The Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield KG
Crossbench
Member of the House of Lords
M
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield's full title is The Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield KG. His name is Peter John Hennessy, 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
No Lords votes recorded for 2026.
Recent Hansard contributions · latest 25
2026-05-18
King’s Speech
My Lords, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Case, is of course a special moment for an old teacher like me. I thank him and other noble Lords, including the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, for their very moving words.
There is anot
2025-07-18
Strategic Defence Review 2025
My Lords, I thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Soames, for his kind words. It is a delight to be back, even as a kind of sandwich filling between him and another friend, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. It is very good to see everybod
My Lords, to understand a nation and its people, you need a feel for the inner bundle of practices, characteristics and states of mind that create the image that a country carries of itself, which in turn shapes the way that others see it. For those of u
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their welcome back; it is an undiluted pleasure to be with you all again. It is funny what one misses. There is serious business, of course, but being a Member of this House is the most agreeable form of adult education
2023-01-20
The Union (Constitution Committee Report)
My Lords, it is a great honour to follow a fellow historian, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, to welcome him to your Lordships’ House and to praise his lustrous maiden speech. His learning, experience and scholarship take him deep into one of the crucial,
My Lords, I declare my membership of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. In addition, I must declare an eccentricity, for I am one of a tiny number of people in the kingdom who experience a spasm of excitement when I hear the words Cabinet Manual. I
2020-03-05
BBC and Public Service Broadcasting
My Lords, I declare a pair of interests. First, since the early 1980s I have made a number of programmes, mainly for BBC Radios 3 and 4, working with as gifted a set of producers as any broadcaster could wish for. Secondly, the BBC has escorted me throu
2020-01-08
Queen’s Speech
My Lords, to borrow a line from PG Wodehouse, it is always easy to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and the imminent return of the European Union withdrawal Bill. Yet fuelled by a wish to find reasons to be cheerful, including real possibilities on
My Lords, last month, I learned what was for me a new concept when for the first time scientists managed to photograph the rim of a black hole. The astrophysicists called it an “event horizon”—an interesting term.
Thinking about today’s hugely timely
2019-03-25
Brexit
My Lords, I am rendered almost speechless, but I shall try. I have no desire to add to the reservoir of recrimination into which so many words have been poured because of Brexit. But, despite the kind words of my noble friend Lord Foulkes and my cherishe
My Lords, in a celebrated article in the Times to mark the unveiling of a statue of the great Benjamin Disraeli in Parliament Square on the second anniversary of his death, the leader writer penned a sentence that has resonated ever since:
“In the ina
2018-12-18
Modernising Defence Programme
In the noble Earl’s judgment, what above all in this defence review distinguishes it from its 13 predecessors since 1945? As a footnote, I am greatly interested in the new tauter approach to strategic policy-making, with the new net assessment unit. To e
2018-11-20
Brexit: Negotiations
My Lords, the European question has long vexed us, as a people and a country. When the wind from Europe blows through the corridors and Chambers of the Palace of Westminster, it scars our politics and sears our national conversation to a degree unmatche
2018-07-23
Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations
My Lords, in a history department somewhere within the British university system, there may well have sat this very afternoon a young man or woman sifting their way through the paper trail already laid down by Brexit. When in 10, 15 or 20 years one or ot
2018-07-05
The NHS
I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, on an inspiring opening speech.
In the life of a nation, there occur a few ripe, golden days—the kind of day that you want to “bite to the core”, to borrow a line from the poet Edward Thomas. Und
2018-06-26
NATO Summit 2018
My Lords, I declare my interests as listed in the register.
Seventy years ago next month, in the stifling heat of a Washington summer, a group of seven western nations set about crafting a treaty which, nine months later, in April 1949, created what
2018-04-19
National Security Situation
My Lords, I declare my interests as listed in the register. I should like to concentrate on the Government’s National Security Capability Review, which was published on 28 March. In my judgment, it is a document of considerable significance for two reaso
2018-04-16
Syria
My Lords, I support the Government’s view that there needed to be a response to the appalling chemical attack on Douma. I am sure that considerable care was taken in assessing the Rubik’s cube of possibilities that might flow from military action underta
2018-03-21
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill
My Lords, I regret that I was unable to speak at Second Reading. I promise that I shall not make up for it this afternoon; I shall be very brief.
With the clauses before us this afternoon and evening, we have reached a truly load-bearing piece of the
2018-02-05
Civil Service Impartiality
My Lords, nearly every political generation experiences a reprise of this question. In the early post-war Treasury, Hugh Dalton was given some unpalatable advice and denounced his officials as “congenital snag-hunters”, but surely that is what we pay the
2018-01-29
Defence Modernisation Programme
My Lords, I warmly welcome the winnowing out of this exercise from the Cabinet Office’s capability review, but could the noble Earl explain the difference between a defence review and a defence modernisation programme?
2018-01-25
Brexit: Devolved Administrations
My Lords, I declare my membership of the advisory council of These Islands.
As a remainer and a United Kingdom man to my last fibre, I was fearful in the gap between the Scottish and the EU referendums, as was the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, and other n
2018-01-18
United States: Foreign Policy
My Lords, I am truly honoured to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, who is such a welcome recruit to your Lordships’ House—on what one might call the warriors’ Bench.
I was honoured to serve as a member of his strategic advi
2018-01-08
Industrial Strategy
My Lords, why has it proved so tough for successive Governments to shape a successful industrial strategy that inspires, bites and, above all, endures? It is as if the framers of such strategies have been so many sculptors gazing at a rough-hewn piece o
2017-11-28
Royal Marines
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for securing this timely debate on this critical Question. I declare my honorary captaincy in the Royal Naval Reserve and my membership of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s strategic advisory pane
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 · 2 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 1: Remunerated employment etc.
-
In receipt of author's royalties from Haus Publishing
registered 2011-09-06 · amended 2025-07-10
Category 3: Land and property
-
Residential properties in Sheffield and Liverpool
registered 2021-05-09 · 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
2010-11-08 → present
Crossbench
current
Government posts
None recorded.
Opposition posts
None recorded.
Committee memberships
2011-07-06 → 2012-03-26
Draft House of Lords Reform Bill (Joint Committee)
2014-06-12 → 2017-04-27
Science and Technology Committee
2019-07-01 → 2023-01-31
Constitution Committee
Contact
Parliamentary office
contactholmember@parliament.uk
020 7219 5353 · House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW
020 7219 5353 · House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW
APPGs (2026) · 0 active officership(s)
No APPG officerships found for this peer. (Officer matching is by name —
if the parliamentary register lists them under a slightly different
form, the join may miss; check
/appgs directly.)
Written parliamentary questions · 2026
No written questions tabled in 2026.
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)
0 bills
0 as lead sponsor
0 as supporter
No bills sponsored or supported on record.
Same source as the year-scoped panel above, but unconstrained by
year. The "Sponsored" tag = lead sponsor; "Supported" = backed at
introduction. Sorted newest first.