7219 8710 · House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW
APPGs (2026) · 29 active officership(s) · 29 historic
One row per active APPG. Funder names link out via the
/appgs Top secretariat funders panel — click any funder
there to open its full relationship graph. Officer matching is name-based against
the parliament.uk register text and may miss titled / hyphenated variants.
Written parliamentary questions · 2026
Showing
3
of 3 tabled
3 answered(100.0%)
2
departments
Source: UK Parliament Members API. The amber "interest" tag is set
by Parliament's own system when the asking member has a register entry
it deems related — typically a paid role or directorship in the
sector being asked about. Click any "i" icon to see the full
question and the department's answer.
Bills sponsored & supported · 2026
0 bills
0 as lead sponsor
0 as supporter
No bills sponsored or supported in 2026.
Source: UK Parliament Bills API. "Lead" sponsor is the
primary mover (sortOrder = 1); "Supporter" rows are
members of either House who
backed the bill at introduction. Year is the bill's first-reading
date.
Historic bills (all-time)
5 bills
5 as lead sponsor
0 as supporter
| Bill | Info | Role | Status | Introduced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pensions (Amendment) Bill [HL] | Sponsored | 2nd reading | 2020-01-16 | |
| Pensions (Amendment) Bill [HL] | Sponsored | 2nd reading | 2019-10-30 | |
| Local Government Elections (Referendum) Bill [HL] | Sponsored | 2nd reading | 2017-06-28 | |
| Local Government Elections (Referendum) Bill [HL] | Sponsored | 2nd reading | 2016-06-13 | |
| European Union Citizens (Electoral Rights) Bill [HL] | Sponsored | 2nd reading | 2015-06-04 |
Same source as the year-scoped panel above, but unconstrained by
year. The "Sponsored" tag = lead sponsor; "Supported" = backed at
introduction. Sorted newest first.