Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
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Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
Tom Rutland (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)
It is a privilege to be appointed as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. May I start by paying tribute to my predecessor and former Deputy Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), for all she has done since the general election last year on workers’ rights, local government and building council homes? She made a real and lasting difference.
In July, the Labour Government published a five-step plan to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation, and to transform the safety and quality of social homes. The affordable homes programme will deliver 110,000 to 130,000 affordable homes. Under the new £39 billion social and affordable homes programme, we have set an ambition of 300,000 new homes over 10 years. We will set targets after the initial bids.
Paul Waugh
I was lucky enough to grow up in a council house in Rochdale in a stable and secure home with an affordable rent, but sadly that is an opportunity and a childhood denied to far too many children in my constituency today. Why? Because under the last 10 years of the Conservative Government, the number of families on the housing list trebled. Does the Secretary of State agree that reducing the number of children in temporary accommodation should be not just the mission of this Government, but the moral mission of this Government?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting this incredibly important issue and for always championing his constituents in Rochdale. He is quite right to highlight the appalling record of the Conservative party on temporary accommodation for families and children, and on homelessness and rough sleeping. Our drive to build more social and affordable homes will tackle its failure head-on. We will reduce homelessness levels and the need for temporary accommodation by providing more secure and affordable homes up and down the country, with a particular focus on social rent, including record numbers of new council homes.
Andrew George
I welcome the Secretary of State to his position and declare an interest as a volunteer member of the Cornwall Community Land Trust. The Secretary of State will be well aware that a perfect storm has hit the construction industry as far as the delivery of social housing is concerned: tender forecasts are not encouraging, Homes England’s scoring matrix is proving to be inflexible, and the cost-value ratio used by registered providers is not helping and is providing a disincentive to deliver in the most deprived communities. There are thousands of homes that community-led CLTs and others could be delivering now. Will the Secretary of State meet me and fellow members of the community-led housing sector? Otherwise, we will be waiting another five years to get shovel-ready affordable homes off the ground.
Steve Reed
I am always happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and others on issues as important as this. I had the pleasure of visiting Newlyn in his constituency not so long ago and some of those issues were made apparent to me by people living in the area. We announced top-ups to the affordable homes programme in the autumn and the spring, and in March we announced £2 billion as a downpayment for the new social and affordable homes programme, which is now open for bids. Homes England can and does vary grant rates on the basis of bids from social housing providers. Importantly, the available £39 billion covers a range of tenures, including community-led housing. I would expect and hope to see increases in the way that he has described.
Tom Rutland
The only way to solve the housing crisis is, as my right hon. Friend so articulately puts it, to “build, baby, build”. In my constituency of East Worthing and Shoreham, the median wage is £37,000, but the median house price has soared to more than 10 times that. What will the Government do to ensure that social and affordable homes are built for my constituents who desperately need them?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for his work on this issue, and I am sorry he is not wearing the red cap I saw him wearing in Liverpool recently highlighting this very important issue. The Government have committed £39 billion to a new 10-year affordable homes programme that will deliver around 300,000 homes, with at least 60% for social rent—the most affordable tenure. We have committed to the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation, and we are backing councils and housing associations to build at scale, so that communities such as his in East Worthing and Shoreham get the homes they need at costs that people can afford to pay.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
There are over 560 families on Gosport borough council’s waiting list for social housing, yet despite taking power a few years ago, the Liberal Democrat council has not built a single extra council house. Meanwhile, the complaints I get in my mailbag about the substandard quality of council accommodation grow more and more every single week. What is the Secretary of State doing to encourage such inadequate councils to build a greater quantity and better quality of council accommodation?
Steve Reed
The hon. Lady will be aware that the Government have reintroduced home building targets that were scrapped by the previous Government. It is important that we have those targets and that they are achievable, and councils will be held to account to achieve them. I am working on an acceleration package to encourage more building in which local authorities will be key partners, and we will make announcements on that in due course. Of course, the hon. Lady will be aware of the changes we are making to drive up standards in council and other social housing, which we will insist are enforced and carried through.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It falls to me to open the bowling for the Opposition Front Bench, so I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment and welcome him to his place today.
The previous Government awarded the Mayor of London almost £9 billion of funding to build a total of 151,000 affordable homes in London. The second tranche of that money amounted to £4 billion, which was to build 35,000 homes between 2021 and 2026. To date, only 997 have been completed, with 443 of those homes being acquisitions rather than newly built. What plans does the Secretary of State have to hold the Mayor of London to account for this lamentable failure?
Steve Reed
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words, but I think it is disingenuous to blame the Mayor of London for failings that were the fault of the previous Conservative Government and, I am afraid, current Conservative boroughs in London such as Bromley, which is a shocking 95% behind its house building target. We cannot tolerate that.
The previous Government choked off house building everywhere by scrapping house building targets and crashing the economy, sending mortgages through the roof so that people could not afford to buy new homes—of course, the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), was a major cheerleader for the Prime Minister who carried that through. In the last four years of the previous Government, housing consents collapsed by one fifth. It is this Government who will take the steps to remediate that situation, this Government who will get 1.5 million new homes built and this Government who will work with local government partners across the whole country, including here in London, to ensure that the homes this country needs are built.
Gareth Bacon
The whole House will have heard that the Secretary of State has no plans to intervene on the Mayor of London. Under section 340 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, the Secretary of State has the power to direct the Mayor of London to review and revise specific policies of the London plan if they are seen to be hindering housing delivery. There are a plethora of policies—including an obsession with dual facing and twin staircasing and a bizarre aversion to corridors—that developers are united in saying are massively hindering development in the country’s largest city, which has the highest demand for affordable housing. The Secretary of State is holding all the cards and the purse strings. Why will he not intervene?
Steve Reed
First, I do recognise the challenges the hon. Gentleman has outlined. They should concern us all, and I thank him for raising them. He will be aware that we are making legislative changes right now, with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that is going through Parliament, to speed up the planning system that is holding back so many homes from being built. We will be tabling further amendments to the Bill to tackle some of the challenges the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
I am working with the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London on an acceleration package that targets London in particular. We will make announcements on that within weeks, and the hon. Gentleman will then see the action that we intend to take here in the capital city to ensure that home building continues apace. We will also be looking nationally, because every region of the country needs new homes built to meet people’s dreams of having somewhere affordable to rent or buy.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
In 2007, Ming Campbell launched the Liberal Democrats’ campaign for not just affordable but decent homes for our military. I congratulate the Secretary of State on his position. Will he join me in congratulating the forces families who backed my amendment to provide them with a decent homes standard, and will he agree that they deserve nothing less?
Steve Reed
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I agree that the changes that have been made—we have managed to come to a consensus on this—are very important and will make a big difference to forces families and veterans, which we all want to see. I congratulate and commend the hon. Gentleman on working cross party to ensure an outcome that will be satisfactory to everybody who is concerned about this issue, as he is.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
My Department does not hold data on the proportion of people who have been granted asylum status living in the private rented sector in England.
John Lamont
It is extraordinary that the Minister does not have that answer. Too many asylum seekers are arriving in our communities far too quickly because the Government have failed on their promise to smash their gangs. People have had enough, and this Labour Government do not seem to have any answers. What actions will the Minister take to support local communities and public services to deal with the growing number of asylum seekers in our communities?
Matthew Pennycook
I am afraid I will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman, as it was the previous Conservative Government—in which he served as a Minister—who lost control of our borders and presided over the complete breakdown of the asylum system. This Government are restoring order to that system, speeding up decision making and reforming the appeals process to cut the asylum backlog and remove those with no right to be here at a much faster rate than the previous Government. Our country has a proud history of providing sanctuary to those fleeing persecution. Genuine asylum seekers who have been granted refugee or humanitarian protection status should be welcomed. The hon. Gentleman would have said the same some years ago, and it is a sign of just how far his party has fallen that he cannot now bring himself to do so.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Despite that answer, it is clear that things are getting worse. Our councils are battling with the cost of this Government’s border failures. The 22% rise in small boat arrivals, combined now with Chagossians arriving in rising numbers, throwing themselves at the mercy of our local authorities as they escape Starmer’s sell-out, is stretching council housing budgets to breaking point. The Government have refused to answer my written questions about what financial support they provide to councils housing asylum seekers and refugees who are granted asylum in their areas. Can the Minister tell the House how much of the proposed rise in council tax is for the cost of the Government’s asylum failures, and will he publish the full costs and support in the interests of transparency?
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman is conflating two separate issues. Genuine asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status and who can stand on their own two feet and work will rent, in some cases in the private rented sector and in other cases in market housing. Some dispersal accommodation for those seeking asylum will, of course, be in the private rented sector, and that can add pressure to local rental markets. That is why decisions must be made in co-ordination with local authorities and taking into account local housing pressures. More importantly, that is why the reduction in hotel use needs to be proceeded with in an ordered and managed way, not the chaotic way that the Conservatives have been calling for.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
The national planning policy framework sets out that:
“The purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, including the provision of…supporting infrastructure in a sustainable manner.”
We made changes to the framework in December last year that will support the increased provision and modernisation of various types of public infrastructure. Local development plans should address needs and opportunities in relation to infrastructure, and identify what infrastructure is required and how it can be funded and brought forward.
John Milne
In my constituency, we have seen promises of new schools and clinics repeatedly broken, but in every case it was not the developer or local council that let people down but national bodies such as the Department for Education and integrated care boards. They do it to save money by cramming more kids into existing schools and more patients into packed clinics. In the light of the 21,000 extra houses that have just been announced by the Chancellor for Horsham district, will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can legally ensure that key local infrastructure promises are met?
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman knows that I am always happy to sit down and talk to him about these and other issues. It must be said that when preparing a local plan, planning practice guidance recommends that local planning authorities use available evidence of infrastructure requirements to prepare an infrastructure funding statement. Local authorities are not doing that in all cases, which is why the chief planner wrote to all local planning authorities recently to remind them of their statutory duty to do so. We can discuss that and other issues when I meet him.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
New housing developments agreed under the previous Government have been built on the green belt around villages in the Shipley constituency, such as Burley in Wharfedale, Wilsden, Denholme and Cullingworth, often without the vital investment in infrastructure such as GP practices, schools and other council services. Will the Minister reassure my constituents that as we build the much-needed affordable and social homes, we will prioritise brownfield and ensure adequate investment in the community?
Matthew Pennycook
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance; ours is a brownfield-first policy. She highlights an important point. The previous Government released vast swathes of the green belt in a haphazard and chaotic manner. We are taking a strategic approach to green-belt release, prioritising the release of the lowest-quality grey belt, and we are ensuring that where that happens, subject to our golden rules, we see higher levels of affordable housing and infrastructure. It is a much smarter approach. The previous Government did not adopt it, and they should stop carping about it now.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
Water companies are not statutory consultees on individual planning applications, but they are consulted as part of the preparation of local development plans. On 26 January, the Government declared a moratorium on any new statutory consultees and announced a review of the existing statutory consultee arrangements. A consultation on proposals designed to limit the scope of statcons to where advice is strictly necessary and to remove entirely a limited number of them will be published in the near future.
Edward Morello
Outdated sewer systems mix clean rainwater with sewage, polluting rivers and placing strains on outdated infrastructure. If the Government are intent on not making water companies statutory consultees, a national rainwater management strategy mandating rainwater harvesting on new homes and major renovations would ease the pressure on infrastructure and reduce the likelihood of sewage overflows. What recent conversations has the Minister had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about introducing a national rainwater management strategy? Will he consider making rainwater harvesting a mandatory requirement on new housing developments?
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman raises an apt point. I regularly meet colleagues from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to discuss a range of issues, including water efficiency and management. I draw his attention to the consultation we launched just last month to review the water efficiency standards in the Building Regulations 2010. As part of that, we are investigating how we can bring technologies such as rainwater harvesting into new developments safely.
Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
Devolution to strong local leaders who understand the economic opportunities and challenges in their patch has clear economic benefits: it can drive higher productivity, boost local economies and put more money in people’s pockets. For example, Greater Manchester, which is further along in its devolution journey, has one of the UK’s fastest growing local economies.
Patrick Hurley
I am pleased to see that the Government are pressing ahead with their commitment to implement new strategic authorities. May I press the Minister to consider how those new strategic authorities can grow their local economies by providing support for things like community businesses and social enterprises in town centres, helping to regenerate and renovate the neglected high streets we see across the country?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is completely right to highlight that. There is a huge opportunity for strategic authorities to support community businesses, co-operatives and social enterprises to help regenerate and revitalise our town centres and build community wealth. We are already seeing that across the country: we see it in Liverpool city region, where significant investment is going into community businesses. We are keen to build on this opportunity and to unlock it across the country.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Devolution is starting off well in North Yorkshire, but North Yorkshire council is really concerned about the upcoming local government settlement, which will obviously be challenging for all councils. May I urge the Secretary of State in his new role to look carefully at the most rural county in England and the particular challenges that it has in delivering services?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We are looking closely at every area. We know that local government is going through the process of reorganisation at the same time as we are doing devolution. We are doing that at pace, but we are doing it in strong collaboration, working closely with individual areas.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
We welcome devolution in London, but the ability of local councils like mine in Wandsworth to tackle growth could be undermined by the changes proposed in the fair funding review. In Wandsworth, 26% of residents and 33% of children live in poverty after housing costs. Will the Minister consider making adjustments to the proposed funding formula to properly account for housing and children’s services and ensure that no council is worse off as a result of the review?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We have consulted on the fair funding review. My colleague the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness is looking at proposals at the moment, and we will report back in due course.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Devolution can have huge benefits for local people. Using £20 million of funding from the last Government, Stockton-on-Tees borough council has brought forward proposals to change Yarm High Street, but the council has completely failed to properly consult and work with local residents and businesses in developing the proposals, so what could be an opportunity has become a nightmare. Does the Minister agree that such changes should be done with local residents and businesses, and not forced upon them?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
One hundred per cent. Devolution offers the opportunity to put communities in the driving seat and give them genuine power. For example, this Government’s Pride in Place programme puts communities right at the centre, because we think that is how to ensure that communities come together to drive the change that they want to see in their area. We encourage all councils to work closely with their local communities to make that change happen.
Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)
The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme will support a wide range of social and affordable housing, including council housing, supported housing, community-led housing and, of course, rural housing. The Government will also consider how planning policy can better promote rural affordable housing through our work on national policies, which will be brought forward for decision making later in the year.
Ben Maguire
I thank the Secretary of State for that response. Cornwall has been given an ambitious annual target of 4,400 homes, and I sincerely hope that a large proportion of those will be for the 25,000 Cornish families on the housing waiting list. I meet so many constituents in social and private housing who have been left high and dry by dodgy developers who go into liquidation before they can deliver vital infrastructure, such as roads and sewerage works. Will the Secretary of State please meet me to discuss the enforcement tools that local authorities need to properly hold those developers to account?
Steve Reed
I certainly recognise the problem that the hon. Member describes; it is an issue in North Cornwall and right across the country. On the developer contribution, we are looking at how we can strengthen enforcement, so that where commitments are made, they are delivered on, and local communities are not stranded and left high and dry because the vital infrastructure to support the homes never appears.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Samantha Dixon)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The Government want more empty homes brought back into use across the country, including through the steps we outlined in the English devolution White Paper to strengthen local authorities’ ability to take over the management of vacant residential premises.
Bradley Thomas
I welcome the Minister to her new role. Will the Government consider introducing a policy whereby long-term empty properties brought back into use as homes will count towards a district’s housing target?
Samantha Dixon
Local authorities have a number of powers to deal with empty homes. The hon. Member raises an interesting point, which I will take away and consider with officials.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
There are 46 long-term empty properties in the community of Park End in my constituency. Park End desperately needs regeneration, so I am delighted that the Government have awarded it £20 million of Pride in Place funding, for the community to use for regeneration over the long term. Will the Government commit to working with me to make sure that the local community gets the best from that funding?
Samantha Dixon
Absolutely. I am really encouraged by the way that local communities are seizing the opportunity of Pride in Place funding, and taking it forward to deal with an issue that affects every council across the country.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
The Government recognise that community-led housing delivers a wide range of benefits. We strengthened support for it in the revised national planning policy framework published last year, and in March we announced a 10-year social finance investment to provide capital funding for community-led housing. As part of the development of our long-term housing strategy, we are considering how the Government might further support the growth of the sector.
Gareth Thomas
Redwood Housing Co-operative spans five floors of social housing in the iconic OXO Tower on the south bank of the River Thames. Given that Redwood is run by its tenants, charges some of the lowest rents in central London and offers some of the best views, should not every community have a Redwood?
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend has long championed co-operatives, and I recognise his commitment to expanding co-ops in London and across the country. With that example, he draws our attention to the benefits that they can provide. We are considering opportunities to legislate to establish a legal framework for a co-operative housing tenure, which would help formalise the rights and responsibilities of both co-operatives and their tenants, and make co-operative housing a more attractive option. As my hon. Friend will know, I am more than happy to discuss the matter with him further at a suitable opportunity in the near future.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
In my Chichester constituency, a lack of available land drives high-density schemes in rural villages that lack the necessary infrastructure, and the schemes quickly become unpopular locally. Community land trusts such as the Westbourne Land Trust gain local support and deliver affordable homes, and that gives communities a real stake in that development. Does the Minister agree that community buy-in is essential if the Government are to reach their target for building homes? What steps are being taken to help community land trusts go from the planning phase to building homes?
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Lady outlined another benefit of community land trusts: getting local buy-in. The availability of land is an issue for CLTs. I have already set out some of the ways that we are supporting them through new investment. As the Secretary of State said earlier, the new social and affordable housing programme will be designed with the flexibility necessary to support a greater diversity of social and affordable housing supply, including community-led housing.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
We recognise the excellent work being done by the Coalfields Regeneration Trust and remain committed to working with it. As my hon. Friend will know, the current fiscal position remains challenging. It is in that context that we are considering funding requests.
Samantha Niblett
The Coalfields Regeneration Trust is asking for £50 million to support local initiatives that deliver training courses and community cohesion at ward level. I have spoken to the trust about supporting constituents of mine in ex-coalfield communities in Swadlincote by improving the confidence of people on long-term benefits, so that they can build towards getting paid work, and about providing activities that support community cohesion. I recently visited Bloomin’ Gardens & Landscapes in Church Gresley. People there told me that they were concerned about the lack of interest in careers in gardening and horticulture. What can the Minister do to help me help my constituents, by ensuring that they have opportunities in gardening and horticulture, and can improve their communities?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
The Government remain committed to supporting ex-coalfield communities, such as those in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and to tackling the decline and neglect we saw under the Conservative party. It was our party that established the Coalfields Regeneration Trust in 1999, and we are committed to working with it to support our coalfield communities. That comes alongside our wider efforts to invest in communities that were held back under the Conservative party through our trailblazing Pride in Place programme.
Mr Speaker
I am intrigued to hear how coalfield regeneration relates to the hon. Gentleman’s part of Northern Ireland. I call Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for that answer. The fact is that there were coalfields in Northern Ireland. There has been an opportunity—
Mr Speaker
Order. So the hon. Gentleman is saying that he has coalfields in his constituency? [Interruption.] Okay. I am going to allow the question, but I ask that we think about whether issues are relevant to our constituencies.
Jim Shannon
The question of who benefited from coalfields in the past is always relevant to people in Northern Ireland. Other parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have experienced coalfield regeneration, and people have come back from those areas on the mainland to Northern Ireland. Can we ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to benefit from this? These benefits have been brought forward in England; bring them forward in Northern Ireland as well.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We recognise that we need to support communities across the country who have been held back. We are working with the Northern Ireland Office to make sure that support is available for communities to renew and regenerate, so that they have the power to drive the change that they want to see.
Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness (Alison McGovern)
The Government inherited a homelessness crisis; there were record numbers of people in temporary accommodation, and rough sleeping had doubled. That is why my predecessor got together the inter-ministerial group on homelessness very quickly. It has met four times, and has established the principles of the strategy, having sought full input from across Government. That strategy is on its way, but just last week, the Government announced a further £84 million in this financial year to support people who are sleeping rough or who are homeless.
Mary Glindon
The Minister’s announcement is welcome, but last year, in England and Wales, 18% of the people who were found to be at risk of homelessness or were experiencing homelessness were aged just 16 to 24. That number is far too high. Will the Minister agree to meet the YMCA and the Youth Homeless Chapter Collective to discuss the action needed to support young people and reduce homelessness for good?
Alison McGovern
I congratulate my hon. Friend on sharing those figures with the House, because even though it is quite hard to hear them, it is important that we do not look away from this crisis. I will of course meet her and the charities she mentions.
Emily Darlington
As the Minister may know, Milton Keynes used to be called “tent city”. We reduced the number of rough sleepers down to 16 when I was deputy leader at the council. We were able to do that because we understood that rough sleeping was more than just a housing issue; it was a whole-person issue. Is she willing to meet me and the other officers of the all-party parliamentary group on rough sleeping, as well as Back-Bench Members who have experience in this area, while shaping and delivering the rough sleeping strategy?
Alison McGovern
I am aware of my hon. Friend’s work, and the work of Milton Keynes council and others in the city, to bring down the number of rough sleepers. We will take that whole-person approach in the homelessness strategy. I never knowingly avoid a meeting with an APPG, so I am sure that we will get that arranged shortly.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Reducing youth homelessness relies on having an effective, working housing market. Of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) understands that, and that is why she has pledged that a future Conservative Government will abolish stamp duty on primary residences. She has also said that she is happy for the idea to be stolen and adopted by other parties. It would reduce the cost of house buying in Beverley and Holderness by around £3,800—a real boost for young families trying to get on the housing ladder. Will the Minister say to the Secretary of State, and indeed the Chancellor, “Adopt this policy, and do it now”?
Alison McGovern
The party of Liz Truss just doesn’t learn, does it? The Conservatives are happy to make tax policy that is absolute fantasy. People need real homes to live in, not this kind of thing, and the Conservatives simply will not get a hearing until they look at their record and learn to say sorry.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Secretary of State and his Ministers to their positions. I very much look forward to welcoming them to meetings of the Select Committee; we are a fair and robust Committee. The Minister highlighted the inter-ministerial group, which the former Secretary of State chaired and saw as being very important. The issue cuts across all departmental groups. It is important, because within two months, as we go into the next year, and in the next financial year, we will see over 170,000 young children in temporary accommodation —in homelessness. That should worry all of us. The inter-ministerial group has met four times. Can the Minister confirm that the group will continue to be convened—and if it will, who will chair it?
Alison McGovern
The Chair of the Select Committee makes the case extremely well. If anybody in this Chamber is not worried about temporary accommodation, they are not paying attention; that is how serious this is. It is terrible for our kids, and for the taxpayer, because it is so expensive. I will follow up with her. A lot of work has already been done on the homelessness strategy. We want to get it confirmed as soon as possible. I will engage fully with the Select Committee on the strategy to ensure that we get it right, and we will come back to her shortly with the details of how we will do that together.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
Every night, over 1,000 children are homeless in my city; they are either in temporary accommodation, or even worse off. Does the Minister agree that this is totally unacceptable for a modern society, and that the Government must bring forward its cross-departmental plan to tackle youth homelessness?
Alison McGovern
I refer the hon. Gentleman to what I just said to the Chair of the Select Committee, but let me confirm again that any child in temporary accommodation, particularly B&B accommodation, who has not got enough space to do their homework pays the price—not just through what they are going through today, but in the future. We cannot accept that. We cannot stand for it, and we should work together across this House to bring this to an end.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Thanks to the action of the previous Government and councils up and down the country, 90% of rough sleepers were got off the streets at the beginning of the pandemic, five and half years ago. Tragically, since then, most of those people—young and old—have returned to rough sleeping. In constituencies like mine, street homelessness is not so obvious—people are living and sleeping in woods, ruins and so on—yet the tragedy is still there. What lessons can the Minister and the Government learn from that rapid removal of homeless people from the streets in 2020, so that they can implement it again?
Alison McGovern
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. Homelessness can be about rough sleeping, but there is also hidden homelessness. Our forthcoming strategy needs to consider all that in the round. He asks me what lesson I take from what happened a few years ago—and, I would argue, from how we reduced rough sleeping in the past. I would say that politics is about choices. We took the choice last week to invest, in-year, an extra £84 million in preventing and addressing homelessness. That is the right thing to ensure that everybody in this country is safe and has a roof over their head.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
I welcome the Minister to her place. Youth and overall homelessness have increased since the Government took office, and charities have been harmed by policies such as the national insurance rises imposed by the Chancellor. We welcome the additional money that the Government have allocated for tackling homelessness this winter, but it is an admission that they have failed in their pledge to reduce homelessness. The former Minister had a novel touch, and sent the figure the wrong way. I will ask this Minister the same question that I asked in the previous Session: does she accept that homelessness has risen under this Government, and will she commit to eliminating it by the end of this Parliament?
Alison McGovern
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words of welcome. I refer him to the comments that I made to colleagues. The homelessness strategy is on its way. I am afraid that we could not overturn 14 years of wrong choices in the time that we have had in office—that is not realistic—but our strategy on its way. If there is cross-party support for going much further to reduce the use of temporary accommodation and ensure that everyone has a roof over their head, I will happily work with him to do that together.
Callum Anderson (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)
The Government have taken decisive action to improve the capacity of all local authorities, including those in Buckingham and Bletchley, to build more social housing, including through our new £39 billion social and affordable homes programme, the new 10-year social housing rent settlement, and right-to-buy reform, so that we can reverse the decline seen under the previous Government.
Callum Anderson
The on-time, on-budget delivery of 183 new council homes for local families on the Lakes estate in Bletchley is a good demonstration of what Labour can achieve in local government. Is my right hon. Friend willing to visit Bletchley over the coming weeks and months to discuss how further investment from the social and affordable homes programme could help ambitious, pro-housebuilding councils like Milton Keynes to go even further for local people?
Steve Reed
I am sure that it will come as no surprise to my hon. Friend that I wholeheartedly welcome the delivery of 183 new council homes in his constituency. I fully agree that the Lakes estate demonstrates the ambition of Milton Keynes city council to build the homes that its communities want and need. I also value such councils’ support in helping the Government to meet our ambitious housebuilding targets, which include targets for the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in this country in a generation.
Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
As per my answer to question 4, the changes that we made to national planning policy last year were intended to support the increased provision and modernisation of various types of public infrastructure. When it comes to ensuring that necessary infrastructure is funded and brought forward in Cheadle or any other part of the country, we look to local development plans and infrastructure funding statements to address needs and opportunities.
Mr Morrison
Residents in Cheadle have contacted me about the huge number of speculative development applications coming through, particularly in Cheadle Hulme and Woodford. We are now being told that a 10,000-home new town will potentially be situated on the constituency border. GPs are completely oversubscribed in Woodford, we have not had a Sunday rail service in over a year, and the bus services are completely inadequate. This has been raised time and again by my constituents. Will the Minister meet me and the leader of Stockport council to talk about this issue, and how the Government can get developers to start investing in infrastructure before they develop homes?
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of issues. The best way in which local planning authorities can protect themselves from speculative development is to have an up-to-date local development plan in place. He touched on developer contributions; we remain committed to strengthening the existing system to ensure that new developments provide the necessary affordable homes and infrastructure. We will set out further details in due course.
When it comes to the prospective new town that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, I gently point out that it was not the Government but the independent, expert new towns taskforce that recommended to the Government that Adlington and 11 other locations in England should be the sites for the next generation of new town. On 28 September, we commenced a strategic environmental assessment to understand the environmental implications of new towns, and that will support final decisions. But no final decisions have yet been taken.
Mr Speaker
Order. I should say that that is the Adlington in Cheshire, not Lancashire.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
The Government continue to implement those reforms to the leasehold system that are already in statute and to progress the wider set of reforms necessary to end the feudal leasehold system for good. We have brought into force a number of provisions in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, with more in the pipeline, and we remain on course to publish an ambitious draft leasehold and commonhold reform Bill later this year.
Mrs Brackenridge
Leaseholders in my constituency face unfair practices such as management fees tripling in as many years, stretching families beyond their means. Yet there are also a great number of responsible agents, including L&A Lettings, based in Ashmore Park. Can the Minister set out how the Government’s leasehold reform will strike the right balance, protecting leaseholders from poor practice without overburdening responsible agents, who already provide a transparent and fair service?
Matthew Pennycook
We know that there are good managing agents who work hard to ensure that the residents they are responsible for are safe and secure and that homes are properly looked after, but we also know that far too many leaseholders suffer from poor service at the hands of unscrupulous managing agents. In our recent consultation on strengthening leaseholder protections over charges and services, we consulted on powers to appoint a manager or replace a managing agent as well as on mandatory professional qualifications for managing agents in England. We think that those proposals strike the right balance, but we are analysing all the feedback we receive to that consultation.
Peter Prinsley
I thank the Minister for his answer to the previous question. In my constituency of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, leaseholders are facing soaring service charges and falling standards. Some have told me that they are considering withholding payment. Does my hon. Friend agree that much greater regulation of property managers is urgently needed to ensure accountability and standards?
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend highlights that, as many of us know, the reality of home ownership for so many leaseholders falls far short of the dream. We absolutely agree that we need to strengthen the regulation of managing agents, to drive up the standard of their service. We are looking again at Lord Best’s 2019 report on regulating the property agent sector, particularly in the light of the recommendations in the final Grenfell inquiry report. We have set out a number of specific proposals in the consultation that I referred to in my previous answer. Our preferred approach in implementing mandatory professional qualifications is for agents to belong to a designated body, but all final decisions will be taken in due course.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
As the Minister will be aware, some freeholders find themselves trapped in a leasehold-like situation: the wider estate that they live on is managed by a management company and not adopted by the local authority. They are fleeced in exactly the same way by exorbitant management charges, and there are often unadopted roads and poor sewerage. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can provide protections for freeholders who find themselves in that leasehold situation?
Matthew Pennycook
We remain committed to protecting residential freeholders on private and mixed-tenure housing estates from unfair charges of the type that the hon. Lady described. We will consult this year on implementing the 2024 Act’s new consumer protection provisions for the 1.75 million homes that are subject to those charges. We are committed to bringing those measures into force as quickly as possible.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
Thousands of my constituents in Stratford-on-Avon now live in so-called fleecehold developments, often with a lack of transparency in how service charges are set and a lack of maintenance of public open spaces, including drainage infrastructure. Will the Minister reassure my constituents that any leasehold reform will including tackling fleecehold and that the reforms will be applied retrospectively?
Matthew Pennycook
I can assure the hon. Lady that we will tackle the injustice of fleecehold as part of the ambitious changes that we intend to make to the leasehold system, with a view to bringing it to an end in this Parliament. The consumer protection provisions in the 2024 Act, which I have already mentioned, will ensure that homeowners who pay an estate management charge will have better access to the information that they need to challenge the reasonableness of charges at the first-tier tribunal. There are other powers as part of those protections and, as I have said, we will consult on them shortly and bring them into force as quickly as possible thereafter.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)
My No. 1 priority is to get Britain building again: we will build, baby, build. That means putting Britain on a path to end the moral stain of homelessness and rough sleeping that doubled under the previous Conservative Government; growing our economy with good, secure jobs and rising incomes in every region of Britain; and putting the key to home ownership in the hands of more people across our country. Under the Conservatives, the British dream of home ownership became a nightmare and out of reach, but with this Labour Government, it will become a reality once more.
Debbie Abrahams
My constituents in Oldham East and Saddleworth were delighted to learn that Oldham has received a £20 million award from the Pride in Place programme. Will the Secretary of State expand on the transformational change that the award will mean to places like Oldham, where Government support was decimated under the Conservatives? In particular, what difference will be made by local people having a say in how the money will be spent?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, for her work in supporting disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Oldham and her strong support for the Pride in Place programme, which offers a significant amount of long-term flexible funding and support to areas like Oldham. Best of all, it is local people who will take the decisions about what the investment needs to look like to make a real difference to their high streets, public services and public transport, so that they can take back pride in the place they belong.
Sir James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)
Nobody but nobody believes that 1.5 million homes will be built under this Government. Although the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness, the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern), spent a lot of time at the Dispatch Box, she did not answer the question about whether the Treasury will be asked to scrap stamp duty. We know that 2.8 million people said that they would consider downsizing if stamp duty were abolished, freeing up family homes of all sizes. She would not answer, so I ask the Secretary of State directly: will he ask the Treasury to scrap stamp duty—yes or no?
Steve Reed
I know that the right hon. Gentleman was a strong supporter of Liz Truss when she stood for leadership of the Conservative party, but surely he cannot have forgotten what she did: she made multibillion pound unfunded spending commitments that crashed the economy, and sent wages down and prices, mortgages and rents skyrocketing. The last thing this country needs is tens of billions of pounds of more unfunded commitments, crashing the economy again and destroying people’s dreams of home ownership—
Mr Speaker
Order. There are lots of Back Benchers who wish to speak and this is topical questions. I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Sir James Cleverly
I asked for a simple yes or no, but the right hon. Gentleman struggled to give that. The truth is that we have outlined exactly where the money could come from and we have made it clear that if those on the Labour Front Bench have the guts to take on their Back Benchers, they will have the support of Conservative Members in making the expenditure cuts that are needed. The London School of Economics has estimated that £16,000 of economic activity comes with every house purchase, so if he will not agree to cutting stamp duty, will he at least agree to not putting up property taxes?
Steve Reed
I have to say again that the right hon. Gentleman’s devotion to Trussonomics is admirable, particularly given that we have already seen it fail once. We heard from the shadow Chancellor that the Conservatives would put up income tax if they won the general election. They put it up to the highest level since the second world war; we are not going there.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness (Alison McGovern)
It is important that we get that right, and we will have further discussions about it shortly. I might disagree with my hon. Friend on the importance of Pride in Place, which will turn around some of the decline created by the Conservative party.
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
In June, the Department made the welcome announcement of legislation to allow proxy voting and remote attendance, which will help to drive up the diversity of councillors across the country, but the Government have not yet set out a timeline. Will the Minister advise the House on when a timeline will be shared, and whether the Government have considered including the changes in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Samantha Dixon)
The Government are committed to an election Bill, which will be coming in due course—very shortly, I imagine—and I am sure the hon. Member will be able to explore those issues further at that time.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
I am sorry to learn about the loss of social rented homes in that instance. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government are committed to reinvigorating council house building, and I direct her attention to the five-point plan that we published in July to deliver a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Alison McGovern
Local government reorganisation will create opportunities to improve public services, efficiency and clarity. The final proposals from councils in Essex were submitted by 26 September, and we anticipate launching a statutory consultation in November. I am sure we will discuss the right hon. Gentleman’s points in detail over the weeks and months to come.
Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Samantha Dixon
As I iterated earlier, we want to see more empty homes brought back into use in Sheffield and across the country. As we outlined in the English devolution White Paper, we intend to strengthen the ability of local authorities such as Sheffield city council to take over the management of vacant residential premises.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
We in Leicestershire have three, if not four, plans for our reorganisation, with no agreement. We also have a county council run by Reform, which has already had not one but two reshuffles, losing its cabinet leads for social services and finance. While 70% of its budget is spent on social services and special educational needs and disabilities, what assurances can the Government give me that my constituents will get those services, and that those services will be protected, when there already seems to be chaos in the council?
Alison McGovern
As I mentioned some moments ago, reorganisation creates an opportunity for simpler and clearer local services. I look forward to working with Members across the House to get it right, particularly in tackling some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman mentions.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
My hon. Friend is completely right to raise this issue. That is why we are giving local communities greater powers to control the proliferation of gambling and vape shops. It is also why, through our Pride in Place programme, we are giving communities the funding and tools they need to shape their local high streets, so that those communities can have the shops they want in their place.
Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
My constituent Steve Dally was charged £70,000 by Liberal Democrat-controlled Waverley borough council for the apparent crime of building a home extension. I met the Housing Minister earlier this year to talk about abuse of the community infrastructure levy. Could he update the House on his plans to stop it?
Matthew Pennycook
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I agree that we have seen unintended consequences of the 2010 CIL regulations—they have unfairly penalised some homeowners. I can only reiterate the commitments I gave him during that meeting. In principle, we are committed to finding a solution to this issue, and I am more than happy to meet him again and update him on the steps we have taken in the interim.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Up and down the country, people are being priced out of their communities by sky-high rents and extortionate housing costs. In Wandsworth, the rent for a one-bed flat will cost the average Londoner almost half of their monthly take-home pay. Does the Minister agree that we must put an end to this situation and make housing affordable again?
Matthew Pennycook
We absolutely need to make housing affordable. One of the primary ways in which we can do that is to build more homes of all tenures, which is precisely what we are committed to doing. We can also boost the supply of social and affordable housing, which our social and affordable housing programme—worth £39 billion over 10 years—will do.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
Winter is coming, and nearly 3 million households are living in fuel poverty, which is an absolute scandal. The long-awaited warm homes plan cannot come soon enough, but given that previous piecemeal programmes prioritised private profit and left us without the changes that our constituents so desperately need, will the Secretary of State commit to funding a public body to co-ordinate, monitor and evaluate a nationwide programme of home insulation to hold cowboy builders—cowboy contractors—to account and deliver energy savings for all?
Matthew Pennycook
I will refer the hon. Lady’s comments about the warm homes plan to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. If she wishes to write to me with details of any particular cowboy builders, I would be more than happy to read what she has to say.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
It is great that we are transforming leasehold properties, but many leaseholders are now stuck in a gap with their freeholders when it comes to betterment. If they want to green their homes through new roofs, new insulation and electric vehicle charging, they have to pay a huge extra cost. Will the Minister and, if necessary, Ministers from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero meet me and my constituents to discuss this issue? There is a real gap when it comes to achieving green improvements.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
In April, the Government described their decision to approve a major scheme to unlock over 8,500 homes next to Cambridge North station after six years in planning as “nationally significant”. Just four months later, the Government scrapped the whole thing. How is that consistent with the Secretary of State’s announcement that he will back getting Britain building?
Matthew Pennycook
I am afraid that I am unclear about which particular site the right hon. Gentleman is referring to. Again, if he wishes to write to me, I would be more than happy to engage with him on the particulars of that case.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Cornwall’s economic potential is vast. Cornish renewable energy and critical minerals can power the UK’s transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy, but economic development funding through the shared prosperity fund has come to an end. Can the Secretary of State reassure the people of Cornwall that our economic growth will not be limited by the fact that Cornwall cannot and will not join a mayoral combined authority?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We recognise the uniqueness of Cornwall. We are committed to working with the local authority to ensure that we unlock the economic opportunities in the area and build on its existing devolution deal.
James McMurdock (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Ind)
The Secretary of State and the other Ministers on the Front Bench have to great fanfare today talked about responsible governance, but Basildon council and its Labour leader have repeatedly failed to meet basic housing standards. Worse than that, its leader has gone live on social media to admit to counting postal votes and using that information to influence a recent by-election. When he is held to account, will Ministers agree to throwing him out of their party?
Alison McGovern
I am unclear about the exact details of what the hon. Member is raising, but if he would like to write to me or the Secretary of State providing details, we will make sure that he receives a swift response.
Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)
South Shore in my constituency is one of the most deprived areas in the country. It has just been named by the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods, which outlined 34 mission-critical neighbourhoods, as No. 1 for hyper-local need. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss how we can improve South Shore in Blackpool?
Steve Reed
I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss his concerns.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
What commitment can the Minister give to my constituents in Thurmaston, Syston, Queniborough and nearby villages who wish to remain in the county of Leicestershire and have services provided in Leicestershire that they will not against their wishes be absorbed into the city of Leicester, as advocated by Labour’s city mayor in the context of local government reorganisation?
Alison McGovern
I responded to the right hon. Member’s colleague from Leicestershire, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), just a moment ago, and I refer him to that answer. We have a process under way, and I will be engaging with colleagues right across the House on it. If the right hon. Member would like to get in touch with me directly, I would be happy to receive his representations.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
I am pleased that Everton East in my constituency will receive £20 million in Pride in Place funding. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Pride in Place programme not only talks about devolution, but delivers it?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is completely right. We had a decade and a half of decline and neglect under the last Government. This Government are getting to grips with it. I thank my hon. Friend for her enthusiasm and for working together to make this impact and to drive the change we want to see across our communities.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
The Government have now delayed their decision on local government reorganisation in Surrey. Can the Minister assure me that the Government are using this delay to protect my constituents in Esher and Walton from the Tory debt of neighbouring councils with which they might be grouped? Will the planned elections in May go ahead?
Alison McGovern
As I have said a number of times on different aspects of this policy, the process is under way. If the hon. Member would like to write to me directly, I will make sure that she receives a response.
Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)
I know that Ministers do not comment on ongoing planning applications, but may I draw the Minister’s attention to an inconsistency? Currently, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is changing its guidance on heather burning on deep peat because of climate change concerns, but there has not been a concurrent change to planning guidance on building on peat. Will the Minister agree to look at that, so that my constituents can be sure that any developments are safe and take account of climate implications?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing that matter to my attention. He is right that I cannot comment on individual planning applications, but I will certainly look into the matter. I wonder whether he would write to me with further details in that regard.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Do the Government accept that it is possible to bring in elected mayors and new strategic authorities without forcibly merging county and district councils in unwanted, cumbersome and remote unitary authorities?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
There are two processes going ahead: the devolution process, driven by economic imperatives to unlock the growth prospects across the country; and the reorganisation process, which is being done to ensure that we have more streamlined and effective public services. We are doing those in tandem, because the last Government failed to get a grip of local government structures and the funding pressures across the piece. We are getting on with it and we are driving it forward. Both processes are being driven with huge collaboration from local authorities across the country.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for taking the decision to invest £20 million through the Pride in Place scheme in my constituency. For 14 years, two communities—Woodrow and Greenlands —have been forgotten, while inequalities in health, jobs and skills have risen. Does the Minister agree that the right people to decide where that £20 million will go are those who know their communities best?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I thank my hon. Friend for his enthusiasm. He is absolutely right: we are putting right the neglect and decline that we saw after 14 years, where communities had been held back because the last Government failed to invest. We are putting communities at the very heart, and I look forward to working with colleagues across the House to unlock the potential to change our places.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
Residents of Rutland overwhelmingly want to join Stamford, but the council is pressing ahead with an unwanted Leicestershire merger; residents of South Kesteven do not want to join a mega Lincolnshire council, but are being pushed towards it; and in Leicestershire my constituents do not want a Leicester city takeover. What reassurance will the Government give that democracy will not die under these reforms, and that local people’s voices will be heard?
Alison McGovern
I can certainly confirm that democracy will not die. I know that officials in the Department will have heard what the hon. Lady has said, and I will accept her question as representations on the issue of local government.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)
In my kind and inclusive city of York, those who are putting up flags and expressing support for them have been emboldened to perpetrate racism and intimidate communities. They have beaten people up and hung a death threat on our city wall. What further support can the Government give my local authority to enable it to get those flags down, given that even contractors are being intimidated?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
The flag is something that we must reclaim, and reclaim proudly. We know that in some communities flags are being used to intimidate and divide, and we are working with local authorities throughout the country to ensure that they have the support that they need to make those judgment calls, but I return to the fact that the flag is ours, we need to reclaim it, and we need to stand up against those who want to divide our communities across the country.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 was never intended to be used by local authorities as an addendum to planning enforcement. The Secretary of State may well have seen recent media reports about this issue. Will he undertake to look into it and to issue guidance to local authorities, explaining that while they have many tools at their disposal, the Proceeds of Crime Act is not one of them?
Steve Reed
The hon. Gentleman has raised an important point, and I am happy to arrange a meeting with the appropriate Minister so that he can share his concerns and we can come to a resolution.
Manchester Terrorism Attack
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Shabana Mahmood)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement about the terrorist attack on 2 October and the action that the Government are taking in response. Let me start by calling this attack what it was: an evil act of antisemitic terrorism that targeted innocent worshippers on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, which was carried out by a terrorist pledging his allegiance to the warped ideology of Islamism. I pay tribute to the two men who were killed on that day, Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby. Their bravery saved countless lives. On behalf of the whole House, I offer my deepest sympathies to their families and their friends. May their memory be a blessing.
A further three men were seriously injured in the attack. I know that all our thoughts are with them, and with all those who were caught up in these terrible events. I also wish to thank those whose bravery saved lives: worshippers, staff and volunteers from the Community Security Trust, and the emergency services, who acted with speed and the utmost professionalism. This is a moment of profound national sorrow. An attack on our Jewish community is an attack on this entire nation, and it calls on us to assert, once more, our determination to tackle extremism, antisemitism and hatred wherever they appear.
Although the events of that day are painful to recount, it is important that we do so. On the morning of Thursday 2 October, a terrorist drove a car at worshippers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Crumpsall, Manchester. The driver then left his vehicle, armed with a knife, and resumed his attack. He was wearing what was later determined to be a fake explosive device, although it should be remembered that all present had every reason to believe that that bomb was real. When the first call to the emergency services came in, Greater Manchester police declared a major incident and firearms officers were deployed. Within seven minutes of that call, the attacker had been intercepted and shot dead. Melvin Cravitz was killed by the attacker. Tragically, initial findings now indicate that Adrian Daulby sustained a gunshot wound during the armed police response.
As is standard in such cases, an investigation is being carried out by the Independent Office of Police Conduct, but there are two things that I can say. First, it is important to note that the IOPC has confirmed that the officers involved in the response are being treated as witnesses. Secondly, it must be remembered that the police acted in a situation in which they believed a terrorist was likely to detonate an explosive device. The necessary processes must now take their course, and I expect the IOPC to complete them as quickly as possible.
There is no ambiguity around who is responsible for the deaths and injuries that took place on that day. Members will be aware that the attack was carried out by Jihad al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent. We know that he came to this country as a child and was registered as a British citizen while still a minor. He was never referred to the Prevent programme, nor was he known to counter-terrorism policing or the security services. He had, however, recently been arrested on rape charges, for which he was on bail at the time of the attack.
Investigators believe the attacker was influenced by extreme Islamist ideology, evident in a 999 call that he made during the incident in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State. Six people were arrested following the attack and were released without charge; one was subsequently re-arrested and has been bailed. I know that there are many questions that the public rightly demand answers to, as do Members of this House. Those answers will come, but for now the investigation is ongoing, and we must allow that work to take its course.
We know that voices in the Jewish community had long been warning that this day would come, and that Jews who had long felt safe in this country—in their country—now no longer do. Now that this awful day has come to pass, we must learn from it so that we do everything within our power to ensure that it does not happen again.
Our immediate priority was to enhance security. Visible officer patrols have been stepped up at synagogues and other sites in Manchester and across the country. Additional support has been made available to more than 500 locations, and although there have been long-standing security arrangements in place, with £18 million of funding each year for the Community Security Trust, it is clear that more must be done. We will provide our Jewish community with the protection they deserve, because no one should be forced to live a smaller Jewish life in their country because of the events of 2 October.
Our posture at religious sites is one of maximum vigilance. That applies to the Jewish community, and it also applies to British Muslims. I know that Members from across the House will have been disturbed by a suspected arson attack that took place at a mosque in Peacehaven, East Sussex, last week. The Policing Minister visited the mosque and met those who were forced to flee for their lives in terrifying circumstances, and we have discussed this with my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven (Chris Ward), who I know also visited the mosque on Friday.
Let me be clear: violence directed at any community—be they Jewish or Muslim, and of all faiths or none—is an attack on our entire country. I know this country is united in our condemnation of those who seek to divide us, because one of the greatest achievements of this country has been our tolerance, our ability to accept and embrace difference, and our generosity towards those who may not look the same but are encompassed comfortably within a single national identity. It was for that reason that I was so affronted by the protests that took place in the days after the attack. These were a clear source of fear to the Jewish community, who were grieving just days after an unspeakable tragedy. The same was true on the anniversary of the 7 October attacks. I described those protests as “un-British” and I stand by that, because those protesters showed none of the generosity of spirit that I love about this country, and they most certainly did their cause no good whatsoever.
The right to protest is a fundamental freedom, but it must be balanced against the right the public have to their safety and security. In my conversations with community leaders and the police in recent days, it is clear that balance has not been struck. For that reason, I can confirm to the House today that we will amend sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. The police will be able to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests when considering whether to impose conditions. This will mean that protests that follow the same routes time and again can be forced to change their route or the time of a protest. I am also reviewing all existing legislation to ensure our public order powers are fit for purpose and are being consistently applied.
The right to protest must and will be protected, but of all the freedoms we enjoy none is more precious than the right to live in safety. The Government’s first responsibility is to keep the public safe. Since 2017, the Security Service and the police have disrupted more than 40 plots, and this work has saved countless lives. Through our counter-terrorism strategy Contest, we continue to tackle threats to this country, including those posed by Islamist terrorism, which remains our primary domestic threat. Through programmes such as Prevent, we seek to stop the slide into extremism that is drawing in far too many young people today.
Once the investigation into this attack is complete, we will know much more about how it took place, but the reality is we now face a domestic terrorist threat in this country that is more complex, less predictable and harder to detect than ever before. That threat will never be defeated unless we address the hate that fuels it. That means acting on the rising tide of antisemitism in this country. I am horrified when I hear our Jewish community talking about their fear in a country that once offered a rare island of sanctuary in an all-too-often hostile world. We have, in the days since the attack, stepped up our efforts to tackle antisemitism wherever it is found—challenging misinformation and hatred in schools, calling on vice-chancellors to do more to protect Jewish students at universities and calling on local authorities to use their powers to protect the community, as well as reviewing the clearly inadequate regulations that protect Jewish staff and patients in the national health service.
While these are important steps, more must be done. Antisemitism is the oldest hatred, and we must now redouble our efforts to fight it once more. Terrorists seek one thing: to divide us. They hate a society like ours where different communities live together in harmony, united by a common identity that transcends the colour of our skin or the nature of our faith. This attack has raised questions that must be answered about the security that we provide to our Jewish community, about how we address a rising tide of antisemitism and about how we bring communities together, rather than allowing some individuals to separate off into dark corners, including how we tackle the continuing threat of Islamist extremism and those who are pulled towards its warped ideology.
However, at the same time we must not let this attack defeat us, nor forget who we really are, because the real face of this country was not that of the vile monster who conducted this attack. It was those who stood up to him and saved their fellow worshippers, and the emergency services who sprinted towards danger to bring the attack to an end. The real face of this country was not those who took to the streets and protested the very next day, but rather those who were horrified by the attack, stood with their Jewish neighbours and chose the path of solidarity over division. The antisemitic terrorist attack of 2 October was a horrifying act. In response to it, I hope the whole House can be united in a simple message: those who seek to divide us by pitting one against another will fail. No act of terror will ever defeat us. I commend this statement to the House.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement.
At 9.31 am on the morning of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, we saw the sickening terrorist attack on worshippers at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester by an Islamist extremist. The brutal attack left two men dead, Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, and three more injured. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the victims and their families whose lives were so wickedly torn apart on that holy morning.
I want to thank Greater Manchester police and others in the security and emergency services for responding so quickly, and the brave worshippers inside the synagogue who stopped the attacker from entering. I join the Home Secretary in saying that I hope the IOPC completes its work quickly and that its conclusions reflect the fact that the police officers acted with courage in what was a very dangerous, unpredictable and fast-moving situation.
Sadly, we know that antisemitism is at record highs in the UK. The Community Security Trust recorded over 1,500 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of this year, the second-highest level ever, and Jewish people in our country, tragically, face far higher rates of hate crime than any other community. We must stand with this country’s Jewish community and fight with all our resolve and energy the ancient evil of antisemitism wherever it is found. It has no place on these shores—not ever.
To be clear, attacks based on race or religion are totally unacceptable. The recent attack on a mosque in Peacehaven was appalling, and I know that we all unreservedly condemn it. Everyone in this country in all communities, including the Muslim community, must have the courage to stand up to extremism wherever we see it. Standing by and saying nothing when encountering extremism is complicity. That is why the antisemitism that is rife on university campuses must also be fought. The Home Secretary mentioned that in her statement, but will she work with her colleagues in Government to withdraw funding from universities that do not do enough to fight antisemitism?
We must do more than just call out extremism. Anyone espousing extremist views or who expresses support for terrorism, or racial or religious hatred of any kind, including antisemitism, who is not a British citizen should be removed from this country. Will the Home Secretary commit today to using her powers under the Immigration Act 1971 to remove from this country any foreign national who expresses extremist views or sympathy for political violence, terrorism, antisemitism or any other form of religious hatred, whether or not the criminal threshold is met? She could make that commitment now. Will she show that she is serious about fighting extremism by doing so?
I agree with the Home Secretary that the protests on 7 October this year, the anniversary of the terrorist murders by Hamas and just days after the Manchester attack, were appalling—“un-British”, in her words, which I agree with. The protests have continued even after the recent peace agreement relating to Gaza was signed, and, of course, they started before Israel’s military action in Gaza. In principle, I support her proposed introduction of a new cumulative impact test to sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act, but will she also consider expanding that test to also account for intimidation felt by other communities as a result of protest? Does the Home Secretary also agree that anyone expressing support for a proscribed terrorist organisation or who incites violence, for example by calling for jihad or intifada, should be arrested and prosecuted?
Since the attack, the police confirmed the attacker pledged allegiance to Islamic State and was influenced by extreme Islamist ideology, as the Home Secretary acknowledged. Islamist extremism is sadly a threat we know all too well in the United Kingdom. In July, we remembered the 52 people murdered by Islamist terrorists in the 7/7 bombings, which took place 20 years ago—the deadliest terrorist attack committed on British soil. We also remember Sir David Amess, also murdered by an Islamist extremist, and the 22 victims of the Manchester Arena attack, also murdered by an Islamist extremist.
We should not be afraid to call out this extremist ideology wherever we see it. It has no place in this country. Will the Home Secretary pledge to drop any definition of Islamophobia that would make calling out Islamist extremism any harder? The fact is that 75% of MI5’s terrorism-related caseload is related to Islamist extremism, and the vast majority of terrorist murders in the past 25 years were perpetrated by Islamists, yet only 13% of the Prevent caseload is Islamist related. What does the Home Secretary propose to do about that?
Britain gave perpetrator Jihad al-Shamie a home when he arrived here from Syria. He then carried out a brutal attack on a synagogue, deliberately targeted at Jewish people, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. We need to reflect very deeply on the implications of that.
Today, we must all stand together and fight the hatred of extremism and terror. Attacks like this one are an attack on our whole nation. We will never change our way of life, and we will never allow our fellow citizens to be threatened or attacked simply because of their background. I know that the whole House will want to send out that message today.
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the shadow Home Secretary for his response and for the way in which he made it. I look forward to working with him and with all Members across the House as we deal with what I hope will always be a shared issue and a shared problem. Where there is agreement and consensus in this House on the measures that we should take, I hope we will be able to progress those matters quickly.
The shadow Home Secretary asked specifically about universities. He will, I hope, have seen the comments made by my colleague and right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, who has made clear to universities what their responsibilities are. It is important that she does that engagement before considering what measures to take if universities fail to take all steps to protect Jewish students on campus. This Government are very clear that universities already have responsibilities and they need to demonstrate that they are reflecting those responsibilities and taking appropriate action.
The shadow Home Secretary asked a range of questions on other crimes that are being committed. He will, I hope, recognise that this Government have worked very closely with policing, despite lots of disquiet in some quarters, to ensure that we have absolutely no tail-off in our response to those who support a proscribed terror organisation. He will have seen that there have been many hundreds of arrests. As long as people continue to show support for a proscribed organisation, they will face the full force of the law every time they do so.
On immigration powers, I am considering all immigration issues. The shadow Home Secretary will know that this Government have quite significantly increased the deportations of foreign offenders who have been found guilty of committing a crime in this country, compared to the situation we inherited. I note his points on the wider powers of the Immigration Act 1971, which I am reviewing. I will say more to the House on that in due course.
The right hon. Gentleman also made a number of points on our proposed amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. I hope that when we bring those measures forward, they will receive support in this House. I am happy to write to him on any further details about the Public Order Act. I am going to review the wider landscape of public order legislation, particularly in relation to the cumulative impact of repeat protests; we are already going to take steps on imposing further conditions and making explicit that cumulative impact is something that the police should take into account, but I am also going to look at the wider framework. Again, I will return to the House in due course with further updates on that legislation.
The shadow Home Secretary rightly noted that the protests have continued both before and after the peace agreement in the middle east. I think we can conclude that not all those protesting truly wish to see peace in the middle east, but it is for them to answer on what their motivations really are. We are very clear that although the right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country enjoyed by people of all backgrounds, it is often the cause of grave offence to other people who live in this country, and it must be balanced against the right of all people to be able to live in safety.
The shadow Home Secretary mentioned Islamist extremism in particular. Let me be clear to him and to the House that this Government, and I as Home Secretary, have a clear-eyed view of where the threats that face this country are coming from. It is true that within our domestic extremism landscape the largest cohort of work that keeps our security services and counter-terror policing busy is related to Islamist extremism. We will not shy away from confronting those issues and dealing with them in the appropriate way.
What happened in Manchester on 2 October asks a bigger question of all of us. This threat is something that we have been living with for some time, and we have not yet defeated it. I commit myself and the Government to doing everything in our power to stand up to this particular threat without fear or favour, and to destroy it for good. I also note that the first people that Islamists often suppress, hurt and damage are their fellow Muslims. It is in everyone’s interest to fight Islamist extremism wherever it is found.
As the shadow Home Secretary noted, there is a wider and more complex domestic extremism picture in relation to extreme right-wing terrorism, and the emerging threat of those who do not have a fixed ideology but who are fixated on violence. It is important that all of our response is measured and follows where the risks are coming from and that we are always asking ourselves what action will ultimately be effective in dealing with the threats. We will redouble our efforts to interrogate the assumptions that have been made in the past and to assess whether they need to be changed and what new effective action must be pursued. I hope that in that task we will have support from Members across the House.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and I am sure that the people of Crumpsall, where this atrocity took place, will welcome it. The only point I would add is that while these acts of antisemitism and violence are un-British, they are also inhuman—I think that is a better way to describe them, rather than “un-British.”
I thank the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister for coming to Manchester on the day of the attack, which was much appreciated. The Home Secretary had a chance to meet the heroes, because while there was violence and tragedy, there were certainly heroes, not least the members of the congregation—two of whom lost their lives—who protected other members of the congregation from what would undoubtedly have been more deaths. The Home Secretary also met the Community Security Trust, the police and the fire brigade, who all played an excellent role in getting to the site of the violence as quickly as they could.
I have lived in this community, within a stone’s throw of the synagogue, for most of my adult life, and I have no doubt that the community will remain resilient. It has always been resilient. The film crews who thronged about the area after the violence were amazed that Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Christians and people of no religion were all consoling each other. There was no hostility at all on the street.
The final points I want to make are not as heartwarming. There is hurt and anger within the local Jewish community. They had known for some time that an attack like this was coming. Obviously they did not know when or where, but it has arrived. They feel that there has developed a hierarchy of racism—that somehow Jew hatred is not as important as other kinds of racism. They feel that not enough has been done to protect them. The extra security that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have announced is welcome, but what the community are looking for is extra action to deal with religious extremists who are involved in illegal activity, to get to the heart of the violent activities against the Jewish community.
The final point I will make is that, in one sense, taking action against illegal activities is the easier part. But partly because of what has happened in Gaza, many people now think it is okay in casual dinner party conversation—we have probably all heard it and witnessed it—to make antisemitic comments. It is not okay. It is also not okay, although it is not against the law, for artists—if I can use that word—like Bob Vylan to be operating and spreading their hate on campuses like Manchester University. Will the Home Secretary look forward with me to a future not only free of antisemitism but where I do not have to walk or drive past Jewish schools with security guards outside them?
Shabana Mahmood
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament. I saw for myself at first hand his deep links in the community that he represents in the House and how he has been a source of real strength in bringing people together in that part of Manchester.
As a member of an ethnic and faith minority myself, one of the things that I most hate about our political discourse and national conversation is the hierarchy of racism. I hate how minority communities feel like we are pitted against one another in a fight for attention and recognition of the difficulties that we might face as individual groups. Racism in all its forms is abhorrent, and I will be as assiduous in fighting the scourge of antisemitism in this country as people might expect me, as a Muslim, to be in fighting Islamophobia in this country. We are all safe when we are all safe, and I will not stand by and watch our communities being forced to compete with one another and forced to explain again and again why they are suffering and why they do not feel safe. To me, that is unacceptable in 21st-century Britain. I will not stand for it, and it will not be the policy position of this Government.
The person who bears responsibility for what happened on 2 October was the terrorist attacker himself—I will not name him again today—but there is no doubt that events in the middle east have caused tensions here at home, and some have sought to exploit those tensions. It is incredibly important that we are clear-eyed in holding the line between what could be a legitimate critique of the Israeli Government’s actions in the war in the middle east and antisemitism: you can be a critic of policy in the middle east without becoming antisemitic, hating Jews and holding Jews in this country to account for things happening in a country elsewhere that are nothing to do with them. It is incumbent on all of us to hold that line and to be clear where that line is, so that we speak with one voice and give confidence to our minority communities here at home.
One of the most devastating things that I heard when I was in Manchester on the day and in the aftermath of the attack was our Jewish community expressing how they now feel unsafe in their own country and that they might never see a time when their children do not have to have security when they go to school. Although it is important that in the immediate aftermath of the attack we consider security matters, enhancing the police presence and deepening our work with the Community Security Trust, I will not stop until people in this country can go to a synagogue or Jewish school without first having to go through a security cordon.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. This is my first duty as my party’s home affairs spokesperson; I only wish that it was not in response to such a tragedy. My party’s thoughts are with the families of Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz, who were tragically killed. Our thoughts are also with those who were injured, the congregation, and the wider Jewish community, which was the target of a vicious attack on its holiest day, Yom Kippur.
We must all be clear that the attack did not happen in a vacuum. Antisemitism is widespread on Britain’s streets, and British Jews have been living in fear, particularly since Hamas’s horrific terror attacks of 7 October 2023. The Liberal Democrats are committed to ensuring that our Jewish friends and neighbours feel safe walking the streets and worshipping in their synagogues. Those who spread antisemitic hatred or incite violence against Jews, whether online, at marches or elsewhere, must be stopped. That is never acceptable.
I thank the Community Security Trust, as the shadow Home Secretary did, for the incredible job that it does, working with the police, to protect the Jewish community across our country. I praise its collaboration with organisations such as Tell MAMA, with which it shares best practice so that both the Jewish community and the Muslim community can be better protected. I look forward to visiting the CST’s headquarters in the near future as one of my first duties in this role.
We cannot ignore the issue of protests. The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, and it is a right that the Liberal Democrats will always protect, but we are also acutely aware of the fear felt by the Jewish community and the harassment that they have felt at some marches. Too often we have seen marches hijacked by people spreading antisemitism and inciting violence against Jews; we saw it even on the night of this appalling attack. My party is unequivocal in its view that those who incite antisemitism and carry it out must be met with the full force of the law.
I say this advisedly, Mr Speaker: unfortunately, the Government’s recent decisions have led to police arresting pensioners for holding up cardboard signs when they should be protecting all communities, including the Jewish community, from those who would cause harm. This undermines the right to protest and, crucially, means that the police are using their time and resources on other things when they should be protecting people. The British Jewish community should not have to suffer violence or live in fear simply because of their identity. We need less “thoughts and prayers” and more action. Will the Home Secretary confirm what additional physical security the Home Office has provided for the Jewish community since the attack?
We must also tackle the underlying root of modern-day antisemitism in this country. If the conversations we have make us feel squeamish and lead us to ask questions that prompt discomforting answers—as questions that I have asked recently have done—that is all the more reason to have them, and to have them more often. Will the Home Secretary, with the Prime Minister, convene a summit of interfaith leaders, communal bodies, education heads and the security services to really get a grip of the ever-growing crisis of antisemitism? Antisemitism, terrorism and hatred can be defeated, but only if we stand united against them and stand for the values that we as British people hold so dear.
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesman for his response. Where we agree, I hope we will be able to work closely, in particular on issues relating to protests and rebuilding interfaith work in this country. I think everybody who has been involved in interfaith work in the last two years, myself included, will acknowledge that there have been real challenges and difficulties there. We have to think more creatively and redouble our efforts to rebuild relationships that have been deeply strained.
However, I cannot accept and leave unchallenged what the hon. Member had to say about the protests, led primarily by the group Defend Our Juries, in relation to the proscription of the group Palestine Action. I think the Liberal Democrats have to ask themselves some serious questions. Are they going to stand up for the rule of law in this country? In this House and outside it, anyone is free to challenge our terror laws—to say that they should be changed and to suggest that the thresholds are in the wrong place and need updating. That is fair and legitimate comment. We may disagree, but it is perfectly legitimate to debate that in this House and outside it. What is not acceptable, and what is a crime under the law of our land, is to support a proscribed organisation. Members of this House should not feel that they can do anything other than support the law of our land. It does not matter whether someone thinks proscription was the wrong thing to do: supporting a proscribed organisation is an offence under our terror laws, and it will always be met with the full force of the law.
I do say to the Liberal Democrats that they really have to decide whether they are going to stand up for the rule of law in this country. If they have things to say —suggestions or amendments—about our terror laws, they should raise them in the normal and legitimate way in the House, but do not break the rule of law in our country. [Interruption.] I think the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart), who is speaking from a sedentary position, is suggesting that he thinks that policing the protests where support for a proscribed organisation is shown is somehow a waste of time; I call it standing up for the rule of law in this country.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
I am sure the whole House will share my joy at the release of the hostages in the middle east today, but as the shocking attack in Manchester last week showed, and as the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) made absolutely clear, antisemitism is rife and increasing on our own doorstep. I therefore ask the Home Secretary to increase funding for police and security not only at synagogues but at Jewish schools like Brodetsky primary and Leeds Jewish free school, as well as at the Zone youth club in my Leeds North East constituency. Will she also consider funding essential and crucial community organisations, such as the Leeds Jewish Representative Council, that are fundamental to community cohesion in Leeds and other cities?
Shabana Mahmood
I am sure that the whole House shares the relief at the release of the hostages after such a long period in captivity, having seen their families go through so much. I am sure that we all hope and pray that the peace process in the middle east properly gets under way and that we will see a longer-term resolution as quickly as possible.
We have already increased the police presence at synagogues and other sites of interest and community institutions for the Jewish community all across the country. We are in discussion with the Community Security Trust and other community organisations about what the future looks like in terms of security and other issues. We will report to the House in due course.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and for advance sight of it. While I am very supportive of the work that is being done to increase security at Jewish synagogues and other venues, the answer cannot be constantly more security for the Jewish community. The Jewish community need to be able to live their lives fully, as the Home Secretary said, so what steps is she taking to address the extremist ideology of the perpetrator? It is present online, in schools and in mosques; it is addling brains and making people do utterly horrendous things, such as those we saw last week.
Shabana Mahmood
The Chair of the Select Committee is absolutely right: the answer cannot just be more funding for more security. As I said in response to an earlier question, I do not want it to be forever the case that in order for Jewish children to go to their local Jewish school, they have to walk through a security cordon. I think it is right that in our initial response to the attack, we are focused on security, because it is important that we give confidence to the community, who have seen such a horrific terror attack take place, but the future has to look different from the present and the past. That is why the Government are going to step up our action on tackling antisemitism, working closely with the independent adviser, Lord Mann. We have set up an antisemitism working group, which will make wider societal recommendations in due course. It is why the Secretary of State for Education has written to universities in particular to remind them of their responsibilities to students. Action is already taking place based on our current arrangements, but there is a question for us to ask about the wider picture and how we really deal with the scourge of antisemitism. It has gone on for far too long, it is rising, and as a society we need to think more carefully and more deeply about how we tackle that hatred and how we bring all our communities together.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
The perpetrator of the hideous antisemitic terror attack on the Jewish community at the Heaton Park shul was on police bail for rape at the time of the attack, joining a long line of terrorists and violent extremists with a documented history of violence against women and girls. I welcome the measures that the Home Secretary has outlined today to provide greater protection for our Jewish communities in the wake of the attack. Alongside that, will the Home Secretary outline whether any work is taking place into misogyny as a risk factor for, or nexus into, other forms of extremism within our anti-terrorism framework, and what plans the Government have to publish an extremism strategy and hate crime action plan?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right—the attacker was, at the time of the attack, on police bail for two different charges of rape. All previous contact he had with the police is subject to an IOPC investigation. There are two planks to the IOPC investigation. The first is the shooting itself, but then there is the attacker’s previous contact with the police. Once we have that part of the IOPC’s work completed, I will be able to give much more detail about the exact nature of those alleged offences, why he was dealt with in the way that he was, and if there are any wider lessons to be drawn from that. I assure her that the nexus of misogyny with extremism is something that this Government take very seriously. I am joined on the Front Bench by the Minister for Victims, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), from the Ministry of Justice, with whom we work closely on these matters. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) that our next publications will focus, if possible—if the investigations have taken place—on the lessons that have been learned from this case.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Of course, we all agree with the Home Secretary, but can we dig a little deeper? There is a reason why the Jewish community is by far our most successful immigrant community, dating from the end of the 19th century. They were determined, and are determined, to integrate into our society in every single way. But let us be realistic: there are some parts of some communities who do not integrate. Will the Government say unequivocally that if someone wants to come and live here, they must think of themselves primarily as British? It does not matter what their colour or faith is—they are British. However strongly they feel about Gaza or anything else, they must approach all issues with our traditional sense of good humour and tolerance.
Shabana Mahmood
I think everyone across the House can agree and unite around the idea that it is important that everybody who comes to this country, makes it their home and chooses to raise their family here commits themselves to being the best of British. That is certainly my own experience as somebody whose parents came to this country in the late ’60s and then in the ’70s. Actually, the vast majority of our minority communities are very proud of being British. Every survey I have ever seen of minority communities that asks them to describe their Britishness finds a huge pride in Britishness and also in our Union Jack—our flag and symbol of our nation.
There are obviously, though, some issues that we have to confront. There is a question to be asked here about this attacker who had all of the benefits. He came here as a small child and became a naturalised British citizen. He was still a minor when he became British, and he committed these attacks in his mid-30s. There is a question to ask about what went wrong in that period of his life, in those formative years, that made him do such an act. I will ensure that those wider lessons are learned, and I will never shy away from honest conversations about either integration or community cohesion in our country. But I also do not want it to be the case that we allow the actions of a minority to make us believe that our majority are not proud of being British, because my own experience and all the data show that the exact opposite is true.
Jeff Smith (Manchester Withington) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and her visit to Manchester immediately following the attack. In the Jewish community in my constituency in south Manchester, there is a real sense of anxiety and fear, and she is right to identify that. The message that needs to go out today, and that has gone out across Manchester, is that the people of Manchester are shocked and appalled by this attack and stand with our Jewish neighbours against antisemitism and extremism. A number of my constituents in Manchester Withington have asked me to press the Home Secretary to ensure that the Community Security Trust and other community organisations get the full support they need—not just security, which is obviously important, but trauma services and mental health support. Could she say a little more about that and give them that reassurance?
Shabana Mahmood
The volunteers of the Community Security Trust are absolute heroes and do vital work every single day. They were there at the site of the attack, and the actions of those volunteers and worshippers at the synagogue in Manchester on 2 October saved many, many lives. So many people were cowering behind the door to the synagogue, keeping it shut and preventing the attacker from entering. I cannot imagine what must they have gone through while they did so, but they did so to keep others safe. They are all heroes. I have been very struck by the conversations that I have had with those volunteers.
I assure my hon. Friend that I and the Prime Minister have had constant contact with the Community Security Trust and other Jewish community organisations. We will say more in the coming days and weeks about how we intend to move forward on matters of security, and about the wider picture of giving reassurance to this country’s Jewish community, so that they can go about their business safely.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
First, on behalf of the Scottish National party, I join the Home Secretary in expressing our solidarity with the Jewish community after the horror of the appalling events at the Heaton Park synagogue. Such antisemitic hate must never be allowed to prevail or divide us. In Scotland, the police have increased security in our centres of faith, and have asked the public to remain vigilant following the attack. However, does the Home Secretary not see that by cracking down on our legitimate right to protest, she is simply giving succour to the haters, allowing them to dictate our approach to protest, and to alter basic freedoms that we have always enjoyed? Surely that cannot be the Government’s intention.
Shabana Mahmood
The Government’s intention is to ensure that the right balance is struck between our fundamental right to protest and ensuring that our communities can go about their business without living in fear of weekly protests on their doorstep. Through amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act, we are suggesting making it explicit that the police can take cumulative impact into account when imposing conditions. That is not a removal of the right to protest; it is just saying that there are conditions. The protest can carry on, but not in a way that prevents other communities from being able to go about their business in safety and security. I am surprised—well, I am not surprised, because the hon. Gentleman is from the Scottish National party, but I hope that Members across the House understand that getting the balance right is delicate and difficult, and that this measure will put us back toward something that looks and feels much more like a balanced situation. Protests can go ahead, but with some conditions. I would be surprised if that did not get backing from across the House. I hope that it does.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
During my time in and around public life, Manchester has faced a number of terrorist atrocities: the ’92 and ’96 IRA bombs, the death of Detective Constable Stephen Oake in 2003 at the hands of an Islamic extremist, the 2017 Manchester Arena terror attack, and now this vile attack on Manchester’s Jewish community. Is the Home Secretary confident that we have fully implemented the recommendations on tackling the failings identified after the arena attack, and that there is an equitable distribution of counter-terrorism resources in the United Kingdom?
Shabana Mahmood
When I visited soon after the attack, I was very clear that the main findings from the arena attack related to the ability of the emergency services to respond in a timely way and therefore save lives. I can tell my hon. Friend that between them, the emergency services—the fire service, the police, the ambulance service and everybody else—took on board the direct learnings from what happened in the arena attack. Only seven minutes passed between moment the first call came in and the moment the attacker was shot dead, so I pay direct tribute to all those emergency services. A role was played not just by armed police, but by the ambulance service and the fire service—fire services happened to be going to a different fire, but they re-routed to deal with the aftermath of the attack. I pay tribute to them. Those are direct learnings from the arena attack.
On the wider picture, we will know more about the preparation and planning of the attack once all the facts are in. I will inform my hon. Friend and others in the House if I think there are wider lessons to be drawn, but it is a little early in the investigation to say whether there are.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
As in the case of the attack on Parliament in 2017, this attack was a combination of the use of a vehicle as a deadly weapon and an attempt to break into premises to kill people indiscriminately. On both occasions, brave men had to sacrifice their life to prevent access. Would it not be a sensible first step for all vulnerable premises to have doors that can be easily locked, so that people do not have to put themselves at risk physically holding them closed? I congratulate the Home Secretary on an excellent statement.
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question and comment. He is right: there are wider learnings here. That is why the Government are implementing Martyn’s law, which is about making premises safe from attack and draws on lessons from the Manchester arena attack. That is due to be implemented. I know there is some concern in the House and elsewhere—in the Jewish and other communities—about the length of time for implementation, which is up to 24 months. I will make sure that we interrogate whether that implementation can occur more quickly; if it can, I will ensure that it does.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
As a Greater Manchester Member of Parliament proudly representing a significant Jewish community, I know how much fear and anguish there already was in the community, even before the horrific attack in Crumpsall, as Manchester colleagues have said. As the Home Secretary has outlined, we need actions, not words, to tackle the scourge of rising antisemitism. Can the Government update the House on the development of our counter-extremism strategy? Have we responded to previous findings in this regard—for instance, the review conducted by Dame Sara Khan?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right. He will have noted my earlier comments about immediate actions that the Government are taking, as well as the wider message to partners across the public sector—at universities, in the NHS and so on: that we all need to do more to tackle the scourge of antisemitism in our country.
On counter-terror policy more broadly, I am myself reviewing all the previous findings made by experts following earlier attacks, under the previous Government and our own, to make sure that we have implemented all relevant recommendations and that our response is alive to the scale of the challenge.
I am very clear that this attack has asked a bigger question of all of us—of the country, and the Government specifically—about the response to antisemitism, and integration and community cohesion. Those issues will be subject to further lively debate in this House in the weeks and months to come.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
May I take this rare opportunity to praise the Home Secretary for what she has done with Palestine Action, and for taking steps to preserve the ability of some to protest, while stopping hate speech and other actions from other protesters? Does she agree that there is a correlation between the rise of antisemitism and these protests?
The Jewish community in London—but also, I am sure, across Manchester and the rest of the UK—are afraid to be comfortable in their religion. They feel afraid even to wear a yarmulke or to identify as Jewish. That is a national disgrace, and I hope that the Home Secretary will move forward to tackle it, with not just words but action.
Shabana Mahmood
I have been clear that I do not want people in our country—our own citizens—to feel that they have to live a smaller life and hide away who they really are because they are afraid of attack, be it verbal or physical, or scared that their children will be abused. That is not the future that I want for anyone in our country—not in our Jewish community or any other community. That is why I have taken steps on protests, and am reviewing the wider legislation on protests and the thresholds for hate crime.
I have been hearing clearly in the last few days that there are particular phrases that may not be liable for prosecution under our legislation, but that create huge amounts of fear. I want to review all that properly in the round, to make sure that we have the most robust legal framework—a framework that allows people in our country their effective precious freedoms, and accepts that people sometimes say offensive things, but provides a clear line between what is offensive and what is criminal. Once I have completed that review, I will report to the House.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her excellent statement. I pay tribute to the men who were killed and I send my condolences to their family and friends, and the wider Jewish community. As the Home Secretary has said, there is no place whatsoever in the UK for hate crime of any sort, directed at any group or any individual, and those who propagate hate must be held to account. The Home Secretary proposes changes to the regulations in the Public Order Act 2023; in addition, will she undertake a review of the Online Safety Act 2023? Use of the online space is a key way in which messages of hate are propagated, and not enough is being done to stop that.
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right to point out that hatred against minority communities runs riot in the online space. We do not need to look that deeply at many of the groups that proliferate online to see that whatever other hatred they say they profess, underneath there is usually a cesspit of antisemitism. That is a huge problem for us. The Online Safety Act has measures that are designed to begin to address some of those problems, but I am sure that there will be more work for us to do in the future. We must first ensure that our legal framework is robust enough to tackle the threats that we see daily in our real-world space, and then review to ensure that there is action much earlier in the online space. I will talk to colleagues across Government to ensure that we do everything that we can.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and I join her in expressing solidarity with the Jewish community following the horrific attack. Does the Home Secretary agree that we must urgently address online spaces where hatred is radicalised and amplified? Will she work with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology to review Ofcom’s guidance, and the categorisation set out in the Online Safety Act, to ensure that small, high-harm platforms are properly regulated to prevent the radicalisation that leads to such devastating attacks?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Lady will understand that I will not make new policy at the Dispatch Box, but I confirm that I will be talking about those matters to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. I recognise that the online space poses a specific challenge when it comes to all forms of hatred, particularly antisemitism, which proliferates across the political spectrum—on the left, on the right and everywhere in between—and I will talk to colleagues in Government about that.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Tonight, Jews around the world begin the festival of Simchat Torah. On Simchat Torah two years ago, we witnessed the worst attack on Jews since world war two. Today, we express joy at the hostage release, but also great sorrow at the massive loss of life during this terrible war. As we have heard, antisemitism is widespread. There is often only one Jewish child at a rural school in, say, Norfolk or Suffolk—indeed, my brother and I were the only Jewish children at our school. What can be done to support our teachers, so that they have the skills, knowledge and curriculum to educate all our children on the terrible scourge of antisemitism?
Shabana Mahmood
The Department for Education and the Secretary of State for Education have already made funding available to schools to tackle antisemitism in the classroom, and to educate teachers about the best way to handle conversations on the subject. I am sure that she will say more about that when she is next before the House for oral questions. My hon. Friend should rest assured that we recognise that antisemitism is a society-wide problem. Colleagues in the Department of Health are taking action, particularly around the regulation of doctors, to ensure that our national health service is a safe space for patients of every background, including Jewish patients. There has been work not just in the Department for Education, but in other Departments; there needs to be a whole-Government response, because this is a whole-society problem.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
In the wake of the terrorist attack in Heaton Park, I am very proud to say that Belmont shul, in my constituency, hosted a Shabbat service following a meeting of the Harrow Interfaith council at which representatives of all religions stood together with the Jewish community to say that hatred will not be allowed to win.
On the previous Friday, however, I was horrified to receive frantic phone calls, just before Shabbat started, saying that none of the synagogues had had contact from the police about what would happen the following day. After some frantic phone calls, the police said, “We can do drive-bys and various other things, but we can’t have a permanent presence at the shuls on Shabbat.” The reason was the Palestine Action demonstration in central London, at which the police knew they would have to arrest perpetrators supporting proscribed organisations.
My constituents, and those across London, are fed up with paying for these hate marches and hate demonstrations to take place. In addition to changing the routes, the meeting places and the times that these demonstrations can take place, how about another suggestion? If people want to organise these hate demonstrations, let them have the bill for the policing.
Shabana Mahmood
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am considering all the recommendations made by advisers to both our Administration and the previous Conservative Administration. I understand the call for protesters to pay. One of the difficulties is with implementation, rather than a disagreement on the substance of that issue. It is one of the things I will be looking at in the wider review I am doing.
It is important that whatever action we take does not create more work for policing, which is why I have already had discussions with senior police officers across the country about what we should do going forward. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I will review those measures very carefully, bearing in mind all the previous reports that have been written. I will ensure that the framework we are left with is robust and capable of being policed properly, and has the confidence of both the police and communities. It is important that, whatever we do, we have the resources to meet that.
If the hon. Gentleman writes to me on the specifics of what happened with synagogues in his constituency, I will ensure that he gets a proper response.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
I pass on my sincere condolences to the families and friends of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, some of whom were in the Gallery earlier. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) said, it is important to mention how Jews, Muslims and Christians came together, united in their revulsion and mourning in the wake of the attack.
A few days before the attack, the punk band Bob Vylan told a concert in Holland:
“F*** the Zionists, get out there and fight…get out there and meet them in the streets.”
I and other Members from Greater Manchester have urged Manchester Academy to cancel the Bob Vylan concert that is due next month because the band is a direct threat to the Jewish community of Manchester. Does the Home Secretary agree that the concert should be cancelled?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend will understand that decisions on whether specific concerts or other cultural events go ahead are made independently by safety advisory groups in those particular locations, informed by evidence on the operational requirements. It would be quite wrong for me, as the Home Secretary, either to pre-empt those decisions or to call into question their legal basis by commenting on them from the Dispatch Box.
It is important that safety advisory groups, wherever they are, take into account all the factors around these cultural events and ensure that they take the measures required to keep our communities safe. That is the job they are supposed to do, and it is the job that I hope they will do.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
While the Prime Minister is swanning around Egypt, shamelessly trying to claim credit for the Gaza-Israel peace deal, we have the Mayor of London stating that the chant “From the river to the sea” is not antisemitic. I think it is antisemitic. Does the Home Secretary agree with me or with the Mayor of London?
Shabana Mahmood
I really do not think the hon. Member should lower the tone in that way. These are very serious matters, and we should all be united in this House in supporting the peace process in the middle east, which has undoubtedly made progress in the last few days because of the actions of the American President and other partners in the region.
One reason I am reviewing the wider legislation in this area, including the thresholds for what constitutes a hate crime, is precisely that we have many contested phrases that, based on context, currently fall foul of being prosecuted. I want to ensure that we have the most robust legal mechanisms so that hate speech and hate crimes are always prosecuted in our country, and that those who propagate them face the full force of the law.
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
I begin by praising Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, who lost their lives defending the lives of others. In my constituency, we have five universities with 1,500 Jewish students—more than any other constituency in the country. We also have a Hillel house, which was attacked in 2024 after a social media post by a senior politician. What will the Home Secretary do to protect Hillel houses on campuses up and down the country, and will she write to all Hillel houses to reassure them of their safety on campus?
Shabana Mahmood
I am of course happy to provide support and to write in the way that my hon. Friend suggests. In doing so, I will be backing the work of the Secretary of State for Education, who has direct responsibility for universities. As some Members will have seen, the universities regulator said on Friday that the Office for Students has powers to fine universities and, ultimately, cut off public funding if those universities fail to uphold their responsibilities to keep students safe, including our Jewish students on campuses. It is important that there is a whole-society response. The university sector needs to step up, and I will work closely with the Secretary of State for Education to ensure that is the case.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
Clearly, how antisemitism is tackled by the police in our communities is key, so I would be interested to hear from the Home Secretary what specialist training our police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service—I appreciate that this is a bit off-piste; maybe she might put on her Justice hat for a moment—are receiving to help them understand the complexity of investigating, charging and prosecuting those exhibiting antisemitic views early on. There is a belief among members of the Jewish community who live near my constituency that far too many cases are dropped due to being labelled as having mitigating issues around concerns for Israel.
Shabana Mahmood
Having discussed these matters with senior police officers across the country, I know that they often take independent legal advice, both on the decisions that the police have to make and in testing with the Crown Prosecution Service whether a prosecution is likely to result in a conviction. These are contested areas of public and political debate, which is why I want to review for myself the legislation that is in place. I will report to the House in due course.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I join colleagues in expressing my condolences to the families of those who lost a loved one in last week’s attack. I also put on record—I think this whole House will agree—our support for the Community Security Trust, not just for the tireless work it does every week at shul, but for its cross-community work. So many in our country right now want to divide people by finding points that pit people against each other. That cross-community work is critical to keeping everybody in our communities safe.
On that thread, one common theme that is coming out—I allude to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols)—is a concern about misogyny, and about the record of violence against women that many of those involved in violent offences have. I know that the Home Secretary’s predecessor was pulling together a counter-terrorism strategy that was going to include that theme in looking at antisemitism, Islamophobia and radical Islam. Can she update us on where that review has got to, so that we can be confident that we will get all these people off our streets and improve our understanding?
Shabana Mahmood
I can reassure my hon. Friend that the nexus between misogyny and other serious offences, including offences relating to extremism and terrorism, is something we take very seriously. If she will forgive me, having been in the job for only a few weeks, I have not yet reviewed all of the counter-terrorism strategy. Our strategy will now need to take account of the things that have happened in Manchester, but I can reassure my hon. Friend that it will be published in the usual way, and we will of course consider the wider lessons about misogyny and violence against women and girls that can be drawn.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
First, I congratulate the Secretary of State on the forthrightness and clarity of the message she has sent from this House today. People in Northern Ireland appreciate the deep hurt experienced by those who went to worship and found that they were victims of terrorism. We have had people machine-gunned while praying, people shot dead as they came out of church, and people’s churches bombed over 30 years of IRA violence, and we understand that. Will she join me in expressing disgust at those in Northern Ireland who, in the very same week that this attack occurred, blocked roads and held protests celebrating Hamas terrorists who had carried out the atrocity two years previously? That kind of anti-Jewish hate drove the action we saw in Manchester. Does she agree that we cannot allow, under the cloud of free speech, people to use the language that drives sectarianism, which is causing hatred, division and the loss of safety in the United Kingdom?
Shabana Mahmood
The right hon. Gentleman is right that this country has had to learn painful lessons on sectarianism in the past, and it seems we have to learn them again in a slightly different context today. That cannot be our reality in the future, and I hope that all of us across this House can unite around that work. Let me also be clear for anybody celebrating and supporting Hamas that it is a proscribed terror organisation in this country. To support that organisation is to break the law of our land, and whenever anybody does so, they should face the full force of the law.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
After the vile attack in Manchester, many of us in this House will have spent time with Jewish friends last week celebrating the festival of Sukkot. It was particularly emotional for me to do that with friends and to realise that for the sukkah—that temporary shelter where we eat that meal—you have to have sight of the sky, because the Jewish community needs to be ready always to leave. That sense of insecurity is pervading the Jewish community now, and the Home Secretary must most importantly address that. Jews’ Free School in my constituency, the largest Jewish school in Europe, had a huge police presence outside it in the Friday afternoon after that attack, but as many have said, that reassurance should not be necessary. We have to address the fundamental insecurity that the community is facing.
Shabana Mahmood
Let me assure my hon. Friend that while in the initial aftermath of the attack it is important that we focus on reassurance measures and security measures, we are clear that in the medium to long term, the only way to make sure that all our Jewish community is safe and that Jewish life in Britain can thrive—as it has every right to do—is to ensure that we tackle the scourge of antisemitism across our country and deal with those wider questions of integration and community cohesion.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on an excellent statement, in which she said early on that the police officers involved are being treated as witnesses. That is absolutely right, but does she understand that many members of the security forces involved in this kind of work fear that they will be hung out to dry? Many of them will not have their fears assuaged by the written ministerial statement today on the legacy of the troubles, on which more anon. Will she reassure me that everything is being done by the Greater Manchester police to put an arm around those officers who were directly involved in this incident, and that they will be given every support necessary?
Shabana Mahmood
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that those officers are being supported. That is why I wanted to make it clear to the House that they are being treated as witnesses. It is why I have asked the Independent Office for Police Conduct to ensure that it concludes that part of its investigation as quickly as possible. There are wider issues about firearms officers in our country having the confidence to do their job. We will soon publish our police accountability review, which is designed to ensure that we meet the scale of the challenge in giving our officers the confidence they need to put themselves in danger for the rest of us. There are sometimes questions that have to be answered, and I think we can all accept that to be the case, but we should do that in a framework that commands public support as well as the support of the professionals, with things done in a timely way, so that we can get answers as quickly as possible and not have a debilitating impact on policing confidence in the long term.
Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)
I commend my right hon. Friend for her statement and also for her prompt response, which I know was appreciated by people in Manchester on the very day.
I believe that people should be able to pursue all religions, or none, without intimidation or fear of being attacked. I also believe in freedom of speech and the freedom to protest, but does my right hon. Friend agree that people cannot use that right to promote hate and promote violence against those with any other religions or beliefs? Does she agree that we need to keep that under review to ensure that we do not allow such people to continue to promote these messages of hate?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right: protest is a fundamental and precious freedom and should be protected, but it must be balanced against the need for all our communities to be able to live in safety and security. That is why I am carrying out a review of the wider legislation, particularly in relation to hate crimes and associated issues. I am doing that to ensure that we know exactly where the line is, and to ensure that that line and the careful balance that must be struck are policed properly and prosecutions follow when the line is crossed.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
I recently visited a synagogue in my constituency to celebrate Sukkot, but this year our celebration was drowned in sadness as we paid our respects following the terrorist attacks on two very brave men. We all condemn those attacks because, as the Home Secretary said, an attack on our Jewish community is an attack against us all and we are indeed stronger together. However, does she agree that acts of terrorism should not be used to pit communities against each other, and that by conflating the right to peaceful protest with the actions of a crazed terrorist we are in danger of doing just that? What steps is she taking to ensure that there is greater community cohesion which will build bridges and not wars?
Shabana Mahmood
I have to say that I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I was very clear that the protests that took place immediately after this terror attack, especially in Manchester itself, were fundamentally un-British. I hope the hon. Gentleman would agree that sometimes imagining that it was ourselves who had suffered, and extending the hand of friendship, love and solidarity to a community that is suffering, is the kind thing to do, the right thing to do and the British thing to do. I would have liked to have seen the organisers of those protests in Manchester in the immediate aftermath of the attack, and across the country, show some of that very British solidarity. That does not mean that people are not allowed to protest—they are, they have been and I am sure they will continue to do so—but sometimes a little bit of solidarity and kindness can go an awfully long way.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I wish to extend my condolences to the friends and families of Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz, and to the people of Manchester and the wider Jewish community across the United Kingdom, following the appalling terrorist attack at the synagogue in Heaton Park. Many in the Jewish community felt that this attack was a matter of not if, but when. According to the Community Security Trust, 76 of the 1,521 antisemitic incidents that occurred in the first six months of the year were violent assaults that were so severe as to be recorded as extreme violence, which meant that they involved gross bodily harm or a threat to life. Will my right hon. Friend say a little more about what she is doing personally to tackle the scourge of antisemitism in our nation?
Shabana Mahmood
Let me first say, as I said throughout my statement, that antisemitism is at unacceptable levels. It is rising and has been rising for some time, and it demands a different and new answer from all of us in government and across society if we are to tackle it effectively. That means, in the immediate aftermath of the terror attack in Manchester, that we provide reassurance to the community for their safety and security, but in the longer term it means that we must work across Government to tackle antisemitism wherever we find it, whether in the national health service, on our university campuses or in protests and marches. We must hold the line between action that might be offensive but is lawful, and that which is a hate crime and must be prosecuted under the law.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Section 12 of the Public Order Act already allows a senior police officer to place conditions on a protest march, for instance by rerouting it if the march will be noisy, disruptive or intimidating, so can the Home Secretary clarify her comments about section 12? When she talks about addressing the cumulative impact of the marches, is she still talking about allowing the rolling anti-Israel marches to go ahead, just using different routes, or does she want to give herself the power to stop them altogether?
Shabana Mahmood
The measure that I have announced will be about placing conditions on marches under both section 12 and section 14 of the Public Order Act. What became very clear to me in the immediate aftermath of the terror attack in Manchester was that there was inconsistency of practice across police forces in the country as to whether cumulative impact could be taken into account when they make decisions about whether to place conditions on a march or a protest. The legislation I propose will make it explicit that cumulative impact is, in and of itself, a feature that policing can take into account in order to put conditions on a march. It will not need to meet any other threshold before conditions can be placed on a march or a protest.
On the wider question, I am reviewing the broader legislative framework. I will have more to say about potential bans, although the hon. Gentleman will know from his time at the Home Office that the policing and banning of protests has consequences, as does allowing them to go ahead with conditions. Again, it is one of those areas where a careful balance needs to be struck. I hope there might be cross-party agreement on how we get that careful balance, and on how we hold it and ensure that the police are able to police effectively, whatever we may decide in the future.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and agree with her that anyone seeking to divide us will only unite us. I join hon. Members in paying tribute to both Melvin and Adrian’s families.
I refer the Home Secretary to the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) about looking at the issues in policing across the country. Sadly, the Home Secretary will be aware of the recent exposé on the Met police, who are responsible for some of the major counter-terrorism operations across the country. Those seeking to protect people who report hate crime should not be the perpetrators of hate crime, and we saw some disgraceful behaviour in that exposé.
This week is National Hate Crime Awareness Week. Every community should feel confident about reporting crime to the police, but we know that for every hate crime reported, many more go unreported, because people do not feel safe or have confidence in the police. Will the Home Secretary look at some of the issues across our police forces?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend refers to the BBC “Panorama” exposé into the Met police, and this is the first time I have been able to place on the record my views on that matter. Like everybody else, I was horrified, particularly at the situation at Charing Cross police station, which had been the focus of previous exposés and promises of change. I have discussed these matters with both the Mayor of London and the chief of the Met police, and I am reassured that they are absolutely clear-eyed about the need to tackle the issues that were exposed in that programme. We are all united in our desire to root out from our police forces all individuals who hold horrible attitudes and we cannot trust to police our communities safely. They have no place in our police service and I am confident that, through the work of the Met police going forward and through the Mayor of London and other partners working together, we will get to a place where we can be confident in our police forces. I hope to work closely with Members from across the House on that issue as well.
Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)
I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to CST and Greater Manchester emergency services for their response on the day, and particularly to those brave members of the congregation who protected their fellow members. I thank the Home Secretary for her quick response in coming to Greater Manchester. As a Greater Manchester MP myself, I know it meant a great deal to our community.
I am proud to have the Yeshurun Hebrew congregation in my constituency, as well as North Cheshire Jewish primary school. I met the rabbi on the Monday before this horrendous attack and we talked about the genuine fear in our community about the rise in antisemitism, which was a horrendous foreshadowing of what would happen at Heaton Park. I completely agree with the Home Secretary that more security should not be the answer, but we are in a situation in which more security is currently needed. Will she assure the House and the Jewish community that greater resources will be given to CST, the police and local authorities to ensure greater visible protection around our synagogues and our local Jewish schools—not just in the immediate term but for as long as necessary, to reassure the community that they are safe?
Shabana Mahmood
Let me assure the hon. Gentleman and the whole House that we are discussing these matters closely with the Community Security Trust and other representatives of the Jewish community. The Prime Minister and I will have more to say in the coming days about the medium-term picture on security and funding for places of worship in our country. Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that we take this very seriously. I know he will agree that, in the long term, we need not only simply to provide protective security but to know with confidence that all our communities can go about their business without having to go through a security cordon before they do so.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Eighty-nine years ago this month, the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, tried to march through the largely Jewish east end of London. They were marched off by people of Jewish, Irish and working-class backgrounds in what became known as the battle of Cable Street, uniting in protest against antisemitism. Following this month’s horrific antisemitic attack, and amid a surge in the far right’s targeting of minorities and the attack at Peacehaven mosque, does the Home Secretary agree with me that we must tirelessly oppose fascism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism, and also protect the hard-worn democratic right to protest, which was crucial to defeating fascists in Cable Street in my area in a historic act of solidarity and unity in British history?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right that acts of solidarity among communities to protect each other reflect the absolute best of our country. As I have said, there is a careful balance to be struck in relation to the fundamental freedom and right to protest—sometimes for causes we can all believe in and sometimes for causes that are much more politically contested. It is a fundamental freedom and one of the things that makes this country such a strong and free place to be, but there must be a balance between that and the right for all of our communities to go about their business with safety and security, which is why I have made the announcement about the Public Order Act. I think the balance struck at the moment is in the wrong place, and we need to take some steps to correct that.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for the statement, and I thank her and her team for dealing very promptly with an issue I have raised over the last couple of weeks.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the Jewish community, and I thank those from the Jewish community who have reached out to me to speak about their concerns. I visited a Jewish school with the CST, and it was awful to see children—young British children— in 21st-century Britain having to do drills on protecting themselves from a lone wolf attack. We are clearly not in the right place on this. In the sentiment of dealing with the root causes, does the Home Secretary agree with me that inter-faith work has fallen off a cliff, and that that needs to be dealt with? I am also concerned about the raising of Palestinian flags in the centre Birmingham—closer to home—and Preston council’s hosting of a known Palestinian terrorist. All of these things contribute to the feeling I am getting from the Jewish community, which is that they do not feel safe in this country.
Shabana Mahmood
This attack has shone a light on the burden that British Jews bear every single day just to live an ordinary Jewish life. There is nothing worse than imagining little children in our country having to go through drills every day at school to keep themselves safe. I would hope that everyone across this House could commit ourselves collectively to doing everything we can to root out the evil of antisemitism, because no child should have to do what has become ordinary and normal for British Jewish children in our country. That is a disgrace for us all, it shames us all and we absolutely need to work together to fix it.
On inter-faith work, the hon. Member is right. In the last two years, people who have done inter-faith work for 20 or 30 years have told me many times that it has fallen off a cliff. There are no easy answers for how we get it up and running again. I think it will take careful, delicate work to bring people together again and rebuild some trust between communities—between our Muslim and our Jewish communities. Let me be frank about that. With enough good will and British generosity of spirit, it is possible for us to get that work up and running. I see it as crucial in tackling the scourge of antisemitism and other forms of hatred, and in making sure that our country is a safe place for people of all different communities. I hope the whole House will support that.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I share with Members the joy at the hostages being released today, and the sorrow at the loss of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, and I send my condolences to their families.
I join the Home Secretary in condemning this attack and condemning antisemitism and racism. I met our local rabbi last week to share my solidarity, and I am so pleased that the congregation have received so many messages of support from across the community and other faith groups—the mosque, churches and other groups—and that there is real support from the local police, for which they are very grateful. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is vital that we continue to send a united message that we support the Jewish community and their right to live and worship in safety, and that we all have a role—here in this place, and in workplaces, schools and streets across this country—in taking action against this?
Shabana Mahmood
It is natural after a terror attack that we might focus on the actions of those who still wish to cause pain and do damage to our communities, but my hon. Friend is right. Since the attack, millions of Brits have come together in the spirit of solidarity towards one another, whether in our churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship, or in places that are community institutions open to all faiths and none. It is those acts of solidarity that will ensure we can be a strong country going forward.
Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)
When we allow Islamist hate preachers such as Sheikh Alafasy to do speaking tours, it is no wonder British Jews in the UK no longer feel safe. In January, he had a platform at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, despite the Jewish Representative Council raising its concerns. They were ignored. In the follow-up meeting, described as an appalling “tick-box exercise”, the chief executive could not have cared less. It now turns out that this Sheikh was one of only 10 people that the terrorist perpetrator of this attack followed on Twitter. There was a chance that he was at the event in January. Can the Home Secretary advise what her Department is doing to hold the chief executive Andrew Bolt and the trustees of Bridgewater Hall to account for completely failing to take the concerns of Manchester’s Jewish community into consideration? It is not just the hate marches.
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Forgive me, I do not know the specifics of that particular case. If he writes to me, I will discuss it with the Security Minister and ensure he gets an appropriate response.
Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)
First, I welcome the move to consider cumulative impact when it comes to policing the issues discussed today. It is a hugely positive move, and I hope it can be applied to static protests as well as marches. In the aftermath of the horrific attack on the synagogue earlier this month, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate undertook research that showed the shocking, but these days sadly not surprising, number of calls for further violence against Jews on the X social media platform. Does the Home Secretary agree that those advocating online for the death of Jews and for synagogues to be burnt down are exactly the sort of content that the Online Safety Act 2023 is supposed to address? Does she also agree that it is utterly reprehensible for anyone to give positive publicity to those on social media calling for people to be killed and for buildings to be burnt down?
Shabana Mahmood
On the measures on cumulative impact, yes, they do apply to both static protest and marches. That is why they are measures aimed at both sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act. As I said earlier in my statement, I am very clear that the online space is not going to be a free space for antisemitism, which presents itself both on the left and the right and everything in between of the political spectrum. I will discuss these matters with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I echo comments across the House and extend Plaid Cymru’s sympathies to the families of everyone affected. We as MPs and other commentators in the public sphere need to be vigilant and alert to the potential consequences of inflammatory language as we recall what happened on 2 October. I thank the Antisemitism Policy Trust for its work showing how utterly unacceptable it is that antisemitic tropes place Jewish people in peril. Does the Home Secretary agree that with free speech, which we rightly treasure, comes responsibility?
Shabana Mahmood
Yes, I do. That is why I described the protests in the immediate aftermath of the attacks as un-British. We have our rights and we can choose when to use them. We can choose whether we wish to cause pain to people or not. I wish that those individuals who were involved in the protests in the immediate aftermath had chosen to show a sense of British generosity of spirit, rather than go on those marches that day.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
I share the Home Secretary’s condemnation of this terrorist attack. I was pleased to join my Jewish constituents in solidarity at an event to mark Sukkot this weekend. It was particularly touching that we were joined by people of all faiths, including Hindus and Muslims. They were there in solidarity, but also with anxieties of their own. One Hindu community representative said to me, “This incident makes us nervous that this could happen to us as well.” Does the Home Secretary agree that the Government’s protections must extend to people of all faiths? Can she say more about what she will do to ensure that people of all faiths can meet, celebrate and worship without fear?
Shabana Mahmood
I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government’s places of worship protective security scheme is open not just to synagogues but to mosques and other places of worship, and already makes significant sums available for the protection of mosques and other temples. We are working closely with representatives from the community on what we might need to do going forward.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
I associate myself with the tributes paid to those who were killed in Manchester and to the invaluable work of the Community Security Trust, whose headquarters I have visited. I pay tribute to my constituents, who have sent a wall of love and support in messages to our local synagogue, showing how they absolutely reject antisemitism.
The Manchester attacker was wielding a knife. My local police force has stressed to me the ease with which someone—even with a pattern of criminal behaviour—can obtain a lethal knife. We do not know what kind of knife was used or how the attacker obtained it, but we do know that the Southport attacker purchased a 16-inch machete from Knife Warehouse, a retailer which, in the words of the inquiry chair, showed “no curiosity” at all about whom it was selling to. It is clear that those who intend to commit violence can arm themselves with alarming ease by exploiting online loopholes that treat lethal weapons as ordinary products. Does the Secretary of State agree that we now need a far stronger and clearer approach to tackle the online sale and circulation of these knives and to close the gaps that allow sellers to profit from them?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Lady will know that we are already taking action in the Crime and Policing Bill to ban the sale of those knives. It is a little too early to draw wider lessons about exactly what happened in this case, but I am sure we will return to these matters in due course once more of the facts are in.
David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)
I commend the Home Secretary for her statement and join her in both condemning this despicable attack and sending condolences to the families of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby. They are heroes—may their memory be a blessing.
Hendon has one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. Many of my constituents are scared; I must tell the House in all candour that more than a few are asking whether there is a future for them and their families in this country. One of the sources of concern is the fear of bias towards Jewish patients in the NHS. Can the Home Secretary expand on the action the Government are taking to ensure that all may be treated in the NHS without fear and stamp out antisemitism in our health system?
Shabana Mahmood
It is an absolute outrage that any patient in our country might be afraid of seeking treatment in our national health service because of the expressed views of the person who is treating them. We are determined to ensure that that is not something that anyone in our country, including in our Jewish community, has to go through. That is why the Health Secretary has already announced that he will be overhauling the regulatory system for medical practitioners, and I am sure he will come to the House in due course to give more details.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The Green party stands shoulder to shoulder in cross-party solidarity with the victims and survivors of the horrific attack on the Heaton Park synagogue. I pay particular tribute to those who put their lives at risk to bring the attack to a swift stop.
The Home Secretary has today spoken passionately and personally about the fight against the scourge of antisemitism being the same as the fight against any form of prejudice, and I very much welcome that. I am sure she will agree that it is essential to say loudly, clearly and unequivocally that prejudice, hatred or violence against Jewish people is totally unacceptable in our country, and will not be tolerated.
The Home Secretary has used this opportunity—this moment—to announce further restrictions on protest, which, I confess, do concern me. Important points have been raised in the Chamber today regarding radicalisation within online spaces. Will the Home Secretary ensure that every policy measure she takes is focused on building solidarity between communities and countering division in our country?
Shabana Mahmood
I agreed with everything the hon. Lady said until she got to restriction on protests. Let me be clear: there is a balance to be struck between these freedoms. I think it is in the wrong place, so I am taking measures to bring it back into balance. I repeat the points I have made about the online environment, which is something I will discuss with colleagues across Government.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
My condolences and solidarity and those of my constituents are with the Jewish community in Manchester in the wake of this terrible terrorist attack. The Home Secretary mentioned regulators. Regulators such as Ofcom have a hugely important role in tackling antisemitism, not least online harm and hatred, as raised by the Antisemitism Policy Trust. Can she give an assurance that the Government have a plan to ensure that regulators are playing their full role in addressing the poison of antisemitism?
Shabana Mahmood
Yes, I can. My colleagues in the Cabinet have written to the different regulators that report directly to them, and they will all come before this House to set out further measures and how we will hold people accountable for their powers.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Does the Home Secretary agree that the murderous attack on the Jewish community in Manchester was the product of the rampant Islamic radicalisation that we have seen across our country—something which chimes with the antisemitism that has been evidenced in the bitter hate marches in our capital city? In that context, is enough being done to deal with the radicalisers? Do we not need to strike the axe at the root of this problem? Much of that root is those who are radicalising young people to carry out awful acts such as this.
Shabana Mahmood
I repeat to the hon. and learned Gentleman my earlier comments on dealing with the domestic threats we face, the largest of which is Islamist extremism. We will know more about the specific journey that this attacker took before he carried out his attack when more of the facts are in, but I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that whatever wider lessons are to be drawn from this attack, I will make sure that they are understood and learned from and that we have the measures in place to be effective in dealing with radicalisation wherever it takes place, including with Islamist extremism.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the Leeds Jewish Representative Council and the Jewish Leadership Council for organising moving tributes in memory of the victims of the Manchester attack. I also thank CST for its tireless work to keep the community safe. I am sorry to say that a few weeks ago a speaker on the streets of Leeds during one of the protests called for all synagogues and all Jewish schools to be held to account for the crime of, as they say, harbouring Zionists. This was the thinnest of veils draped over an excuse to legitimise targeting the Jewish community. Does the Home Secretary agree that there is absolutely no place for such calls on the streets of Leeds or anywhere in the UK? Will she do everything in her power to enable the police to ensure that it does not happen again to keep the Jewish community safe?
Shabana Mahmood
I agree with my hon. Friend; those comments are despicable and utterly unacceptable. It is why I am reviewing the wider legislative framework in relation to protest and hate crime.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I give my condolences to those who lost their lives as a result of the Manchester synagogue attack and to those who suffered the trauma of the loss of a family member. I thank the Home Secretary for her strong and emphatic statement. She speaks for everyone in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with her words of strong condemnation. I was sickened and shocked to hear of the attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur and the loss of life that ensued. It is an established fact that antisemitism in the UK is once again on the rise, to such an extent that there are security details at all religious events.
I can well remember after the Darkley hall massacre that many, probably all, churches across Northern Ireland had extra security details on their doors. Those dark days are behind us in Northern Ireland, but they are not behind our Jewish friends, and we have witnessed that in recent times. They require actions, not words, and above all honesty about the threat level against them. Just how will the Home Secretary provide assurances to the Jewish community that are not just media soundbites but promises of safety that can be trusted?
Shabana Mahmood
I assure the hon. Member and the House that the Government will take action—we have already taken action, and there will be more to come. I know that will be debated in the House over the coming weeks and months, but this is not a moment for warm words; it is a moment for strong action, and that is what the Government will deliver.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
I agree with the Home Secretary that violence directed at any community, be they Jewish, Muslim, of all faiths or none are attacks on our entire country and we are united in condemnation of those who seek to divide us. In Luton, we have strong cohesion because we have worked for many years to build it, yet recent events, combined with increasingly open far-right and racist rhetoric, have left many feeling scared and vulnerable. Bedfordshire Police has stepped up patrols around different places of worship, but its resources are limited. I welcome the Home Secretary’s comments on looking at that. What cross-Government work is being done on the community cohesion building of our voluntary and community sector, and what support will there be for that?
Shabana Mahmood
Community cohesion will be vital and is an important element of the work we have to take forward in the light of the attack. I am happy to discuss that with my hon. Friend and ensure that she gets a meeting with the relevant Minister to feed in the experience of those in Luton.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
I join the Home Secretary and all Members across the House in my unequivocal condemnation of the heinous terrorist and antisemitic attack against Jewish worshippers in Manchester, and I express my heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Mr Daulby and Mr Cravitz. As a proud British Muslim, I remind the House and those listening that the actions of these so-called Islamist terrorists were vile and unacceptable. They have nothing to do with the religion of Islam and are actually in total contradiction to the teachings of Islam and the obligations of all Muslims.
In my constituency and across the country, Muslims have joined the Jewish community in being saddened and angered by the terrorist attack in Manchester, and by any and all hatred and violence expressed against any community. We stand in full solidarity with them. The Home Secretary said that the terrorist was not known to the police or to the Prevent programme, so will she advise the House what steps are being taken to address any gaps identified in our preventive measures so that such acts of terrorism cannot happen again?
Shabana Mahmood
The attacker was not known to counter-terror policing and had not been referred to the Prevent programme. Once all the facts are in, we will be able to draw wider lessons. As we did not know him, the question will be: should he have been on our radar? That is a question that I and others in our security services will take seriously. He was, of course, known to the police in the context of those two charges for rape, and the IOPC will now investigate all his history with the police in a non-terror context so that we can draw those wider lessons.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and pay tribute to everyone who helped defeat the attack last week. I also pay tribute to the Home Secretary for the leadership she has shown so early in post, which has been fantastic. In an earlier reply, she lamented the decline in interfaith work across the UK. In Edinburgh, it has never been going stronger. The Edinburgh Interfaith Association does fantastic work to ensure that Edinburgh is an inclusive city. I formally invite her to meet it to learn about its work.
None the less, the Jewish community in Edinburgh are concerned about the rise in antisemitism. I met them last weekend, and I spoke to a young man who is proud to be Jewish but said he could not live his life openly—the phrase he used was that he was “Jewish in the closet”, and I felt ashamed. I welcome the Home Secretary looking at the threshold for hate crime, but will she reassure us that she will be speaking to the devolved Administrations to ensure that we get this right across the UK?
Shabana Mahmood
I will be speaking to all our colleagues in the devolved Administrations. I am happy to discuss with my hon. Friend the wider lessons on interfaith work to be drawn from his own experience.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
The horrific terrorist attack at Heaton Park follows a decade during which antisemitism has increased nearly every year, and the CST has confirmed that antisemitism is increasing on university campuses. In York we have two fantastic universities where antisemitism has no place. Will my right hon. Friend commit to working with the Secretary of State for Education to ensure that universities across the country have all they need to root out antisemitism for good?
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
On an inspiring visit this weekend to Bromley Reform synagogue, which serves my constituents in Dartford alongside those of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) and the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), I was moved by the strong views of the congregation rejecting hatred across all religions and communities in our country. Following the Home Secretary’s excellent statement, does she agree that it is vital that we send a message to the Jewish community and every other community in this country that they will be safe and that the Government stand with them?
Shabana Mahmood
I agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that that message has been heard today. There is obviously much work for us to do, but the Government will not shy away from doing it.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her powerful statement and send my condolences to those grieving for their loved ones following the horrific terrorist attack, which realised the fears of those in our Jewish community across the country. A Stevenage constituent wrote to me straight after the attack to say how scared she was for her husband, who had gone to do security at Yom Kippur that evening. She also told me that classmates of her son’s had wished he had died in the Holocaust, and that other classmates had talked about antisemitic comments during lessons on the second world war. She also told me about not disclosing the fact that a party for her daughter was for her bat mitzvah because she was scared of the response. These are the fears that our Jewish community are facing. While I welcome all that the Government are doing in their deeds, in law and with resources, the harder thing is how we call out these so-called small acts of antisemitism. They start that way, but where do they end? How can we encourage everyone—all of us—to call them out?
Shabana Mahmood
No act of antisemitism, big or small, is acceptable, and we must all call it out and challenge it wherever we see it. The Government will act. We are already taking measures, and we will take more, to strengthen the response to rising antisemitism in our country. Let me assure my hon. Friend that the testimony from his constituent is devastating for all of us. It is a source of national shame that our fellow citizens feel that they have to hide who they are in this way. We must all commit ourselves to doing everything in our collective power to ensure that our Jewish community can live a full Jewish life here in Britain in the 21st century.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. Does she agree that slogans such as “Glory to our martyrs”, “Globalise the intifada” and “Zionists off our streets” are unacceptable and likely to encourage unstable individuals to carry out horrific actions and attacks on the Jewish people such as the one we saw so recently?
Shabana Mahmood
Let me reassure my hon. Friend that I am carrying out a review of the wider legislation on protest and thresholds for hate crime legislation, to ensure that our whole legal framework is as robust as it needs to be, so that we can strike the careful balance between our freedom of protest and freedom of speech, and keeping all our communities safe.
Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
Before we come to the ministerial statement on the China case, I wish to make a brief statement. Members will know that I have already put on record my disappointment that the charges against two individuals relating to espionage for the Chinese authorities have been dropped. I am not only disappointed, but very angry. It is of the utmost importance to me that all those who work in this Parliament are able to undertake their activities securely and without interference. I continue to seek advice from officials on what further steps might be taken to pursue the issue in other ways. I will be issuing updated security guidance to Members later today.
I think there is something the Government ought to be aware of: it is this Parliament and MPs here who have been spied on; and it is MPs’ offices that have been infiltrated. As it stands, we have seen payment for spying on what I believe we should be protecting. At this moment, I feel we have not had the protection. I certainly do not blame the Minister—I know that he will be answering a lot in his statement and taking many questions—but I want to put it on record that I am angry and disappointed. My job is to protect Parliament. I feel that we are not getting that protection.
Security Update: Official Secrets Act Case
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I want to update the House on the facts surrounding the collapse of the trial of Christopher Berry and Christopher Cash. However, following the Home Secretary’s statement, I also want to take the opportunity to express my deepest sympathies for the victims and families of those affected by the abhorrent terror attack that occurred at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. Tragically, two members of the UK’s Jewish community lost their lives. They remain in the thoughts of the whole House at this very difficult time.
I also express my gratitude for the rapid reactions of emergency responders, the security services and members of that local community. Two days later, a mosque in Peacehaven, East Sussex, was targeted in an arson attack. Fortunately, no one was injured. My thoughts, and I am sure the thoughts of the whole House, will be with members of that local community as well. We remain united in standing against hate in all its forms.
As I told the House in September, the Government remain extremely disappointed by the outcome of the Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry case. I understand the strength of feeling across the House and share the deep frustration at the fact that these individuals will not face trial. While the decision not to proceed was an independent one made by the Crown Prosecution Service, the Government remain gravely concerned about the security of our democratic institutions and are crystal clear that our Parliament must and will be protected from espionage. That is why I am today announcing that MI5’s National Protective Security Authority will be taking further steps to protect our democratic institutions from foreign interference. I will set out more details on that in a moment.
Since I addressed the House on 15 September, there has been correspondence between hon. Members, the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service. There has also been widespread—and, at times, wholly inaccurate—reporting in the media. I will address the details set out by the Crown Prosecution Service and the basis on which the Government provided evidence to support the case, but first let me underline a fundamental point that has too often been overlooked in recent days, including by the Conservative party. The CPS brought these charges under the previous Government, and under the legislation that was in place at the time: the Official Secrets Act 1911—an antiquated law that is clearly no longer fit for purpose in addressing the complex and sophisticated nature of the state threats that we face today.
It has been clear for many years that the legislation has not kept pace with the modern state threats that we face today. It was evident that the Official Secrets Act was no longer fit for purpose as early as 2015, when Conservative Ministers tasked the Law Commission with reviewing this antiquated legislation—10 years ago. In 2020, the Law Commission and the Intelligence and Security Committee of this House were both clear that the legislation, drafted before the first world war, needed to be updated as a matter of urgency. It referred to espionage as
“any sketch, plan, model, article, or note, or other document or information…which…might be…useful to an enemy”.
Those terms are archaic in the modern threat landscape that we now face. That is why the Labour party supported the passing of the National Security Act 2023 on a cross-party basis, closing the loopholes that have been exposed by this case.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has written to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley), and the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), about this case, and it is welcome that these facts have been set out. The DPP has made it clear that charges were brought in April 2024 based on the law as it stood at the time of the offences. The deputy National Security Adviser—a senior official with very extensive experience in matters relating to national security—provided a witness statement in December 2023, under the previous Government. Further witness statements were requested and provided in February and July of this year.
All the evidence provided by the deputy National Security Adviser was based on the law at the time of the offence and the policy position of the Conservative Government at the time of the offence. Every effort was made to provide evidence to support this case within those constraints. The decision on whether to proceed with the prosecution was ultimately taken by the Crown Prosecution Service, which was hamstrung by antiquated legislation that had not been updated by the previous Conservative Government—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I say to both Front-Bench teams: please, this is a very important and serious matter. We could do without the side chatter.
Dan Jarvis
Despite the evolving nature of the state threats that we face, the DPP has given his assurance that the CPS was not influenced by any external party, any member of this Government, or any senior civil servant or special adviser working within it. I want to be clear again today, as the Government have been before, that suggestions that the Government concealed evidence, withdrew witnesses or restricted the ability of witnesses to draw on particular bits of evidence are all untrue. The DNSA did not materially change his evidence and was under no pressure from anyone to do so.
What has changed is the CPS’s assessment of the case law. The DPP has explained that in a separate case—the Crown v. Roussev—the High Court ruled on the threshold for evidence needed to prosecute under the antiquated 1911 legislation. In the light of this new judgment, the CPS independently decided to seek further evidence. But the fact remains that it was not the policy of the Conservative Government to classify China as a threat to national security. As the right hon. Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly) said as Foreign Secretary, summing up China in one word as a threat was
“impossible, impractical and—most importantly—unwise.”
I have listened with interest in recent days to advice from former Conservative Ministers on how the UK should now define our approach to China, but I must remind them and the House that what matters is what their policy was in government. The previous Government set out their position on China in the 2021 integrated review, in which they described China as a “systemic challenge” to UK security. In the integrated review refresh of 2023, they described China as an “epoch-defining challenge”. As the Prime Minister has explained, the current Government’s policy position was immaterial to the assessment made by the CPS. Ministers cannot retrospectively change policy that existed under the Conservative Government and, as stated before, the CPS decision to drop the case was not influenced by any member of this Government, special adviser or senior official.
At this moment of profound global change and insecurity, these matters have led to discussion about this Government’s approach to China, so let me set that out for the House. We must tackle the threats that China poses, which range from cyber-security attacks, foreign interference and espionage targeting our democratic institutions to the transnational repression of Hongkongers in the UK. This Government are unequivocal that the first duty of Government is to keep people safe. We fully recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security, yet we must also be alive to the fact that China presents us with opportunities. It is the world’s second largest economy, and, together with Hong Kong, the UK’s third largest trading partner. The only way to act in the UK’s best interest is to take a long-term and strategic approach. That means working in close co-ordination with Five Eyes and wider allies to build collective resilience to the threats that China poses, investing in our intelligence services and being unequivocal about our position on human rights. It also means developing a consistent and pragmatic approach to economic engagement without compromising on our national security. Let me set out the recent actions that the Government have taken to strengthen UK security against state threats, including those posed by China.
MI5’s national protective security authority has today launched new guidance to protect the UK’s democratic institutions from foreign interference. The guidance will help Members in this House and the other place, Members of the devolved legislatures, local councillors, mayors and elected representatives’ staff to better understand the nature of the threat. It also provides simple, effective steps for at-risk individuals to take to protect themselves, their teams and the integrity of our democratic processes. The guidance will kick-start a wider cross-Government action plan that is being driven through the defending democracy taskforce to reduce foreign interference and espionage threats to UK democratic institutions. It will be delivered in close co-ordination with the parliamentary security authorities. I urge all Members of this House to be alert and follow the guidance, and to take up the National Cyber Security Centre’s important opt-in service for Members of both Houses.
The Government also remain steadfast in our commitment to holding Chinese state-linked actors accountable for widescale cyber-espionage. In September, the NCSC co-sealed a US-led technical advisory calling out Chinese state-sponsored cyber-threat actors targeting global networks, including in the UK. I can reassure the House that we continue to keep all tools under review, and will act as necessary to reduce their threat.
The Government are also committed to legislating to further strengthen safeguards against foreign interference. That specifically includes a new elections Bill to strengthen safeguards against covert foreign political funding, and involves taking forward the recommendations from the independent reviewer for legislation on state threats.
Let me finish by reiterating this Government’s unwavering commitment to national security and to keeping our country safe. We will take all necessary action to deter those who seek to do us harm, and to ensure that the UK is best placed to tackle state threats, including those emanating from China. I commend the statement to the House.
Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
May I associate myself with the Minister’s remarks about Heaton Park synagogue? I thank Mr Speaker for all his work on Members’ security. No one has worked harder to protect the integrity of our Parliament.
The Security Minister is very well regarded, so I am sorry to see that he has been sent here again to make these arguments, which will not wash. This is about the ineptitude of the Government, and I cannot accept much of what he says. He has brought some updates to the House, which we acknowledge, but in essence, China spied on this Parliament and the Government are issuing us with leaflets. That is not good enough. There are Members here who have been spied on and sanctioned by China. Even Madam Deputy Speaker has been sanctioned. All MPs speaking today should be acting in the national interest—nothing else.
Let us remind ourselves of what has happened. Two men have been accused of spying on MPs in this very building. The CPS has what it felt was a clear and compelling case to prosecute, but the trial has collapsed because, for months and months, the Government have refused to give the CPS vital information. That was not a mistake; it was not a misunderstanding; it looks like a deliberate decision to collapse the case and curry favour with the regime in China. Instead of admitting that, the Security Minister has come here blaming the Official Secrets Act, when we know that the Act was enough to prosecute the case. Its deficiencies had nothing to do with the Government’s failures.
May I remind the House how serious this is? If the Government do not prosecute those who spy on us, it sends a message to the public that the Government do not care about their safety; it sends a message to our allies, who share intelligence with us, that Britain cannot be trusted; and it sends a message to those who spy on us that they can get away with it.
Let us look at the facts. First, the Government blamed the CPS. The Minister came to the House on 15 September and claimed that he had become aware of the situation only that day, and that the CPS decision had been an entirely independent one—an assertion that he has repeated today. He said:
“I am not able to talk about why the CPS has decided to make this decision.”—[Official Report, 15 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 1186.]
He said that it was not for him to “speculate on the reason”. He told my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) to “seek a meeting” if she wanted to find out the reasons. However, we now know, despite all he has just said, that the trial collapsed because the Government refused to give the CPS what it needed, and the Minister knew full well why it had collapsed. The Director of Public Prosecutions has said that he spent months trying to get the Government to provide the evidence that the CPS needed.
Secondly, the Government tried blaming the previous Government. Just like the Prime Minister, the Minister claims that the CPS could not prosecute because the previous Government did not describe China as a threat. I cannot believe that he would actually say that. He knows what we said, but let me remind him. For starters, the 2021 integrated review described China as—listen carefully—the “biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security.” The 2023 integrated review refresh said several times that China posed—listen carefully—a threat. In 2024, the then Minister for Security said from the Dispatch Box that China poses a serious threat. But even if the previous Government had not said China was a threat, which they did, this Government needed only to convince a jury that it was a threat, and the Minister knows that. I am astonished that he has repeated that nonsense today.
The Minister’s and Prime Minister’s argument has been refuted by no less than a former DPP, two former Cabinet Secretaries—one a former National Security Adviser—two former heads of MI6, and a professor of public law at the University of Cambridge, who said today that Ministers’ statements so far are “misleading” about the legal position. They are all clear that those people could have been prosecuted under the old legislation. Is the Government’s position that they are all wrong and the Government are right? The Minister referred to R v. Roussev. That case last year made it easier to prosecute, not harder. As the former Director of Public Prosecutions said of recruiting people to spy on MPs,
“That of itself clearly constitutes a threat to national security.”
Only this Government could mess that up.
We know that the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, has a very close relationship with China. Are we supposed to believe that he was not involved in the “substance of the case and discussions around it”, as they say? What does that even mean? He was in those meetings, acting in the name of the Prime Minister. Do the Government really expect us to believe that he never mentioned any of this to the Prime Minister at any point?
We know from the CPS that it spent months and months asking the Government for the evidence that it needed. The Government say that the NSA did not take the decision not to give it the evidence, so who did? Who made that decision—can the Minister answer that question today? Is the Government’s argument seriously that no Minister knew anything about this until the trial collapsed? If that is the case, it is astonishing. My suspicion is that that is not the case, and that Ministers did know. They had the Chinese super-embassy in their in-tray, and they are allegedly being asked to pay £1 billion in compensation for the nationalisation of British Steel. I suspect that they have decided that closer economic ties with China were more important than due process and our national security. If that is the case, and that was the Government’s decision, they should tell us and have the backbone to admit it. They should explain it to the public, the CPS and our international allies, and let them all be the judge.
This issue is not going away—there is nowhere to hide. I wrote to the Prime Minister today and would like to know when I will get a response to my questions. We have also written to the Crown Prosecution Service to ask whether the trial can be reopened if the Government finally provide the evidence that they have been holding back. We know that the evidence that the CPS needs exists. If the Government decide not to provide it, then we will know that that is because this weak Prime Minister does not have the backbone to stand up to Beijing.
Dan Jarvis
I find it genuinely astonishing that at no point did the Leader of the Opposition acknowledge that all the acts that we have been talking about this afternoon happened when she was in government, on her watch.
I believe that it is important to discuss these matters in a fair and reasonable way, so I particularly made sure that the right hon. Lady had early sight of the statement, to give her ample opportunity. She has clearly not read the statement—she either did not read the statement or did not listen to what I have said, because she has asked me a number—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. This statement is very important, both to me and my constituents. Please let us hear the Minister.
Dan Jarvis
I took every opportunity to give the right hon. Lady as long as I possibly could so that she could look at the points that we were seeking to raise today. But she has asked me questions that I answered in my earlier responses. I say that to her because it is important that we seek to discuss these things in a reasonable way. Matters relating—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) guffaws from a sedentary position, but I think it is important that we should seek to discuss matters relating to national security in a reasonable and consensual way. That is the approach of this Government.
I am genuinely really sorry that the right hon. Lady has taken the opportunity to make a whole series of baseless smears this afternoon. Perhaps we should not be too surprised: the statement that we have heard from the Leader of the Opposition is sadly typical of what we have heard from some of her colleagues in recent days. For days, the Conservative party has been making baseless claims that the Government deliberately collapsed an independent legal process through political interference. There is not a shred of evidence to back up any of the accusations that she has made. I do not think that is a responsible way to discuss matters of national security.
I remind the Leader of the Opposition that, whatever Members might say this afternoon, we are here today because of legislation and policy that existed under the previous Government. The Leader of the Opposition referenced the letter that she had written to the Prime Minister. We want to respond to her in a timely fashion, so I will now respond to the points that she made to the Prime Minister. In case she has forgotten, it was she herself who said in September last year:
“I have shied away from calling China a threat”.
She articulated the previous Government’s policy as Business Secretary, saying in September 2023:
“We certainly should not be describing China as a foe”.
Those are the right hon. Lady’s own words.
Opposition Front Benchers have raised a number of questions, including in the letter published by the right hon. Lady earlier today. I am very happy to set out the Government’s response to her questions. First, on the question of what Ministers knew about the Government’s interactions with the CPS, Ministers were aware that evidence was being provided by the deputy National Security Adviser to the CPS as it built a case for prosecution, as was first agreed under the previous Government. Ministers and special advisers did not take decisions about that evidence and they were not cited in the contents. The deputy National Security Adviser was given full freedom to provide evidence without interference, as was the case before the general election.
Secondly, the right hon. Lady asked in her letter whether the Prime Minister was briefed by Ministers or the National Security Adviser about the case. The Prime Minister has already confirmed that he was briefed on the case by officials, not least because the case began under the previous Conservative Government.
Thirdly, there have been various reports alleging that in a meeting in September, the National Security Adviser ruled that China could not be defined as a threat and took decisions relating to witnesses or evidence. That is simply untrue. Of course, the NSA takes part in discussions about national security and diplomatic relations—that is literally his job. But any discussions were on the basis that the case would be going ahead and about how to handle the implications. The National Security Adviser was not involved in any decisions about the substance of the evidence. That means, to answer the fourth question raised by the Leader of the Opposition, that he made no decisions about the content of any evidence—[Interruption.] Hon. Members have asked for a thorough explanation and I am giving it to them; they might pay the House the courtesy of listening to the responses.
The National Security Adviser made no decisions about the content of any evidence relating to the case itself. This was a matter for the deputy National Security Adviser—a hugely experienced, highly capable senior official who provided evidence under the previous Administration.
On questions about when I and other Ministers were aware that the case would not be proceeding, I should say that Ministers were informed after the DPP had made his decision and shortly before reporting restrictions were lifted. Hon. Members will note that I came to the House straight away to make a statement.
Finally, on whether it might still have been possible to argue successfully in court that China was a threat regardless of the previous Government’s position not to do so, that was a judgment for the Crown Prosecution Service. However, the deputy National Security Adviser provided evidence reflecting the threats posed by China as the CPS built its case. On the comments, referenced by the right hon. Lady, made by two former Cabinet Secretaries, I note that they have both remarked that the Official Secrets Act was not fit for purpose. Of course, if the Conservatives had been swift in replacing it, we would not be here today.
Safeguarding our national security is the most fundamental responsibility of this Government. In 14 years of rule, the Conservative party was slow both to update our national security laws and to adapt to the national security realities that we face today. If we followed the Conservatives’ approach—to ignore and refuse to engage with China—that would undermine our national security. On this side of the House, we will always defend our national interest.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
May I begin by expressing solidarity with the two previous Conservative Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who would seem to have suffered from having Chinese spies in their offices? That must have been very distressing, upsetting and threatening.
The DPP’s claim of needing further evidence from the Government and decision not to publish the China audit has, I think, become conflated and resulted in a great deal of muddle and confusion, and allegations that the Government are soft-pedalling on China. Before we disappear down that rabbit hole, may I take us back to basics? As I understand it, these men were charged with an offence under section 1(1)(c) of the Official Secrets Act: to pass on information that
“might be…directly or indirectly useful to an enemy”.
When the Crown Prosecution Service was building its case, presumably it had a witness and presumably that witness was the deputy National Security Adviser, who was there to answer this question: is China an enemy? Without that evidence, there was no point in charging the men in 2024. What has changed since 2024? We are told that what has changed is that the enemy is now—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. This House will listen to the right hon. Member with respect.
Emily Thornberry
It seems that there is now case law saying that an enemy is a threat to national security. Frankly, that seems to be a lower test not a higher test. But if, in 2024, there was evidence that China was an enemy and the Crown Prosecution Service had made a decision to prosecute on that basis, I cannot understand why there has been a change now. The only other answer is that the Crown Prosecution Service did not properly assess the evidence before making those charges. Moving away from all the light, heat and fury, it seems to me that those are the central points.
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. She talked about muddle and confusion: she is right that there has been a lot of ill-informed commentary in previous days. That is precisely why the Government have proactively brought a statement to the House to set out the facts of the trial, and I am very happy to be able to do that.
Let me do that again for my right hon. Friend. The DPP has set out the reasons at the heart of his decision not to take this case to trial. He believed that the evidential test was not met. The DPP took an independent decision on the evidence, as was set out in his letter of 7 October. The DNSA did not materially change his evidence and was under no pressure from anyone to do so. As the Prime Minister, her constituency neighbour, has explained very clearly, the current Government’s policy position was immaterial to this assessment. It is only the Government’s policy at the time that the alleged offences were committed that is relevant.
My right hon. Friend will understand that the CPS decision to drop the case was not influenced by any member of this Government, special adviser or senior official. I have been crystal clear about that today. The Director of Public Prosecutions has given his assurance that the CPS was not influenced by any external party. As the Government have already stated, the suggestions that the Government concealed evidence or withdrew or leant on witnesses are all untrue.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. Over the weekend, Sir John Sawers became the latest former intelligence chief to express disbelief at the collapse of this espionage case, and our intelligence allies are now also questioning whether the UK can be trusted to counter China’s growing threat. It is vital that we have a clear answer about who in Government is responsible for the failure to bring this case to trial. Sadly, instead of clear answers, over the weekend we have heard Ministers delivering vague and cryptic lines to take.
The nation has a right to understand which figures within Government were involved in the process not to proceed with a prosecution. Given the Minister’s statement that the Government have not concealed the evidence or suppressed anything, will the Minister commit to publishing a timeline showing who knew what and when, and who said what and when? Will he publish correspondence between all officials, politicians and advisers involved with the CPS? If he will do that, we can gain the clarity that we and the British public need.
Will the Minister confirm again, with full confidence, that the Prime Minister, or any individuals who act on his behalf, played no role in any decision to prevent the supply of relevant evidence to the CPS, which might or might not include words of gentle encouragement either way? We must learn the lessons from this appalling episode so that we can have confidence in the ability of our national security laws to protect our interests and protect our democracy. That is our job in this House. This is the only way to provide the British public with the answers that they deserve and demand, and to rebuild the UK’s credibility with Five Eyes allies.
Will the Government commit today to holding a statutory independent inquiry into the China spying case? We know that China poses a clear threat to this country’s interests and values, a view that is shared by Liberal Democrat Members, as well as by our intelligence chiefs. Yet the Government’s approach to this case is only the latest example of their unwillingness to challenge Beijing’s efforts to expand its espionage capabilities in the UK and export transnational repression to our shores.
It is time for the Government to take the steps necessary to protect our interests and those of our citizens. Working with the CPS, will the Government look at all legislative options to prosecute the two individuals involved? Those options are still available. Will the Government block the application for the Chinese mega-embassy? And will the Minister add China to the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme?
Dan Jarvis
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new role. As he may know, I am a regular visitor to his constituency and I pay tribute to the important national security work that takes place there. He asked me a number of questions and, with great respect to him, I hope that he will concede that I have responded to a number of them already.
On his point about releasing information, which is an entirely reasonable question, it is not for me to make decisions about the publication of evidence that may be used in any further ongoing legal processes, so I hope he understands the reason that I am unable to commit to doing that at the moment.
I take issue with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the Government’s relationship with China, particularly on transnational repression. I hope that he will accept that the Government take that very seriously. We have done a lot of work through the defending democracy taskforce to ensure that we have the right resources in the right place to protect all those who live here in the UK from the impact of transnational repression, but I am happy to discuss that with him further.
The hon. Gentleman specifically raised the importance of our Five Eyes alliance, about which I agree with him. That is precisely why the UK recently hosted the ministerial gathering of the five countries in London, where we cemented our excellent relationship with our Five Eyes partners. As he will know, we share intelligence with them on a very regular basis. That relationship is in good health and has in no way been undermined by recent events.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
The Government have made it clear that they regret the fact that this case is not going ahead. The Minister rightly says that the CPS acts independently when making charging decisions, but will he go further than regret and say that, as a matter of law and evidence, this prosecution should have gone ahead and that the issue of innocence or guilt should have been determined by a judge and jury?
Dan Jarvis
I have a huge amount of time for my hon. Friend. The expression that I used both on 15 September and again today, on behalf of the Government, was that we are “extremely disappointed”. I hope that he will understand, not least given the Select Committee that he chairs, that it is not appropriate for Ministers to give advice to the Director of Public Prosecutions or the CPS on matters of law. The CPS and the DPP are rightly independent of Government. Frankly, we go down quite a dangerous road if we get into a situation of politicians and Ministers seeking to advise them and to influence their decisions. That is not the approach that this Government will take.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
There is a real threat at the moment to public trust in the criminal justice system following the collapse of this trial. Will the Minister make a commitment that he, ministerial colleagues and other advisers will co-operate fully with any scrutiny work done by my Committee or other Committees of the House?
Dan Jarvis
I can give the right hon. Lady that absolute assurance. The Government and both the Departments in which I serve take the importance of parliamentary scrutiny very seriously. As Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Lady conducts herself with great gravitas and, of course, I give her an assurance, on behalf of Government, that we will work closely with her and her colleagues to provide any information that they seek.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Following on from the point made by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, it is vital that Parliament is able to examine what has happened here. The Government have made a commitment to transparency. We have a wrinkle, in that the National Security Adviser has been appointed as a special adviser rather than as an official, which means that he has to appear in front of a Committee of the House in camera. That is far from adequate. Will the Minister commit to engaging fully with the Committee corridor to ensure that the relevant Committees get access to information, as is normal, in a reading room, in camera or in a Cobra situation, in order to ensure that Parliament can satisfy itself of the comments that he has made so clearly at the Dispatch Box today?
Dan Jarvis
I am genuinely grateful to my hon. Friend for her suggestion. I hope that she, the House and Opposition Front Benchers know that my approach will always be to make as much information as possible available to colleagues, whether through the Privy Council process or through other means.
I welcome the fact that the National Security Adviser will shortly be giving evidence to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, but I am happy to look more closely at my hon. Friend’s suggestion and to give her an assurance that we will want to work very carefully with this House and its Committees to make sure they are able to do their important job of holding this Government to account.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, the 2021 and 2023 integrated reviews were very clear. All the officials and security services said that China was a significant threat. That was sufficient not only for Ministers but for officials to give to the CPS. The question is why they did not.
The question I really want to ask is about the absurdity of the role, or lack of role, of the National Security Adviser. The Government say that he was not involved in any matters of substance, but is it not the role of the National Security Adviser to be involved in all matters of substance when it comes to national security? What is the point of a National Security Adviser who does not involve themselves in matters of national security, as in this case? Instead, are we meant to believe that the deputy National Security Adviser was allowed to involve themselves in substantial matters of national security in this case, but apparently not to discuss these substantial matters of national security with the National Security Adviser? This seems to me to be a matter of substantial absurdity.
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Gentleman has been consistent in expressing those concerns over many years. I would gently point out to him that the situation he describes as absurd is the same situation that we inherited from the previous Government.
The right hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member of this House, so let me say something to him about the National Security Adviser. Over the past year, this Government have rebuilt our international relationships, led on the global stage and signed new agreements with multiple countries to safeguard our security and to grow our economy. The National Security Adviser is doing an excellent job and, if the right hon. Gentleman does not believe me, perhaps he should speak to Steve Witkoff.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I share Mr Speaker’s fury about the collapse of this trial, as I am sure all Members do. It is a huge disappointment that this former Conservative party researcher has escaped justice.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister has been able to be so unequivocal about the facts of this case. It is extraordinary that, having listened to him, the Leader of the Opposition should carry on almost as though his statement had not happened, because he had answered many of the questions that she posed.
On the changes that have happened since, can my hon. Friend be sure that we would be more able to pursue a criminal conviction if this offence had taken place under the current legislation? If not, can he tell us what he is doing to make sure it does not happen again?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who asks such a very useful question that parliamentarians should be asking themselves. Yes, I can give him that assurance, and I have made clear from this Dispatch Box on many occasions the importance that this Government attach, as I am sure the previous Government did, to the National Security Act 2023. It was a groundbreaking piece of legislation, and as my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), would acknowledge, I have paid tribute on numerous occasions to those who were involved.
My hon. Friend asks the right question. The NSA closed the loopholes that we are essentially debating today, so I can assure him that our legislative framework is in a much better place than it was a couple of years ago. That said, because this Government take these matters incredibly seriously, we constantly look at the legislative framework to assure ourselves that it is appropriate. We work very closely with Jonathan Hall KC, who has made recommendations, at the Government’s request, on our legislative framework, and we have made a commitment that wherever there is a requirement for more legislation, we will bring it forward.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
The integrated review refresh, which stated that the Chinese Communist party posed a threat to our people and our security, was in fact published the very day that these two men were arrested. But that in itself is a red herring, because the Bulgaria case proved that it is for a jury to decide whether a country is or could be a threat, and it is not for the Government alone to prove that. The Minister told the House in response to our urgent question that the Government demanded that the Chinese chargé d’affaires come in for the démarche. Did a Minister do that, or did an official do it?
Secondly, given that the House has been told how disappointed the Government are with this outcome and that they seem to be quite clear about the evidence of guilt, what repercussions are they choosing to put on the Chinese Communist party? Will they be cancelling the joint economic and trade commission? Will they be putting in place sanctions? Will they be banning the embassy? If they will not act, why not?
Dan Jarvis
Of course, the hon. Lady has a very close personal interest in this case, and it will be well understood by Members across the House why she has expressed concerns today and previously. I am sorry that she does not feel that the Government’s response is adequate, but I assure her that I will endeavour to ensure that this Government do as much as we possibly can to work with her and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on this issue, so that she can have confidence that these matters are not able to happen again.
The hon. Lady specifically asked about the démarche I referenced in my statement—it was not an urgent question—on 15 September. As she will know, that was done through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, but I will come back to her with more details should she wish.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement and for introducing some facts to the debate—I can see that some alternative realities have come crashing down.
I want to focus on the future and the Minister’s commitment to protecting democratic life in the UK, particularly through the cyber-security measures. He knows that this will rely, at least in part, on the Computer Misuse Act 1990—if my memory serves me right, the 386 Amstrad was then the best computer we could get. As he knows, many people think that that Act fails to distinguish between malicious actors, state or otherwise, and cyber-security professionals working in the public interest, and perhaps the democratic interest. Will he commit to looking at that anomaly?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, not least for saying that facts matter—they really do. That is why I have come to the House today, to set out facts so that Members can make a judgment on how they wish to proceed.
My hon. Friend also makes an important point about cyber-security and the ongoing review of the Computer Misuse Act. I can assure him that we take these matters incredibly seriously. In fact, I will have more to say about it shortly.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
The Minister and I have been friends for many years, so it gives me no pleasure to say this. The statement that he read out today, no doubt under instruction, has thrown out more chaff and set up more straw men than a Russian disinformation campaign. It is pure fabrication to claim that those are the relevant points and, sadly, he knows it.
The Minister knows it, because we discussed many of these issues when he was in opposition and I was in his place. He knows it, because the various security and defence reviews that have been updated in the past four years have set out the clear position of the threat. He knows it, because I stood at the Dispatch Box, as he now does, on 15 April 2024 and made clear the position of China being a threat.
And the Minister knows it, I am afraid, because the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, set out how the DPP has asked a very clear question: why have we not had the information in time for these cases to proceed? That is exactly the right question. The DPP did not say that the evidential threshold was not met. If it had not been met, the arrests should never have happened and the Minister should rightly be hauling the head of MI5, the head of counter-terror policing and the Treasury solicitor before him for abuse of power. He is not doing that because he knows the threshold was met.
Instead, the Minister should read the words of the DPP—the threshold is “no longer met”. That means there has been a change, and there has been a change because something has changed. That change could either be a commission or an omission, and from what we have heard today—from the way in which the Government have very carefully used language—it sounds much more likely that something has not been done than that it has.
As my friend the Minister knows, simply ignoring an order is not the same thing as not receiving one. I am afraid that what this has done, and what this statement does, is advertise that the UK is not willing to defend itself against threats from hostile states. I know that that is not a position he wishes to advocate.
Dan Jarvis
As the House knows well, the right hon. Gentleman is personally invested in this issue. Members will understand the history and the reasons for the concerns he has expressed, and I understand why he has taken the opportunity to express them today and on other occasions. The Government fundamentally agree with some of his concerns, though clearly not with his subsequent analysis. He will have noted the point I have made today about the issuing of guidance from the NPSA. We have published that guidance today, and I hope he will acknowledge the determination that exists—from myself as the Minister and from colleagues right across Government—to provide assurances and satisfy his concerns.
One of the ways in which we will do that is through the defending democracy taskforce, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a founding member. I can say to him and to the House that that taskforce provides the fulcrum point for dealing with many of these matters right across Government. It has had its mandate refreshed by the Prime Minister, and we invest a lot in that mechanism. It will seek to provide us with some of the answers we need in order to give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance he seeks. I hope he will understand that I stand ready to meet him and the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) to further discuss any concerns they might have. The right hon. Gentleman may not be satisfied today, but I will do what I can to provide that satisfaction and assurance as we go forward.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
My constituents will welcome the Minister’s clarity that China is indeed a threat. [Interruption.] Let me finish. Those threats to our national security take place not just here, but overseas, and I am increasingly troubled by the actions of the Chinese Government in former British colonies across the world, not least in Africa. They are looting minerals, destroying nature and damaging democracy. That impacts us in this country too, and for far too long, Britain has been missing in action. We have let China run riot, and enough is enough. What engagement has the Minister had with the Soft Power Council to ensure it keeps national security in mind as it carries out its work, and can I urge him to work with colleagues across Government, particularly in the Foreign Office? We need to get serious with China and fast, which requires a cross-Government approach.
Dan Jarvis
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that these matters require a cross-Government approach, and that is precisely the way in which this Government seek to proceed with them. I think it is fair to say that the Government have referenced concerns about the issues he has raised on a number of occasions, but I would be very happy to discuss them further with him, should he wish to do so.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
The Minister used the Roussev case in his own defence. In that case, the Court of Appeal set the clear precedent that the appropriate definition of an enemy state is not based on what the Government say—it is a state that behaves like an enemy. The judge stated plainly that
“There is no reason in our view why the term ‘an enemy’ should not include a country which represents a current threat to the national security of the UK.”
Throughout the duration of this case, there has been ample evidence—including from the Intelligence and Security Committee and the current director of MI5—that China represents a threat to our national security, including at the time when Mr Berry and Mr Cash were acting as spies. The Prime Minister’s comments on this case were frankly nonsense, and it is time that we stop kowtowing and take a stand against China. If the Minister means what he said about future dealings, will he start by doing what a number of people have called for and refusing to approve the espionage centre masquerading as an embassy at the Royal Mint? Will he reject it and tell the Chinese, effectively, that enough is enough?
Dan Jarvis
I always listen to what the right hon. Gentleman has to say, but that does not mean that I always agree with it. I do not agree with it today, and I am not sure it is especially helpful to refer to China’s application for an embassy in the way he has done. I can give him the assurance that I have given the House previously about the importance we attach to national security in the context of that issue. I hope the right hon. Gentleman understands that the issue of the embassy is not a matter for me—there is a quasi-judicial process in place, and it is a matter for the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government—but the previous Home Secretary and the previous Foreign Secretary have been crystal clear about the national security implications that underpin that decision.
Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)
All of us across this House have an interest in protecting and preserving our democracy. Clearly, we have threats to our democracy, internally as well as externally. The Minister said a little bit about the elections Bill, but can he set out in more detail what the safeguards and protections will be for our democratic institutions and, indeed, for this place?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend asks a really important question. In July, the Government published a policy paper outlining their proposals for an elections and democracy Bill, which we will introduce as the “Elections Bill” as soon as parliamentary time allows. Our intent is to modernise our democracy so that it is fit for the 21st century, including reinforcing safeguards against foreign influence in our elections.
In relation to political finance—hon. Members may want to listen very carefully to this—tough new rules will require parties to assess companies from which they are receiving donations against a series of tests, proving their connections to the UK and Ireland. This will end the status quo whereby a new company registered today, owned by anyone, funded from anywhere and without even a single day of trade, can donate and have influence in UK politics. The introduction of “know your donor” checks will increase scrutiny of donations, requiring recipients to conduct enhanced checks to decrease the risk of illegitimate donations entering our system. This will guard against foreign interference. It will be very interesting to see whether or not Opposition Members vote for that Bill.
Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
The Minister said categorically and very carefully that the National Security Adviser took no decisions as to the contents of the evidence provided to the CPS. Will he clarify for the House whether the NSA had any influence at all—direct or indirect, and whether about provision or omission—over the contents of that evidence, provided by his own deputy, which led to the collapse of the trial?
Dan Jarvis
I can give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his absolute clarity today. Will he provide further details of the measures he has announced today and how they will protect parliamentarians, councillors and those in public life across the UK from foreign interference?
Dan Jarvis
The proposals contained in the elections Bill will hopefully go a long way towards providing that kind of reassurance, but again, I reference the importance of the work being done by the defending democracy taskforce. It is a mechanism that we inherited from the previous Government, which brings together Ministers, law enforcement and senior officials to look very carefully at these issues and make sure that we have the right resources in the right places. I hope very much that this will be a shared endeavour across this House, to ensure that wherever there are attempts to interfere with our democracy and harass or intimidate elected representatives, we can stand together as a House against those threats.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
The Minister says that it is for another Department to decide whether the Chinese Government should have a new embassy. That is certainly true, but the proposed new embassy is so large that it would be the biggest embassy in any country anywhere in Europe. That has national security implications, and if the Minister wants to encourage people to believe that the Government are not cosying up to communist China, he should make recommendations accordingly.
May I just ask the Minister about the extract he read from the 1911 Act? I will read a slightly fuller one, though still one with ellipses:
“If any person for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State…obtains or communicates to any other person any…document or information which…might be…directly or indirectly useful to an enemy; he shall be guilty of felony”.
My reading of that extract from the Act is that the felony lies in the disclosure to anyone at all—it does not have to be directly to an enemy. Whether or not China was regarded as an enemy at the time, the nature of the sensitive material disclosed meant it was a felony, even if it was disclosed to a China that was not regarded as an enemy. Surely the trial should have gone ahead.
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Gentleman knows that I always value his sage advice and listen carefully to what he has to say. [Interruption.] It is true. He asked about the embassy. So that we can dispel some of the nonsense that has been spouted about the embassy, we need to provide a Privy Council briefing for him and for other Privy Counsellors, and I am happy to take that away. On his second point, he knows that these are points of law and matters for the CPS and the DPP; they are not matters for Ministers.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s clarity on tackling the threats that China poses, including the transnational repression of Hongkongers in the UK. That will be a real reassurance to the many British nationals overseas who live in Milton Keynes. I would like him to go into further detail, particularly in the context of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Russia’s interference in Brexit and the Nathan Gill case that has just completed, with eight counts of bribery coming from Russia. At the time of taking those bribes, he was a close colleague of some MPs on the other side of the House. How will the new elections Bill stop interference through political funding, which we are seeing gaining more and more ground here in the UK, creating a real threat to our democracy?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I ask the Minister to be brief and on point regarding what this statement is actually about.
Dan Jarvis
The safety and security of Hongkongers in the UK is of the utmost importance, and any attempt by any foreign power to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated. On my hon. Friend’s second point, and not wanting to get in trouble with Madam Deputy Speaker, I just say that using a position of public office to effectively further Russia’s malign interests while benefiting financially will not stand. It is a betrayal of our democratic values and of our electorate.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
The Minister has told us that his Government’s assessment of China is a mixture of national security threats and opportunities for engagement, including economically, but does he accept that that is exactly the assessment made by the last Government? That combination, with reference to the Act and the offence we are concerned with, does not require a country only to present a national security threat, simply that it does so, perhaps in combination with other things. That is the key point, and the Minister has been clear about that, so can we be clear about what happened with the Government’s evidence? Was it the case that the Government could find no evidence of China presenting a national security threat? Was it the case that the Government internally decided that the evidence it could find would not meet the CPS’s requirements? If so, who made that determination? Was it the case that the Government did supply evidence to the CPS on that specific point, and the CPS decided it was not significant enough? If it is the latter, will the Minister publish the evidence to the House? If he does not think that is appropriate—it may not be—will he give authority to the deputy National Security Adviser to share that evidence in full with the Intelligence and Security Committee?
Dan Jarvis
I have a lot of time for the right hon. and learned Gentleman, not least because he brings an almost unique perspective from his understanding of the law and of matters relating to intelligence. He correctly made the observation that ultimately, any Government strategy on China has to take consideration of national security issues. At the same time, any fair-minded, reasonable Government have to understand the economic opportunities that exist. As a former Attorney General, he would not recommend that I get into the business of second-guessing judgments and decisions taken by the DPP. On his point about publishing the evidence, he hopefully will have heard the response I gave a moment ago. [Interruption.] I am responding to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s serious question about publishing the evidence. I hope that he will have heard the response I gave a moment ago.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
The Minister states:
“we will take all necessary action to deter those who seek to do us harm,”
and that includes threats “emanating from China”. Despite ongoing transnational repression of Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hongkongers, continued cyber-security attacks on this country, and Members of this Parliament being sanctioned and spied upon, there appear to be no consequences for China. Instead, the UK Government give in to its coercive, bullying behaviour. I have a straightforward question: if the Minister is serious about deterring this behaviour and these threats, will he take the necessary action and include China on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme—yes or no?
Dan Jarvis
Any decision about the enhanced tier of FIRS will be brought forward to Parliament in the normal way. I can say to the hon. Member that any attempt by any foreign power to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities here in the UK will not be tolerated.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
We know the very basic facts, which is that the Director of Public Prosecutions asked for a statement from the Government to clarify that, at the time of the offence, China was a threat to national security. He says in his letter that such an assurance, or evidence, or a statement from the Government were not forthcoming. We know that the Government withheld that vital element of the case. The Minister is shaking his head, but who decided that, in the words of the DPP, it would “not be forthcoming”. Somebody decided that. He seems to be saying that it was the deputy National Security Adviser who is somehow accountable for making those decisions, but I question that point. To whom are they accountable, if not the National Security Adviser?
Dan Jarvis
Let me seek to clarify. The deputy National Security Adviser, who is a senior and highly regarded official with extensive experience in matters relating to national security, provided a witness statement in December 2023. That was under the previous Government, and I made that point earlier. Further witness statements were requested and provided, as I said earlier, in February and July this year. All the evidence provided by the deputy National Security Adviser was based on the law at the time of the offence and the policy position of the Government at the time. I can give the hon. Member an assurance that every effort was made to provide evidence to support this case within the constraints that I have just outlined. The decision about whether to proceed with the prosecution was ultimately taken by the DPP and the CPS, which were hamstrung by antiquated legislation.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I admire the Government’s attempts to pin this on the previous Conservative Government. It is an endeavour in which I would usually join them, but on this occasion I cannot, because the argument simply does not stack up. The argument seems to hinge on the Conservative Government’s classification of China as a threat to national security. That is not a formal classification, but one that needs to be substantiated. The Government seem to be arguing that it was not because, for instance, in the integrated review refresh of 2023, China was merely described as an “epoch-defining…challenge”. However, the same paragraph in that report talks about the Chinese Communist party as presenting
“state threats to the UK’s democracy, economy and society”.
Reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee of the same year talk about how China’s
“ambition at a global level…poses a national security threat to the UK.”
We have heard other testimonies today from MI5 and others. My question to the Government is: was this the sort of evidence that was provided to the CPS? If not, why not? Whose decision was it not to present that kind of evidence?
Dan Jarvis
There is, I am afraid, a fundamental flaw in the hon. Gentleman’s question. These activities took place under the previous Government and under the legislation that was in place at the time. This is not about seeking to blame the previous Government, but it is a statement of fact to say that those activities, about which there is concern across the House, took place in the previous Parliament and under the previous legislative framework. That is just a statement of truth.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman, whom I respect very much indeed, that his answer to the question put by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), the former Attorney General, raised more questions than he gave answers. Is he seriously suggesting that the National Security Adviser, with all his links to the 48 Group and to the Grandview Institution, had no involvement whatsoever in the advice that went to the Crown Prosecution Service? While he is about it, will he clarify that apparent conflation of this country’s economic ties with China, which he appeared to give in mitigation for the mess that the Government appear to have got themselves into?
Dan Jarvis
I respect the right hon. Gentleman too, and I hope that he will understand that any Government will seek to balance issues relating to national security as well as issues relating to economic prosperity. That, I think, is not an unreasonable way in which to proceed. I do, however, want to pick him up on one point: the National Security Adviser does not have any links to the 48 Group.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Foreign interference in our democracies is, of course, deeply concerning, and transparency from Governments and, indeed, all legislators is essential. That includes transparency in relation to past elected representatives, such as Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, who has pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from Russia. To uphold public accountability, will the Minister commit to working with the Attorney General to publish the names of all individuals interviewed by counter-terrorism police in connection with the Nathan Gill bribery cases? The people of Wales are rightly concerned.
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Lady is right; transparency is important. If she will forgive me, I will look carefully at the point that she has made and take it away, but I hope this also means that she will be seeking to support our elections Bill.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
I am going to keep this quite basic, because I think this is where a lot of the public will come from. The Government should always want to do everything they can, and more, to keep the British public and our institutions safe, so I do not understand why they will not do everything they possibly can at least to try to bring this to trial—at least to try to give a jury an opportunity to take matters into its hands and consider this case. I do not understand why they are willing to accept advice, and not actually put this matter to trial when they have the opportunity to do so. Will the Minister please commit to publishing all minutes from any meetings at which matters discussed with the CPS, or what the CPS had requested, were asked for?
Dan Jarvis
I will keep it basic as well. This Government will do everything that we can to keep the public safe, and the hon. Lady will have heard the response that I gave earlier with regard to publishing issues.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
The stench emanating from the collapse of this Chinese spy case makes a manure heap seem positively floral. The bottom line is that everyone is disappointed, everyone thinks there is enough evidence and everyone seems to agree that China is a security threat, yet the case has collapsed and China has been given, essentially, carte blanche to carry on spying in the United Kingdom. I have it on good authority that senior figures in Washington now fear that Five Eyes has become Six Eyes.
The one thing that has changed since charges were made in April 2024 is the National Security Adviser. Will the Minister give a commitment that the National Security Adviser will appear, and answer questions in person, before any parliamentary Committee that wishes to have those questions answered?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Member talks about a stench. He has some brass neck, given what has gone on in his party recently. The National Security Adviser is a special adviser, and, given the reference to the United States, I would point the hon. Member in the direction of President Trump’s policy adviser, who just this morning praised the contribution made by the NSA.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The problem that the Government have is that the story keeps changing, either each day or within a day. The right hon. Gentleman, who is obviously stating the Government’s position now, is giving us a view that completely contradicts the messages given by Ministers over the weekend. He has clearly referred to a huge number of meetings at which—I say this with the greatest respect—he was not present. Can he agree now that the content of all those meetings, and the minutes of those meetings, will be published, so that everyone in the House can understand what has happened? If that has to be done under certain rules so that the public do not have access to the information, fair enough; but the reality is that until such time as the Government come clean, the stench of this will continue.
Dan Jarvis
Let me assure the hon. Member that I take very seriously the points that he has made. Clearly there will be a legal dimension to all this, but I am happy to go away, look at his point and then come back to him.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
In 2023 the Intelligence and Security Committee published a report on China in which it wrote that China was a “whole-of-state threat”. In their 2023 public response to the ISC report, the Government wrote that they recognised
“the committee’s concerns about the long-term strategic challenge”.
The ISC had used the word “threat” rather than “challenge”. Does the Minister regret that in 2023 the Government’s response did not use the word “threat”?
Dan Jarvis
With respect to the hon. Member, I am not going to become involved in a critique about whether the Government should have responded in a different way, because that is a matter for them. However, he mentioned the important work of the ISC. The Government consider that the ISC has a very important role to play in Parliament. It is obviously independent of Government, and it will clearly be for the Chair, the deputy Chair and the wider Committee to take a view on how they wish to proceed. As for the specific report to which the hon. Member referred, all that material would have been available to be considered by the CPS.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is the Minister for Security. I have been here for almost an hour and a half, and I have not heard him answer this question: was China spying on Parliament, or is it even a consideration that it is spying on Parliament?
Dan Jarvis
I have been crystal clear—[Interruption.] If hon. Members will allow me, let me say that China poses a series of threats to the United Kingdom, and I was very clear about what they were. I referred specifically to a number of particular issues. I could not have been clearer about that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for coming forward. As he knows, this topical issue lies heavy in the hearts of many people in constituencies throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as we consider whether national security has been at threat owing to the semantics of language, and the general public are asking for openness and transparency. I have been contacted on a number of occasions by concerned constituents of Chinese descent who believe that they are being shadowed by the Chinese secret service, and the decision not to prosecute means that they are feeling even more insecure and even more fearful. That must be addressed. Will the Minister tell us exactly when the decision was made to classify China as non-threatening, and how will I tell that to my constituents who are living in fear right now as a result of this so-called non-threat?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the hon. Member, as always. I think he is referring to activity that took place under the previous Government, but let me agree with his basic point: the public do want to know what has happened. That is why the Government have put forward a statement today, to provide that transparency. What I think the public do not want, however, is Ministers, or politicians, interfering in the legal process, and seeking to influence, persuade or cajole senior figures in the CPS, including the Director of Public Prosecutions. I do not think that is the right way to proceed, and I think that hopefully, if Opposition Members, and indeed Members throughout the House, step back for a moment, we can reach a consensus that it is not right for Ministers to second-guess legal decisions made by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
The Minister has comprehensively taken on several strawman arguments, answered questions that have not been asked, and stuck to his carefully constructed sentences. One example was: “Ministers and special advisers did not take decisions about that evidence, and they were not sighted on the contents.” But was any Minister, the National Security Adviser, any other special adviser or any senior official other than the deputy National Security Adviser, such as the Cabinet Secretary, sighted on the decision regarding the evidence sent to the CPS?
Dan Jarvis
Fundamentally, the decision was one for the DPP and the CPS. I could not have been clearer about the fact that this Government have not sought to interfere with the process.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
I listened carefully to the Minister’s statement, but questions remain. The Minister says that China poses threats. Will the Government now publish in full the China audit, so that we can know the scale of those threats? The Minister says that the Government will act against transnational repression of Hongkongers here in the UK, so will the Government now implement targeted sanctions against the officials in Hong Kong and Beijing who are responsible for the bounties? The Minister says that the Government will legislate against foreign influence. Will he ensure that the new elections Bill tackles not only covert foreign political funding, but all foreign political funding, by shutting down the opportunity for foreign actors to influence our politics through corporate donations?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Member referenced the China audit; I am sure that he will acknowledge that the then Foreign Secretary came to the House to give a statement specifically on the China audit. The reason why the China audit has not been published is that it is at a higher classification than documents that would normally be published.
I hope that the hon. Member’s second point was at least a tacit welcome of the Government’s elections Bill. There will be a number of measures in there, which I hope that he and his colleagues will be able to support. It is important that we seek to work together to transform the political landscape to make it much, much harder for those who seek to interfere in our democracy to do so.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The Minister has made great play of the need to work cross-party on this issue. May I gently suggest to him that the time to do that was before the case collapsed, not afterwards?
The Minister has leant heavily on what officials are willing to say about the threat or otherwise that China poses, but officials do not make Government policy and do not state the position of the UK Government; Ministers do. If the Government were struggling to find an official who would say in a witness statement that China was a threat, is there any good reason why they could not have asked the former Security Minister to do so, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), who was happy to give a statement at the Dispatch Box? I am sure that many other former Government Ministers would have happily given evidence that China was a threat, enabling the case to proceed. What possible reason was there for not doing that?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Member talks about my making great play of the need to work cross-party, but that is because I genuinely believe that on important matters of national security, we should proceed in a certain way, and where possible, we seek to work across the political divide to establish consensus. I thought there was a slight irony in the point that he went on to make. I agree with him that Ministers are accountable, and if Opposition Members want to hold Ministers to account, that is absolutely a matter for them. What I think is most unfortunate—I am not saying that he was responsible for doing this, but others have done it—is when Members seek to blame officials or imply criticism of them. I do not think that is the right way to proceed.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
It seems to me that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, put her finger on the nub of this matter. We know that in April 2024, the CPS decided that the evidential test was met. The evidential test was that there was a reasonable prospect of conviction for the offence of passing useful information to an enemy. We know that in September ’25, the DPP maintained that the evidential test was not met, so what changed? Who changed it? How did we move from the evidential test being met to the evidential test not being met? Was the evidence before the DPP withdrawn? Was it found to be unreliable, or did the Government fail to substantiate the evidence that enabled the evidential test to be met back in April 2024?
Dan Jarvis
With great respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, that is what I was at great pains to explain in my opening remarks.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the Government have now set a perverse incentive for British officials, in that admitting to espionage problems with China is seen as rocking the boat?
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The Government have not had a great record in the courts recently. Kneecap’s case was thrown out because the paperwork was not correct, and now we have the spy case not proceeding because evidence was not provided. The fact of the matter is that China now controls many of our supply chains, holds a lot of our national debt, and is an important part of the economic framework in the United Kingdom because of its investment in strategic industries. The general public may not understand the intricacies of how a case is built up and who is involved in it, but can the Minister understand that despite his excuse-ridden statement today, many members of the public might be coming to the conclusion that national security is being sacrificed because the Government are not prepared to deal with our increasing economic dependency on China?
Dan Jarvis
No, I do not agree. There will be those, including in this House, who will seek to simplify the nature of the relationship to a single word. More sensible and fair-minded colleagues, and certainly the public, will understand that difficult choices have to be made. Fundamentally, this Government’s approach will always be to put our national security first. I have been crystal clear about that today and previously, but that does not mean that we should not look for opportunities to trade with a country where there will be some economic advantage to doing so. That seems to me entirely reasonable and completely pragmatic, but we will proceed on the basis that our national security absolutely comes first.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Last month, the Security Minister came before the House and stated that he was not happy with the decision not to prosecute. I asked him why the Government were dithering over formally challenging China, having excluded it from the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme, and he suggested that they were not doing so. Subsequent revelations have suggested that the Government have yielded to Chinese threats to withhold investment, and to offers to waive the outstanding debt owed to Jingye. Would the Minister like to correct the record and explain why China is not in the enhanced tier, given that we are discussing spying for China? Can he clarify what role the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, has played in deciding that China should not be classified in the enhanced tier alongside Russia and Iran?
Dan Jarvis
“Extremely disappointed” was the way that I described our reaction, both on 15 September and again today. I gently say to the hon. Member that he should not believe everything that he reads in the papers. He asked me about FIRS. I hope he heard the response that I gave some moments ago; I said that we look very carefully at any question of whether to place a particular country on the enhanced tier of FIRS. FIRS is an important part of the National Security Act 2023. There were those, including on the hon. Gentleman’s side of the House, who said that we were not going to roll it out, but we rolled it out on 1 July. I said that we were going to roll it out on 1 July, and we did. We looked very carefully at how we can most effectively use that tool, and we will continue to look closely at that, but any decisions about the enhanced tier will be brought forward in the normal way.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
The Government say that they want to take a long-term and strategic approach to China, but that is exactly what China does, whether we are talking about it increasing control over supply chains to gain leverage over the west, the belt and road programme, or the debt-trap diplomacy with which it is associated abroad. This is nothing less than a concession to an authoritarian regime, and it plays into China’s hands, as it wants to continue gaining economic and military leverage over the west. The head of the CPS said that he requested evidence from the Government to allow the case to proceed, but the Government did not provide that evidence. Why not, and is it still the Government’s view that it is impossible to argue in court that China is a threat?
Dan Jarvis
On the hon. Gentleman’s final question, I have taken every opportunity to try to provide the Government’s response. I was not entirely clear about his critique of taking a long-term strategic approach and whether he thinks that is a good thing to do or not. I think it is a good thing that Governments think carefully and strategically about their role in the world and the nature of their relationships with countries like China. Yes, we have to be clear-eyed, and have to always defend our national security, but we also have to look for opportunities for economic growth as well.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Is it to do with this statement?
Neil O’Brien
Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like you, I am one of the parliamentarians sanctioned by China. Like many Members of this House, I am left wondering whether it was not just our offices that were spied on, but our families, our homes and our children, and in the absence of a trial, I have no way of finding out what happened.
The Minister has been asked multiple times whether he will publish the minutes of the meetings in which this case was discussed. We know from the DPP that, over months and months, the CPS asked again and again for evidence that was not forthcoming. However, without the minutes of those meetings, we are not able to find out what was asked for, why it was refused or who made that decision. What means are available to this House to get hold of the minutes of those meetings, which the Government do not want to publish? What parliamentary means do we have to get hold of the minutes of meetings in which this issue was discussed and these decisions were made, so that we can find out the truth?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving some notice of that point of order. He is absolutely correct that he and I are two of the four sitting MPs who are sanctioned by China. I have been advised to say that he should seek advice from the Table Office as a first step to see how these documents can be published. The Minister has said repeatedly in responses to Members from across the House that some material may or could be made public at some point. I am not sure what that material will be, or what format it would be in, but I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will seek advice from the Table Office, to make sure that the information is made available, if it can be. Unless the Minister wishes to respond to that point of order, I will let the matter fall.
Digital ID
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Liz Kendall)
I have always believed in giving people power and control over their lives: control over the public services they use and how they access childcare, benefits and housing support; control over their data, and who sees it; and control over the choices they make to rent or buy a home, apply for a job, open a bank account, and much more besides. In the age of the smartphone, we can take this control quite literally into our own hands, but too often it feels like we are at the mercy of a system that does not work for us as well as it should. It is one with endless form filling and bureaucracy just for people to prove who they are, and one where they may need their passport to apply for a job, their national insurance number to pay tax and their driving licence to buy a pint or a glass of wine—if they are lucky enough to be asked. Most frustratingly of all, they may have to rummage around in a drawer looking for an old electricity bill just to open a bank account, join the library or enrol their children in school. It is time to fix this: to put power back in people’s hands; to get more out of our public services; and to bring the UK into the modern age.
There are three reasons why we want to introduce a new, free digital ID, available to all UK citizens and legal residents above the age of 16. First, it is about giving people greater agency over their lives. In over 15 years as a local MP, I have lost count of the number of people who have come to me because they have struggled to get the public services they need or had to battle for support from different parts of the welfare state. I am sure many hon. Members will know a frustratingly similar story. People are passed from one person to another, and asked to repeat their story and provide basic information time and again. They are made to fit into a system, rather than the system working for them, which ultimately leaves them feeling as though they are a number on a list, not a human being with a life.
Bringing in a new digital ID is about far more than replacing numerous bits of paper just for people to prove who they are. It is about changing the way the state interacts with its citizens through what I like to see as a new digital key that unlocks better, more joined-up and effective public services that actually talk to one another and fit around them. In building our new system, we will learn from the experiences of other countries, some of which have had digital ID for over 20 years. Many show us just how transformative this can be. In Denmark, a graduate applying for jobs has to log into a portal only once, and their ID automatically links to their school records, saving them retyping their qualifications each time. In Finland, a parent can go online to register their children for day care without uploading a payslip or putting in their salary, and the site automatically calculates the right fee. In Estonia, a digital ID means that when someone has a baby, they do not need to go to a local office to register the birth, sign up for childcare benefits or apply for nursery places. That happens automatically from day one in the hospital, so parents are free to focus on what matters most.
Digital ID has the potential to empower millions of people like that in the UK, with quick, effective, seamless and secure integration between different Government systems. We know that the Tell Us Once service makes the process of registering a death more straightforward, but we should not have to wait until the end of someone’s life to offer them joined-up, personalised support. So our new system will help modernise Government services to fit around people’s lives, rather than forcing them to fit into the system.
The second reason for introducing digital ID is to offer people greater security and actually greater control over their own data. Other countries that have introduced digital ID find that digitally checked credentials are far more secure than physical documents. They are much less likely to be lost or stolen, they have reduced errors and mistakes, and they have helped crack down on fraudsters who can ruin peoples’ lives. Privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start. There will be no pooling of people’s private information into a single, central dataset—it will be a federated data system—and user control will be at the heart of our plans. With a digital ID, people may end up having more choice over what they show the world, not less. If they are buying a drink at the bar, instead of showing a physical driving licence revealing their full name and address, they will be able to prove they are over 18 without even showing their exact birthday if they do not want to. We will ensure that our digital ID operates to international best practice standards for data security and privacy, and we are working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre to ensure it keeps pace with the changing threats we face.
The third and final reason for introducing digital ID is to deliver greater fairness by showing exactly who has the right to work in the UK. Digital ID is not a silver bullet for tackling illegal immigration, but it will be a deterrent to would-be migrants who are considering coming to the UK, alongside all the other action we are taking. Making ID checks both mandatory and digital for all employers will provide us with far more actionable intelligence, so we can move swiftly to identify rogue employers who are not following the rules. Under this Government, illegal working arrests have gone up 50% in the last year. That is progress, but our digital ID will help us to do more. It will be mandatory for right to work checks by the end of this Parliament, helping tackle illegal working, cracking down on rogue employers, creating a level playing field for employers who do the right thing, and giving people who do have the right to be here the cast-iron guarantee that this is their country and that they are welcome in the UK.
For our new ID to be both effective and fair, it must be genuinely inclusive. That is non-negotiable for the Government, and for me personally. Currently, around one in 10 UK adults do not have a passport or a driver’s licence to prove their identity, and around 1.5 million people do not have a smartphone, laptop or tablet, or are digitally excluded for another reason. We are already making progress with our digital inclusion action plan. We will continue to work closely with all the relevant organisations to understand the barriers to inclusion and how they can be overcome, so we bring everyone into the system. I want to hear directly from hon. Members across the House about these matters, and from those in the digital identity sector who have so much experience to learn from. We will consider physical alternatives to the virtual document and face-to-face support for those who need it, such as the 5% of UK households who do not have home internet access. Ultimately, however, we want Britain to be a country where everybody has the digital skills and access to be part of the modern world, including through our new digital ID to unlock more effective services and support.
To conclude, we will launch a full consultation on our plans by the end of this year, including with parliamentarians, the devolved Administrations and members of the public. Legislation informed by that process will follow shortly afterwards. I know hon. Members will have many questions and I look forward to taking them, but let me just say this. Some 92% of people over 16 already have a smartphone. Many of us already use digital credentials held in our phone wallets, from tickets to events and online banking to storing boarding passes. People should expect the same service from the Government. Indeed, we should be criticised if we are not modernising our services to make them easier and more convenient for the public. Years from now, when we look back, I believe that having your ID on your phone will feel like second nature, putting more power directly into people’s hands and giving them more control over how they interact with government and the whole range of services. That is something worth striving for. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Nearly three weeks ago, the Prime Minister unveiled a plan for mandatory digital identity that will fundamentally shift the balance of power between citizen and state. He did not announce it here in this House, but at a love-in of the progressive left, sponsored by Labour Together and haunted by the ghost of Tony Blair. The justification was his own catastrophic failure on migration. He knows it will not stop the boats. When Brits are forced to have ID as illegal migration continues unabated, it will simply confirm fears of a two-tier society, fuelling the division and conspiracy theories that he so arrogantly claims he is the antidote to. What a cynical mess. Can the Secretary of State set out how the scheme will identify illegal migrants working in the black economy, when their gangmasters are experts at avoiding any state interaction? She rather slinked away from those key points in her wonderfully innocuous statement about making it easier to join libraries. We have in the official press release this glorious piece of doublethink:
“It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications.”
When employment itself requires Government-issued identity, you cannot meaningfully consent—unless, of course, you never want to work.
Here is the fundamental issue: in a free society, the burden of proof has always rested with government to justify its actions to earn our trust. Mandatory digital identity reverses that. While today the scheme focuses on work checks, Labour says it wants to extend this type of mandate into more areas of our lives. Which areas? Where does it stop? I understand that even 13-year-olds are now being considered. What about those without digital access? Labour has deprioritised gigabit roll-out and published a very worthy digital inclusion action plan without any action.
The Prime Minister points to Estonia and India as models we should seek to replicate, despite serious cyber vulnerabilities. The UK’s own sign-on system was breached during red team testing this very March. When 2.8 million people petitioned against the plan, the Government assured them that they would adhere to the highest security standards. Can the Secretary of State confirm to us here today that the system on which her mandatory ID will be built already meets those standards, and that the National Cyber Security Centre will publicly back her up?
This crafty scheme was not in Labour’s manifesto. Even the Cabinet think the whole thing is a fantasy. The Secretary of State cannot even bring herself to tweet about it. Why does the Prime Minister keep handing her his steaming messes to scoop up? The migration argument has totally bombed—we heard it here today. She and the Prime Minister are now reframing this whole thing as the route to better online services—no more rifling around for utility bills; not an ID, we hear today, but a key. They are deliberately conflating two very different things.
Better and more convenient online services were already coming in. We already had right to work and rent checks, convenient DBS—Disclosure and Barring Service—checks and driving licence renewals, all designed with choice, consent and privacy in mind, paper options retained, nobody forced down the digital route and trust as the key, and private identity providers enabled. This is not about Luddites versus modernisers; this is about the fact that Labour cannot resist its big fat socialist dreams: centralised databases, state mandation, big money, the exclusion of private sector expertise. Why create this honeypot for hackers? How much will it cost? Why should we trust Labour to be the verifier of someone’s identity, when during the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 it would not even commit to recording someone’s sex accurately?
Let me be clear: Conservatives oppose mandatory digital identity in principle and in practice. If we believed it was necessary, we would have introduced it in government. We chose not to because you can deliver better online services without resorting to a costly, controlling, complex and risky system. This is a cynical distraction from a desperate Prime Minister. He wants people to believe that mandatory ID will fix his migration mess, but it will not. Channel crossings will continue until he introduces a real deterrent, but he has not got the guts to take on the lawfare industry that made him.
We believe that government should empower citizens, not the other way round; that government should earn citizens’ trust, not the other way round. Only those entitled to benefits should receive them and those with no right to be here must leave, but those imperatives are not best delivered by controlling British people instead of those who do not play by the rules. The Government who promised to tread lightly on our lives have got their boots out. Will the Secretary of State now kill this plan, rather than be the sacrificial lamb for another of this Prime Minister’s grubby mistakes?
Liz Kendall
Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, that is definitely the first time I have been called a big fat socialist. [Laughter.]
The hon. Lady asks how it will help crack down on illegal immigration. Making ID mandatory and digital will really help us to get, much more swiftly and automatically, more actionable intelligence about rogue employers, and about who are doing the checks they are required to do and who are not.
Secondly, the hon. Lady talks about those who are digitally excluded. As I said in my statement, I take that issue extremely seriously. We actually have a digital inclusion action plan. The Conservatives did not do one for 10 years. If they cared so much about it, perhaps they would have done.
Understandably and rightly, I am sure we will have lots of questions about having the highest possible standards. We will be working to international best practice standards. There are not many advantages to lagging behind so many other countries—many other countries—that have digital ID, but one is that we can learn from their experience when things have gone wrong and how they improved their security. That is what we intend to do.
I finish by saying this. The hon. Lady comes to the Dispatch Box with fire and brimstone, but it is quite interesting that she differs from the shadow Home Secretary. Back in February, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) backed the idea, saying there were “very significant benefits”. In August, he said the Conservatives should consider it. The Conservatives’ leader in June said that she had moved her position on digital ID and that if it could answer difficult problems then, yes, that was something they would look at. Given the amount of flip-flops on the other side of the Chamber, you would think it was still summer. They are not serious, and they are not credible. Until they are, they are not electable.
Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is absolutely right to champion access to a consistent, trusted digital ID. All of us online have digital IDs aplenty already—Facebook, TikTok, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Tesco—so she is right to bring the benefits of one digital ID to my constituents. But making digital ID mandatory for everyone seeking work is poking a stick in the eye of all those with security, privacy and/or Government capacity concerns, which my Committee will be examining as part of our work on digital government. For now, though, can she first confirm that people will be in control of their digital ID data and who accesses it? Secondly, will she say whether it will be procured externally from the private sector or developed in-house by Government digital services?
Liz Kendall
My hon. Friend is right to raise the important issues of security—people are rightly concerned about the security of their data, and that is why that will be at the heart of our consultation. In answer to her specific questions: yes, people will control who sees and accesses their data, and we absolutely expect this system to be designed and built within Government, building on the One Login.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
I thank Secretary of State for advance sight of this statement, but I am quite frankly disappointed that this is how we are starting the conversation on digital ID in Parliament. We Liberal Democrats believe that freedoms belong to citizens by right, but the Government’s plans for digital ID for every single working person risk eroding the hard-won freedom to control the way we live our lives. They risk excluding millions of vulnerable people from their own society and wasting billions in public money chasing expensive solutions that will not work. Yet again, it is a gimmick to tackle irregular migration—something I had hoped was reserved for the Conservatives. Yet again, by eroding public trust with these rushed, retrofitted policies, the Government have squandered an opportunity to use technology to improve public services by bringing people with them. In addition, the Government announced this—a scheme that will impact every single working person in the UK—weeks before it could be scrutinised by Parliament.
Any claims from this Government that this scheme will be non-compulsory and give agency are poppycock in reality. As a requirement for the right to work, it is mandatory ID in all but name—the Secretary of State said so herself just now. Where is the choice in that? Last week, the Foreign Secretary proposed issuing digital IDs for teenagers. This is clear Government mission creep, and it is dangerous.
Liberals have always stood up against concentrations of power, and for good reason. We have seen the Government’s abject failure to secure people’s data before—just ask the victims of the Legal Aid Agency data breach or the armed forces personnel who were victims of the Ministry of Defence data breach whether they have faith in the Government to keep their most personal data secure. How can the public have trust in the Government to manage a system that will manage the data of almost the entire population?
Will the Secretary of State commit to publishing an impact assessment for the 8.5 million people without foundational digital skills, such as my constituent Julie, who does not own a smartphone and is fearful of being excluded from employment, healthcare and other essential services? Will the Secretary of State come forward with a plan to reduce the risk of further marginalisation?
All these serious concerns, from privacy to exclusion, come at a staggering cost. This scheme will cost the taxpayer billions—money that will be wasted on a system doing little to tackle the Government’s stated aims of immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, our public services are crumbling. Finally, I ask the Minister how much taxpayer money the Government are prepared to waste on this—a scheme for which they have no mandate and no public support—before they admit it does not work.
Liz Kendall
I will try to keep this brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady raises a number of different issues that I mentioned in my statement. On digital exclusion, we have a digital inclusion action plan and will be spending £9.5 million in local areas to help people who are currently excluded to get online. We will be publishing a full consultation on that, and I am sure she will feed in her views.
It is interesting that the Liberal Democrat leader, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), said last month that if a UK system were about giving individuals the power to access public services, he could be in favour of it. I hope the Liberal Democrats drop their partisan approach and work with us to deliver the system. I say to the hon. Lady and to other hon. Members that many, many other countries have digital ID systems. The EU is rolling out a digital ID system in all member states—
Liz Kendall
I know that those on the Conservative Benches do not like it. I think we need to keep a little perspective.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We have two Select Committee statements and a substantial debate later this evening, so this statement will have to conclude in 45 minutes. I ask colleagues to keep their questions short and the Secretary of State to keep her responses even shorter and on point.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Just over a month ago, I visited Tallinn, in Estonia, to understand why digital ID is so popular with the old, the young and those who are defined as digitally excluded. They told me that it is because they have control over their data that is held by the state; they can see it, see who has accessed it and who else can see it. What is critical, in a state that borders Russia, is that they have confidence in their absolute control over their data security. I believe there are lessons that we can learn.
In the UK, my constituents want to know who is in this country, who is legally entitled to use our public services, and who is entitled to work here. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to learn from countries such as Estonia and Denmark on those matters?
Liz Kendall
Yes, I do. My hon. Friend is right that the citizens of this country rightly want to know who has a right to be here and who has a right to work here. That is a very important principle.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
I am wholly opposed to this policy, as I know are many of my constituents. While the Government have talked about the so-called economic benefits of accessing services and digitalising how we interact with Government, my constituents are concerned about infringements on liberty and the shifting relationship between the individual and the state. The state must always be accountable to the individual. Can the Secretary of State rule out this system ever becoming one through which the Government can track location, consumer spending habits or social media activity?
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate the Secretary of State setting out the Government’s ambitions. I have to pick her up on something, though, because she said this policy would be free, but ultimately the taxpayer will have to pay for it. The costings that we have seen are about £1 billion to £2 billion to create the system and another £100 million each year to run it. We know the cost of a data breach: the Office for Budget Responsibility has suggested it could be 1.1% of GDP—in fact, our entire growth—were it to happen to the economy. Marks & Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover and Co-op have all shown us that. Can the Secretary of State therefore give us at least a ballpark figure for the capital and revenue costs that she envisions for what she has set out?
Liz Kendall
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. We also need to look at the potential benefits of this policy in savings from cracking down on fraud and making services more effective and efficient. Clearly, the eventual cost will depend on the design and build of the system, which is what we are consulting on. I am sure that she and many other colleagues will feed in their views.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Given that digital ID will not stop illegal immigration and will further erode our civil liberties, will the Secretary of State confirm that the Prime Minister announced it only as a deterrent to those seeking to topple him at the Labour party conference? If not, what is the actual purpose of this policy?
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
I have been contacted by a large number of constituents in recent weeks, whose healthy scepticism about digital ID making a material difference in tackling illegal immigration I share. I think there is scope for better digital integration across the public sector more generally, but the Secretary of State talked in her statement about a lot of hypothetical things—things that this policy could do in the future—and the only use case that has been confirmed so far is right-to-work checks. Can we be clear on the use cases that we intend to pursue and over which timescales, so that we have the information we need to make a decision on whether we want to go down this path?
Liz Kendall
These are not hypotheticals; we are looking at how other countries have used these systems to deliver more effective Government and other services to their citizens. We have proposed having mandatory right-to-work checks by the end of the Parliament, but there will be many important voluntary ways in which people can better access services and support. We will be consulting on that fully when we come forward with the detailed proposals.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
I am firmly against the Government’s plans to introduce digital ID, which is alarming state overreach. This pledge—seemingly made on a whim, given that it made no appearance in the Labour manifesto and there is no mandate for it—seems to be a desperate attempt to shore up Labour’s moribund pledge to smash the gangs. There appears to be little appetite or enthusiasm for this proposal on the Government Benches, and the claim that it will curb illegal immigration, when we are still offering asylum seekers somewhere to live and an asylum support enablement card of £49.18 a week, is not supported by the evidence. Having received a huge amount of correspondence on this matter, I ask the Secretary of State what guarantees she can give my constituents that the scheme can be afforded, that their data will be safe, and that the scheme will be never used to track their use of services.
Liz Kendall
I have already said that the scheme will not be used for that. In many other countries these systems have made accessing Government and public services much easier, quicker and more efficient. I think there is some scaremongering about this issue. Such schemes in other countries really have made Government fit around people, rather than making people fit into Government and their different services, and I think that is a huge benefit.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
Given the serious threats that digital ID poses to civil liberties and our data security and the risk of our data being handed over to US tech giants, I am firmly opposed to it. However, is it not also a real big waste of money, and should the Government not instead focus on the No. 1 priority of people across the country, which is tackling the cost of living crisis? Would it not be better to push the money from this into that while safeguarding civil liberties?
Liz Kendall
I think that providing better value for taxpayer money by getting services to work more quickly, effectively and efficiently and by cracking down on fraud and reducing error and waste is a really important part of delivering for the British people.
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
I fully agree with many of the points made so far, and I too have had many comments from constituents. This scheme will not help in areas of digital exclusion, especially where there is poor phone coverage, as there is in many parts of Devon, and neither will it stop rogue employers who currently employ cash in hand and do not look at the books. Why would they look at ID on a phone? They will not. Digital ID must be optional. Could the Secretary of State please assure us that it will be built along the lines of sovereign AI and that we will not hand over control of a system like this, with information about people’s lives, to companies such as Palantir?
Liz Kendall
We absolutely will not. If the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me with more detail about areas and groups of people in his constituency who are digitality excluded, I will make a commitment to doing everything possible to tackle that problem.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
I think that many Members have fundamentally misunderstood the proposal. It is actually about putting power in the hands of the citizen, not the state. The state already holds this information; digital ID will allow citizens to access it. On fraud, £11.4 billion was lost in scams last year, and £1.8 billion per year is lost due to identity theft. Does the Secretary of State see a role for digital ID in cracking down on the growing problem of fraud and identity theft?
Liz Kendall
I absolutely do. The countries that have introduced digital ID have found that it helps to tackle fraud. People can lose forms of identity and they can be used by other people. The scheme will help to tackle that problem as well as make services more effective and efficient.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I am completely opposed to digital ID cards as a matter of principle. The proposal was not in the Labour party manifesto, and the Government have no mandate for it. It is basically a multibillion-pound gimmick to try to address the fact that small boat arrivals are up a third since they came to power and they have not got the faintest clue how to stop them. I have two very specific questions to ask of the Secretary of State. First, how much—even as a ballpark figure—will it cost to bring in this system? Secondly, if it is to be mandatory, which would be completely wrong, what would be the penalty for a citizen who refuses on principle to have digital ID?
Liz Kendall
I do not know why the right hon. Gentleman thinks that people should not be required to prove that they have the right to work in this country. It seems a very reasonable thing to do. Some 92% of people over 16 have a phone, and as I said in answer to a previous question, we are consulting on how we will design and develop this whole programme. Further details about costings will come out in due course.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
On the Public Accounts Committee we regularly hear examples of Government IT systems that are out of date, inefficient and open to fraud and hacking. That is the reality of it. When looking at other countries such as Estonia and Denmark, will the Secretary of State also look at how they have completely reformed and recreated modern, comprehensive IT systems where individuals have easy access? In Estonia, as I understand it, an individual has the right to know which parts of Government have looked in their IT systems at them.
Liz Kendall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will be learning lessons from those countries. People will be able to see who accesses their data, so this proposal will give them more power and control.
If I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will reply to the second question from the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). There will not be a sanction or penalty for people who do not carry digital ID. There will remain penalties on employers who do not obey the law and do ID checks, but there will not be penalties on the individual.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I am not sure, however many examples the Secretary of State gives of other countries, that she will convince the people of Britain that mandatory ID cards fit with our particular values. Will she listen to the millions who signed the parliamentary petition, as well as to the fighting Yorkshireman Harry Willcock and the Churchill Government of 1952, who considered the abolition of ID cards an important symbol of a society that trusted its citizens?
Liz Kendall
I think that when the British people—so many of whom now have online banking on their phones and store so much in their digital wallets—look at their friends, neighbours and colleagues across the channel and see that many across Europe have digital ID as a matter of course and that it makes their lives simpler and easier, their common sense will say, “We want a bit of that.”
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
As Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital identity, I welcome the Government’s proposals. However, many of my constituents have deep concerns and are seeking reassurance. In order to build trust in the digital ID system, it would help if people felt that they had choice and control over whether to use digital ID or not. As such, will the Secretary of State look again at the proposal for mandatory digital ID for adults and allow people a choice for non-digital alternatives, which incidentally would offer resilience against IT failure, and control over their data with a decentralised or federated data approach?
Liz Kendall
The Prime Minister has been very clear that it will be mandatory for right to work checks, but I can confirm to my hon. Friend that we do not want one big, centralised data set and that it will be federated. That is one of the lessons we learned from other countries. I am sure that there are many more things we will have to do to make sure that people’s data is secure, but this will give people more control because they will be able to see who accesses their data, and that is a good thing.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
If it were not so sinister, it would be quaint to hear the Secretary of State say that it is international, novel and modern, and therefore it must be good. Try telling that to Jaguar Land Rover workers, M&S customers, or postmasters and postmistresses. Will the right hon. Lady recognise what I recognised when I was the Home Office Minister responsible for national cyber-security: when one concentrates data and makes it interconnected and interoperable, one also concentrates risk, and the risk is that people lives will be damaged and possibly even destroyed?
Liz Kendall
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He has a lot of experience in this area. We want not only to learn from other countries but to work closely with the National Cyber Security Centre to make sure that we have the highest possible standards of security. Where mistakes have been made, we can learn to put them right, and we are determined to do that. I am very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss this in more detail, because we want to get this right.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)
Identifying rogue employers who exploit labour and dodge taxes is one thing. However, it makes no difference whether someone holds digital ID over paper ID if the employer refuses to acknowledge the ID. Could the Secretary of State point to the evidence, which I am very interested to see, of how a digital ID will prevent rogue employment?
Liz Kendall
The hon. Member is always rightly concerned to see the evidence, and when we publish our consultation on this proposal she will see it all there. It is important to understand that making ID checks mandatory and digital, rather than solely relying on getting information from individuals, as we do at the present, can make a real difference in identifying those who are not doing the full range of checks. It is not the only thing we need to tackle rogue employers, and there are many other actions we need to take, but it is a good step forward.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
Just as we opposed ID cards under Tony Blair, we will oppose digital ID under this Labour Government, as they seek once again to impose this unwanted scheme on a sceptical public. The whole idea of digital ID is an attack on our liberty and privacy. It is a treasure trove for hackers and those who would hoard personal data. It will do little to tackle illegal immigration and it will cost billions of pounds. We in Scotland want nothing to do with this Britcard, and the Scottish Government will energetically oppose it. My question to the Secretary of State is this: when we rightly and inevitably oppose and reject this, will she do the usual UK thing of imposing it on us anyway?
Liz Kendall
It is not a Britcard. I must say that I am tiny bit confused, because in March 2021 the Scottish Government published “A changing nation: how Scotland will thrive in a digital world”, which included plans to
“Introduce a digital identity service for users…to prove who they are, and that they are eligible for a service.”
The hon. Member had better make up his mind.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
I do not know how many doors I have knocked on in my 12 years as a Labour member, but I do know that not a single person has ever told me that what they really need to improve their lives, their community and the country is mandatory digital ID. It will not tackle irregular working, it would undermine civil liberties, it is divisive among the public, and it will not make a difference to people’s lives. Why are we doing it? Why are we burning political capital and public money on that instead of focusing on the issues that really are impacting our constituents? I worry that this is yet another huge mistake.
Liz Kendall
In the 15 years that I have been an MP, many people have said that it can be a nightmare trying to talk to different bits of the public sector: repeatedly having to give the same information and tell their story time and again. They are concerned about illegal working in this country. This is an important step forward in terms of improving how the state fits around people’s lives—it does not force them to fit into the system—and I think that is an issue that many Members across the House have in common with their constituents.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on her new position. I am mindful of her previous position, where she masterminded the personal independence payment reforms, so with her proposals before us today I am concerned that she is fast becoming the Minister for lost causes. In my constituency, we have an awful lot of people who are digitally excluded; it is really sobering. Will she please give us some clear examples of how people will be helped? I know of dozens and dozens of people who are against the proposal in principle, but what about those who will potentially be excluded?
Liz Kendall
We have a £9.5 million digital inclusion fund that will support local organisations with grants of between £25,000 and £500,000 to help specific groups of people who are currently digitally excluded, to ensure that they can get the benefits of all manner of different private and public sector services that are available online. We will announce the results of the application process shortly. As always, I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman for him to tell me about the specific issues in his constituency. If we need to do more to ensure that everybody is digitally included, we will act.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Well, here we go again, 15 years after the Conservatives abolished it. I say to the naysayers that our passport data and our driving licence data is on a database, so we need to be careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
We have had GOV.UK Verify and Tell Us Once, so there have been attempts to do this, and we all log into our HMRC accounts, so we are using digital identification in many ways, but will the Secretary of State be really careful about the challenges that some will face? Also, why on earth is it mandatory? The previous proposal was for voluntary use, and interestingly it was popular with migrants, who really wanted to have that ID to prove their right to access, but they did not have to do so. That would allow public services the time to work with those who are digitally excluded.
Liz Kendall
My hon. Friend has a huge amount of experience on this issue; I look forward to discussing it with her. The only area where we are proposing the digital ID to be mandatory is for right-to-work checks. [Interruption.] No, we are not proposing it to be mandatory for any other area. I believe that as people start to see those benefits, they will want to have it on their phone for accessing public services as well as those in the private sector. We have to get the security right and we have to get digital inclusion right, but I believe that in today’s world, where so many of us have so much information on our phones, there has been a shift in opinion. I look forward to hearing more from her about what she thinks we need to do next.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
This ID card is being touted as an idea to do mandatory work checks. It rather surprises me that the right hon. Lady, who until recently was in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions, is not aware that we already have mandatory checks in order to work. Her statement was contradictory: she said that it will give people more control over their data, but unless you are a multimillionaire who does not need to work, you will need to have an ID card, so it is not really optional at all. She has failed to answer questions from many MPs across the House on how much it will cost. Can she say how much it will cost?
Liz Kendall
At the risk of repeating myself, costs will depend on exactly the design, build and delivery of the programme. We will set out further details. I think people would expect that those who work here have a right to do so. That is an important principle, and one that I am proud to support.
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)
I welcome the statement and the consultation as a contribution towards modernising our public services. Constituents of mine are frustrated by how they cannot interact with the state. Alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White), I went on the recent trip to Tallinn, and I was struck by not just how digital identity could make things easier, but how it could drive the uptake of things like childcare and pension credit and actually provide a service to people. I was also taken by the fact that, in Tallinn, the identity system was developed to stop the overreach of the state, and civil liberties are built into it. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that control and data use are a real part of the consultation?
Liz Kendall
I agree with my hon. Friend that this could give people more power and control over their data—who sees it and who uses it—as well as all the other benefits he rightly set out.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
The British people did not vote for a two-tier digital police state run by this failing Labour Government. This policy is undemocratic and authoritarian and will do absolutely nothing to stop illegal immigration. Will the Secretary of State listen to the overwhelming volume of public opinion and drop it immediately?
Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)
I recall the debate about the previous attempt to bring in ID cards, when people were concerned about having to produce them if demanded by authorities such as the police. I too have been to Estonia, and I understand that the argument has moved on—we now have apps on our phones such as the NHS app and we have the GOV.UK One login, so we all have a digital footprint these days—but can my right hon. Friend categorically state that that at no stage in the future will people be required by the police to produce this digital ID?
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
EU nationals in the UK were guinea pigs for a digital-only status. Serious concerns are still being raised, including about access issues that resulted in people being wrongly denied work, housing, education and welfare. Extending digital IDs to the British people will result in another layer of mandatory surveillance and loss of privacy. Will the Secretary of State confirm what independent oversight will monitor data breaches, errors and misuse?
Liz Kendall
There will not be surveillance, and we are not proposing that it will be mandatory to access all different types of services. That is just a wrong characterisation of what we are proposing.
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
The current proposal is that digital ID will be mandatory for right-to-work checks by the end of this Parliament. Concerns have been raised with me by constituents that that makes it de facto mandatory for working-age people. Has the Secretary of State considered simply sticking with it as a voluntary service so that people who wish to can get the benefits of a streamlined ID, and then, when it is bedded in, perhaps looking at whether it is necessary to make it mandatory for right-to-work checks?
Liz Kendall
We have considered all those different aspects. It is right for the Prime Minister to say that it should be mandatory for right-to-work checks by the end of the Parliament to prove a person’s right to be here and to work. I also believe that as we develop it and show the benefits for many other aspects of daily life, for which we are not proposing it will be mandatory, people will see the benefits of that. I hope that that will start to shift the debate.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
I want to pick up the question about punishment, because I am confused. The Secretary of State says that, in order to work, someone will have to have a digital ID—it will be mandatory—yet she also says that the impetus will be on the company and not the individual, who will not need to have one. How will that work? Will the individual have to have one? If they choose not to, will that mean they cannot work? Will it mean they have to claim benefit? Or will it mean they will go to prison because they do not have a mandatory ID?
Liz Kendall
No, that is not what it will mean. The specific question was whether there would be sanctions or penalties on a person for not having one, and I said, “No, there won’t.” As is the case now, if an employer has not done the required checks, it can face a civil penalty of up to £60,000 for each individual worker or, for a criminal offence, up to five years in jail, but there will not be penalties or sanctions on the individual.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, which set out clearly how far the UK is lagging behind our European neighbours on faster and easier access to services. That said, my constituents have raised two main concerns with me, and I would be grateful if she could provide some reassurance. One is about why they will require digital ID to work when they already have national insurance numbers, and the other is about how digital ID will impact the most vulnerable residents.
Liz Kendall
I hope that I have explained why digital ID needs to be mandatory for right to work checks, and the benefits of that as one part of a toolkit of things to crack down on illegal immigration. Making sure that vulnerable people—those who do not have smartphones or tablets, or the skills—have access is extremely important to me. We will be working closely with all the organisations that can make a difference and the digital inclusion action committee, and we want to look at what more we can do very locally to support groups that we know have access to people. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to talk in more detail about what we might be able to do to support her constituents, because we are determined to make sure that Britain is a digitally included country.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
Through the Secretary of State, may I thank the Minister for Digital Government and Data, who is sitting to her left? He was in Belfast last week and engaged with the Minister for Communities in the Northern Ireland Executive. He will know, and she should know, that our principled and practical objections to this proposal 20 years ago remain to this day, but the Secretary of State will also know that since the policy’s announcement there have been many fanciful and facile comments in Northern Ireland suggesting that it would be in breach of the Belfast agreement. She knows that ideologically, practically, principally, politically and legally, that is wrong, so will she at least confirm today that nothing within the consultation will give an option to anyone to suggest that the policy, if it were to be introduced, would be anything other than across the United Kingdom?
Liz Kendall
It will be across the United Kingdom. As the right hon. Gentleman said, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Digital Government and Data was in Northern Ireland just last week, and he also visited and talked to members of the Irish Government. The Good Friday agreement and the common travel area are absolutely sacrosanct. This will be a UK-wide proposal, and nothing that we do would ever harm the Good Friday agreement.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
Over 20 years ago, I began a career with Experian, a data company, and we were talking about having a unique reference number for everybody in the country. That was for the benefit of companies, so that they could make more money off us, whereas what the Government are doing is looking to give us access to our own data. I am excited by digital ID, but I used a Facebook post to ask my constituents what they think. I had over 400 responses, which were really kind and considered—
Samantha Niblett
My question is this: with all the arguments for and against taken into account, and with trust in politicians and politics at an all-time low, what assurances can my right hon. Friend give that she will work with me to ensure that my constituents feel like this is being done with them, rather than to them?
Liz Kendall
I am sure that my hon. Friend will send me the results of her survey, and I will look through them in detail. I believe that if we can show people that the Government are changing, and that we are working around them and meeting their needs and concerns, that will be one of the ways in which we can build trust, and that is what we are determined to do.
Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
My constituents have been crystal clear with me: they do not want a mandatory digital ID forced upon them. It would mark a clear erosion of their civil liberties and—let us face it—the Government’s track record on data security is poor to say the least. Many in my constituency do not have phone signal or wi-fi, and rolling out digital ID is set to cost between £1 billion and £2 billion—four times what the Government plan to save with the family farm tax. Please, Minister, learn the lessons from the welfare Bill, listen to your Back Benchers and do not waste this colossal amount of taxpayers’ money.
Liz Kendall
I do not really know what the question was there.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement and her comments on digital inclusion. Will she say a bit more about how the inclusion strategy might address some of the challenges faced by care-experienced young people and care leavers? Will she guarantee that the priority will be bringing together and integrating the public services and support that they are entitled to? Too often, they fall between the cracks of those services.
Liz Kendall
Absolutely. That is one of the issues that has already been raised with me directly, along with people who are homeless, women who may be fleeing domestic violence, people who do not have access to broadband, and a whole range of other issues. We will work closely with the groups that work with care leavers, but obviously we will want to talk to them ourselves. I am more than happy to follow up that conversation with my hon. Friend.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Why does the Minister think that a staggering 3 million people have already signed a petition against her expensive and intrusive plans? Does she perhaps think that those people want her to get on with fixing things that matter to them, like illegal immigration and smashing the gangs, which this measure will do nothing to fix, as the construction of her statement seemed to suggest she understands? Will she spend her time trying to sort things that really matter to people, rather than trying to create problems to which there is no obvious solution?
Liz Kendall
At the risk of repeating myself, I think that trying to get Government services to talk to one another and work more effectively is what people want. The right hon. Gentleman raised the issue of action on illegal immigration. The Home Secretary has made it clear that she will do whatever it takes to secure our borders. [Interruption.] Somebody asked, “How’s it going?” Removals are up to 35,000. Returns of foreign national offenders are up 14%. We have taken the first step in our French returns deal, and we are investing an extra £100 million to boost our border security. There is much more to do. I think this is one of the tools to do it. I believe that it is possible for the Government to tackle illegal immigration and transform our public services and give people greater control over their data. The right hon. Gentleman’s Government did not, but this Government do.
Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)
Thirty-one per cent of children in Wales live in poverty, and 25% of households in Wales are in fuel poverty. Given the scale of the crisis facing people, does the Minister honestly believe that an intrusive and unpopular digital ID system should be a priority?
Liz Kendall
Tackling child poverty is also a priority, as the hon. Lady will see when we produce our strategy.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
The people of Mid Bedfordshire, in response to my survey, said that they do not want digital ID, and nor do I. Does the Secretary of State agree that the individual freedoms of British people are an unacceptable price to pay for failures to enforce existing laws, protect our borders and stop illegal working? Will she please answer how much this will cost? If she does not know at this moment in time, is it responsible of her to be pushing it?
Liz Kendall
How much this costs will depend on exactly how we design and build it. I believe that this will help tackle illegal immigration and help give people more control over their data. There is a lot of misinformation out there about what this will and will not do. I do not believe it will take away people’s freedoms. I do not believe that people in Estonia, Denmark, Australia, France and many other countries believe it takes away their freedom either.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
As has been mentioned, the petition opposing the Government’s proposals is the fourth largest that the people of this country have signed. I have had nearly 100 emails from my constituents opposing the scheme. Will the Secretary of State please commit to documenting every single use case for the scheme, and will she say how the separate islands of automation across Government and public services will be prepared to take advantage of a single digital ID?
Liz Kendall
All those details will be set out in the consultation. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and his constituents will respond to that. I will say once again that many other countries do this. They have learned from experience about security, and they have learned how to keep people’s data secure. We will learn the lessons from what they have done, and I look forward to his response to the consultation.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
I have been contacted by a contractor who worked on the last Labour Government’s ID card scheme. He wrote to me that
“it was a massive waste of money”
and suggested that it could be like
“writing Fujitsu a blank cheque”.
What sum are the Government setting aside for that cheque to the contractor to pay for the development of digital ID?
Liz Kendall
The hon. Gentleman may not have heard me earlier, but I said that it will be designed and built in-house.
Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)
Let us be absolutely clear: a national digital ID system creates infrastructure for surveillance and control, not freedom or efficiency, and in the hands of future Governments it could be weaponised against the most vulnerable communities. That is not a hypothetical threat. History shows us how identity systems have been used to target the powerless. We do not build tools of authoritarianism and simply hope they are never misused. Will the Government listen to the overwhelming public concern from more than 2 million people, many of whom are my constituents, and finally scrap this draconian proposal?
Liz Kendall
I think there is a lot of misinformation out there about this proposal. It is not about surveillance; it is not about a police state—the police will not be able to stop people and require them to show their digital ID. In many other countries where such a scheme has been used, it has been about making the Government and the state more effective and efficient and about giving people greater control over their data so that they can actually see it. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman uses search engines or whether he has any form of online banking on his phone, but I gently say to him that the world has moved on. I understand that lots of people have concerns, but I believe that there is a strong case for making this happen, just as it has happened in many other countries.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I respect the Secretary of State greatly, but honestly on this one I am afraid I just cannot support her whatsoever. I say that because the opposition to this ID in the United Kingdom is great, but in Northern Ireland, the Labour party, the Government and the Secretary of State in particular have managed to unite all the political parties against it. My goodness—she should do more stuff on Northern Ireland affairs, because if she can get everybody together, we could do things that were never done before. I say this with great respect: this is not about illegal immigration; this is about the nanny state. It is the first step on an icy, slippery slope—an imposed restriction by Government—and my constituents are saying no. Would the Secretary of State reconsider what she is putting forward, because really, it is going nowhere in Northern Ireland?
Liz Kendall
The hon. Gentleman and I agree on a football club, but it would appear that we do not agree on digital ID. As the hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts visited Northern Ireland last week. We will work through all the different institutions. I want to be very clear to anybody who has concerns about this that it is not a Brit card—that is not what we are calling it. We want to ensure that security and privacy are built in from the start. The Good Friday agreement is absolutely sacrosanct. I think there are real advantages here: when people see the system that we want and the benefits to their lives, they may reconsider their views.
Points of Order
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lewis Cocking
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On Tuesday 16 September, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology visited my constituency to officially open Google’s new data centre in Waltham Cross, an investment that I was proud to have helped secure when I was leader of Broxbourne Council. However, not only did I fail to receive notice from the Science Secretary that she would be accompanying the Chancellor, who herself informed me at the very last moment, but not one elected representative was invited to this official event. I am sure that the Government would not have been playing politics when they failed properly to notify me or Broxbourne’s fantastic growth-focused Conservative-run council, so could you, Madam Deputy Speaker, please advise me how this situation can be remedied, and how I can hold Ministers to account for obvious breaches of the ministerial code?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The hon. Member has put his point on the record, and someone on the Government Front Bench will no doubt be making a note in order to notify the appropriate Ministers. It is appropriate for colleagues across the House to notify colleagues when they are visiting their constituencies for work and political reasons.
The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Liz Kendall)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I really apologise if we did not inform the hon. Gentleman that we were coming. That was an error and we will make sure that we put it right.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Is this an actual point of order, Mr Shannon?
Jim Shannon
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you will know, the women’s rugby team won the world cup, beating Canada. The Ryder cup team beat the USA, despite all the verbal abuse and beer being thrown at Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. Is it possible that Mr Speaker or the Prime Minister have organised a reception for both teams, ever mindful that the Ryder cup team took unreal abuse from the USA people? New York people—big in the mouth, big in the stomach.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Mr Shannon, this puts me in a very difficult position, because that is not actually a point of order, but that will make me deeply unpopular, and I cannot talk on behalf of Mr Speaker or the Prime Minister and say what they wish to do.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 25 September, I sent a letter to the Foreign Secretary that was signed by more than 80 Members of the House. It expressed our pressing concern for the safety of British citizens participating in the global sumud flotilla, a non-violent humanitarian mission trying to deliver aid to Gaza. We were concerned that the flotilla would be violently intercepted by Israeli forces, and we called on the Government to protect British citizens. A week later, that actually happened. It then also happened just last week, when participants on the Gaza freedom flotilla were also intercepted, including four British citizens.
I and other Members of this House have received many emails about that, and we even had constituents on board. That is twice that the safety of British citizens was put at risk, and to our knowledge the Government did not condemn Israel’s actions, and we have not been made aware of what actions were taken to secure their release. Madam Deputy Speaker, can you advise on how Members can hold the Government to account during the recess, particularly at times when the safety of our citizens is under threat? Can you advise us on how Members can secure timely responses in times of urgency?
Madam Deputy Speaker
It is incredibly important that timely responses are given to Back-Bench MPs who are here to secure advice, guidance and responses to their constituents. Those on the Treasury Front Bench will no doubt have heard that and will ensure that a swift response from the appropriate Department is given to the Back Bencher.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, at this day’s sitting,
(i) the business determined by the Backbench Business Committee shall be treated as being taken on an allotted day provided under paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 14 and, notwithstanding the provisions of paragraphs (1) and (2) of Standing Order No. 22D relating to the scheduling of select committee statements, select committee statements on the Third Report of the Scottish Affairs Committee and the Fifth Report of the Education Committee may be made after the conclusion of proceedings on this Motion;
(ii) proceedings on the Motion in the name of Andy MacNae relating to baby loss may be proceeded with for up to three hours after their commencement, or until 10.00pm, whichever is the later, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; those proceedings may be entered upon and may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Stephen Morgan.)
Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Scottish Affairs Committee. Patricia Ferguson will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of her statement, I will call Members to ask questions on the subject of the statement. These should be brief questions, not full speeches. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee Chair, not to the relevant Government Minister. Front Benchers may take part in questioning.
Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for affording me the opportunity to make a statement on the publication of the Scottish Affairs Committee’s third report of this Session, on the pilot safer drug consumption facility in Glasgow’s east end. Despite a reduction in deaths this year, Scotland continues to face the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. Without a doubt, that is the most pressing public health issue facing Scotland, and it is in that context that the Committee agreed to undertake a thorough examination of the pilot facility on Hunter Street, called the Thistle.
The Committee’s inquiry follows up on excellent work conducted by our predecessor Committee on problem drug use in Scotland, and I take this opportunity to express our thanks to everyone who contributed to this inquiry, in particular Dr Saket Priyadarshi and the team at the Thistle for their continued engagement with our work. This is a challenging issue, and I express my gratitude to the members of the Scottish Affairs Committee for their thoughtful and collaborative work on this report.
In 2024, some 1,017 people died from drug-related causes—a figure expected to rise in 2025—with the highest concentration of deaths occurring in the Glasgow city area. The problem is not new. High levels of drug deaths have been a concern in the city for over a decade, and other harms, such as the transmission of blood-borne viruses, remain prevalent. Between 2014 and 2020, an outbreak of HIV among people who inject drugs saw 188 new diagnoses reported in the Greater Glasgow area. To address those harms, Glasgow city health and social care partnership, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and other partners launched the Thistle, the UK’s first sanctioned safer drug consumption facility.
The Thistle was opened as a three-year pilot. At the Thistle, visitors can self-administer drugs in safe, hygienic conditions under medical supervision. Staff can reverse overdoses, treat wounds and provide hygienic injecting equipment. Of equal importance to the immediate medical harm reduction is the space the facility provides for expert clinicians to build trusting relationships with people whom it would otherwise be hard for support services to reach. Those relationships can be a pathway to engagement with other health and social services, such as drug treatment, counselling and housing services, which can help address the drivers of problem drug use.
When we visited the facility shortly after it opened, we were particularly impressed by the expertise and dedication of the staff we met. The opening of the Thistle marks a radical change in approach to drug use in the UK, but internationally, safer drug consumption facilities are not uncommon; similar facilities already operate in 60 cities across the world. None of those facilities have ever reported an overdose death on the premises.
As part of our inquiry, we visited Norway and Lisbon. We saw how safer drug consumption facilities have been a core part of Portugal’s strategy to reduce drug harms. We looked carefully at what Portugal has done, given that it has achieved a radical reduction in drug harms; it has achieved an 80% reduction in the number of drug-related deaths over the past 20 years. We also travelled to Oslo and Bergen, where we saw how facilities can be successfully integrated into local communities. Above all else, our report calls on the UK Government to adopt an evidence-based approach, and not to make up their mind about the Thistle before the trial has concluded. To that end, our report also argues that experts in the evidence, rather than those with preconceived ideas, should determine the facility’s future.
There is no statutory basis for a safer drug consumption facility to open or operate in the UK. Instead, the Thistle has been able to open because of prosecutorial discretion applied by Scotland’s Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate has decided that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of the facility for possession offences. While the Lord Advocate’s dispensation has been crucial to enabling the Thistle to open, our Committee found that prosecutorial discretion is not a substitute for a considered legal framework.
Our report also considers the cost of the Thistle. The Scottish Government have committed up to £2.3 million per year to fund the facility for the duration of the three-year pilot. Evidence to our inquiry found that facilities like the Thistle can be value for money, generating savings elsewhere. Such facilities reduce costs associated with public injecting, hospital admissions, ambulance call-outs and treating blood-borne viruses. For example, preventing just six to eight cases of HIV annually could generate savings equivalent to the annual cost of the Thistle.
While it is right that the cost of the Thistle be properly considered, the context of Scotland’s drug crisis cannot be forgotten. The Committee argues that the scale of Scotland’s emergency—there were over 1,000 deaths in 2024 alone—necessitates a commensurate response and significant investment. While the Thistle has not diverted funding from other services, we did hear concerns during our inquiry about the need to strike the right balance between investing in services like the Thistle and investing in traditional recovery services. We know that safer drug consumption facilities are not the only tool available for addressing problem drug use, and we are clear in our report that this facility is complementary to and works in tandem with traditional recovery services. In other words, it is not an either/or.
Our report recognises that drug trends in Scotland are changing. The facility offers supervision for only the injection of drugs, but inhalation is becoming more prevalent and can be a safer method of consumption. The Thistle must be able to adapt to meet the needs of the population it is trying to help. An inhalation space is currently not possible due to both reserved and devolved legislation, and our report encourages the Lord Advocate and the Scottish Government to consider any future application for an inhalation room on its merits.
The Thistle opened in Glasgow’s east end—an area with long-standing issues around public injecting. Since its opening, we have heard concerns about its impact, particularly regarding drug-related litter. We know that community support is of paramount importance to the pilot’s success. That is why consultation work was undertaken about the opening of the Thistle and continues through the community engagement forum. When members of our Committee attended a community engagement forum meeting in August, they were able to see that consultation work in action, but we encourage the Thistle to go one step further and develop a more responsive communication strategy to maintain dialogue between meetings.
As I said, an independent evaluation is under way to assess the facility’s impact on people who inject drugs, local residents, businesses and public services. That includes examining the service’s effectiveness, reach, costs and potential long-term savings. Community concerns must be taken seriously, but it is also important to allow time for the pilot’s local impact to be properly understood, and we await the results of that evaluation, which will provide an objective assessment of the Thistle’s impact.
If the Lord Advocate continues to apply her discretion beyond the three-year pilot, the Thistle and any future facilities in Scotland could continue to operate without UK Government support, perhaps indefinitely. However, the Committee has found that the legal position of the pilot is fundamentally precarious, and the arrangement is undesirable in the longer term. We therefore conclude that if the independent evaluation deems the pilot a success and the Thistle is to be made permanent, the UK Government should ensure that there is a full legal framework for safer drug consumption facilities in Scotland.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who was then the Home Office Minister with responsibility for this area, for giving oral evidence to our inquiry. She told us that the UK Government will not introduce safer drug consumption facilities, and pointed instead to alternative ongoing interventions to address drug-related harms. While those approaches are needed, the evidence we have heard is clear that the sustained scale of Scotland’s drug death crisis demands further action.
I will conclude by echoing the sentiment in the report that any intervention that is found to be effective at saving lives and reducing harm deserves the Government’s serious consideration. The Committee looks forward to the Government’s response, which I hope will reflect serious consideration of our recommendations.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
For Members who are new to this, Back Benchers may ask questions for 10 minutes following Select Committee statements.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
I thank our Select Committee Chair for the statement—I have a brief question. I am sure that she expects me to say this, but I just want to say for the record that although I supported the report as a whole, there are a couple of recommendations that I could not support. The first is the recommendation on the inclusion of an inhalation room, and the second is on the provision of tourniquets. I cannot ever support the facilitation of addiction as a way of helping to treat addictions—I just do not see that as an option. Why, before we know the results of the pilot, does the report conclude that it should be extended?
Patricia Ferguson
I hope the hon. Lady does not mind if I call her my hon. Friend. I thank her for her question. I think it fair to say that the issues we looked at challenged us all. Many of us were considering issues that we had never reflected upon before, so it was a challenge, and I perfectly understand that we will have disagreements about how to go forward. The thing about inhalation that was highlighted to us is that for many people, inhalation is safer than injecting, which has all sorts of risks attached—infected wounds and blood-borne viruses, for example. Inhalation does not have those problems, and is becoming increasingly popular as a method of using drugs, so it seemed to the Committee that we could encourage its consideration. We are not suggesting that there should be further injection spaces at this time—we think it is important to see what the evaluation says, and that any decisions should be based on that particular finding—but we are aware that other places in Scotland are looking at the Thistle with interest, and may well make those applications, although that is not the gist of the report.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Scotland has the worst drugs death figures of any nation in Europe, and they have increased again, with 607 suspected drug deaths in the first half of this year. Six years ago, the SNP Scottish Government declared a “drug death emergency”—just another example of soundbite announcements with no actual delivery. They have had two decades to tackle this issue, but the truth is that they have failed. None of them is here tonight. Does my hon. Friend agree that the independent evaluation panel will determine the Thistle’s efficacy and, ultimately, its future beyond the three-year pilot, and that that gold-standard service is not an either/or but must work in tandem with a range of other recovery services?
Patricia Ferguson
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me, as the impartial Chair of the Committee, for not criticising or commenting on the failings or otherwise of the SNP, whose Members are not, as he points out, here this evening. He is absolutely right that this is not an either/or. It is important that the provision is part of a range of options offered. If any of those options can help to reduce the drug death numbers in Scotland, they must be considered seriously, and that is what we suggest.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I thank the Select Committee Chair very much for the report’s conclusions, particularly the call on the Government to consider a secure legal footing for safer drug consumption facilities. From the discussions that have been had, does she have any sense of the chances of a lesser legal mechanism from the Attorney General to give comfort in relation to the risk of prosecution for people using and running such facilities in England and Wales?
Patricia Ferguson
To be perfectly frank, I cannot answer the hon. Member’s question because we did not take evidence on the situation elsewhere in the UK and were particularly focused on Scotland, as one would expect of the Scottish Affairs Committee. It may be that the prosecutorial discretion that the Lord Advocate has offered is something that others wish to look to, but whether or not the law in England and Wales would allow that is not for me to say because I genuinely do not know.
John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)
The facility is located in my constituency. The report stresses the importance of engagement with the local community. Drug litter and public injecting very close to the facility are a cause of real concern for my constituents, whose worries are not being properly addressed. There are now suggestions that the facility could open for 24 hours a day—a cause of real worry for my constituents. The community must be properly consulted about material changes to the facility. Does my hon. Friend agree that a robust strategy is essential not only for communicating with but for listening to and addressing the concerns of my constituents?
Patricia Ferguson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that public confidence in the facility is paramount if it is to have a future—and even for the duration of the three-year pilot. Committee members who attended the forum were very struck by the fact that although forum members from the community and local businesses were raising questions with the operators of the Thistle and those involved most closely with it, there was no mechanism for a response to be given between meetings. We suggested that the communications strategy needed to be much more responsive so that if a problem is raised, or a good comment made, the Thistle can respond to it rather than wait until the next meeting. That would give the public a lot more confidence and reassurance that their concerns were being addressed.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Committee Chair for bringing this statement forward. I share the concerns in the questions asked earlier about the recommendations; I would be concerned about the addiction aspect as well. But I recognise that some of the problems in Belfast city, for instance, are the same as those at the Thistle pilot scheme in Glasgow, which the hon. Lady outlined. Ever mindful of my own opinion, I think it would be worth while sharing the information from that pilot scheme with those in Belfast, who may have a similar outlook and point of view.
Patricia Ferguson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Many reports have been done on international facilities, which he might want to bring to the attention of his colleagues in Belfast. He is absolutely right that it is not just Glasgow or Scotland that have these problems, although Scotland seems to be suffering particularly badly. There are other models. In Lisbon, we saw a mobile model that accompanied the fixed facility. That seemed to be popular; a queue of people was waiting to use it when we were there—a small queue, but a queue. There are other ways of addressing the issue, and he may wish to consider those.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
As a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, I thank my hon. Friend for securing time for this statement. The report makes it clear that drug consumption rooms are just one of the tools that can be used to reduce drug-related harms and that one intervention must not come at the cost of another. Scotland sustains the highest number of drug-related deaths in Europe. Does my hon. Friend agree that a lack of recovery beds and facilities undermines a holistic, joined-up approach that those living with addiction deserve?
Patricia Ferguson
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. She is absolutely right: it cannot be one thing or another. A holistic attitude must be taken towards eradicating drug misuse. Given Scotland’s particular situation, we have to be open to considering any and all options. But recovery facilities are certainly vital.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend and her Committee for this important report. The effects of drug addiction and misuse hit communities hard in Scotland, as we have heard, but also in Newcastle-under-Lyme and elsewhere in Staffordshire. I think of the work of Paul Sweeney MSP on the ground in Glasgow; he has done much on these important issues.
There are often enhanced challenges around the stigma of drugs in religious and ethnic minority communities. Will my hon. Friend touch on what the outreach at Thistle looked like for those furthest-to-reach communities? That will be particularly important for my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme, as the Government learn the lessons.
Patricia Ferguson
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We did not look closely into that issue; if someone is going to inject drugs, they will buy them and take them almost immediately, so the reach of the Thistle will never be much further than the localised community around the building. For that reason, we have not looked at the issue in the way that he suggests. It will be interesting to see from the evaluation whether there has been more of a reach than was imagined at the beginning, when the facility was being scoped. But that is certainly not the experience that people have had until now.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)
I thank the Select Committee for its report. I have been following the international evidence on taking a public health approach. Could my hon. Friend set out how the centre is developing a harm reduction model and how it will evaluate that? I am thinking particularly of engagement with clinicians. It is so important that people get the right support in the right way when they enter such a centre.
Patricia Ferguson
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is important to understand that, although prosecutorial discretion is offered by the Lord Advocate, the Thistle is quite limited in what it can offer. At the moment, it would like to be able to offer tourniquets, for example, to allow people to inject more easily. It has also applied to become a drug testing centre. There is an increasing incidence of synthetic opioids, which can be very dangerous, coming on to the market in Scotland. Testing would allow the police and academics to track those and take them off the streets more easily. Things like that can be done, but permissions need to be given to do them. At the moment, the facility does not have such permissions and it is simply an injecting centre.
That is not to say that staff are not able to refer people to other facilities, perhaps those where recovery or housing services are more of an option, or where there is a space for people to have a really good wash, get some clean clothes and go out feeling better. However, at this facility people are able to talk. No one leaves the premises immediately after injecting, so people will sit around having conversations with each other and with the professionals at the facility, who are trying hard to be really supportive.
Education Committee
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Education Committee. Before I call the Chair of the Committee, I remind hon. Members that questions should be brief and should be directed to her and not to those on the Front Bench.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
As Chair of the Education Committee, I am pleased to present to the House our fifth report of this Parliament, “Solving the SEND Crisis”. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement.
This inquiry was our first major undertaking in this Parliament. We chose the subject because the crisis in special educational needs and disabilities provision—SEND—is not just a challenge, but a moral imperative. Our report focuses on practical steps that can deliver an education system where every child, regardless of their needs, is given the opportunity to flourish.
The crisis touches every corner of our education system, from early years to post-16 education. It affects 1.7 million children and young people, their families, their teachers and a wide range of other professionals. For too long, children and young people have been let down by a system that is fragmented, not fit for purpose and, as a consequence, often too adversarial. Our report sets out a road map for change—a vision for an inclusive, equitable and sustainable SEND system, grounded in the voices and experiences of the children and families it serves.
Over eight months, we conducted a rigorous inquiry. I put on record my thanks to everyone who took part. We received over 890 written submissions and held seven oral evidence sessions. We heard from children and young people with SEND, whose courage and clarity moved us profoundly. We heard from parents exhausted by battles for basic rights, from teachers stretched beyond capacity and from professionals yearning to deliver but constrained by broken systems. We visited schools in Norfolk and learned from the inclusive model in Ontario, Canada, where children’s needs, not processes, drive support and where SEND provision is everyone’s responsibility.
The evidence is stark. The number of children identified with SEND has risen by 400,000 in a decade to 1.7 million. Nearly half a million children have an education, health and care plan, and 1.2 million rely on SEND support. Behind those numbers lie stories of frustration, exclusion and unrealised potential. Parents told us about sleepless nights, navigating a maze of bureaucracy, and the impact on the whole family of having to fight constantly just for their child to be able to access education. Teachers spoke of the deep frustration they experience when they are unable to meet every child’s needs. Local authorities describe the invidious situation they face, holding the statutory responsibility for delivering for every child, but without the powers to do so, and with a funding crisis that is driving them to the edge of bankruptcy. This is not what inclusion looks like—this is a system at breaking point.
Our report identifies a series of critical failures and offers practical, evidence-based solutions. First, inclusive education remains an aspiration, not a reality. A decade after the 2014 reforms, there is still no shared definition of what inclusion means. Without clarity, schools, local authorities and families are left adrift, with no consistent standard to aim for and no clear accountability for delivering it. We call on the Department for Education to publish a clear definition of inclusive education within three months, underpinned by national standards for SEND support and ordinarily available provision, backed by statutory duties and proper funding.
Secondly, trust has collapsed. Parents and carers feel sidelined, blamed or forced into costly legal battles to secure their child’s rights. Last year, 95% of SEND tribunal appeals were upheld, a damning manifestation of systemic failure. We must rebuild trust through genuine partnership. This means treating parents and carers as equal partners in their child’s education, ensuring access to independent advocacy and making transparency the cornerstone of every process.
Thirdly, while there are many committed, highly skilled professionals who work hard every day to deliver for children, there are some fundamental ways in which our workforce are not equipped to deliver. Teachers and support staff are dedicated but overstretched, lacking the training and resources to meet rising needs. Special educational needs co-ordinators are in short supply and are too often regarded as the sole person with responsibility for SEND support in a school. Educational psychologists are mired in assessments, preventing them from directly delivering interventions and sharing their expertise with other professionals. We propose a cross-departmental SEND workforce strategy, jointly led by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, to invest in training, to secure the recruitment of specialists and to free professionals to focus on frontline support.
Fourthly, funding is broken. The notional £6,000 threshold for SEND support, unchanged since its introduction in 2014, is woefully inadequate. High-needs deficits are spiralling, and the statutory override is a temporary plaster on a deepening wound. We urge the Government to commission a full cost-benefit analysis of inclusive education and to ensure sufficient funding in the high-needs block to deliver early intervention, which can transform lives and reduce long-term costs.
Finally, accountability is failing and there is a structural misalignment of statutory responsibilities and powers. We heard time and again that health and social care partners are too often absent from the SEND table and cannot be held to account. In education, accountability is unevenly distributed, leading to an understandable over-reliance on the statutory part of the system—the education, health and care plans—because it is accountable.
We also heard that local authorities do not have the powers or the funding to deliver the school places that are needed, which is contributing to their financial pressures as they are forced to purchase expensive independent school places to meet their statutory responsibilities. We recommend statutory duties for health and social care, enforceable SEND tribunal powers for health provision and a SEND lead within the NHS to drive accountability, a statutory framework for SEND support and ordinarily available provision, and better alignment between local authorities’ responsibilities and their ability to deliver the school places that are needed to meet them.
We have seen what is possible. At Aylsham high school in Norfolk, we witnessed a resource base seamlessly integrated into mainstream education where every child’s needs are met with flexibility and care. In Ontario, we saw a system where support is based on need, not diagnosis, and where parents are partners, not adversaries. These are not distant dreams; they are models that could be emulated across our country.
I make it absolutely clear that the statutory entitlement to an education, health and care plan should remain unchanged. That is a commitment the Government must honour. During our inquiry, it became crystal clear to us that if we build a truly inclusive and properly resourced mainstream education system, we can ease the pressure and the struggle that so many families face in securing an EHCP, because in settings that have a whole-school approach to inclusivity, the needs of more children are met without having to go through that process.
Inclusive education is not just a right; it is a necessity. It benefits every child, strengthens our schools and builds stronger communities. It is also cost-effective, reducing the long-term burden on public services by investing early in children’s potential.
This report is not a catalogue of despair; it is a call for action. Our 95 recommendations offer a blueprint for reform, rooted in the lived experiences of children, families and professionals. We cannot afford another decade of delay, so I urge the Government to act with urgency and ambition, to work across Departments, to listen to those at the heart of this system, to rebuild trust and to place inclusion at the core of our education system.
Every child deserves the chance to thrive. Every family deserves to be heard. Every education setting deserves the tools to succeed. Let us build a SEND system that delivers not just for today but for generations to come. Let us make inclusion a reality. I commend this report to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. It is usual to run Select Committee statements for only 20 minutes. Members can see that many are standing to speak, so some will be disappointed unless everybody keeps their questions short and the Chair’s answers are also short.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady and her Committee for a detailed and important report on a subject that is of huge importance to all our constituencies. I wanted to pick up particularly on parental involvement in the process, which is primarily covered in paragraphs 96 to 102 of her report. Too often, parents feel that the process is something that is done to them, rather than with them. I would be grateful if the hon. Lady could set out what immediate, practical steps she and her Committee think can be taken to move the process away from feeling like a confrontation and towards more of a collaboration.
Helen Hayes
I thank the right hon. Member for his question, which is an important one. The evidence we saw in Ontario in Canada is that where parental involvement is embedded in the system, partly through statutory entitlements to participation in decisions about a child’s education, that builds much better partnership working, builds trust and confidence, and fosters collaborative relationships between parents and professionals. Those are the steps that we have seen in practice and believe can make a difference in the area that the right hon. Member raises.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
For the record, my wife is employed as a local authority SENCO. In my local authority, the London borough of Bexley, we have not only a safety valve but an Ofsted judgment of systemic failings, one of which was around health services. From having rewritten my own daughter’s EHCP on three occasions to make sure it is legally compliant, and from my constituents, I know of those real issues with health provision. Paragraphs 289 and 290 of the report contain recommendations about the involvement of health services in EHCPs and in SEND provision. Could my hon. Friend elaborate on those recommendations and what we can do to make that provision fit for purpose?
Helen Hayes
I know that my hon. Friend has extensive experience of this area, not least through his own family experience. I am really pleased to see Ministers and the Secretary of State from the Department of Health and Social Care on the Front Bench for this statement—by accident, I think, but I will take full advantage of it.
We heard time and time again from parents and from professionals working in the SEND system that health has such an important role to play in the ability of children with SEND to access education, but that health services are too often absent from the table and there are no mechanisms to hold them to account. It is nonsense that the SEND tribunal can make rulings that are binding on education, but cannot make rulings that are binding on health. As we propose in our report, that is an easy fix that would create more accountability in the health system. Our report contains other recommendations, but we need to get this right, because the consequence of not getting it right is children being locked out of education.
Chris Coghlan (Dorking and Horley) (LD)
There is a 12-year-old child in Dorking who is autistic and has had two suicide attempts, the most recent within the past four weeks. They do not have an EHCP. As the Chair acknowledges in the report, there are serious concerns about local authority governance. I have received 120 family testimonies from Surrey and 650 from across the country of lawbreaking, unethical and harmful behaviour by local authorities related to SEND. How can parents have confidence that lives such as that child’s will be saved unless and until local authorities are held accountable under the law and there is swift and decisive intervention if they abuse their powers?
Helen Hayes
The hon. Member raises a devastating case, which is sadly not a unique example across the country. The pressures that families face as a consequence of this failing system cause further health complications, not least with mental health and wellbeing. He is right that there are problems with local authorities’ ability to deliver against their statutory responsibilities. We highlight in our report the broken nature of the link between powers and responsibilities—currently, local authorities do not have everything they need to enable them to deliver—but the crisis across the system also masks local authorities that are performing poorly, even by the current standard. I believe the hon. Member’s local authority is one that faces particular challenges.
Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for the report—we agree with the recommendations that have been made. Does she agree that the Select Committee reached those recommendations by engaging with communities and local MPs, such as in Corby and East Northamptonshire, which brought together local SENCOs, parents and others to input directly into the Committee’s report? Will she thank them, as I do, and say well done to them for shaping that report and its outcomes? That is where it needs to come from—people who face these issues day in and day out making sure that this report belongs to them.
Helen Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. It was a real pleasure to meet some of his constituents who came to Parliament to participate in a workshop and to present their findings and their recommendations to me, which were then submitted as evidence to our inquiry. I hope that his constituents will see their experiences and their needs reflected in our report, and I agree with him that part of the key to solving this enormously challenging area of public policy is better engagement with parents, families and professionals across the country. That is how we understand where change needs to take place, and it is how we build trust for the future.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for her statement. As part of the evidence we gathered, we went to Ontario to see its inclusive education system, and I am sure I was not alone in finding that one of the bits of evidence that made the most impression. A couple of things stood out. Ontario focuses on communication from kindergarten, because social integration is vital for children to thrive. Parents there do not have to fight, because dialogue works better. Families are listened to and their trauma acknowledged. All behaviour is a form of communication; we have to understand what these children are trying to tell us. Does the Chair of the Committee agree that there is so much we can do to transform the education we offer to children with SEND that does not need to cost huge amounts of money? It just requires a radical shift in attitude, and that starts with—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I made the point earlier that in order to get as many Members in as possible, we have to have short questions and answers.
Helen Hayes
I thank the hon. Member for her question, for her participation in this inquiry and for the contributions she made to our report. What we saw in Canada showed us what is possible here. We saw a system where SEND education is everybody’s responsibility in a school and across the system. We saw children with much higher levels of need than would ever be usually in a mainstream school here, with their needs being met well. There were huge benefits for the whole school community and the wider community from that approach. I hope that the Government will take seriously the recommendations that come from that experience in Ontario.
Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her statement. Does she agree that improving ordinarily available provision alongside effective SEND support can meet many pupils’ needs without the need for an EHCP, as our Committee’s visit to Aylsham high school in Norwich proved? Does she hope, as I do, that the Government’s forthcoming White Paper will not seek to restrict access to EHCPs, but instead will offer earlier and effective support, thereby bringing the need for EHCPs down naturally?
Helen Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her contribution to this report as a member of the Select Committee. The situation that we saw in Aylsham high was one where children’s needs were met across the whole school through a whole-school approach to inclusion. The headteacher of that school told us powerfully, “We are not a net generator of new EHCPs.” We are talking about what we have seen being delivered and what we therefore know is possible. A system that delivers whole-school approaches to inclusion can restore the EHCP to what it was originally intended to do under the Children and Families Act 2014—specifically to deliver support for the children with the highest levels of need. An inclusive approach to education can work for everyone.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
One of the key findings of the report is that there needs to be a clear definition of what an inclusive education means. Does the Chair of the Select Committee agree that inflexible, draconian disciplinary systems at secondary level applied without consideration for reasonable adjustments are one of the things that contribute to a hostile environment for children with SEND? Will the Select Committee consider that and how we might improve education for all children?
Helen Hayes
This is why we are concerned that there should be a definition of inclusive education applying across a number of dimensions of the system, so that we can think about buildings and the extent to which they are inclusive, welcoming environments, about the curriculum and the flexibilities that it affords to deliver for children, about the expertise within the system, and about other aspects of education as well. The hon. Lady is right to say that the policy approaches taken by schools have a bearing on whether those schools are accessible to the widest possible range of pupils; that is why it is important for the Government to set out the definition, so that everyone is clear about the basis on which we are working.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
I started my teacher training in 2008, and I continued to work as a teacher and to be a teacher trade unionist until 4 July last year. I knew that the SEND system was broken, although I did not realise quite how broken it was until I opened my emails on day one. We all know that the system is broken throughout the country, but it is most broken in Staffordshire, a place that I have the pleasure to represent but which has the eighth highest refusal rate for EHCPs in the country, rejecting more than 45% of requests. It also has a high rate of appeals, more than double the national average at nearly 10%, and a startling 98% of those appeals are successful. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we genuinely want to solve the SEND crisis, we must solve the problem of the postcode lottery that so disadvantages people in Lichfield, Burntwood and the villages, and more widely across Staffordshire?
Helen Hayes
My hon. Friend is right. As we made clear in our report, there are pockets of very good delivery—there are schools, local authorities and professionals across the system that are doing their best—but there is a postcode lottery in SEND, sometimes even within different schools that are very close to each other. We need a whole-system reset so that we can secure consistent delivery for all children, wherever they live.
Baby Loss
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Andy MacNae, who will speak for about 15 minutes.
Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered baby loss.
I am deeply privileged to be opening this debate in the middle of national Baby Loss Awareness Week, and in advance of the international “wave of light” on Wednesday. I want to start by welcoming the bereaved families who have joined us in the Galleries, and particularly for doing so at such a late hour: they have shown fantastic stamina in sitting through some fascinating business. I know that a number are also watching online. I have no doubt this will, for many of us, be an emotive debate that will bring back many memories, so I say this to those in the Galleries: I am grateful for your courage in joining us, and your presence lifts this whole debate and this whole day. I know that for many of you, your story is one of being let down by the system. While today cannot undo that, I hope that this national spotlight on what you have experienced, and our shared commitment to fundamental change, will be of some comfort. I also thank everyone in the Chamber for their attendance today, and for the cross-party support that the debate has received.
This is a personal topic for me and for my family. Our daughter Mallorie was born in 2015 with Edwards’ syndrome, a condition that we were told was not compatible with life; yet she lived for five days, and died in my arms. Those days were both the hardest of our lives and the time that we value most. We spent those days in the butterfly suite, a bereavement room funded by the local baby loss charity Friends of Serenity. Throughout that time, we received amazing support from the maternity team at Burnley hospital. I want to take this opportunity to thank, once again, all the team at Burnley, and to recognise the amazing work that baby loss charities do throughout the UK.
The years since Mallorie’s death have been challenging. The impacts of losing a child do not end after a week or a month or a year; they stay with us. My wife, Vanessa, suffered depression and post-traumatic stress disorder following Mallorie’s death, and has never been able to fully recover and return to her work as a health visitor. For 10 years she has had consistent difficulties in accessing sustained specialist mental health support, instead being bounced between short-term interventions and generalists. Her NHS career has now been terminated on grounds of ill health, and she is back on a five-month waiting list for therapy. Yet we count ourselves among the lucky ones. We had as good a hospital experience as we could have had in the circumstances, and time to prepare for what we knew was an inevitable outcome. We did not leave feeling that more could have been done, or that we had been let down; we felt listened to and supported in the weeks that followed.
Sadly, however, as we will hear today, far, far too many families have had the very opposite of that experience. We will hear heartbreaking accounts of babies who should not have died, of families’ concerns being belittled and ignored, of practices that fall well below any acceptable standard, and of institutional cultures of denial and cover-up. I believe that as we reach the end of today’s debate, no one will be in any doubt that addressing the long-term systemic failings in maternity care once and for all must be an imperative for this Government.
Let me start by detailing the extent of this challenge. Tragically, 13 babies die shortly before, during or soon after birth every day. Every day, 13 mothers know the immense grief of losing a child they were expecting to welcome into their lives. In 2023, there were 4,478 baby deaths in total. Some 1,933 of these were neonatal deaths, while 2,545 were stillbirths, with the cause of one third of those stillbirths still unknown. More broadly, ectopic pregnancy affects one in 80, while 240 infants die every year from sudden unexplained death syndrome, and evidence suggests that one in six pregnancies in the UK ends in miscarriage.
Crucially, these family tragedies are not shared equally throughout society; ethnic minorities and those living in deprivation are far more likely to experience this loss. This has been known for 70 years, yet little action has been taken to address it. Even in 2023, black babies were over twice as likely to be stillborn compared with white babies, while neonatal mortality rates among black and Asian babies were over one and a half times higher than the rate among white babies. Similarly, babies born to mothers living in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to die shortly after birth than those in the least deprived areas. This profound inequality must be rooted out.
These deaths occur amid a pattern of poor culture and practice in too many of our maternity wards and trusts. In its 2022 to 2024 review, the Care Quality Commission found that only 35% of maternity units were rated as “good” for safety. No units were found to be “outstanding”, and 65% were rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement”. Behind these figures lies a litany of family tragedy. In response, there has been no shortage of inquiries. Over the last 10 years, we have seen reviews or investigations into care in East Kent, Morecambe Bay, and Shrewsbury and Telford, as well as the ongoing review in Nottingham. These have revealed much and made many recommendations, yet change has not come and the cycle of failure has continued.
It is in this context that the Government have rightly decided to launch a national investigation—a systematic and urgent national review of maternity services. This is an opportunity that we must grasp, and we have a Secretary of State who I believe truly understands the urgency and importance of making it count. We have the investigation being led by a chair of the highest reputation, we have a commitment to a taskforce to deliver on recommendations, and we have many colleagues in this place who are determined to make sure that the voices of families are heard and acted on.
We must get this right, so before I hand over to colleagues, I would like to make four key asks. First, the investigation must provide clear and binding steps to achieve national change in maternity care, particularly to tackle the inequality of outcomes that is dependent on the race or wealth of the mother. To this end, the investigation must set out clear, consistent approaches to safety across all maternity units in England, which means unequivocally defining “safety”—amazingly, there is no shared definition of “safety” across maternity services. The inquiry must identify the reasons why past recommendations have not been implemented or resulted in change. It must be willing to address any embedded cultural, structural or governance factors that undermine quality, safety and accountability. When the investigation reports and the taskforce releases its action plan, the Government must fully resource the delivery and ensure there is robust monitoring and real accountability.
Secondly, it is crucial that the Government set new national maternity safety ambitions. In 2015, the then Government announced ambitions to halve relative rates of stillbirth, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries by 2025. Alongside that, they also announced an ambition to reduce preterm births from 8% to 6%. Those ambitions are due to expire and, in any case, were never on track to being met. It is a stark reminder of how important this issue is that 2,500 fewer babies would have died if the targets had been reached.
The UK’s baby death rate is still considerably worse than those of the best-performing countries in Europe. To match those countries, Sands and Tommy’s have proposed new ambitions, with an end date of 2035 to align with the NHS 10-year plan. I apologise for the list, but they include a stillbirth rate of two per 1,000 total births; a neonatal mortality rate of 0.5 per 1,000 live births for babies born at 24 weeks’ gestation and over; a preterm birth rate of 6%, with disaggregated data for iatrogenic and spontaneous preterm births; and eliminating inequalities in these outcomes based on ethnicity and deprivation.
The Government’s commitment to close the black and Asian maternal mortality gap is welcome, but it must explicitly include closing the black and Asian stillbirth and neonatal mortality gaps. Establishing routine data collection on miscarriages should be prioritised. Once that is established, an ambition to reduce the miscarriage rate should be added. I urge the Government to be ambitious, and to implement these new targets, which will help to guide and inform the improvements that will be made in services in the years to come.
Thirdly, we must urgently improve bereavement care for parents in hospitals and the mental health support they receive after discharge. Losing a child is devastating, and compassionate care, both immediately and in the long term, is vital to processing grief. The national bereavement care pathway aims to standardise bereavement care, and states that this should be given by trained staff, with dedicated grieving spaces provided, opportunities for parents to have meaningful moments with their baby offered and referrals for further support made.
Since its 2017 launch, NHS trusts have gradually adopted the pathway, with full coverage achieved in 2024. However, voluntary uptake and a lack of ringfenced funding have led to highly inconsistent implementation, and sometimes it is entirely lacking. A bereaved mother described the hospital support she received as:
“Terrible. No aftercare whatsoever. I felt abandoned. My mental health spiralled due to lack of support and not knowing where to get help… I left that hospital with a broken heart.”
Bereavement support must continue post discharge. I have described the challenges that my wife Vanessa has faced in accessing specialist support, and she is by no means alone. Sands’ 2025 report found that over 80% of bereaved parents needed specialist psychological support post discharge, yet despite the introduction of NHS maternal mental health services in England, only 17% of bereaved parents were actually able to access it.
We must also recognise the additional barriers that fathers and partners face in accessing support. Only 29% of services offered basic assessments to fathers in 2024, and those are often quite perfunctory. One father explained how he was assessed and recommended for psychological interventions and a referral to a clinic, yet the only support he actually received was a leaflet outlining local self-help groups. It is not good enough, and services must recognise that fathers and partners also grieve. So I urge the Government to issue clear standards and national guidance for commissioning specialist mental health support services for bereaved parents, including fathers and partners.
Support must also be given to healthcare professionals, who can themselves be impacted by baby deaths. Training remains inaccessible for many healthcare professionals, and staff often lack the time to attend sessions. Bereavement care training must be available during work hours, and overall we must ensure staff are equipped to support grieving families and to look after themselves.
Finally, I want to touch briefly on the role of regulators, most notably the Nursing and Midwifery Council. In an area as critical as maternity safety, an effective and accountable regulator is a crucial component, yet issues with the NMC are long term and well documented. As was noted in relation to the 2024 culture review of the organisation:
“Good nurses are finding themselves being investigated for years over minor issues and bad nurses are escaping sanction because of a system that’s not functioning as well as it should.”
Such failures can have tragic consequences. For instance, the NMC cleared a midwife who had been referred to it following the avoidable death of a baby in Morecambe Bay in 2008. In 2016, the same midwife was linked to the death of another baby, and subsequently dismissed by their trust for actions fundamentally below acceptable standards. This cannot continue, and if we are to deliver on our maternity safety ambitions, we need an effective, culturally healthy regulator. The NMC still has a long way to go until it could contribute in this way. The Government must continue to offer rigorous scrutiny, demanding accountability and ensuring that the NMC becomes the regulator that nurses and midwives, as well as the public as a whole, deserve.
To sum up, each year babies die who should not have died, every year mothers are failed and harmed, and every year parents experience profound loss without the support to deal with it. We cannot continue as we are. We have both an opportunity and an obligation to act. This Government have the chance to drive a change that will be felt in the lives of families for generations. To do this, we must deliver on the full potential of a national investigation. Clear, impactful and binding actions must address systemic weaknesses and embedded cultures. To ensure long-term focus, we must also adopt ambitious, measurable targets to align with the NHS 10-year plan.
These steps to reduce baby loss must come in tandem with a compassionate system of care for those who do experience loss despite our best efforts. To this end, the Government should issue national guidance on commissioning specialist mental health services for bereaved parents. Finally, the Government must ensure the sector has capable and accountable regulators to ensure that professional standards are maintained. Taken together, we can make what has been a story of national tragedy into one of national pride, delivering compassionate and exemplary care for women and babies when they need it most. This is the challenge and the opportunity before us, and we must not fall short.
Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae). I thank him for working with me and the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) to secure the debate, and I thank my many colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety. I would also like to thank the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), for being here himself today. It means an enormous amount to families up and down the country to see that commitment from him. I know it is an issue in which he has taken enormous personal interest.
I think the most difficult meeting I had when I was doing his job many years ago was with a man called Carl Hendrickson, who came to see me a few days before I stood at that Dispatch Box to give the statement on the Morecambe Bay inquiry. Carl lost both his wife and his son at Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust. A midwife mistook some fitting by his wife as just fainting. His wife died an hour later from an embolism. The next day, his son Chester died from brain damage. He came to see me with his 11-year-old son, Conrad. I will never forget it, because it was obviously going to be a very difficult meeting and I asked him whether he would like his son to sit outside with some of the civil servants while we discussed what happened. He said no, because he wanted his son to know, for the rest of his life, that he had taken his concerns about what went wrong right to the very top and asked awkward questions. And that was what he did.
I owe a great debt to the Morecambe Bay families: to Carl and to Simon Davey, Liza Brady, James Titcombe and many others. The American thinker Margaret Mead had a saying:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
For me, those Morecambe Bay families were that small group of thoughtful, committed people, along with the families from Mid Staffs, Shrewsbury and Telford, East Kent, Nottingham and many other places.
As we reflect in this very sad and meaningful Baby Loss Awareness Week about what has gone wrong, it is also important to remember that progress has been made since then. Since the Morecambe Bay inquiry, the overall number of baby deaths is down by about 20%. That is about 700 fewer a year, or two fewer a day. The NHS is better than it was about being honest about mistakes. There have been a lot of reforms. We have a chief inspector of hospitals and a CQC that is set up to call a spade a spade when there is poor care. We have the duty of candour, which will be further strengthened by the new Hillsborough law. We have medical examiners, we have Martha’s rule and we have “freedom to speak up” guardians.
Despite those improvements, there are some warning signs. Since the pandemic, the decline in baby deaths has plateaued. The number of maternal deaths has actually increased. As the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen just said, there is big inequality. You are far more likely to die as a black or Asian mum. You are far more likely to die as a black or Asian baby, or a baby from a deprived background, than other babies. Still we have a third of NHS staff, according to the staff survey last year, saying that they are afraid to raise safety concerns, and half saying that they do not think anything will happen if they do.
The thing that is so important to remember—I have said this to the House on many occasions—is that if you are in a birthing unit and present at a C-section and something goes wrong, there is nothing as a professional that you want more than to be open, honest and transparent about what happened, so that lessons can be learned and you can make sure that mistake never happens again. But our system makes that practically impossible. We have the CQC, the NMC, the General Medical Council and the trust. Lawyers get involved and people worry. There is jeopardy for clinicians: that if they are honest and open about the ordinary human mistakes that anyone can make, they will be punished for it. The result is that the one thing that needs to happen more than anything else—truthfulness to the bereaved families and learning the lessons so that the tragedy is not repeated—can be the very thing that does not happen at all. Instead, we get a five-year legal process happening and the truth is not established for maybe five, six or seven years after that.
So what needs to happen to put it right? We all have our lists of things, and I echo absolutely everything that was said in the wonderful speech before mine. For me, first of all, it is absolutely essential that we get the CQC back on its feet. It went badly wrong, but under new leadership that the Secretary of State has put in place, I believe it is now going in absolutely the right direction. We must return to the one-word ratings so that parents and families know absolutely whether the care in their local hospital or NHS organisation is safe. That is really important.
Secondly, we have a litigation culture. At the moment we spend about £3.5 billion annually in maternity awards for where maternity care has gone wrong, which is not far off the £4 billion total cost of all NHS maternity units. It has gone so badly wrong that many parents think that when something goes wrong, their only friend is not a doctor but a lawyer—that cannot be right. We need to have much better accountability. The Government are rightly absolutely committed to bringing back family doctors. People having their own GP would make an enormous difference, because at the moment there is no one inside the NHS to turn to when these things go wrong, and going back to the system of everyone having their own GP could make a really big difference to that.
We need to support the work of brilliant charities such as Tommy’s, Sands, the Clinical Human Factors Group and Baby Lifeline in their contribution to making maternity care safer. We also need to tackle the dangerous culture of “normal” births, which still sees too many mothers steered away from getting a surgical intervention when that would be the safest route for them and their baby. Those are all important changes.
I would like to say one final thing, which is that we must not return to a targets culture. I have some concerns about the new NHS league tables. I know they are set up with the best of intentions, but safety and quality is not one of the factors that ensures a move up the list. I know the Secretary of State will take great care in the way that those are implemented, but I think it is really important that there is always a bottom line—a floor—on safety and quality below which the system never goes.
What I really want to say to the House, in conclusion, is that we must not lose hope. If we had the same levels of maternity safety as Sweden, one fewer baby would die every day; if we got to the same levels as Japan, two fewer babies would die every day. If we could get the NHS back on the trajectory it was on in the years leading up to the pandemic, we would be able to get to care as safe as Sweden’s in the next five or six years, so it really is something within our grasp.
I will finish by saying this. The NHS was set up on the premise of equality, and the idea that no matter who we are—whether we are rich or poor, young or old, from the north or the south, from the city or the country—everyone should be able to access the healthcare they need. Everyone means every baby, too. We talk about safety more than any other healthcare system in the world. In this very sad week, when we remember all the people who have lost their dear babies and their dear loved ones in the process of having babies, let us redouble our efforts to make the NHS the safest, highest-quality healthcare system in the world.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I will now call the next co-sponsor of the debate. After she has spoken, there will be a five-minute time limit.
Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)
As a harmed mother from Nottinghamshire, I gave birth to my son by emergency C-section because health professionals treated me with utter contempt, ignored me and did not do as they should, and then said it was all my fault. My son was not put in my arms when he was born; instead, he was rushed over to a consultant to start him breathing. While I wish I had time to share the details of what happened in the Chamber so that others can understand the severity of a failing system, time does not permit me.
To those who have lost a baby, we know that when the world says, “I’m sorry for your loss”, it sounds thin and distant, because what was lost was not just a child. Families have lost first breaths, first steps, first days of school, and a lifetime of “I love you.” They have lost hope.
We must stop whispering about baby loss in the shadows. We must speak about the preventable errors, missed opportunities and systemic failures in our maternity services that have turned dreams into dust. Grief is a fact, but these failures are not inevitable. For too long the grief of affected families has been treated as a private sorrow and an isolated tragedy, but let me be clear: these are not isolated incidents. The heartbreak and loss are a consequence of a system that is failing, where warnings are missed, staffing is insufficient, preventable errors steal precious futures, tragedies are swept under the carpet and families have to fight for answers.
We have heard the data and read the reports, and we have shared our devastating stories. We know the truth: maternity services are fundamentally broken and our babies are paying the price. I am not asking for a miracle, but I am demanding competence, safety and accountability, and a country where every mother who walks into a delivery room knows that she is in the safest hands possible and that her baby will be protected. Our children deserve that safety, and the children yet to come deserve it too.
While we cannot bring back the precious babies we lost, we can honour their memory by ensuring that their fate is never repeated. We are not just mourning a past but fighting for a future where safety is guaranteed, where every mother is heard and where every birth is met with the excellence and dedication it deserves. Let the memory of the children we hold in our hearts be the light that guides our resolve. Let the stories be the steel in our spine. We pledge to them and ourselves that we will fix maternity services and build a legacy of safety so powerful that their short lives will forever protect the long lives of others, and we will do it for good.
I know from my own experience as a harmed mother in Nottinghamshire that speaking out and sharing what are potentially the most traumatic and personal experiences can be terrifying, and I want to commend those who have spoken out publicly and the hundreds of families who have spoken to me about their experiences. From talking to thousands of women and families, I have seen the recurring issues within our maternity services, including a culture of women not being listened to, a lack of accountability and situations where babies have died in the most horrendous circumstances and families are having to fight over and over again for answers and to relive the worst moments of their lives over and over again because the systems in this country are quite frankly broken.
I was the first elected member in Nottinghamshire to call for an independent review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust back in 2020. I am immensely grateful to the families, some of whom are in the Gallery today, who are leading the fight for change in Nottingham. We know that almost one in five stillbirths and neonatal deaths in this country could have been prevented through better care, yet the previous Government failed to act on this crisis, and families across the country have suffered immensely as a consequence. If I hear one more time that a previous Government Minister stood up and said that they were going to do it—well, they did not. They did not assign funding to it. They gave false promises to women and babies. We have a real opportunity under this Government to make maternity safer. Every woman deserves a birth experience where she feels heard, respected and, above all, safe.
Let me also be clear that this should never be an argument about natural versus surgical; it should be about what is the safest option for each woman. For too long the narrative has been poisoned by judgment. We have seen a damaging trend of labelling C-sections as a failure, a shortcut or a lesser way to give birth. The judgment is not just unfair but dangerous. The pressure created by this toxic conversation can sometimes push clinicians to delay necessary, lifesaving procedures or make women feel immense guilt for a safe outcome. Let us be clear that the safest birth is the most informed birth.
We must ensure that every woman has access to high-quality education regarding birth and feels confident asking critical questions about their care. We need to create a space where asking for help is seen not as a weakness but as a commitment to their wellbeing and their baby’s health. We must empower and support doctors, midwives and nurses, so that they can make decisions purely on medical necessity and safety—decisions that are free from dangerous judgments, including regarding C-sections. That requires us to have a workforce in place, so that clinicians can do their job, can make time for training, and, most importantly, once again have time to listen.
A key part of the conversation is continuity of care. We must ensure that midwives are given time to fully understand each woman’s needs and wants. By doing so, we can reduce the number of instances in which potentially life-threatening issues are missed and women fall through the cracks. Continuity of care can help address disparities in maternity care. When women—particularly black, Asian and minority women—see the same midwife throughout their pregnancy, they can build a relationship and ensure that their experience, culture and religious needs are considered. That creates a safer place for women to discuss sensitive issues and removes the frustration of having to repeat their story to numerous staff. If we can rebalance the conversations and culture around birth and put in place a system that allows for continuity of care, we can reduce the harm done to babies and families.
Continuity of care after birth will also be vital in reducing the incidence of death just after birth, which disproportionately affects babies born to mothers living in the most deprived areas of the UK; they are twice as likely to die in their first month as babies born to mothers in the least deprived areas. Change is so desperately needed. That is what families need, and what they are calling for. It is time to listen to the bereaved, and to harmed families, and to put them at the heart of any reforms.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for making such a moving speech; she is an inspirational mum, raising awareness of this. If she will allow, I will raise the case of Hayley Patrick-Copeland, a bereaved mum who has been raising awareness of baby loss and putting in place support for bereaved parents. If I may, I will also put on the record in this place, for centuries to come, the names of her children, Alya and Aleah, whom she lost. Will my hon. Friend join me in remembering them, and in commending Hayley for her inspirational work, just like my hon. Friend’s, raising awareness of baby loss?
Michelle Welsh
I thank my hon. Friend; that was an important thing to say.
I was so pleased when the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced a rapid review of maternity services, which I believe he did to ensure that we get on with fixing the problems that we know are there—for example, with continuity of care—as soon as possible. It is vital that we take families with us and ensure that they are listened to and treated with respect. Let us not waste this real opportunity to change the systems that have been harming families for far too long.
The final key aspect that I would like to address is the need for true accountability. Too often, negligence leads to loss; the failures are there for everyone to see. I ask those who have recently called for a reduction in accountability this: how can accountability be reduced to improve maternity services when it is not even there? I am not talking about hounding midwives and obstetricians, but if someone makes a mistake again and again, as we saw in Nottinghamshire, families have to fight for the truth. Mothers leave hospital having been made to think that they were at fault. There has to be accountability. We need accountability and support to allow midwives to become great. Families should be clear about the process, which should work with them, so that they get answers and the truth without having to fight for them.
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and is a great advocate on this subject. I am sure she knows about the MBRRACE-UK—Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK—data; it shows mortality rates across the country. Like Nottinghamshire, Leeds has high mortality rates—in fact, they are the highest in the UK and 70% higher than the average. Those preventable baby losses are not an accident or a statistical mistake. Does she agree that the leadership of hospital trusts with such high rates need to take accountability and fix them? This is not an issue for individual maternity units; this should be taken on by the chief executive and those at the highest level in teaching hospitals.
Michelle Welsh
I absolutely agree; if we had that approach in Nottinghamshire, the story would have been very different.
This starts with us building a culture that allows people to say, “This went wrong, and this is why. I made a mistake, and I am sorry. It’s time to fix it.” We cannot accept any more maternity scandals in this country. Of course, there will be times when nothing more can be done, through nobody’s fault, but in instances where mistakes were made, clinicians need to come forward. How do we learn from mistakes if they are never identified?
Regulators such as the Care Quality Commission, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the General Medical Council need to step up. The evidence is there for all to see in Nottinghamshire: the NMC failed, the GMC failed and the CQC failed. All those organisations were informed over and over again about what was happening in Nottingham, and nothing was done—not one thing. To this day, no one has been held accountable.
I welcome the Government’s decision to publish a consultation on secondary legislation in order to modernise regulatory frameworks. I would be grateful to hear more about that. I ask the Government to involve bereaved and harmed families in the process, because regulation must work for families, and to work with organisations such as the Royal College of Midwives to ensure that clinicians are involved. In any reform and change, there must be balance.
It is time for this Labour Government to take action. What successive Governments have allowed to unfold in maternity care tells a devastating story about how little the lives and experience of women are valued. Those of us who were made to feel completely expendable at the most vulnerable moment in our life will know that to be only too true. In choosing how to respond, this Government have a powerful opportunity to send a decisive message about how they view and value women.
It is possible to make change. Every day, I meet fantastic organisations run by people who have used their experience to fuel their work to change lives. They include Jo Cruse from Delivering Better, Sharon Luca from the Luca Foundation, Heidi Eldridge from the MAMA Academy, Laura Corcoran from Dignity Care Network, and Clo and Tinuke from Five X More. I could name so many more.
It is truly astonishing how many people across the country, from all corners of our society, from mothers to midwives, are working themselves to the bone to improve our maternity and bereavement services. They are all pushing for change for women and the babies of the future. This is no longer just a campaign; it is a movement, and if the Government and the NHS do not act now, they risk being left behind. We face many crises in our maternity services, and the only way through them is together. Families, midwifes, mothers, fathers, nurses, obstetricians, charities, decision makers and Members of Parliament must come together in this movement to fundamentally reshape our services, so that safe birth, continuity of care and accountability are at their centre.
All of us here are bound by a shared, heartbreaking truth: no parent should have to say goodbye before hello. Affected families deserve more than condolences. It is up to us in this Chamber to demand an end to the preventable failures, systemic neglect and outdated protocols that steal futures. Grief must become the engine of change. It is not enough to patch a broken system; we must rebuild it, stronger and safer than ever before, for every baby whose life was too short, for every family left shattered, and for every future family depending on us right now. Our task is clear. The time for analysis is over. The time for delay is over. I will not rest until our maternity services are fixed, permanently and profoundly.
We are fighting for a future in which safety is guaranteed, every mother is heard and every birth is met with the excellence and dedication it deserves. Let the memory of the children we hold in our hearts be the light that guides our resolve: baby Harriett, baby Teddy, baby Junior, Amaya, baby Winter, Maya, Dexter, Smokey, baby Ladybird and baby Coupa, the wonderful, kind and funny Ryan, and every baby and mother impacted and gone too soon. We must pledge to them and to ourselves that we will fix maternity services. We will build a legacy of safety so powerful that their short lives will forever protect the long lives of others, and we will do it for good.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
This Baby Loss Awareness Week, we honour those children who are loved and missed, and we recognise the parents, siblings, families and friends who carry their memories every day. Today, I want to emphasise just how vital it is that we see the quality of bereavement care standardised, and that this standard is mandated for every NHS trust and health board.
My constituents John and Holly Osman live in Wells with their two lively children, six-year-old twins named Alex and Amelia. It may surprise some of my constituents that I speak about John, as we do not share a political perspective. However, we share a life experience with each other, many of my constituents and, I understand, one in every two people in this country: the terrible loss of a pregnancy or the death of a baby. That experience transcends all political differences.
Some eight years ago, John and Holly lost their much loved twins, Logan and Lottie, five months into their pregnancy. Logan and Lottie’s lives were short. Logan was with them for 15 minutes and Lottie for 57 minutes. Holly, who is in the Gallery this evening, tells me that registering their births and deaths will remain one of the hardest things they have ever had to do.
John and Holly were lucky to receive excellent bereavement care from the team at the Royal United hospital at Bath, which in 2017 and 2018 was piloting the national bereavement care pathway. Being able to deliver in the forget me not suite, where they receive care from trained bereavement midwives and spent two days with their babies making memories, is something they say they probably did not realise how much they needed then, but that they cherish deeply now.
As Holly highlights, the power of compassionate, skilled bereavement care cannot be overstated. It helps parents begin to process trauma, to create memories and to honour a life, however short. That care does not erase loss, but it brings dignity, acknowledgement and a foundation for healing. The care that parents receive in those heartbreaking moments stays with them forever. No one can turn back the clock, but we can make a difference through having compassion, understanding and better care.
It shocked me that 50% of bereaved parents reported that they were able to access the support they needed, but only 17% were able to do so through the NHS. I pay tribute to the NHS clinicians, midwives and support staff who deliver that care with tenderness and professionalism. Good care helps parents and families begin to navigate the painful journey of bereavement. Whether those NHS staff who engage with the bereaved family during this journey have received specialist bereavement training depends on where that care is being provided.
Poor care can deepen trauma. We know that bereavement leaves parents vulnerable to increased risk of developing mental health conditions. That is why it is essential that every bereaved parent in the UK has access to standardised high-quality bereavement support, including clear signposting, timely referrals and specialist mental health care when it is needed most.
Excellent bereavement care should not be a matter of luck or postcode. The national bereavement care pathway has finally been adopted voluntarily by every hospital offering maternity care in England, with the last trust having adopted it last year. However, in Scotland, the pathway has been mandated by Government. The difficulty with voluntary adoption is exactly that: it is voluntary, which means that the nine standards of care that comprise the bereavement care pathway are not national standards in England until they are mandated by the Department of Health and Social Care. I ask the Secretary of State to consider mandating the bereavement care pathway with immediate effect, so that families and friends can be reassured that care in the most difficult of circumstances will be exemplary.
To Lottie and Logan’s family and to the many others who have written to me, thank you for your courage in sharing the most personal of stories. Your love for your children and your determination to help other families is a gift to us all. We cannot take away the pain of loss, but we can ensure that no parent walks through it alone.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I welcome this important debate, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), for bringing to the House, during Baby Loss Awareness Week, this debate on a grief that touches thousands, who often grieve in silence.
I will use this debate to call for a UK-wide perinatal death reduction programme, and will talk about foetal growth restriction monitoring. I am really glad that the Secretary of State for Health is in the Chamber; that shows his commitment. This debate is well timed to inform the rapid review of maternity and neonatal safety in England.
For many, baby loss is invisible and misunderstood. This week breaks that silence, honours lives cut short and stands with families who carry their babies’ memory every day. Like other Members, I pay tribute to charities like Sands, Tommy’s and the Miscarriage Association. Their work must be supported and recognised.
I speak with a heavy heart to share the story of Maia Devlin Corfield, a beautiful baby girl who should be here today. Her parents Sherena and Jack came to my advice surgery to tell me about Maia’s stillbirth at Kingston hospital. Though Sherena’s pregnancy was low risk, Maia showed signs of growth restriction. Staff reassured Sherena but failed to act. Maia was born still on 29 November 2024. The autopsy showed she was healthy, but died due to a placental condition that halted her growth and breathing.
Babies with growth issues like Maia are eight times more likely to die, and it was Kingston’s foetal growth monitoring system that failed her. It diverged from national standards and, despite early warnings, many unsafe practices like that remain. The Government’s own maternity and neonatal safety investigation into Maia’s death made nine recommendations, yet risks still persist and are not listened to. Sherena and Jack often feel that they are not being listened to, but bereaved parents need to be heard because by listening to them, we can identify those areas that need to change. It is that culture and the regulation and standards that all need to work together to see real change.
Freedom of information requests by Sherena and Jack have revealed that at least 27 trusts cannot properly identify babies with growth issues. The issue is that many hospitals use a global growth monitoring system that under-detects small babies in high-income countries like the UK because it uses data from across the world. Safer UK-developed systems based on NHS data do exist and are used by many units, but Maia was failed by outdated growth charts still in use at Kingston and St George’s and at many other hospitals. A key part of the system is those growth charts. Donald Peebles, NHS England’s clinical director for maternity, has confirmed that a national safety alert will soon advise trusts to stop using these intergrowth charts, but is there a system to track which hospitals still use them, and how can we update foetal growth monitoring systems urgently?
I have also talked to the chief nurse for the South West London integrated care board, who highlighted issues of midwife retention and recruitment and, in particular, maternity triage, which needs reform with a universal standard that would ensure consistency of safety and access—those early warning systems that failed Maia and are failing others. Just as we have a mental health investment standard, we should consider a similar maternity services standard as well.
I turn to the demands for change. The “Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle” published by NHS England in June 2023 outlines three key elements for foetal growth monitoring, but they are not consistently adopted and then monitored to ensure that they are implemented. There are too few of those deaths in each trust to rely on the trust to take the action; it has to be done at a national level. In fact, it has to be done across every nation—Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England—otherwise there will be inconsistencies as there already are between the different nations. Will the Minister work with counterparts across the UK to ensure that no nation falls behind? Will the Minister meet Sherena and Jack to discuss how to improve maternity care and look at the findings they have? We owe it to Maia. We owe it to every family shattered by preventable baby loss to demand accountability, enforce standards and ensure that no parent is ever told that everything is fine when it is not.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) both for bringing this debate during Baby Loss Awareness Week and the incredibly thoughtful and moving contributions they have already made to the House. I suspect we will see this House at its best this evening, debating in a measured but passionate way something of huge importance to so many of our constituents.
I welcome to the Public Gallery those family members who have stayed until this late hour because this matters so much to them. I pay tribute to Bliss, Sands and other charities that do so much in this space. It has been a privilege for me to meet, and read correspondence from, constituents of mine who have been affected by baby loss. I have to say, they have carried themselves with the most incredible dignity given what they have been through. I am very conscious that it is something that they will never get over.
I will not use surnames as I have not sought permission, but some families have given me the name of the baby they lost, and I want to place those names on the record, because it matters: baby Wynter, baby Harry and baby Ciara-Mae. I know that they will always be their parents’ baby. It is important that we remember that. I hope to do them justice.
The hon. Member for Sherwood Forest spoke with incredible eloquence when she said that it is about not just mourning the past but fighting for the future. She sums up what this debate must be about if it is about anything. We have seen progress, but it is sadly not enough. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash mentioned, that progress has apparently plateaued since the pandemic. We still see terrible inequality of outcomes across different groups in our society.
Sadly, giving birth is not risk-free, but by no means are all those baby losses inevitable—many are avoidable. We need to ensure that we do all we can to reduce that risk. When something goes wrong, as sadly it has on too many occasions, families deserve transparency, openness and a fight for improvement. They need to be believed and listened to. We have seen problems in Morecambe Bay, Telford, East Kent, Nottingham—I could go on. Let me focus briefly on Nottingham—as a Leicestershire MP, many of my constituents will have been affected. Donna Ockenden’s work is very welcome; she has built extraordinary trust with the families and those who have been failed. I also welcome the national review that the Secretary of State has put in place, and the work being done by the noble Baroness Amos. I know that the Secretary of State knows this, but I gently say to him that there are different views among the families, and I encourage him and the review team to continue taking the families with them, to work with them at each stage, and to listen to them.
Improvements are needed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash mentioned the CQC and he was absolutely right to do so. We need to see continued transparent engagement by that review with the families. We need to see whether more can be done to consider the role of the independent regulators. It is important that we look at the support available for both parents when the worst happens and they are bereaved. We need to raise more awareness. I know that the Secretary of State knows that. The families I have spoken to speak well of him. I know him well; he is a decent man and cares deeply about this. I know that he is listening. The fact that a Secretary of State is on the Treasury Bench at this hour and will conclude the debate at around midnight is testament to his commitment—I wish him well in his work.
It behoves us all to continue to strive and do more to reduce the number of avoidable baby deaths and the pain the avoidable baby loss causes. Equally—I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash—we must also focus on hope and progress, and on safety, accountability and what more we can do to ensure that a child coming into this world is not a moment of sadness and grief but a moment of joy. I wish the Secretary of State well in his work on that.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for his work to secure this debate and for sharing his personal experience. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh). Hearing people’s personal experiences makes this a better place for us to legislate and do what we have to do, so I thank my hon. Friends very much for sharing, which takes bravery and courage. I am sure that the whole House shares those feelings.
Losing a child is one of the most devastating experiences that any parent can face, as other Members have said. Words cannot describe the immense personal pain of dealing with such grief. To carry a child for nine months—sometimes less—and to dream of their future only to lose them is simply unimaginable.
As a mother of three, my heart goes out to every parent who has endured the heartbreak of losing their child or baby. This debate, during Baby Loss Awareness Week, could not be more timely. Baby loss is not just a personal tragedy but a public health issue, in particular when it occurs as a result of preventable errors or gaps in care that we have the power to fix.
Baby loss has a deep and lasting impact not only on mothers and fathers, but on siblings and entire families. For some, that pain comes immediately after the loss; for others, it may take weeks or months before the full emotional weight is felt. That is why I welcome the amendment to the Employment Rights Bill that will extend bereavement leave to those who experience pregnancy loss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, for her work in driving that change.
It cannot be right that someone who suffers a miscarriage in the morning, losing the future that they dreamed of, is expected to turn up at work at 9 am as if nothing had happened. I am proud that the Labour Government have recognised the real human cost of such a loss, and ensured that families receive the time, care and support that they need to begin to heal.
In Bradford, we have seen the devastating impact when maternity care falls short. Bradford teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust is one of the 14 NHS trusts now under review for historic maternity failures—a clear sign that systemic change is urgently needed. In November 2021, two newborn babies tragically lost their lives at Bradford royal infirmary after lapses in hygiene allowed a drug-resistant superbug to spread through the neonatal unit. A report found that staff were not consistently following hand hygiene guidelines and were unclear about the use of protective equipment. These were preventable deaths, heartbreaking for the families involved.
I welcome the measures that the trust has since put in place, but we must ensure that lessons are truly learned so that no family ever has to endure such pain again. Every mother deserves to give birth knowing that she and her baby will receive the best possible care—care rooted in safety, dignity and compassion.
In Bradford, a mother gave birth to her son on 13 February 2023; sadly, he passed away the next day. She was moved between units with little communication and no explanation of what was happening. She was not offered a transfer to another trust where her baby might have received neonatal care and a chance of survival. Her son was born alive but died in her arms, and her records were later found to wrongly describe the loss as a miscarriage. No mother should have to endure such failings. In describing what she went through, she said:
“My experience at Bradford Hospital’s maternity unit destroyed me. My son died after birth. I nearly died myself, but they didn’t care. They sent me home the same day he died, even though I had clear signs of infection. I left that hospital with not just empty arms, but with a body that has never been the same. Now all I have is a baby I can visit at the graveyard and a lifetime of pain that they caused.”
In my own constituency, I have consistently advocated the concern about the standards of maternity services and the leadership at the Bradford teaching hospital trust. On new year’s eve last year, a couple from Bradford were wrongly told that their unborn baby had died; the day after, she was delivered fit and healthy. Jamal and his wife Fozia were told by doctors that there was no heartbeat when they went for a routine test. They described their experience as going through hell and back. No parent should ever have to experience such pain and uncertainty. I have written to the Secretary of State, and I am glad that he is taking notice.
I welcome the maternity review being led by Baroness Amos, but lessons must be learned. The failures at Bradford really need to stop, so that nobody goes through such experiences again.
Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)
Genevieve Meehan, affectionately known as Gigi, was born on 18 July 2021 at Stepping Hill hospital. She was small but perfectly formed, and by all accounts the happiest little person anyone could meet. Gigi loved dancing with her big sister, trying spaghetti bolognese and playing with her favourite green tambourine. Those are the precious, ordinary moments that make up a childhood—the moments that every parent treasures and that we photograph, remember and hold dear. Gigi had been reaching the magical milestones that fill parents with pride and wonder: she waved for the first time, she pulled herself up to stand and she said “Da-da”. Each of those was a cause for celebration and a promise of all the milestones yet to come.
Gigi’s parents, Katie and John, did everything right. They chose a nursery that was well known in the area, had positive recommendations from friends and had respectable Ofsted results. They visited multiple times and attended settling-in sessions. The staff seemed well trained and capable. It felt safe. They trusted that nursery with the most precious thing in their lives, but in May 2022, that trust was shattered. Gigi, a loving and happy 10-month-old girl, was left strapped to a bean bag, face down, without being checked by the nursery staff. She died at nursery. The nursery was not safe, it was not caring and it failed Gigi at the cost of her life.
No parent should ever have to experience what Katie and John have experienced. No parent should have to bury their child because basic standards of care were not followed, or to campaign for changes that should already exist in order to protect the children who come after, yet that is exactly what Katie and John are doing. In the face of the most earth-shattering loss imaginable, they are campaigning tirelessly for Gigi and to make our nurseries safer for all children.
As a new father, I cannot begin to comprehend the devastation that Katie and John have endured. When I look at my daughter, Poppy, I see the same joy, wonder and infinite promise that Gigi brought to this world, and I am haunted by the knowledge that what happened to their daughter could happen to our children. Katie and John are not alone in their grief: it is an all-too-common story that nationally agreed standards of care are not being adhered to, leading to avoidable deaths, whether in maternity units, neonatal care, nurseries or crèches.
Gigi’s campaign has already achieved important progress. Ofsted inspections will be more frequent—every four years instead of every six years. In collaboration with the Lullaby Trust, the early years foundation stage statutory framework will be updated to include more detailed safe sleep guidance, but that cannot be the end. Mandatory safe sleep training for all staff is needed, CCTV should be implemented in all nurseries and far more Ofsted inspections must be unannounced. There can be no doubt that the lives of babies and their families will be saved if those measures are seriously considered and implemented by the Government.
As the Sands and Tommy’s policy unit report, “Saving Babies’ Lives 2024”, states:
“With political will, progress is possible.”
This Government must have a relentless political will in ensuring that our nurseries and maternity units are the very safest of places. No babies should ever lose their lives at the hands of inadequate standards of care, a reliance on whistleblowing culture or a lax inspection routine.
Katie and John should be watching Gigi grow up. They should be seeing her starting school, making friends and discovering who she is. Instead, they are fighting to ensure that no other parent endures their nightmare. We owe it to Gigi, we owe it to Katie and John, and we owe it to every parent who trusts us to keep their children safe. We have to do better.
Juliet Campbell (Broxtowe) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing the debate. It coincides with Baby Loss Awareness Week, a time when we pause to remember every baby who has been lost far too soon. The week provides us with a chance to take stock of this sensitive issue and to commit to supporting family members, including fathers and siblings, by improving services for all families affected by baby loss.
In 2023, there were more than 4,000 baby deaths in the UK, behind each of which is a family whose lives will never be the same again. The pain that those families experience is the same as the pain of losing any child, and they deserve to be treated with the same sensitivity as with any other bereavement. Although we have made significant progress over the past few decades, the rate of baby deaths remains too high, and disproportionately so in African, Caribbean and Asian families and those from deprived backgrounds. That inequality is a challenge that our society, our NHS and our Government must address urgently. Our NHS maternity and neonatal services must have proper funding and training to provide care and support through a service provision that recognises the medical, social and emotional needs of those families. It also means ensuring that staff have the support to offer a service with empathy and compassion, and to understand that baby loss has a profound impact on all members of the family. Every parent experiencing miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal loss deserves a safe space where they can grieve with dignity.
Finally, I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Forever Stars, a charity based in my Broxtowe constituency founded by Michelle and Richard Daniels, who have lived experience of baby loss. Their strength and dedication to families who have experienced baby loss has flourished into an organisation that provides understanding and comfort to hundreds of families across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, but that should not have been left to a grieving family. The creation of baby loss services, memorial gardens and specialist bereavement spaces should be a standard part of our health and social care service. I therefore call upon the Government to see this as an opportunity to design and develop improved services for families who experience baby loss.
Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)
My constituent’s sister was stillborn many years ago, in a situation in which my constituent’s mother was simply told, “Don’t worry, dear, you’ll have another one next year.” There was no bereavement counselling and, more importantly, no marked grave. My constituent found out some years later—quite recently—that his sister had been buried in a communal unmarked grave. It appears that, because this practice went on until the late 1980s, there are some 89,000 such children. These families have had the lifelong pain of not knowing where to grieve, how to grieve or where to focus their attention, with no chance of finding it.
These children deserve our support, and I hope that this House will share my view that the Government need to step in to provide a small memorial so that these families can have a focus for their grief, and some acknowledgment that these children existed. I would be grateful if the House shared this call, which I have tabled as an early-day motion. I know the Minister has kindly offered to meet these families, and I am extremely grateful for his support.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)
I am very glad to be able to take part in this very moving debate and to follow so many excellent speeches as we once again mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, not least on behalf of myself and my story, and that of my beautiful baby Lucy, who I tragically lost back in 1998, but also on behalf of all the MPs in this place, women and men, who are not yet ready or able to stand and tell their story, as indeed I was not for so many years.
For almost 20 years I never spoke of my loss, and I never told anyone who did not know me back when it had happened, until I helped to set up the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss back in 2016, 11 years after I was first elected. That was along with a cross-party group of MPs, all of whom are no longer in this House, although Baroness Prentis of Banbury is now in the other place. I told them my story in the Tea Room, and I could point to the table that we sat around to share our stories through floods of tears. It was the first time I had spoken about it in any detail since it had happened two decades earlier. Baby loss was, and I think it may still be to a certain extent, the last great taboo that a lot of parents have to navigate their way through.
Not long thereafter, I was approached by one of the officers of the new all-party group regarding the private Member’s Bill introduced by the former Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, Tim Loughton. As those Members who were around at the time will remember, part of that Bill covered baby loss and the lack of any recognition for stillborn babies born before 24 weeks—what are, in law, still called late-term miscarriages. His private Member’s Bill tried to address this through what would become known as baby loss certificates. He had been approached by his constituents Hayley and Frazer, who gave birth to their son Samuel at 19 weeks. Tragically, he was stillborn, and they had been horrified to receive no official recognition and—even worse—to learn that their child was entered in the official records as a miscarriage, as indeed my Lucy was at 23 weeks and four days, just a few days short of the legal definition for recognition.
Tim also cited another tragic case, that of twins born either side of that 24-week threshold. One thankfully survived and was given a birth certificate, but the other—born just a day or so earlier on the wrong side of 24 weeks—tragically did not survive, received no official recognition, and was entered in the official records as a miscarriage. This felt grossly wrong to all those parents and to Tim, as it did to me and my husband when it happened to us. Tim set about trying to change the law, hence approaching me to see whether I would be brave enough to stand here—on the Opposition Benches as I was then—and tell my story, as it was so relevant to the case he was trying to make. Somehow, I managed to do it—it is all down on record for anyone to read or watch, so I will not repeat it today—and it involved an awful lot of tears. Those who have spoken today have somehow managed not to be in floods of tears. I did it, as lots of Members have done today, and I commend them all for sharing their heartbreaking stories. We should remember, though, that for every Member who bears witness in this Chamber, there are no doubt many more who are not yet ready to do so.
I was very proud of myself back in February 2018 to give mine and Lucy’s story in detail in that private Member’s Bill debate, and for my experience and Lucy’s all-too-brief life to perhaps have made a difference in helping to change the law and bring about the baby loss certificates, which are now much treasured by so many parents. It is something I am still very proud of.
After that debate and all the publicity it garnered, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt)—who was Health Secretary at the time, and who I pay tribute to for everything he did—set up an official Department of Health expert working group, which Tim and I sat on, to consult on what a change in the law would look like and how the baby loss certificates would work. I was very glad when in February 2024, just before the election, the last Government announced the roll-out of the first ever baby loss certificates.
As welcome as those certificates are, I worry that there are still some unintended consequences, as there often are when first enacting new policies. I have been contacted by Catherine, whose much-wanted baby died at 12 weeks. Through the grieving process, she found comfort in knowing that she would get a baby loss certificate for her son Matthew. However, when she applied for that certificate, she found that she was not able to add her partner’s name to it, as he was registered with a GP on the Scottish side of the border. While relationships across the English-Scottish border are not common, neither are they unheard of. Catherine asked me to ask the Secretary of State—I am very happy that he is in the Chamber in person tonight—what steps could be taken to enable both parents’ names to be included on baby loss certificates where those parents are registered with GPs in different countries in the UK. I am sure that what I have described is an anomaly, and I hope the Secretary of State will address it in his response.
Due to time, I will leave my remarks there, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank you for your grace.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I appreciate the hon. Lady finishing her remarks. Members will have noticed that I indulged the hon. Lady, but unfortunately after the next speaker I will have to reduce the time limit to four minutes so that I can get all Members in.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
I thank the hon. and right hon. Members for bringing this debate to the Chamber today. I thank other speakers for their moving remarks, and it is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). I thank her for sharing her story, on behalf of all those untold stories. I speak for all my families in Esher and Walton who have dealt with baby loss. Their stories are many, their grief is unlimited, and I pay tribute to them and those families with us today who are intent on turning their grief into others’ hope. Your bravery humbles us all.
Today, I will focus on one family. Last week I was visited by my constituents, the wonderful, brave parents of Jimmy Alderman, whose story reminds us that there is still so much we must do to protect our youngest and most vulnerable. Jimmy was just six weeks old when he died last October. He had been breastfed while being carried in a sling at home, which many parents understandably see as practical, safe and nurturing. Tragically, Jimmy slipped into an unsafe position and lost consciousness. Despite his parents’ desperate attempts to save him, he died three days later.
Following the inquest, the senior coroner issued a prevention of future deaths report, which found that guidance available to parents on the safe use of baby carriers and slings, particularly when feeding, was wholly inadequate. The coroner highlighted the absence of clear NHS advice, the lack of visual guidance showing safe versus unsafe positions and the limited awareness of suffocation risks, especially for newborns and premature babies.
In response, the National Childbirth Trust and the Lullaby Trust have both updated their advice, warning that hands-free breastfeeding or bottle-feeding when using a sling is unsafe, particularly for babies under four months old. Their message is now clear that if a baby needs to feed, they need to be taken out of a sling. Those are important steps, but it should not fall solely to grieving parents and charities to close such critical gaps in public information. National guidance must keep pace with modern parenting practices, and it is vital that the NHS clearly sets out the risks and best practices around baby carriers and feeding safety.
Jimmy’s parents have shown extraordinary courage, and in Jimmy’s memory they are calling for a couple of simple, but vital reforms. First, they want a national awareness campaign to promote the safe use of slings and carriers. Secondly, they want consideration of tighter regulation in industry standards for baby carrier safety. Those sensible, achievable measures could save many lives. That is what Jimmy’s parents are motivated by. Nobody should have to go through entirely preventable grief, as they have.
Will the Minister agree to meet with Jimmy’s parents and me to discuss how the Department of Health and Social Care can support this campaign, including through updated NHS guidance, a national awareness initiative and a review of safety standards for baby carriers? By working together, we can ensure that Jimmy’s short life leads to lasting change and that no other parent has to endure the unimaginable pain that his family has faced.
Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)
I thank the hon. and right hon. Members for securing today’s debate on such an important issue that is sadly too often overlooked. Earlier this year, I was incredibly grateful to meet Angels and Rainbows, a local group in my Lowestoft constituency run by bereaved parents who support others through the experience of baby loss. I put on record in this place my sincere thanks for their vital work, which is life-affirming, trauma-informed and grounded in the realities of grief. One key issue they wished me to raise today was how women who have just lost a baby are placed on the same wards as those who have just given birth.
It feels deeply cruel that parents who have just been through the trauma of child loss should have to share the same space as joyful new mothers and healthy new babies making their first cries. That is why hospitals should provide a space away from new parents and the maternity unit, so that parents can grieve in peace. As my local hospital, the James Paget, is brilliantly part of the new hospital building programme, I hope that its senior leadership looks at the need for a dedicated private space for bereavement care in its plans.
Training is key, too. Parents told me how vital it is for staff to receive appropriate training in how to communicate sensitively with families going through baby loss. As one constituent said:
“I felt the staff weren’t prepared or prepared me on what was happening or going to happen. It was as if it was a taboo subject.”
The quality of care received by my constituents has been very inconsistent, with some feeling well supported and others not at all, particularly once they were out of hospital. One of my constituents found out at her 12-week scan that she had suffered a “missed miscarriage”, and was given medication and told to expect an experience similar to a bad period. Instead, she nearly passed out from the agonising pain, had contractions, and passed the pregnancy on her bathroom floor at home. She had been given no guidance on what to do next, and was not given any reassurance when she reached out for advice. She was not offered a follow-up scan, contacted by a midwife, or signposted to counselling or a specialist service. Left without support, she was later diagnosed with PTSD.
Unprepared staff, the dearth of support services and long waiting times for counselling make this horrible situation worse, and it is important to recognise that fathers too are suffering from that lack of support. Dads have told me that they even felt ignored by services, while also needing to support their partners in turn. We must do better, for everyone, which is why Angels and Rainbows is campaigning for a full-time bereavement midwife or bereavement support worker in every hospital. For a while we had one at the James Paget, and some really positive changes had been made as a result and through work with our intrepid support group. Sadly, in May this year that role was cut, despite the trust’s acknowledgment that the role was “undoubtedly beneficial to families”. While all midwives need training, it takes a lead to help to co-produce change with those with lived experience, drive it through and then, importantly, sustain that change.
In the words of one of my constituents, baby loss
“is not ‘just’ a medical event. It is the loss of a child, a dream, and a future. Without compassionate systems in place, the trauma of miscarriage can last a lifetime.”
With her words to close my speech, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this moving debate during Baby Loss Awareness Week.
Chris Coghlan (Dorking and Horley) (LD)
I commend the hon. Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for calling this important debate. I have seen at first hand the commitment of the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash to these issues, and I applaud his dedication.
On Thursday I sat down with my constituents Jamie and Ellie Thompson. They lost their son Billy on Easter Sunday 2024, just 15 days short of his fifth birthday. It was diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, one of the rarest cancers and one of the worst. It attacks only children, it attacks the brain, and it is untreatable. Billy was the brightest, most cheerful little boy. He loved superheroes and he loved rugby, just like his dad. His mum said that everyone who met him fell in love. One day he was playing at the beach with his sister Maddie and his parents, and he was not his usual self. Five months later, he was gone.
Jamie and Ellie told me how their beautiful boy became angry, anxious and in agony. They spoke of their terrible struggle to look happy in front of him, before breaking down in the room next door. One day Billy said, “Mummy, I can’t see,” as he slowly lost his eyesight and the use of his limbs. Sadly, mistakes in palliative care meant that his last days were brutal too. Today, his family are trying to make sense of it all. Jamie took out his anger on playing a season of hard rugby; Ellie threw herself into her local community projects in Billy’s memory. They both suffer from flashbacks, but thankfully Maddie is now eight and seems to be OK.
Time and again, I have seen people take tragedy in their own lives to turn it to positive change for others. Jamie and Ellie have started a charity, Billy’s Battalion. They are fundraising to support five promising trials of DIPG treatment at Great Ormond Street hospital, and I ask the Secretary of State to see whether there is anything that the Government can do to support it. This is what Jamie and Ellie are doing to honour Billy’s memory, and it is people like them who inspire me the most.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)
It is a privilege to speak in the debate, and I thank the co-sponsors and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to happen on the Floor of the House today. I also thank everyone who has spoken so far and so bravely, whether that is sharing their own experience or that of their constituents. These debates have a true impact.
This issue is of profound personal significance to me, as it is to so many families up and down the country. Alongside Tommy’s, many Members of this House, Myleene Klass MBE, Sands and the Miscarriage Association, I have been campaigning for five years for simple changes. First, I want to recognise those for whom this is not an abstract discussion but a reflection of one of the hardest chapters of their lives. To every parent who has experienced the heartbreak of losing a baby, I want to say, “Your loss matters, and your voice matters.”
Time and again, investigations into maternity and neonatal care have revealed the same issues: poor communication, missed warning signs and families left to fight for answers. National standards of care are not being followed, and too often bereaved parents are left wondering whether lessons will ever truly be learned. That is why the forthcoming national investigation into maternity and neonatal services is so important. It must drive lasting change, and I urge the Secretary of State, who I am so pleased to see in his place, to ensure that there is clear national oversight of how any recommendations are implemented. The investigation must also take ambitious approaches to improving maternal heath and reducing baby loss.
We need a focused national strategy that sets new maternity safety ambitions, tackles inequalities and ensures consistency across all services, and I want to briefly mention infertility services. I have decided that locally commissioned services are simply not good enough—they are not fit for purpose. In some places, you get nothing; in other places, you get three cycles of in vitro fertilisation, as NICE suggests. In other places, you have to pay thousands of pounds if you are LGBT. As shown by “Joy”, the Netflix story that was told so well, the same backward thoughts about infertility treatment still exist in local commissioning boards.
That is no more so than in South Yorkshire, where the NHS trust is currently consulting on—I am quoting from the website—views on
“how many cycles of IVF should be provided to people in South Yorkshire”
and on
“how much gluten-free…produce should be prescribed”.
I have coeliacs in my family and understand the struggle, but to compare that to the loss of babies, which many couples who go through IVF will have suffered, is simply not good enough. The trust’s own numbers show that the saving from reducing two cycles to one would be only £280,000 a year. That would be less than 2p per person in the whole ICB area. Let us take that money centrally, so that no matter where you live in the UK, you have access to three chances to start a family. You might have suffered five miscarriages, three miscarriages, baby loss or stillbirth. You might be being told by your doctor not to try for a baby given the risk to your life, and only to get support through IVF.
It is simply not good enough, and fertility services are also diagnostic. I know people who have had endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, blocked tubes, endometrial cancers, polyps or fibroids discovered not through going to a gynaecologist, but through going to a fertility doctor. We should value that and not just see it as an excess cost. I think fertility services should be taken back centrally and provided on that basis.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
I pay tribute to all the moving speeches we have heard so far tonight.
There are few losses in life more devastating than that of a child—it is every parent’s greatest fear—but when a baby dies just as life is beginning, at the very moment when joy and expectation are at their highest, the pain is all the harder to bear. Chloe and Toby from my constituency of Horsham, along with nine other Sussex families, have gone through this unimaginable experience. Their babies died in the care of the University Hospitals Sussex NHS trust between 2021 and 2023. Chloe and Toby are not natural campaigners; it is not something they ever expected or wanted to do. They are simply grieving parents looking for truth, accountability and, above all, change.
University Hospitals Sussex, like public services in general, is under immense pressure. Staff are working in a system stretched beyond capacity. I want to acknowledge the efforts of the countless clinicians, midwives and support staff who show up day in, day out. They, too, have been let down by the system; it is not just the families. Nevertheless, the fact remains that something has gone seriously wrong. Nine babies have died in circumstances that the families believe were avoidable, and thus far they have not had satisfactory answers.
Fundamentally, this is about trust. Trust needs to be restored. For that to happen, we first need to fully understand what went wrong. I understand that things can go wrong in any profession—and my own father was an obstetrician—but, unfortunately, in obstetrics the consequences can be devastating. I very much support the words of the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), who said that this is not about launching some kind of witch hunt, which could actually get in the way of preventing further tragedies in the future, because the key thing, and what we need to focus on, is avoiding blame and openly sharing and fixing problems. However, we must shine a light on past mistakes.
In Sussex, Members of Parliament from across the House are working together on this issue, and I look forward to continuing those conversations with my colleagues locally later this week. However, the trust itself acknowledges that improvements are needed, and I welcome the work already under way to make maternity care safer. However, if this review is to succeed and to carry the confidence of the very people it is meant to serve, it must be guided by the right person. The Government have appointed Baroness Amos to lead the review. She commands great respect, and I have no question about her personal abilities or integrity. However, as I have said, the key issue here is trust, and in that respect she is not the right choice for Sussex. I ask the Secretary of State for Health to listen to what the families are saying in Sussex, which is that Donna Ockenden be appointed to oversee the review at University Hospitals Sussex.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the trust that Donna Ockenden has built through the work she has done, with those Sussex families, and indeed families in Nottingham, Shrewsbury and Telford. Her report in 2022 laid out immediate and essential actions. She deliberately did not call them recommendations; they were actions that needed to be taken. They must be delivered in full, so does my hon. Friend agree with me that we cannot lose any more time and that those actions need to happen alongside the inquiry that is now taking place? We cannot afford to delay, and these families deserve to see those actions implemented now.
John Milne
I thank my hon. Friend and fellow Sussex MP for her intervention, and I very much agree with her. Donna is a midwife herself, and she has been personally involved with the families in Sussex.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The points that the hon. Member is making about the choice of people to oversee the review or inquiry reflect the points made to me by two of my constituents, Amarjit and Mandip, who would have their daughter with them today were it not for failures at the Leeds general infirmary. The point they made to me is that they want any review or inquiry to be clearly and demonstrably independent from the people who had a role in running the Leeds teaching hospitals NHS trust in the past. Does he agree with me and my constituents on this point, and does he share my hope and trust that the Secretary of State will weigh that request very heavily before he meets the families?
John Milne
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and yes, that sounds like a very similar situation. As I have said, this is all about trust.
I understand that concerns have been raised about Donna’s workload and the risk of relying too heavily on one person, but Donna has indicated that she is willing to participate. I am sure that she would not say so unless she were confident that she could give this task the care and attention it needs. Unless we restore trust, we risk further harm, further delays and further grief, which none of us wishes to see.
Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)
Almost 15 years ago, my constituent Lauren Trevillyan lost her son Olly. She told me how the support just was not there—not for the families, not for the parents, not for the children. There is just not enough aftercare for people after such a loss, not physically and not mentally. To this day, Lauren is still waiting for a response to her request for counselling. Lauren struggled through those dark months, but now she is fighting for others. Lauren has been the driving force behind the baby loss awareness drop-in at Corby library over the past week, which is absolutely something we should all be behind. We need to talk about this openly and honestly. We have to break the taboo, because sadly it is far more common than people think. As has already been said, in this country 13 babies a day die close to birth.
When I talk about baby loss, I cannot do so without raising the courage and determination of numerous families in Corby who continue to campaign and fight for answers: answers on rare childhood cancers, on multiple miscarriages and on those born with limb deficiencies. Toxic waste was dumped in Corby and we need answers. These families have questions that the local authority is not prepared to answer. In a response to the families’ solicitor, the council said, when it was asked where the toxic waste was dumped:
“The Council understands its obligation of transparency…but considers the weight of public interest…falls in favour of non-disclosure.”
Families are concerned that those with rare childhood cancers or multiple miscarriages are in certain places in Corby where whistleblowers have come forward to say that toxic waste was dumped. It is not good enough. Families are entitled to answers. If the local authority continues to refuse to be transparent and honest, and to answer the families’ questions, then I will lead their calls for a public inquiry. We have to end the defensiveness of our public bodies, either through their own integrity—as it should be—or by the Hillsborough law or, if needed, by public inquiry. Enough of the defensiveness. It is time for answers. We are determined to get them and the people of Corby deserve to hear them.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I thank the co-sponsors for securing the debate and for all colleagues’ powerful contributions so far tonight. Many of those contributions have focused on preventable baby loss, calling for lessons to be learnt and for more to be done, which I fully support. However, I would like to take this opportunity to shine a light on the many occasions when baby loss is not preventable, but where I believe there is still more that could be done as a society.
Earlier this year, my wife and I had an early miscarriage. It was our first pregnancy and we were extremely excited when we got the positive test result. We were very quick to tell all our friends and family. We had no negative signs ahead of our 12-week scan, but during that scan it became quickly apparent that something was not right. We were asked whether it was possible that it could have been nine weeks. Then a second staff member came in and shortly after we were told that there was no heartbeat. We were moved to another room where we asked all the questions that I am sure many ask in this situation. Was there anything we could do? Is there anything we could do differently next time? We were reassured that, actually, it was extremely common, there was nothing we could have done, and that it happens to around one in four or five people.
On our journey home, we felt a bit silly for not knowing that fact and for not being prepared for how common that type of miscarriage was. We wondered why we had not been told in our early antenatal appointments that it was a possibility. We also wondered why we had not heard that so much from friends and family, or seen it in conversations on the TV. After that, we pledged that we would talk about it more.
After that moment, we were faced with some morbid choices: a natural miscarriage, the opportunity to take some pills, or some sort of surgical procedure. We were given a leaflet to think about it and off we went. We did not actually have the opportunity to make that choice, because shortly after we found out the miscarriage started to happen naturally. I can only say that I was not prepared for the level of brutality that that would entail. We were told that it might be like period pains, but it was much more severe than that for my wife and the volume of blood was unsettling. I could not believe it was normal while it was happening.
We started googling and looking online for advice, and we were lucky to find blogs by Tommy’s and other organisations that have been mentioned today, which provided us with some reassurance. However, we still ended up going to A&E because we were concerned about the blood loss. They gave us some reassurance, and we managed to go home with some medication and to get through that event. The follow-up from that traumatic incident in our lives was a simple phone call; we had to report a negative pregnancy test a few weeks later, and that was the end of the support.
Before I run out of time, I must add that we were keen to get on, and we have since got pregnant again. We have jumped that 12-week hurdle, and we are now aware that the chances of miscarriage have greatly diminished, so we are in a better place than we were. However, we are still wondering about what more can be done to provide reassurance to people in that really troubling moment.
I ask the Secretary of State whether we can record every miscarriage so that we can get firmer statistics about how often this happens. I ask him also to look at whether we can provide access for people 24 hours a day so that they do not have unsettling moments wondering if they need to attend A&E, and whether the mental health support that is in place after a third miscarriage could be in place from that very first moment, because it is a deeply traumatic event for anybody to go through. I think we need to talk about it as a society much more, so that the next couple is prepared.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
I start by thanking Members for bringing this important debate and thanking those who have spoken so bravely about their own experiences of loss and harm. No matter how a baby dies or a wanted pregnancy ends, it is always deeply painful and traumatic for bereaved families, but their suffering is particularly exacerbated when the loss of a baby could have been prevented. I have constituents who tragically know that only too well.
Our city is at the centre of the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history and a corporate manslaughter investigation due to failings by Nottingham University Hospitals that have led to hundreds of baby deaths and injuries—hundreds of preventable tragedies. Many families are still waiting for answers. Many have faced contemptuous treatment, not just at the time of the loss or injury of their baby, but in the aftermath. These families have been institutionally gaslit, lied to and robbed of so much, and they are still having to fight for their children. Some have also faced abhorrent racism.
I pay tribute to the Nottingham affected families group for their unwavering determination to secure accountability and change. It is because of their tenacity that the review is happening at all. It has been a privilege to work with them, and I have been deeply moved by their strength and selflessness in fighting not only for their own families, but for others, in the face of such appalling institutional failures and systematic neglect. I also thank Donna Ockenden for agreeing to lead the review and for all her work so far—I am so grateful that families in Nottingham have such a champion fighting their corner.
Above all, there must be accountability for this scandal, and lessons must be learned so that no family has to go through such an avoidable tragedy again. While standards of care at NUH under new leadership have improved, they are still falling short, and further action must be taken to ensure that parents and babies receive the care that they deserve.
I welcome the Government’s launch of a national maternity investigation to examine maternity and neonatal services across England. This rapid review will consolidate previous inquiries’ findings and recommendations, with the aim of improving the quality and safety of maternity care. However, I am concerned that families in Nottingham do not feel that they were included in the meaningful way they were promised, and the Government must not simply wait for the outcome of this investigation before taking action. I am certain that the Secretary of State will act on that, and I thank him for his ongoing genuine commitment to this.
The Nottingham affected families group has been calling for the 22 national recommendations from the Shrewsbury and Telford Ockenden review to be implemented without delay. The families also want the role of oversight bodies, which are meant to hold trusts and healthcare professionals to account, to be scrutinised. The CQC must become a more visible organisation and it must be able to bring prosecutions more than three years after the offence occurred; the current limit is far too short, and it is denying people even a semblance of justice.
There is so much more to say, but in the last few seconds I want to pay tribute to charities in Nottingham founded by bereaved parents, particularly Zephyr’s and Forever Stars. These organisations are already doing the work of supporting grieving families, but they are operating on shoestring budgets and generally do not receive statutory funding. We need to see that change. We need to see statutory funding increase and for those allocating it to recognise that these charities are best placed to provide those services, as they have already built relationships of trust within our communities.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
First, I commend all Members who have told their personal stories and shared with us how their life has been touched by what has happened to them, and how they have tried to move on. I think of my mother Mona, who is 94 years of age and has suffered many miscarriages. My speech writer Naomi—obviously a very busy lady—had a miscarriage as well. We all have personal stories of this, whether through our family, extended family or those we live with.
In 2023 in Northern Ireland, there were 67 stillbirths and 80 infant deaths registered, and for those mums and dads, my heart simply aches. I pay tribute to the friends and families, charities such as Sands, and so many others who rally around those going through the unimaginable. The support they provide is phenomenal and life changing, and that must be placed on record.
I also highlight the tremendous decision to help those who are in the early stages of grieving a loss by making available a baby loss certificate. A certificate does not mean less pain by any stretch of the imagination, but it does provide validation; it says that a wee life existed, was here and was real, and that it is okay to grieve for that wee life and the promise and hope for tomorrow that has passed. In Northern Ireland, we do not yet have those certificates, but my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) called for them in the House just last year.
Whether a loss is felt in the fifth week, the 15th week or the magical 25th week, the fact remains that it is a loss. While some are able to put their words into a song or a poem, and others release grief with the planting of a tree that they can watch grow, and that shows them the passage of time, others choose never to speak of it—and all of these are valid. I often think of a very special constituent of mine who came to me some 45 years after she had lost a baby and asked me how to find where the remains had been buried. The hon. Member for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron) referred to things happening in his constituency; some of the things that happened in Belfast over those years would also pose many questions.
I wish to recall the story of that lady. She was part of the “don’t talk about it” generation, yet for all those years, she carried that grief, and wanted to know where her baby boy was resting. The baby had been taken from her, and she was not given the option to bury him. While we both believed sincerely that he was safe in the arms of Jesus, she wanted to know where he was on this earth. This is a subject to which the hon. Member for Corby and East Northamptonshire referred. Agnes passed before I could find out which of the unmarked baby graves he was in, but I take great comfort in knowing that she has finally met him in glory now.
I tell the story of Agnes because it shows the lifelong grief that can be felt. I believe that this debate, and the ones like it held every year, are not simply about what must be done; they are a way to tell the Agneses of this world, who grieved in silence, that they are not alone. Each life is so precious, and the loss must be acknowledged and felt. On behalf of the mums and dads of my constituency of Strangford and across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we honour those little lives, and the indelible little footprints left on hearts throughout the United Kingdom. You were here, you mattered, you were loved, and you are not forgotten.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
I want to thank the three Members who secured this debate. It is of profound importance. Not long after becoming an MP, I was contacted by Hayley Johnson, who wanted to speak with me about her heartbreak. In April 2025, Hayley found out she was pregnant with her daughter Evelyn. Up until she was 26 weeks and six days, she did not once see a GP, and was given only phone call appointments. On Tuesday 5 August 2025, she was suffering with lower abdominal pains and called her GP surgery, who said that her daughter was lying funny and prescribed her codeine. On Friday, she started losing blood while she was at home. It transpired that when she had called the GP, her placenta was rupturing. She lost over 4 pints of blood and nearly died. Luckily, the amazing staff at Burton hospital got her daughter out safely and stabilised Hayley, but after 13 hours, Evelyn sadly passed away with her mummy and daddy by her side.
Hayley was informed by the hospital that if her GP had seen her in person and examined her, they would have noticed what was happening, and her daughter would have stood a greater chance of survival. Because of the negligence she suffered, all she has left of Evelyn is a small box in the living room containing her ashes. I promised Hayley that at the right time I would mention Evelyn’s name in the Chamber, so that she would be remembered always in the records of Hansard.
No parent ever imagines that they will outlive their child. The loss of a baby is heartbreaking beyond words and a grief that shatters hopes and dreams for the future—the hope of seeing that child grow, thrive, learn and love, and the joy of watching them take their place in the world. All of those are stolen in an instant, leaving a space in the family that can never be filled. Brothers and sisters lose the chance of a lifelong companion. Grandparents lose the grandchild they had longed to cherish and spoil. Baby loss touches everyone and takes so much from so many.
My constituents and friends Suman and Jim Antcliffe have suffered the painful loss of two grandchildren: Lenny, who sadly passed away not long after a full-term birth, due to cord entanglement; and Bhai, whom they lost at 18 weeks’ pregnancy for a reason no one knows. Amid deep sorrow, Lenny and Bhai’s incredible parents, Miriam—Suman and Jim’s daughter—and her husband Roy, founded Lenny’s Legacy. They have published an e-book about the physical recovery after a baby’s death, which includes information on postpartum recovery, breastfeeding and lactation. Perhaps our NHS could look to fund that in hard copy, so that hospitals could to give it to parents who have suffered that loss.
Soon after I became the Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire, the team and I were contacted by Alex and Kirsty Garner, a couple who had suffered a loss. They felt that there was not the support they needed, so they created that support with a group called Our Little Angels in Swadlincote, run by parents, for parents. My team and I were honoured to help them secure the funding for that. I promised Alex and Kirsty and other parents who have walked this painful path that I would mention their babies’ names in the Chamber. I may go slightly over the one minute I have left—I apologise for that, Madam Deputy Speaker—but it would be wrong of me not to call them by name now. We have Hayley Johnson and John Haddon and baby Evelyn; Miriam and Roy Prestwich and babies Lenny and Bhai; Kirsty and Alex Garner and baby Harry; Ames and Graham Silcock and their babies Olivia, Teddy and Ava; Gina and Adam Deacon and baby Poppy; Jaimee Long and Owen Archer and babies Arlo and Ava; Rebekah Wykes and Matthew Buckley and baby Jacob; Chelsea and Steve Cooper and babies Flower and Blossom; Nicolle Taylor and Peter Summerbell and baby Ariya; Rachel and Leigh Brassington and baby Archie; Hayley and Anthony Dawe and twins Finley and Darcie; Millie Garbutt and Luke Lenton and baby Lenton; Katie Garner and Callum Charman and baby Charman; Kirstie and James Palmer and baby Palmer; Amie and Connor Chinnery and baby Noah; Bev and Oliver and baby Alister; Beth Milnthorpe and Craig Timbrell and baby Timbrell; Charlotte Atherton and Callum Keyte and baby Wyatt; Bec Barker and baby Alister; Bec and baby Maisie; Paula Ann Haddon and her baby; and Lorinda Brownhill and Adam Townsend and baby Alfie.
To every family who has lost a baby, your grief matters and your children matter. This week, we light candles and wear ribbons to remember them, and to remind one another that love, even in loss, endures.
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
I speak with a number of hats on: as the MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, representing all my constituents who have lost babies in pregnancy; as a mum of two children; and as a woman who has lost two much-wanted pregnancies. I want to use my place here to shine a light on the pain that families are feeling due to baby loss, and the steps that the Government can take and are taking to help them, from enforcing a duty of candour on public bodies to giving bereavement leave to parents who have lost a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy.
First, I welcome the national maternity investigation. I thank the Secretary of State for his attention to it, and for listening to harmed families. I want to emphasise that, on the whole, maternity care in this country is safe, but where it is not, strong action must be taken. I was relieved to see that my local trust, Morecambe Bay, will be part of the national investigation, not least because of the experiences of my constituents Ryan and Sarah, whose baby Ida was born in 2019 and died seven days after. Ida died because of failings in her care. I know, as Ryan and Sarah do, that mistakes happen—healthcare workers are human—but they have had to fight every step of the way to get the truth about their daughter’s death, which feels so inhumane. After the hospital trust’s completely inadequate internal investigation declared there to be no care issues and Ida’s death was graded as “moderate harm”, Ryan and Sarah had to approach a senior coroner to get a full inquest. It was only at that inquest, five and a half years later, that the trust accepted that its failings had led to Ida’s death.
The thing that breaks my heart is that those failings had already been identified: the Kirkup report identified major failings, which were meant to have been fixed. I first became involved in maternity advocacy in Morecambe Bay after the pretty awful birth of my first child. There was a lot of activity in the trust in response to the Kirkup findings, and I do believe that improvements were made, but two things never went away, and I think they are still harming families to this day.
The first thing that I want to highlight is the ideological belief that certain types of birth are superior to others. We hear talk of “normal” or “physiological” birth. The belief that that is somehow superior to a birth with intervention still harms people today. The second thing is the organisational culture that led to a care organisation responding to a baby’s death not with care, respect and humility, but with a gross failure to investigate, a gross failure to act with decency and kindness, and a gross lack of transparency.
Finally, I want to mention a constituent who came to my surgery a few weeks ago. Her stepdaughter was born sleeping many years ago, and she and her husband recently found out that she was buried in a mass public grave. They know the location where she was put to rest, and they really want to put a marker directly on the grave site, but apparently that is not allowed under local council rules. They are puzzled, as am I, as to why marking one baby’s death is somehow disrespectful to the other babies who lie in that mass public grave. I am working with my constituent to try to address that.
I am glad that the pain that families feel across our country is being recognised in this place today. We cannot let more babies die preventable deaths. We cannot let those losses go unacknowledged. I thank Members in the Chamber today for their work.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I thank the right hon. and hon. Members who secured the debate, as well as those who have shared their story. Every Member here agrees that the tragedy of losing a child is one of the greatest anyone can face, yet sadly it is all too common an experience; nearly half the population has either experienced the loss of a baby or knows someone who has.
It is with that deeply saddening thought in mind that I want to pay tribute to the tireless campaigning of Louise Caldwell in Scotland. After her experience of loss, she has influenced the Scottish Government’s strategy on baby loss. She has also succeeded in getting two baby loss units opened—at Wishaw hospital, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke (Pamela Nash), and at Gilbert Bain hospital, with the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and our Liberal Democrat colleague Beatrice Wishart MSP. Those dedicated facilities allow mothers, fathers and families to grieve the loss of their baby in the most dignified and compassionate environment we can provide. I realise that this is a devolved matter, but I am sure that everyone in the Chamber understands the need for baby loss units and, along with them, compassionate labour rooms, away from the sounds of happier arrivals, for those all over the UK who experience delivering a sleeping angel.
While dedicated spaces are essential, we must also look at prevention. I find it deeply concerning that we continue to see repeated failings in maternity services. The Ockenden report on Shrewsbury and Telford, and the East Kent inquiry, highlighted systemic issues, including inadequate equipment, crumbling maternity wards, weak incident management and slow triage of urgent cases.
Furthermore, it is unacceptable that when my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) asked the Department about progress regarding implementing the recommendations of the report, the answer implied not only that Ministers could not confirm delivery but that they had no mechanism to measure any progress made. That is simply not good enough, as the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) highlighted. We need a national strategy that extends across all four nations, with clear baselines to ensure that mothers and babies receive the care they need and deserve. We need clear and transparent measures to ensure that standards are being met and to identify when they are not, because ultimately this is about protecting women and babies.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Baby Loss Awareness Week is an opportunity for those affected by baby loss to remember and commemorate their babies’ lives and to highlight this deeply important subject. I am glad to see that we are doing just that in this debate, and has it not been possibly the best of our Chamber? I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for their very moving tributes, which started the debate.
Every year in the UK, as we have heard, thousands of families are affected by the heartbreak of baby loss. It is a grief that is often invisible to the outside world and too often a silent trauma, but for those living with it, the impact is lifelong. It touches every aspect of their being —emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual—and the structures must be in place for those who need support following the loss of their baby.
In my constituency of Hyndburn and Haslingden, the staff at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS trust do a fantastic job. They are signed up to the national bereavement pathways, but as we have heard, that is not a statutory requirement. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider making it a statutory requirement, so that access to psychological support is not a postcode lottery. With rising demands on maternity services, additional staffing is required so that every family who experiences birth trauma or baby loss can get the support that they need.
Thanks to some work that was undertaken by a number of leading experts at the University of Lancashire, including my brilliant constituent who is the perinatal mental health lead at East Lancs Hospital trust, Clare Yates, they developed an evidence-based birth and reproductive trauma debrief service that has been designed to ensure that every family could receive that support across East Lancashire, and it is ready for implementation. Given the limited resources and staffing, we have not been able to roll it out, but I hope that events such as today’s debate and the renewed focus on this issue from the Secretary of State might change that, so that the enhanced service can be offered to give the care and support that families desperately need.
Up and down the country, there are competing uses for maternal funds, with the result that, unfortunately, trauma, mental health and bereavement support often get overlooked, with greater importance given to physical health. Holistic baby loss trauma services make a profound difference, and we must recognise that supporting families through baby loss is absolutely essential care, so I urge the Secretary of State to do all he can to ensure the highest possible level of care in maternity services, including in the devastating circumstances of miscarriage or baby loss, and to ensure that that support is there for everyone who is unfortunate to experience it.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
I know that this debate is not an easy one for those of us participating and for the campaigners, activists and bereaved parents who are listening, but it is nevertheless vital and I am very thankful that it is taking place. I begin by commending all those, including my hon. Friends who have led this debate in the House and beyond, who have found the courage to stand up and speak about their experiences of baby loss.
I know from personal experience just how difficult that is to do—to reopen that wound and to relive that pain in public. Every story of baby loss, told or untold, is worthy of our compassion and respect, and I say that because after the occasions when I have shared my own experience, I have been met time and again with questions: how long ago was it, how far along were you and how do you know that racism was a factor? Perhaps some of those questions were asked in innocence, but let me tell you how it made me feel: as if people were measuring my loss, weighing my grief and deciding how much pain I was allowed to feel, and as if there were a scale for sorrow. It is not one-sided. I have spoken to women who, after hearing my experience, have opened up about their own and ended by saying that their experiences were not “as bad” because mine was a late-term stillbirth and theirs was a miscarriage. That broke my heart because it is not true. To all those who experience baby loss in whatever form, your experience matters, your grief matters and your loss matters. That is why Baby Loss Awareness Week is about all forms of pregnancy and baby loss—it is not the loss Olympics. Whether it is an abortion someone had to have, an ectopic pregnancy, an early or late miscarriage, a stillbirth or neonatal death, every single one of those experiences deserves recognition and care. No one—absolutely no one—has the right to quantify your loss.
For those of us who have shared our stories, we do not do it for validation or pity; we share them so that others who have endured baby loss know they are not alone, no matter when or how they lost their baby. We share them as a call to action because in a country like ours, the figures surrounding maternal mortality and baby loss should never ever be acceptable.
Earlier this year, I led a debate in recognition of Black Maternal Health Awareness Week, during which I highlighted the racial disparity in maternity care and the fact that it has gone down. Black and mixed heritage women are now three times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth, down from five times when I first launched the APPG for black maternal health, and Asian women are twice as likely. Regretfully, this decline is not necessarily something to celebrate, nor is it due to improvements in maternity care for black women. It is because the UK’s overall maternity mortality figures are rising. More women and babies are dying in the UK now than in the last two decades. Black women are likely experiencing even further deterioration.
The latest findings from MBRRACE-UK reveal a widening divide in neonatal death rates between the UK’s most and least deprived areas. Black and minority ethnic people are 2.5 times more likely to live in relative poverty and 2.2 times more likely to live in deep poverty. In plain terms, poverty and deprivation are costing newborn lives, so the combination of socioeconomic inequalities and institutional racism has a double impact on black women and their babies’ experiences of maternity care and its outcomes. The data also shows a sharp rise in stillbirths among babies of Asian heritage, and black babies remain twice as likely to be stillborn. Urgent, targeted action is needed to tackle these deaths and health inequalities and prevent avoidable deaths.
The new report from the Health and Social Care Committee on black maternal health shows that the outcomes of maternity care are shaped by systemic failings in leadership, training, data collection and accountability. The Secretary of State will know that when the Government promised to find a way forward, I was proud, and when the Government made it a manifesto commitment to set a target to end disparity in maternity care, I was prouder, but this has not happened. The NHS 10-year plan has come and gone without a specific plan for racial disparities in maternity care. If that was not the time to announce a target, when will it be?
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for securing this important debate during Baby Loss Awareness Week to give those who have experienced pregnancy and baby loss that voice and the feeling that they are not alone. When I had my son 18 years ago, I was lucky to have the support of five other mums during those first tricky years with our babies. However, sadly for three of those mums, they had also suffered the heartbreak of a miscarriage. For them, they had support from each of us. It was not a silent subject; they could talk and share about their loss. However, at the time, I remember thinking about how their partners were coping with that loss without having that same support network. It is so important that both parents have the support they need after such devastating bereavement, such as from organisations like Ashby Sands United in my constituency. Ashby Sands is a football team for men who have suffered the devastating loss of a child or a miscarriage. One of their members told me at a recent event,
“Sometimes I don’t need to say anything, the lads know how I feel. The football isn’t always good, but the friendship and the support I get from them is what I cherish.”
In this debate, it is experience that matters, and my constituent Sarah has asked me to share these words:
“Losing a baby is an incredibly difficult and isolating time, to then learn that our baby’s death was preventable is just soul destroying. Feelings of guilt and regret—and whether it could have been prevented. Mistakes were made in my pregnancy, incorrect measurements were recorded, follow up scans were not arranged, our care was mismanaged. The hospital admitted if these scans had happened and measurements were recorded accurately; we would have had a different outcome. At one of our most exciting and vulnerable times of our lives, we put our trust and care into the hands of strangers. Trusting that we will be treated with the dignity and respect that we each deserve.”
Sarah stressed the need to drive changes in teaching and learning to make maternity and childbirth safer for all. She welcomes the rapid review and its potential to bring about much-needed changes to maternity care across the UK, but she stresses the need for a trauma-informed approach to the consultation. Those who have experienced that trauma will need support to engage. Will the Secretary of State say more about how trauma will be considered in the review?
I also welcome the rapid review. My constituents can have their babies in Nottingham, Leicester or Derby. As a former Leicestershire county councillor, I sat on the health overview and scrutiny committee. The saddest report that I requested was about maternity healthcare and baby loss. As Nottinghamshire was a neighbouring trust, I wanted to understand the situation in Leicestershire. We received a report on babies who died in childbirth. In a six-year period, seven babies had died and seven families had dealt with that devastating loss. In line with the statistics on late-term loss, six of the mothers were black or Asian. Data indicates that neonatal mortality rates for black and Asian babies are over 50% higher than for white babies. Will the Secretary of State set out how he will work towards eliminating those stark inequalities in maternity and neonatal outcomes based on ethnicity and deprivation?
I have considered a number of reports on maternity and have a few reflections. Maternity healthcare needs to be considered as healthcare. I have heard phrases such as “pregnancy isn’t an illness” and “giving birth is natural”, but I have also heard from mothers who felt that they were not listened to and felt powerless. Every stillbirth, neonatal death or infant death is a tragedy. We must make efforts to prevent them from happening. I know that, together, we will fight for justice for those who deserved just a little bit more time.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Tonight I will talk about Laura Corcoran, an inspirational woman who lives in my Bassetlaw constituency. When a scan showed no heartbeat, she was sent home to wait two weeks until the delivery of her baby. She remembers asking, “How do I collect my baby?” She said that the thought of flushing it down the toilet was something that she did not want to countenance. With no information, Laura was left feeling isolated and alone, and she had to rely on what she had to hand. She resorted to using a sieve and a plastic takeaway food box.
Laura said:
“People are given a test tube to collect urine samples, but when I was told to collect my baby, I was given nothing. I was angry.”
During her recovery, she channelled her anger and used her engineering skills to design a device that she has named the “miscarriage cradle”. It hooks on to a toilet seat and collects and seals the remains so that they can be taken safely to hospital. Her mission is for every woman to have better control, giving them a choice of managing the miscarriage at home.
Laura has begun actively promoting the miscarriage cradle in the NHS, and the Royal Liverpool university hospital was the first to adopt it. In a statement, the hospital said that one recommendation of the 2023 pregnancy loss review was for NHS trusts to provide women experiencing pregnancy loss with a compassionate clinical care kit, and the miscarriage cradle ticked all the boxes. The statement also noted that, in the tough world of hospital finances, the trust will save money, because when women have the option of managing a miscarriage at home, savings are made on staffing and bed space costs. So far, 13 trusts have adopted the miscarriage cradle, and the 14th has just got approval.
The Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust says:
“Going through a miscarriage is one of the hardest experiences that anyone can face. It’s raw, painful and often feels isolating. This miscarriage collection kit is more than just a product—it’s a small but powerful way to help women hold on to their dignity in a moment that can feel so overwhelming.”
Those words define Laura’s mission. Her focus is for every NHS hospital trust to have miscarriage cradles in stock. She has asked me to raise awareness of her cradle, and she also asks whether she can meet the Secretary of State to discuss this with him. She also asks Members to sign my early-day motion on baby loss kits.
Finally, I take this opportunity to thank JOEL The Complete Package, a Bassetlaw charity, for its support for families experiencing such crises, and for its fundraising initiative, which has ensured that there is a room at Bassetlaw hospital for parents facing such a difficult time in their lives.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I ask hon. Members to take their lead from the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White) so that I can get everybody in. If they kept their speeches to three minutes, that would be very helpful.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
I thank all hon. Members in this evening’s debate, particularly those who secured the debate but also the many who shared their incredibly powerful stories.
We have heard from several Members about the failures at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust to keep mothers and their babies safe. In 2019, my constituents Carl Everson and Carly Wesson were expecting their daughter Ladybird. During the pregnancy, Carl and Carly were told that Ladybird had a fatal chromosomal abnormality—trisomy 13, also known as Patau’s syndrome. They were told that she was incompatible with life and that if she survived the pregnancy she would live only briefly and in severe pain.
Faced with that devastating prognosis, Carl and Carly made the agonising decision to end their pregnancy. Two weeks after Ladybird’s funeral, they were told during an appointment that the long-term culture test showed a normal female carrier type. There was no evidence of Patau’s; Ladybird had been a healthy baby. Carl and Carly later learned that Ladybird’s death was not inevitable. It was the result of a misdiagnosis and a failure to follow national guidelines around abortion.
The Abortion Act 1967 requires two doctors to form an opinion in good faith, but Carl and Carly learned through their investigations that the second medical practitioner was, at best, used as a rubber-stamping exercise. That failure led to the loss of a very much loved and wanted child. Carl and Carly have spent six years fighting for answers—six years navigating a system that should have protected them. Today they continue their fight for answers and are working every day to ensure that guidelines around abortion are properly followed by doctors and that laws are updated if required.
The second family that I have worked closely with on this issue over the past year have been the Sissons. Sarah and Tony Sissons did not lose their son Ryan—indeed, Ryan joins us in the Gallery today—but every day they mourn for the man Ryan could have become. Ryan was born healthy, but just three days after his birth, a sequence of errors and neglect at Nottingham city hospital caused him to suffer a catastrophic brain injury. Consequently, Sarah and Tony were told that Ryan would never be able to walk or talk.
Sarah was just 19 years old, and was given no help to navigate her drastically changed life; instead, the Sissons were handed a leaflet about adoption. I understand that that leaflet is still framed on a wall in their house. Ryan told me today about how he learned to march in the sea cadets—he showed me in Westminster Hall and he was damn good at it; he did a pretty good job of walking and talking as far as I was concerned.
Last month Ryan turned 18, but he did not go out with his friends to the pub to celebrate. He is not applying to universities or doing an apprenticeship. Sarah and Tony are preparing their home so that Ryan can live with them for the rest of their lives. Sarah gave up her career to care for Ryan. She spent his childhood fighting to get that care, battling with the NHS and local authorities, attending endless appointments and mourning the big life milestones that Ryan never really got to reach.
Ryan is the oldest child being considered in the Nottingham Ockenden review. Among the nearly 2,500 families affected, Ryan is the first child. Ryan should not have been the first of thousands. The failures of Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust should have been learned long ago, but they were not. Those responsible have not yet been held accountable. Ryan should have had the chance to enjoy a happy, healthy childhood. Ladybird should be with her parents, far away from a House of Commons debate on baby loss.
Despite the efforts made today by myself and colleagues, it is not possible to put into words how the failings of the NUH trust have profoundly impacted so many lives in our community. I hope, deeply, that this Government are going to provide the justice that they deserve.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. There is now a formal three-minute time limit.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I rise to speak about baby loss on behalf of those affected—those who I know and love, and those who I do not know. This tragedy touches far too many families in Portsmouth North and across our country. We have heard today how each year in England and Wales, tragically, around 2,500 babies are stillborn and a further 1,600 die within their first year of life. Behind every statistic is a grieving family—mother, father, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins and siblings—whose world is changed for ever.
Around 2,000 babies are born in Portsmouth each year. While outcomes have improved, we still see the deep inequalities that drive baby loss, and babies born in our most deprived communities are twice as likely to die before their first birthday than those in our wealthiest communities. Many of our maternity teams are working tirelessly to change that. At my hospital, the Queen Alexandra hospital, the maternity service has earned a UNICEF baby-friendly gold award, a national HSJ digital award and an NHS parliamentary award for innovation and compassionate care—proof that the possibility of dedication and excellence can and does exist.
However, such excellence should not be a postcode lottery; it should be national and available for all. We have the knowledge to prevent many of these tragedies. We have had inquiries that have produced recommendations and actions about early, informed and accessible antenatal care, tackling health in pregnancy, supporting maternal mental health, accountability, transparency, openness and addressing inequalities, and listening to women and families about their experiences, to ensure that their birth choice is right for mum and baby, free from pressure and prejudice. Services must be properly funded, staffed and joined up.
When nothing can be done and a loss occurs, compassionate bereavement support is vital. Parents tell me that small acts of care, including a quiet room, a midwife who listens, a support group for all the family, the use of language—that it is a baby loss, not a miscarriage —and the opportunity to talk and be heard, can all make a difference. However, like maternity provision, bereavement support varies widely and too many families are left to cope alone, often in silence.
This week, as we mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, we must stand with every parent who lights a candle, remembers a name or holds in their heart the baby they never got to take home or who was not physically in their lives forever, but who will always be a part of their family. To those families, I know we all say, “You are not alone, your babies are not forgotten and your courage gives meaning to this work and to our debate.”
As a Government, we must work with local NHS leaders, public health teams and charities. We cannot talk about breaking down barriers to opportunity if we do not do that in our maternity services. Baby loss is not inevitable, but it is a challenge that we, as a Government, can and must meet. With compassion, we must have action.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I thank every Member from across the House who has shared their personal experience and those of their constituents. I also thank the families who have been listening to the debate in the Gallery.
From what has been shared so passionately, it is clear that not every family faces the same risks or receives the same care. The latest data from MBRRACE-UK—Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK—has already been shared, but I feel that I must repeat it, as it is so deeply concerning. It shows that babies of black ethnicity are more than twice as likely to be stillborn as babies of white ethnicity. Neonatal mortality rates among black and Asian babies are over 50% higher than those among white babies, and babies born to mothers in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to die in the first month of life than those in the least deprived areas.
Access to bereavement care is also unequal. The national bereavement care pathway sets out what good care should look like, but voluntary adoption, stretched staff and a lack of time for training mean that too many families miss out. When mental health support is needed, it is even harder to access. Over 80% of bereaved parents report needing psychological support, yet only half are able to access it through the NHS. In particular, fathers and partners are forgotten far too often.
I thank the Secretary of State for being in the House to listen to the debate. Will the Government commit to eliminating inequalities in maternal and neonatal outcomes based on ethnicity and deprivation? Will they ensure that every bereaved family—wherever they live and whatever their background—can access high-quality bereavement and mental health care? Will every NHS professional who supports those families be given the training and time they need to do so with confidence and compassion?
I welcome the steps that the Government have taken, including extended baby loss certificates and the improvements to parental bereavement leave set out in the Employment Rights Bill. However, Members from across the House, like families across the country, are calling for the compassionate, consistent and equitable care that every bereaved family deserves.
Michael Payne (Gedling) (Lab)
I rise, in Baby Loss Awareness Week, to pay tribute to the far too many families in Gedling and Nottinghamshire who have suffered the devastating loss of their babies in circumstances that were entirely avoidable. They placed their trust in a system that should have protected them, and that system failed them.
The Ockenden review of maternity services in Nottingham is now supporting 2,500 families who have been affected by neonatal deaths, injuries, stillbirths and maternity deaths. Many of them were failed by the NMC, failed by the GMC, failed by the CQC and failed by our NHS. Regulation must be overhauled, and accountability must improve.
The mothers and fathers who have come forward in Gedling and Nottinghamshire have shown extraordinary dignity, courage and perseverance in the face of heartbreak that most of us can barely begin to comprehend. Yet even in the face of unspeakable loss, each and every family I have met in Gedling and Nottinghamshire who have lost a child or suffered harm during birth have reminded me that light always shines brightest in the darkest places. In the depths of their grief, their pursuit of truth and change honours their children’s memory and stands as a beacon of tremendous humanity and hope.
I want to take a moment to pay a special tribute to the incredible charities, volunteers and support organisations who walk alongside bereaved families day in, day out. They bring comfort where it is needed most, and we all owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.
In speaking of courage and compassion, I also want to take a moment to thank my friend and neighbour, the Member of Parliament for Sherwood Forest, Michelle Welsh. Long before she entered this place, Michelle walked side by side with Nottinghamshire families through years of anguish and struggle, standing shoulder to shoulder with them when few others would. Just 37 days ago, she suffered her own loss with the passing of her beloved dad, who taught her to fight always against injustice, wherever she found it. Just days after losing her dad, she was back in Parliament, meeting bereaved maternity families. In thanking Michelle for her leadership today—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Gentleman will know that we do not refer to Members by name in this place. That is the third time he has referred to the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest by her name.
Michael Payne
My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker.
In thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for her leadership today, I want to say that her dad would have been so incredibly proud to sit in the Gallery today to see his little girl in this Chamber using the privilege of her platform to fight for those who have been failed and suffered the most unimaginable loss.
I also pay tribute to the families who have campaigned for years for change and justice. We owe them far more than sympathy. We owe them justice, and we owe them truth.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has had more than three minutes, and I want the Front Benchers to have some time to respond. I call Dave Robertson.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
I place on record my thanks to the co-sponsors of today’s debate and to all Members who have shared their personal experiences. It has been a very difficult debate for many of us on such an important but such a difficult subject.
Like many Members today, I am here to speak on behalf of my constituents. Tim and Hannah lost their son Zack when he was just 14 hours old. Zack’s inquest found that there was a total and complete failure in his care. I genuinely do not know how parents can receive an inquest verdict like that and find the strength to put themselves back together, but Tim and Hannah did—I am sure that is something we will see in many of the people in the Gallery today. They found the strength to put themselves back together and start looking to what comes next.
Zack’s story is that he caught a group B strep infection as he was born. It is incredibly common—20% to 40% of women have it on any given day—and it is generally symptomless in adults, but if it passes from mum to baby during labour, it can be fatal. On average, one baby a week in the UK dies of a strep B infection. Group B strep is common in mums and highly dangerous to babies, but the UK does not routinely test for it during pregnancy. Instead, we rely on risk factors to identify expecting mums who have it, and too often—as in Zack’s case—that approach is not working.
I am pleased that a major trial, the GBS3 trial, is under way to look at whether we would be better off routinely testing, and is due to report later this year. It is no overstatement to say that that trial is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look at our approach to the safety of babies in this situation. I really hope that it reports and moves us towards a situation in which we can routinely test for this condition during pregnancy. The gold standard test costs just £15, and can save lives—potentially, a life a week. We must do all we can to protect babies like Zack and ensure that no more parents go through what Tim and Hannah have had to.
Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)
It is a real privilege to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, particularly after so many powerful and profound speeches and interventions from Members across the House. I want to share the testimony of a constituent who has endured an experience that affects many families, yet receives very little attention: hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, or HIE. Her son survived a HIE event during his birth. HIE is a brain injury caused by a lack of oxygen or blood flow, which can lead to developmental delays, intellectual and physical disabilities and—tragically—in one in five cases, death. Some of these complications can remain hidden until school age.
My constituent had never heard of HIE at the time, nor had I prior to her contacting me, but it is an all-too-common condition that affects three to four births out of every 1,000. In her son’s case, it resulted in mild cerebral palsy. She was supported by a wonderful charity called Peeps, which highlights that families affected by HIE often feel that they do not belong in a baby loss space. Many of those families experience birth trauma, PTSD and complicated grief. While charities such as Peeps offer support to anybody affected, NHS mental health support can often be restricted to just the mother. This leaves fathers and partners—who are also deeply affected—to cope alone. Support must and should be for the whole family.
Peeps also emphasises the significant gaps in long-term support, especially for families whose children survive but face lifelong, severe disabilities. They are left to navigate complex needs for years after the initial intensive care ends. The trauma is compounded for families whose event may have been avoidable. A study in Finland between 2005 and 2024 suggested that a fifth of all such cases could have been prevented, or at least could have benefited from preventive measures. This compounds the trauma of affected families and underscores the importance of absolute honesty and systemic learning in our NHS services.
Additionally, HIE is not always recorded consistently in NHS systems or statistics, making it harder to advocate for policy change and obscuring potential disparities in outcomes, which we know exist for stillbirths and neonatal deaths. We must listen to brave parents such as my constituent and fantastic charities such as Peeps and ensure that HIE is no longer misunderstood or unheard of in conversations about baby loss. We owe these families recognition, compassionate care, and a commitment to address the lack of consistent data that makes it so hard for them to advocate for change.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. That brings us to the Front-Bench contributions, which will perhaps be in the region of eight minutes each.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
The hon. Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) must be thanked, not just for securing this debate to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, but for their tireless advocacy to improve maternity services across the United Kingdom—work that they have been carrying out for many years.
The pain of baby loss is multifaceted. It involves not only the unimaginable grief that accompanies losing a baby, but the emotional and psychological suffering that comes with facing the prospect of a life without your child—a future completely different from the one you had hoped for. Losing a baby can be loud, fast and chaotic, but it can also happen quietly—almost unnoticeably. Some parents arrive home from the hospital to a wardrobe full of baby clothes and piles of newborn toys, but an empty cot. Other expectant mothers may wake up in the morning excited to be another day closer to their baby’s arrival, only to find out that it was not meant to be.
Half of adults in the UK said that they or someone they know had experienced pregnancy or baby loss. According to Sands, every day in the UK 13 babies die shortly before, during or soon after birth. These families, as we have heard tonight, have to try to pick up the pieces, maintain their relationships, work and continue with daily commitments, all while tackling the emotional and often physical trauma of their experiences. They often walk that path alone, feeling like there is nobody they can speak to about their indescribable grief, or that they should not speak about it, as though they themselves have somehow failed. That is not the case, and no woman should have to suffer in silence.
In the case of my constituents, Hannah and Simon, not only did they have to come to terms with the fact that they would not be taking their baby boy, Austin, home from the hospital, but they had to face the reality that this tragedy was avoidable and that their baby would have survived, had the trust recognised and responded to concerns identified in the foetal and maternal monitoring. Hannah and Simon are not the only ones. Connecting with other parents in Sussex resulted in them hearing stories from other families whose experiences were concerningly similar to their own.
Between 2019 and 2023, the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust paid £58 million in compensation for 60 medical negligence claims related to maternity and obstetric care. That is the second-highest amount of compensation and the third-highest number of claims across all NHS trusts in England. That, and Hannah and Simon’s story, points to a larger systemic problem at the heart of maternity care. It was clear then, as it is now, that successive Governments have been asleep at the wheel on maternity care, and it is the families at the heart of it who pay the price—families such as Hannah and Simon’s. Their baby Austin would have been starting school next year if things had been different, and their daughter, just three when her little brother died,
“should not have to continually ask us why her friends got to bring their siblings home, and she had to say goodbye instead.”
That family, like too many across the country, deserved better. Now, they themselves are calling for change so that no one else misses out on a lifetime of memories with their child as a result of avoidable mistakes.
As part of her inquiry into maternity care, Donna Ockenden provided a blueprint—a starting point from which we could put an end to this scandal, make maternity care fit for purpose and put an end to these unnecessary deaths. However, not only have the nationally applicable, immediate and essential actions of the Ockenden report not all been implemented, but the Government have dropped the requirement for every ICB to have a women’s health hub, and they have announced cuts to the national service development funding for maternity services from £95 million in 2024-25 to just £2 million the following year.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that the UK is underperforming compared with other OECD countries on infant and newborn mortality, or that, according to a Care Quality Commission report in September 2024, 65% of units are not safe for women to give birth in? We want our country to become the safest place in the world to have a baby, but that can only be achieved if accountability is taken for these failings, lessons are learned, and concrete steps are taken by the Government to put an end to this national scandal.
We have heard from a number of Members this evening about the impacts of deprivation and ethnicity on outcomes for maternity and for babies. The colour of someone’s skin, their bank balance or where they live should not be deciding factors in whether they and their baby live or die. Quite simply, maternity care should not be a lottery.
I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s presence this evening, and I endorse the comments made by the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) and my hon. Friends the Members for Horsham (John Milne) and for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), who said that families who have lost babies through medical negligence need to be taken with the Government on this journey towards reviews. I think that the Sussex families would be furious with me this evening if I did not say to the Secretary of State that they are not happy with the way in which the reviews announced in July are going so far, so I urge him to do everything in his power to listen to the families and take them on that journey together.
Let me pose a question to the Secretary of State on behalf of Hannah and Simon. These Sussex families have waited over a year for the Government to appoint Donna Ockenden, the one person with a proven record of exposing failings and driving improvement. Thus far, their patience has been repaid with delay, confusion and avoidance. When will the Government act to stop these preventable deaths by appointing Donna Ockenden to lead the Sussex review, and by confronting what has become a national shame for our country’s children with a full public inquiry?
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) spoke movingly about his and his wife’s experience of miscarriage, and I endorse his call for mental health support following every miscarriage, not just after three.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Lady will want to conclude her remarks very quickly.
Alison Bennett
The theme of this year’s Baby Loss Awareness Week is “Together, we care”, and we do care. We care about all kinds of baby loss, and we care about babies like Austin. Hannah told me:
“We lost an entire lifetime. Our son never had the chance to grow up, to take his first steps, to speak his first words, to make friends”—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady must have misunderstood what I meant by “quickly”.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Let me first draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) and the hon. Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing the debate, and on their eloquent and thoughtful speeches. Behind the statistics that I will put before Members, as others have done today, are the broken families with a gaping hole in their lives and a pain that will never go away. There are so many unanswered questions. What would their first word have been? When would they have taken their first steps? Who would they have grown up to become? For families who have lost a baby, these questions, painfully, tragically, will never be answered.
I have been honoured to meet representatives of charities all of which are doing excellent work to support families who have been affected by baby loss, and campaigning for improved maternity services. I pay tribute to those charities—including Bliss, Sands and Tommy’s—and to the royal colleges, and I thank the families in the Maternity Safety Alliance for sharing their very personal and moving stories with me when the shadow Secretary of State and I met them recently.
The last Government worked hard to improve maternity services. A decade ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash, then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced an ambition to halve the rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths in England by 2030, and he made encouraging progress. The stillbirth rate fell by about 20%, as did the neonatal death rate, and the maternal death rate fell by about a third.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of baby loss certificates following the pregnancy loss review under the last Government was a vital step in recognising bereaved parents’ grief and offering support on their terms?
Dr Johnson
My hon. Friend is, of course, right. Those certificates have proved to be of great comfort to many. The hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) talked about her work in that regard, and I thank her for it. I am also grateful for the work of my former colleague Tim Loughton.
One of the reasons I went into politics is the fact that one can make more of a difference as a politician than as a single doctor alone. The changes made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash mean that, by quite some margin, he has saved more babies’ lives than I have as a consultant paediatrician. I assure the Secretary of State that it is not flattery when I say that he has more capacity than any NHS doctor when it comes to saving babies’ lives. I am pleased to see him here at almost midnight; I know that he cares, and I know that, like all of us, he wants to stop the tragedies about which we have heard so much today. However, I ask him to consider, every day, whether he is really doing all that he can to maximise the opportunity that he has, and, in the spirit of constructive opposition, I have a few questions for him. He said he came in with a plan, but in fact he took a year to create the 10-year plan, which creates a maternity and neonatal taskforce that is tasked with creating another plan. I sincerely hope that it is a good plan, after all this waiting, but I do worry that it has lost time, so can he confirm when it will be published?
Staffing levels have been mentioned in many tragic incidents, and the Secretary of State has promised that he will train thousands of additional midwives. Looking at the figures, an average of 10 fewer students have been accepted on to midwifery degrees in England across his two years in office compared with 2023. Can the Secretary of State confirm when he expects to train the 1,000 additional midwives he promised in his manifesto?
The previous Government increased the number of medical school places and built five new medical schools. As those students begin to qualify, the specialist training places need to be expanded and British graduates need to be prioritised. The Secretary of State seemed to understand that at Easter, but what has he done about it? The applicant-to-place ratio has risen dramatically, and now strikes are threatened, which would threaten the care of women and babies across the country.
We know that reducing baby loss starts before a baby is conceived and that factors such as teenage pregnancy, smoking, obesity and sub-optimally managed chronic conditions increase the risk of stillbirth. We must systemically improve on factors that increase the risk of baby death. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has brought through legislation, introduced by the previous Government, to fortify bread flour with folic acid by the end of 2026. That will prevent 200 cases of neural tube defects a year and improve the health of pregnant women. I am also pleased to see that the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is gradually making its way through Parliament. However, given that the Bill completed its Second Reading in the House of Lords on 23 April and is not due to appear in Committee until 27 October—more than six months later—there just does not seem to be enough urgency in the Government’s actions. Can the Secretary of State tell us what he is doing to improve pre-conception advice and optimise the management of chronic conditions in women to reduce the risk of baby loss?
As an NHS doctor, I pay tribute to my colleagues, who welcome almost 600,000 tiny miracles into the world each year. However, as we have heard this evening, care does not always meet the highest standards and too often avoidable deaths occur. Can the Secretary of State assure us that the findings of the ongoing Ockenden review into maternity services will be swiftly acted on? Donna Ockenden’s 2020 review into maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford trust found that at least 201 babies and nine mothers could have survived had they had better care. From her report came a £95 million ringfenced fund to improve the care available for expectant mothers, but as we have heard already this evening, the Government have slashed that fund from £95 million to just £2 million, with the rest of the money siphoned off to England’s 42 integrated care boards.
The Government have also reduced ICB budgets and are forcing them to restructure. I am worried that this un-ringfencing of the budget, and the distracting reorganisation, will have a negative impact on efforts to improve maternity services. What is the Secretary of State doing to prevent negative consequences?
Neonatal care can be lifesaving. One in seven babies in the UK requires neonatal care, but unfortunately their fight for life is not always won, and 1,933 babies died in neonatal care in 2023. With that in mind, will the Secretary of State clarify the extent to which neonatal services will be included in the maternity and neonatal investigation due by the end of the year? How will the quality of neonatal care be assessed? The recent NHS estates review of maternity and neonatal care did not appear to include parental accommodation, yet many parents find that their babies are transferred miles away for specialist care. May I urge the Secretary of State to recognise the value of this accommodation and make sure it is widely available?
As many Members have mentioned, black and ethnic minority women are more likely to suffer baby loss or maternal death. Can the Secretary of State update us on what progress he has made on his Government’s manifesto promise to close the maternal mortality gap for black and Asian women?
In the decade since the previous Government launched ambitions to improve maternity safety in the UK, the number of stillbirths and neonatal deaths has reduced by almost a quarter, and the number of maternal deaths has reduced by around a third. These are encouraging signs, and they show good progress. We must build on these achievements, but there is so much more work to be done. Today we have heard many stories of loss and of care failures. Only action will turn the page on baby loss. We all wish for improved maternity and neonatal care, but the Secretary of State is the man with the levers to make that happen—the levers to save hundreds of lives. I urge him to use them urgently.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in this extremely powerful debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for securing the debate, and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.
Before I get into the substance of the debate, since this is Baby Loss Awareness Week, I want to put on record my thanks to the all-party parliamentary groups on baby loss, on maternity and on patient safety for their work in raising awareness; and charities such as Tommy’s, Sands, the Miscarriage Association and Bliss, which give bereaved families a voice and incredible support, and which deserve special recognition. I am extremely grateful to Members from across the House who have named local charities, run by those—often with lived experience—who play such a crucial role in improving services, so that others do not have to experience the torture that they have experienced.
It is such organisations that drove the adoption of baby loss certificates, introduced by the last Government and expanded by this one. I, too, thank Tim Loughton for his work, and my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for her leadership in this space. Not everyone will choose to have a certificate, but the option is now there for all parents who have experienced losing a pregnancy to have that loss recognised officially. I know that this has meant so much to those who have taken up that option, and to those who are providing the service, particularly staff in the NHS Business Services Authority, who have shared with Ministers their pride—many of them having that experience of loss themselves—of being part of the solution. I am of course delighted that the Government in Wales have also taken up this option.
Given the time available, there is simply no way of doing justice to the contributions that we have heard from Members across the House and the stories that they have shared with us. However, if there is one thing I have learned in my time as Secretary of State working on these issues it is that words will not do any justice to these families. What people want to see is action, and what they need to experience is justice.
I really do want to say a heartfelt thank you to Members across the House who have had the courage to share their personal stories. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen, by talking about his daughter Mallorie, has given a voice to many fathers and partners who too often feel airbrushed from the conversation and absent from consideration. I think it is very poignant that he opened the debate for us this evening.
This is no exaggeration, but my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) talked about the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest, and it is truly extraordinary that, in the aftermath of such an awful bereavement with the loss of her father, she was back to work in a matter of days, so that she could be there with families in Nottingham to support them in their ongoing campaign for justice.
Of course, my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake) and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) all shared their stories, because others who have spoken previously had the courage to share their own experience. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South. I have certainly never forgotten her speech about Lucy, and she really has blazed a trail for others to follow.
I can honestly say that, in the last year, the most difficult meetings have been those with victims of the NHS. I think we should pause for a moment just to reflect on how outrageous that sentence is—victims of the national health service. They are people who, in their moments of greatest vulnerability, placed themselves and their lives and the lives of their unborn children in the hands of others, but who instead of finding themselves supported and cared for, found themselves victims. It is truly shocking.
I have heard dozens of stories, each unique, each told with heartbreaking clarity and each with a common theme: that what should have been a moment of joy became a terrifying ordeal. I have had complete strangers describe to me, a Government Minister, their experience of injuries endured in childbirth. Women have had to share with me, a total stranger, what it has done to their sex lives and what it has done to their continence. I have had fathers share with me for the first time their attempts at suicide, and the impact that their loss and grief has had on their mental health. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson) of the harm done to young people, in this case young Ryan, who was with us in the Gallery today. I have seen photographs of parents’ children. I have seen the ashes of their children in the tiniest boxes. I have seen more courage than I could ever imagine mustering if I had to walk a day in their shoes.
Each time they have met me—each time they have met anyone—they have had to relive the trauma inflicted on them by the state. Perhaps what is most shocking of all is that if there is another theme that ties these families together, it is the fact that they have had to battle time and again for truth, for justice, for answers, for accountability and for change, so that other families do not have to experience what they are going through.
I cannot thank enough the Members on both sides of the House who have placed on record not just the stories, but the names of the children we have lost, so that they can stand on the record there for all time, a stain on the history of our national health service, but also a galvanising call to action. I hope there is some small comfort for families who have been with us in the Chamber this evening to hear the debate, or who have watched online, to know that Parliament is listening, that we are learning, and that, crucially, we are acting.
Many Members have remarked on my personal responsibility and the responsibility that weighs heavily on my shoulders to get this right. We have been joined by some of the Nottingham families this evening. When I have met them, they have arranged themselves around a horseshoe table in date order, with those whose experience goes back furthest sat to my left, and those most recently sat to my right. I go back to Nottingham regularly and honestly dread the prospect of going to another meeting with another family arriving on my right-hand side at that end of the table with another story to tell, but one that has happened on my watch.
We know how serious these situations and challenges are. We have an implicit message from the system that tells women not to have a miscarriage at the weekend. We have women who are classed as having a normal birth still leaving traumatised and scarred. We still use terms such as “normal” to describe a particular type of birth for ideological reasons. All these things need to change.
We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Clapham and Brixton Hill, for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) and for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge) the shockingly wide race and class inequalities. We should not kid ourselves that these are statistical anomalies or just institutional failures, because I have heard time and again direct first-hand experiences of overt racism: black women told that it was assumed that that they would be “a strong black woman” and so would not need so much pain relief; and examples of Asian mothers described as divas. Perhaps most shockingly of all, taking a step back and looking at the overall picture, we have had the normalisation of deaths of women and babies. We have levels of loss and death in this country that are simply not tolerated in others. We have a shocking culture of cover-up and backside covering, as we have heard across the Chamber this evening.
Recognising that I cannot respond to every individual point that has been made in the debate, I will undertake to write to Members across the House with detailed answers to the questions they posed. I want to conclude by making this point, which is about trust. We are setting out the rapid investigation led by Baroness Amos because I need to act urgently on the systemic challenges. I want to acknowledge openly and publicly that not all families are with me on this; many have concerns, and they wonder whether this will be just another review that sits on the shelf. I want to conclude by assuring those families and this House of my personal commitment to ensuring that that is not the case, and not just through leading the taskforce that will implement the recommendations myself, but by giving a promise to this House and to those families, in the spirit set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest, that grief must be the engine of change. The stories I have heard from those families at first hand will be the steel in my spine to deliver the change they need.
Andy MacNae
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will speak relatively briefly. I would just like to thank everybody for their presence, honesty and passion today. This has been a moving, deeply powerful and deeply impactive debate. I particularly thank the Secretary of State, not just for being here, but for the passion, anger and urgency in his speech.
There are a million things I would like to talk about, but I will just reflect very briefly on the words of the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) about Billy and Billy’s parents and taking tragedy and turning that into positive change. If there is one idea that I think sums up this debate, it is the chance to take tragedy and turn it into positive change—an action that makes real difference. That is the task before us, and I thank everyone for supporting it.
Ilkeston Market Place
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
This evening, I am presenting a petition in the name of Samuel Wilson, who, on 16 December 2023, was murdered in Ilkeston by a man driving a van under the influence of alcohol and cocaine. This murder was possible because of a lack of appropriate anti-vehicle measures on Ilkeston marketplace. This petition has been led by Samuel’s family and has been signed by 6,870 of Samuel’s friends, family and members of the wider Erewash community. The petitioners
“request that the House of Commons urge the Government to call on relevant authorities and key partners to strengthen pedestrianisation measures on Ilkeston market place, and that the petitioners remain informed as to actions taken to achieve this goal.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of Loraine Wilson, the family and friends of Samuel Wilson and residents of Ilkeston.
Declares that Ilkeston Market Place is insufficiently pedestrianised and that new anti-vehicle measures should be put in place to enhance public safety.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to call on relevant authorities and key partners to strengthen pedestrianisation measures on Ilkeston market place, and that the petitioners remain informed as to actions taken to achieve this goal.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P003116]
Heritage Sites: East of England
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
I am pleased to have secured some parliamentary time today to highlight our superb heritage in the east of England and the role of Government in supporting that. I am mindful of the very moving stories we heard in the previous debate, so I will keep these remarks fairly brief; I know that others want to intervene, and I am very happy to accept that. I declare an interest as co-chair of the East of England all-party parliamentary group.
I begin by wishing Members a slightly early Essex Day. The official celebration is on St Cedd’s day in two weeks’ time, but I am sure St Cedd would not mind an early greeting. In the seventh century, Cedd became the bishop of the East Saxons at the request of King Sigeberht the Good—whose territory included the mighty Colchester, which I am proud to represent, and the muddy river crossing now known as London—and Cedd remains the patron saint of Essex. As a proud Essex girl, I know that Essex retains a fierce and unique identity. We may no longer have our own king, but we will shortly be electing our own Mayor as part of this Government’s commitment to devolution.
It is the process of devolution that is the context for tonight’s remarks. Powers are being reorganised in the east of England, and I and other colleagues want to make the case for heritage and culture to be at the heart of that process. The English devolution White Paper, issued last December, says:
“Strategic Authorities will also be key partners in boosting culture, heritage and the visitor economy, supported by close integration with arm’s length bodies like Historic England.”
However, the consultations issued in July this year for devolution in Greater Essex and Norfolk and Suffolk say that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and its arm’s length bodies should
“explore a deeper, collaborative partnership with the mayoral combined county authority.”
Many east of England MPs are concerned that this language does not sufficiently prioritise heritage and culture and the economic opportunities that they present within this devolution process.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Member for bringing forward this debate. I spoke to her beforehand. Does she agree that European heritage days are a supreme example of how to enjoy heritage sites, whether it be in the east of England or anywhere else in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? The days provide free entry into many historical venues. The priory in Newtownards, which is a Dominican priory built in the 1200s, is one such site that can only be entered on European heritage days. Does the hon. Member agree that greater affordable access for the public will only enhance and inspire new generations to know who they are and where they come from, and that that is definitely worth greater UK investment?
Pam Cox
I absolutely agree that accessibility and affordability are at the heart of much of this.
On the point about devolution, I would like to ask the Minister to address this issue and to work with colleagues to enhance the standing of heritage and culture within the ongoing devolution processes in the east of England.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her generosity in giving way at this late hour. I am not an east of England MP, but I am the Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on UNESCO world heritage sites, so this is an issue about which I care passionately. On the point my hon. Friend has just made, I ask the Minister to bear in mind very carefully clause 41 of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, because we do not want that legislation to inadvertently cause second-order effects and challenges for these very important sites, which are part of our history, culture and heritage and are a big part of who we are as a society.
Pam Cox
Indeed, planning regulation plays an important part in preserving our heritage. I am sure the Minister will make note of those comments.
The east is a region rich in history. In my constituency of Colchester, we are rightly proud of our claim to be the first city built in Britain and its first Roman capital. We possess the oldest and longest Roman city walls, the remains of the temple of Claudius and Britain’s only known Roman chariot racing track, which is a monument particularly close to my own heart—think “Ben-Hur” with an Essex twist.
It is known as the Colchester Roman circus and is a site of international importance, yet continues to face planning and development pressures, which speaks to what my hon. Friend just mentioned, and lacks the sustained investment needed to realise its full potential. One difficulty we face at that site and at some other scheduled ancient monuments in my constituency is that their historic importance can be at first sight very difficult to appreciate. The Roman circus spectator terraces were so huge that the Saxons, presumably including King Sigeberht, found them a great source of building materials. Unfortunately, their commendable recycling meant that there is nothing left of the circus above ground.
As a result, I have been in discussions with local heritage architects about the possibility of reconstructing these mighty starting gates of the circus based on designs that have been found in similar buildings elsewhere in Europe. These are the gates through which charioteers and horses would have thundered at the start of every race. We have run into a problem, however, in that Historic England does not seem very keen on reconstructions these days, when in previous generations it may have been more keen. A reconstruction in some form would most likely draw many more people to the site, promote local pride and energise local tourism. Given that, I would like to ask the Minister to take up this issue with Historic England to see if its attitude towards reconstruction can be revised in situations such as these.
Another key site in my constituency is the former Romano-British settlement at Gosbecks field. This dates from the early first century CE and is believed to have been the residence of Cunobelin, known to Romans as “King of the Britons” and to Shakespeare as Cymbeline. The site includes an Iron Age dyke, which today still forms part of the boundary line between my constituency and that of the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel).
Gosbecks is believed to be the place where ancient Britons signed up—or surrendered, depending on your view—to become part of the Roman empire. It therefore plays a vital part in the history not just of our county, but of the country. I would like to see very much more made of Gosbecks.
The Romans constructed a large theatre and a huge temple at Gosbecks, but here too the bricks were recycled and today there is little to see. However, experts—and former colleagues of mine—at the University of Essex have a renowned track record in developing immersive technology and virtual and augmented reality applications that could help bring Gosbecks back to life for new audiences. Think Runnymede and Magna Carta—it is of that order of magnitude. There is already some interest in that from the National Lottery Heritage Fund from a green spaces perspective, but I also see many synergies with the ministerial team’s responsibilities for culture, heritage and media, with an emphasis on media, as Gosbecks and sites like it could provide brilliant opportunities for 21st century interactive media interpretations that are the gateway to more inclusive access to our heritage and culture. I therefore encourage the Minister and the Department to do more to promote such opportunities, perhaps taking Gosbecks as a use case.
Our heritage sites tell our national story, connect us to the generations who came before us and offer opportunities for education and tourism and to create pride in place. However, they also face real and growing threats from neglect, development pressures and underinvestment—threats that became ever-more intense under the previous Government’s cuts to local authority coffers.
I welcome the many announcements of enhanced funding for heritage made by the Government over the past year. To give just a few, we have had £15 million through the heritage at risk capital fund, a further £5 million through the heritage revival fund, and just this week we have had details of a new £20 million museum renewal fund. Those initiatives empower communities to take ownership of local heritage and breathe new life into neglected buildings. When done well, such projects can deliver multiple returns for local economies, creating employment, aspiration and pride.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. Does she agree that other heritage sites including independently run stately homes like Knebworth House in my constituency receive no Government funding and therefore need a fair fiscal and planning framework? Does she agree that we need the Government to provide streamlined consent for energy-efficiency measures so that they can continue to support rural jobs, tourism and climate goals?
Pam Cox
I agree that all those options are things to be explored. Speaking as a former historian, I think that anything that enables greater access to heritage is to be celebrated. In the east, beneficiaries of some of the grants that I mentioned include projects to revitalise Lowestoft town hall, the former Iron Duke pub in Great Yarmouth and St George’s Guildhall in King's Lynn in Norfolk. As we can see, heritage takes many forms across our region.
In Colchester, work has just begun on a £10 million project to restore our magnificent Victorian water tower, known as Jumbo. The project is generously supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, central Government, city and county councils, charitable funds and local residents. It will create a great visitor attraction for our city—it is one of the first things people see as they come into the city on the train. But welcome as those projects are, they do not make up for the fact that heritage and cultural sectors in the east face ongoing funding challenges. Much of the blame for that, like so many of the challenges we face, can be laid on the years of austerity after 2010. Since that year, overall local authority spending on heritage has dropped by 45%. That is bad enough in itself, but according to figures from Historic England it is down in the east by 60%, which can be catastrophic for those sites. Spending on museums in the east is down by 57%, and on archives by 38%. By one count from an Institute for Public Policy Research report published in July, the east of England receives less heritage and cultural funding per capita than any other region: just £12.57 per person, which is less than half the national average and just a fifth of the amount in London.
In bringing my remarks to a close, I encourage the Minister to consider two broad courses of action: first, to create a dedicated regional heritage strategy for the east of England, which could help shape devolved policy under the new mayoralties, with clear priorities and long-term funding commitments that address the funding gap for heritage in our part of the country; and, secondly, to meet me to discuss how we might develop more innovative, inclusive approaches to preserving and celebrating our regional heritage.
Heritage is not just about bricks, mortar or memory; it is about identity, belonging and opportunity in the here and now. When we invest in heritage, we invest in jobs, tourism, education and community cohesion. As we have heard from Members around the Chamber tonight, there are treasures aplenty in our region, and I hope we can find new ways to unlock their full potential, with imagination, investment and a commitment to future generations.
The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts (Ian Murray)
I am pleased to respond to this Adjournment debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) on securing it and wish her a very happy Essex Day. That is something I never thought I would say from the Dispatch Box, but I wish everyone a happy Essex Day none the less.
As my hon. Friend laid out, the east of England has a unique and rich heritage. It is awash with nationally significant heritage assets such as the Iron Age neolithic flint mines at Grime’s Graves, Framlingham Castle and Tudor Lavenham, and historic houses such as Audley End House and Sandringham—and, of course, we heard about Knebworth House too. The region is also home to a rich Roman heritage, which is no more evident than in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Colchester, which is not only, as she said, Britain’s oldest recorded settlement, but the former Roman capital, with its iconic Roman circus. She called it “Ben-Hur” but in Essex—I am not quite sure what that film would be called, but perhaps we can leave that sticking to the wall, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I want to take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for her work to preserve heritage in her constituency, including the grade II listed Balkerne water tower, which she also mentioned. I know that she has been involved in efforts to restore it and secure its future, and that exciting plans are in train. If there is anything the Department can do to help her with those plans, we stand ready to do so.
As my hon. Friend said, our local heritage tells the story of who we are and forms the cornerstone of our communities in the present in order to preserve the past. The Government are proud to support communities to celebrate the heritage buildings and assets they value and ensure that they can continue to meet their needs in the present and into the future.
Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State marked the 60th anniversary of the first ever arts White Paper and announced £270 million of funding to fix the foundations of our arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage sector in communities right across the country. That ambition is now starting to bear some fruit. My hon. Friend’s constituency has benefited directly from nearly £1.3 million of Arts Everywhere funding to protect Colchester castle for future generations, enabling urgent maintenance and roof repairs to ensure the landmark’s future.
Furthermore, I am pleased to say that, as announced in August, through the Government’s heritage at risk capital scheme, 37 much loved historic buildings and sites in the places across England that need it most will receive funding to support repairs and restoration. That much needed funding will breathe new life into our heritage and, in many cases, help turn it into vibrant spaces that our communities need today. Over £2 million of that funding is going to projects in the east of England, including £700,000 to bring Lowestoft’s derelict town hall back to life as a fully accessible public space with an art gallery, café and events venue, and £137,000 for the Iron Duke restoration project in Great Yarmouth, which my hon. Friend mentioned, bringing the building back into use and creating 50 much needed new jobs for the area.
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
I am really lucky in North West Cambridgeshire to represent a whole variety of heritage sites of different sizes, including Burghley House, which I visited recently—a 16th century stately home that welcomes thousands of visitors each year to the house itself and the gardens—and smaller sites such as John Clare Cottage, where the famous poet lived, the surroundings of which inspired so much of his poetry. As well as welcoming the local, national and international tourism to those sites, does the Minister agree that it is important that we support the educational work they do in respect of local history, agriculture and the natural environment?
Ian Murray
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it is true: as we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, our heritage is about our future, but it is also about learning about our past. It is good for social cohesion, but it is also tremendous for education, and Burghley House and the John Clare Cottage in North West Cambridgeshire play a vital role in that education. I am pleased to confirm that this year we continued Historic England’s Heritage Schools programme, which supports teachers to bring local heritage into teaching across the curriculum. I hope that that continues, because it is very much a passion of the Secretary of State and I; we really want to make sure that our heritage across the United Kingdom is shared by everyone. The Arts Everywhere project is so important for community cohesion and for young people’s learning about our history and shaping its future.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester set out, preserving and maintaining the rich heritage of this region or any region can be expensive and challenging. In addition to the funding that I have already mentioned, there have been many other interventions by the Government, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England to make safe, to maintain and to preserve the region’s invaluable heritage assets. In 2023-24 alone, the National Lottery Heritage Fund gave £33.5 million for heritage in the east of England, including £13 million to Norwich castle, an iconic site in the city originally commissioned by William the Conqueror.
Thanks to sustained investment in our heritage, we are seeking seeing at-risk heritage sites removed from Historic England’s heritage at risk register. My hon. Friend said that that is the legacy that we should leave for future generations because we are custodians of our heritage. That is what the risk register is there for, and I am delighted to see that sites are being removed from the register because of that investment. The register gives an annual snapshot of the health of England’s valued historic buildings by identifying sites most at risk of loss due to neglect. It lists 427 entries in the east of England alone in 2024, but by working closely with partners and communities, 14 sites have been removed from the register, with £800,000 in grants being awarded for repairs to an additional 25 sites last year. We are making progress, and we are also making it easier for communities to take ownership of the heritage assets they love by providing nearly £5 million through the heritage revival fund delivered by the Architectural Heritage Fund.
In addition, we have changed the definition of an asset of community value to state clearly that heritage buildings are included in that, so that they can be assets for the community to take on. Maintaining our historic heritage does not necessarily mean preserving it in aspic as a relic of the past. In our towns and cities, old and new stand side by side, and our heritage has a key role to play in delivering the Government’s ambitious commitments to boost economic growth and build 1.5 million new homes alongside our existing heritage.
There are examples up and down the country where growth and development can co-exist with our wonderful heritage. A local example is Lexden Gardens, which is in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Colchester. That development, which will see the creation of 120 new homes on the former Essex county hospital site, includes the restoration of the grade-II listed main hospital, which has deep rooted heritage connections and significance to the local community. To support our ambitions, we are working across Government to streamline the planning system, including the role of Historic England as a statutory consultee, to ensure timely, expert advice that supports high-quality development. The Government remain committed to protecting historic assets and will ensure that any changes to the planning system do not remove the quality of advice or heritage safeguards.
My hon. Friend asked some questions. I think I have a few minutes to run through some of those. She asked whether we would address the issues with regards to enhancing the importance of heritage, culture and tourism within the ongoing devolution process in the east of England. I can assure my hon. Friend that there has been no change in position between the two papers that she cited. The Government remain committed to supporting local areas to deliver their own priorities, including widening access and participation to culture and heritage and harnessing their potential for community transformation and economic growth. The Department’s arm’s length bodies, such as Historic England, will continue to explore how to work in partnership with strategic authorities within the ongoing devolution process in the east of England.
My hon. Friend asked about the local heritage architecture and the possibility of restructuring the mighty starting gates of the circus based on designs of others elsewhere. It is an incredibly interesting project. My hon. Friend Baroness Twycross in the other place takes the heritage portfolio, so I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets a meeting with her to discuss the project in detail. The scheduled monuments like the Roman circus are protected in the form they have been passed down to us by previous generations, but should a proposal come forward to reconstruct elements of the circus, as she has laid out, it would require careful consideration through the scheduled monument consent process. I understand Historic England continues to work with Colchester council on that exciting project.
My hon. Friend also asked about synergies in the Department’s responsibilities for cultural heritage and media. I agree that virtual and augmented reality have great potential to bring our heritage to life. In fact, through programmes like the Audience of the Future and the creative clusters, we have demonstrated the value that immersive reality can bring to all sorts of experiences, including museums and storytelling. If she wants to take that particular issue to Baroness Twycross as well when we arrange that meeting, that is something she would be very much interested in hearing about in terms of how augmented and virtual reality could create a real benefit to the people of Colchester and, indeed, the Roman castle site.
Finally, my hon. Friend asked whether the Government will create a dedicated regional heritage strategy for the east of England—one that can help shape the devolved strategy in itself. Our devolution reforms aim to put power back in the hands of local leaders and local people, and to support mayoral strategic authorities to lead strategies in the areas they want to prioritise to drive the change they want to see—I have no idea what that means either, but I think it basically means that the power of having the strategic authorities is from the grassroots up. Indeed, we should be working with our local councils, local members and the strategic authorities for that to happen. Again, Baroness Twycross would be happy to talk to my hon. Friend about that.
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and providing me with the opportunity to reiterate the Government’s commitment to protecting and enhancing our shared heritage. We will continue to invest in our heritage, to forge collaborative and collective partnerships and to approach development in a pragmatic way, ensuring that precious sites, many of which have been mentioned by hon. Members, such as the Roman circus and the Balkerne water towers, as well as sites in the east of England and beyond, are not only preserved but celebrated for generations to come. I look forward to seeing the ongoing positive impact of these heritage projects in Colchester and across the east of England as we continue to build a future where our rich history stands proudly alongside new growth opportunities in all our communities.
Question put and agreed to.