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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Financial Transparency: Overseas Territories
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the impact of financial secrecy in the Overseas Territories on UK communities.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. Before being elected to this place, I dedicated almost 15 years of my working life to tackling financial crime at two major UK banks. That work took me across the globe to the USA, the United Arab Emirates and often to India, so I like to think I can speak with some authority about financial secrecy overseas and how it impacts us at home.
For a number of people watching this debate, the contents of my speech will make for uncomfortable viewing, so let me be clear from the outset that my objective is not to criticise the overseas territories writ large—far from it. Some have shown a real commitment to transparency, which I commend them for, and others have a zealous determination to work with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to drive through much-needed reforms, but are hampered by a lack of local expertise. But other overseas territories seem insistent on blocking change at every opportunity, and it is those that I wish to focus on.
Hon. Members might ask, “What connects the sun-kissed beaches of the British Virgin Islands with the rain-soaked streets of Bolton?” What do my constituents care about shell companies, trusts and the veil of financial secrecy that a number of our overseas territories seem quietly content to provide? The purpose of today’s debate is to challenge the notion that what goes on over there has few ramifications for our daily lives over here. Financial secrecy in our overseas territories has real-world consequences for my constituents, businesses and Britain’s standing in the world. Journalists including Nicholas Shaxson and Oliver Bullough have outlined how the UK’s overseas territories have systematically undermined the global economy by creating a shadow banking system—“Moneyland”, to use Oliver Bullough’s parlance.
In a number of our overseas territories, low levels of taxation and substandard levels of transparency have attracted the world’s crooks and kleptocrats like moths to a flame. Money laundering, fraud, bribery, tax evasion: regrettably, many of the scandals we read about are likely to involve a financial structure in the British overseas territories. It is an enduring embarrassment going back many, many years, and it undermines our global reputation.
In 2016, 11.5 million documents detailing financial and attorney-client information relating to 214,488 offshore entities were leaked—the now-infamous Panama papers. More than half the shell companies exposed in that leak from Panamanian offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca were set up in the British Virgin Islands. That leak revealed the sheer scale of the dark economy, which allows the rich and powerful to store their assets offshore, out of sight of the taxman, law enforcement or the press. From the likes of the former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili to the more than 30 Mossack Fonseca clients blacklisted by the US Treasury, roughly $2 trillion passed through that firm. In 2017 came the Paradise papers, with another 13.4 million documents from firms, including from Bermuda, the BVI and the Cayman Islands, then the 2020 FinCEN files, followed by the 2021 Pandora papers. Each leak tells a story about unfairness, about how those who can afford to find ways to avoid paying their fair share can do so, and about how the world’s crooks and kleptocrats cleaned and stashed their dirty cash. Each leak exposed the role played by the UK’s own overseas territories in enabling assets to be hidden.
So what is the impact on UK communities? I will focus on three areas where there is a direct, tangible impact on the UK: first, inhibiting growth; secondly, threatening national security; and thirdly, damaging our standing in the world. Sustainable economic growth and good-quality public services require the tax that is owed to be collected, whether it is from a small business in Westhoughton in my constituency or from oligarchs who have decided to make London their home—nobody should be above the law. The Chancellor has already made good progress on closing the £44 billion tax gap by hiring 5,500 new compliance staff, incentivising whistleblowers and committing to a 20% increase in the number of tax fraudsters charged each year.
Those are all noble endeavours, and I applaud them, but financial secrecy continues to erode our tax base, because when money that should be taxed is hidden offshore, it is the honest British taxpayer who ends up footing the bill. It harms His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ ability to collect what is owed, it fuels unfairness in our system and it leaves less for our stretched public services. There are too many cases to list, but I will endeavour to go over some, such as brothers Michael and Stephen Hirst, who evaded over £3.2 million in tax by routeing profits through companies they secretly controlled into Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands.
But it goes deeper than that. Illicit money flowing through opaque companies registered in our overseas territories does not stay offshore; it finds its way into our UK property market. That distorts it, according to the National Crime Agency, and hinders people’s attempts to get on to the housing ladder. Transparency International UK has identified over £11 billion in suspicious wealth invested in British property, more than half of which was routed through shell companies in our overseas territories. Behind those faceless firms are the likes of Bangladeshi businessman Shafiat Sobhan, Pakistani tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain and Azerbaijani banker Jahangir Hajiyev—individuals accused or convicted of grand corruption who saw London as the safest place to stash their gains.
That money even floods our high streets. If we walk down any high street in the UK, we will see a proliferation of vape shops, candy shops, Harry Potter shops and barber shops. Not all of them have unscrupulous owners, but some are used as fronts for money laundering and tax abuse. As London Centric recently reported, these practices are often enabled by opaque corporate structures in offshore jurisdictions.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree with the National Crime Agency that if it had open and accurate data on who owned and controlled those businesses, its operations would be much more effective? Those businesses are often linked to overseas territories, so the National Crime Agency cannot find their real owners and crack down on them.
Phil Brickell
I thank my hon. Friend for his passionate campaigning on this issue. He is absolutely right that we need more transparency to support our law enforcement agencies to tackle this issue, and I will come on to that now.
I pay tribute to the brilliant enforcement work undertaken by the National Crime Agency through its Operation Machinize. Just last week, police visited a number of addresses in my constituency, seizing £17,000-worth of goods in the process. I applaud the work of our enforcement agencies, but as I will explain, these tireless professionals need more support in their work.
Elsewhere, financial murkiness causes friction for British businesses. When I worked in finance, we would often conduct “know your customer” checks and hit a wall, because a trust or a corporate service provider was incorporated in a secrecy jurisdiction. The beneficial owner was always elsewhere. Every time we spoke to law enforcement, journalists or civil society about dirty money, the same names came up: the BVI, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. It is farcical.
Banks, lawyers and accountants are on the frontline of anti-money laundering checks. Collectively, they spend over £38 billion a year on financial crime prevention—the equivalent of £21,000 every hour. A good-quality public register of beneficial ownership would make their work cheaper, faster and, frankly, more effective, unlocking the growth potential of our world-leading financial services sector.
On national security, since Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, the UK has quite rightly been at the forefront of the global sanctions regime against Putin. I commend the Minister for his personal leadership in ensuring that it is Putin and his cronies who pay for their unlawful war. The overseas territories have played an important role in enforcing those sanctions, freezing over £7 billion in Russia-linked assets. Indeed, initiatives like the Cayman Islands’ Operation Hektor, which has frozen £6 million of assets, deserve recognition.
Enforcement is only as strong as the weakest link. If opaque corporate structures allow sanctioned individuals to move assets through nominee companies, the whole system is undermined. That is why full beneficial ownership transparency is not a bureaucratic nicety; it is a national security measure. Opponents will say that UK law enforcement agencies have access to this information, but many agencies are critically underfunded and simply do not have the capacity to keep up the bewildering game of whack-a-mole that they play with bad faith actors.
Transparency International UK has identified around £700 million-worth of UK property linked to sanctioned Russian oligarchs that went unflagged in the UK’s register of overseas entities in 2022. Among them is a vast Hampstead estate valued at up to £300 million, reportedly owned by Russian chemicals magnate Andrey Guryev. Reports suggest the property was originally acquired using a company based in—you guessed it—the British Virgin Islands. I asked my friend Yaroslaw Tymchyshyn, chair of the Bolton branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain how he felt about this. He said:
“The government needs to seize all Russian assets which should be used to fund the Ukrainian war effort. It irks us that the oligarchs are living the high life in the west, whilst the Russians continue to bomb and use drones to kill civilians, including children.”
What should I say to him?
Elsewhere, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has reported that since February 2022 more than a quarter of suspected sanctions breaches have involved intermediary jurisdictions, including the BVI and Guernsey. This level of financial secrecy allows sanctioned elites and hostile actors to hide their wealth, undermining Britain’s sanctions regime and weakening our ability to deter aggression. When dirty money flows unchecked through our financial system, it erodes the credibility of our foreign policy, drives up the cost of energy and food, and ultimately fuels Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine.
In addition, criminal gangs involved in drug smuggling, people trafficking or protection rackets need to launder their ill-gotten gains into the regular economy. The financial secrecy afforded by the overseas territories gives the perfect cover to dodgy accountants, lawyers and corporate service providers. Edin “Tito” Gačanin, a Dutch passport holder but a Bosnia and Herzegovina native, was convicted last year of trafficking drugs from South America into Europe. It has been alleged that Gačanin is connected to the infamous Kinahan cartel, one of Europe’s most notorious organised crime gangs. As reported by the BBC, that cartel has flooded UK streets with drugs and guns over two decades. According to an investigation by The Times, in order to avoid US sanctions, the Kinahans recently sought anonymity using jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, the BVI and the Isle of Man.
Even organised fraud finds shelter in the overseas territories. Just last month, the Foreign Secretary rightly announced sanctions on a global scam network led by Cambodian citizen Chen Zhi, who allegedly used BVI companies to launder profits. Those profits were reportedly routed into a £12 million mansion in north London, a £100 million City office block and a string of luxury flats, while victims across the world were left penniless. Even when the authorities do catch fraudsters, financial secrecy in our offshore territories inhibits our ability to hold criminals to account.
Covid fraudster Gerald Smith was prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office, but tried to use a BVI company to obstruct the seizure of a flat he owned to avoid paying compensation, resulting in a direct loss to the taxpayer. He still owes £82 million—and he is not alone. Just this summer the SFO told the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, which I chair, that 25% of all cases that it is currently investigating have links to the overseas territories.
A final point on national security: I am gravely concerned that secrecy jurisdictions open a back door into our politics. The FinCEN files reveal that in 2016 the husband of Lubov Chernukhin received more than £6 million from Suleiman Kerimov, who was sanctioned in 2022 by the UK for his connections to Putin. Kerimov used a BVI company to conceal that payment. Lubov Chernukhin has donated more than £2 million to the Conservative party since 2012.
I have additional concerns about the Electoral Commission’s capacity to keep up with cryptocurrency donations, which Reform has reportedly already begun accepting. Indeed, the crypto platform Zebec sponsored a panel at Reform’s party conference on “Strengthening the Rule of Law: legislative reform?”. Zebec is, unsurprisingly, ultimately controlled by an entity registered in the British Virgin Islands, as reported by The Observer. Protecting our democracy from foreign interference is made all the more difficult by crypto firms involving themselves in our politics while hiding behind the veil of corporate secrecy, enabled by our overseas territories.
We come on to international leadership. Financial secrecy in jurisdictions under the Union flag does not just damage our economy; it damages our credibility. The UK rightly prides itself on being a global leader in the fight against economic crime. We have made real progress with the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 and the register of overseas entities, by boosting the powers of Companies House, and with the Treasury’s recent welcome announcement on reforming our anti-money laundering framework.
Next year, when the UK hosts the countering illicit finance summit, the Government will have a chance to show further leadership, but the UK cannot credibly call on others to improve transparency if the jurisdictions flying our flag lag behind on beneficial ownership. Our diplomats work tirelessly to promote British values overseas—the rule of law, fair competition and integrity in public life—yet, when investigative journalists, non-governmental organisations or foreign Governments look into global corruption cases, the trail often runs through a British overseas territory. That damages us and weakens our hand in international negotiations, giving cover to regimes that would keep their elites’ wealth hidden.
What needs to happen? In 2018, MPs led by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) and the Government’s anti-corruption champion, Baroness Hodge, successfully secured an amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. I pay tribute to them for their tenacious campaigning over many years. Their amendment required all overseas territories to introduce registers of beneficial ownership by 2020. That deadline slipped to 2023, and then to 2025—another deadline that was largely missed.
The UK’s overseas territories are a valued and integral part of our British family. Their ties to us are deep, and their prosperity is something we rightly cherish. They are our partners in defence, trade and increasingly in tackling the great global challenges of our age: climate change, migration and the rule of law. But being family means being honest, and I am afraid to say that certain jurisdictions have not covered themselves in glory by obfuscating, delaying, ignoring and frustrating the will of this Parliament. It is not acceptable. Missing deadlines sends a “terrible message” to the world, according to the current Deputy Prime Minister, in response to a question I asked him earlier this year when he was before the Foreign Affairs Committee.
This speech is not lazily tarring all overseas territories with the same brush. Far from it: Gibraltar, Montserrat and St Helena have delivered and deserve praise. The Falkland Islands are on track to implement by mid-2026 and are engaging constructively with the UK Government. Bermuda has made positive noises, although there is still room for improvement in its recent statement on next steps under its Beneficial Ownership Act 2025.
Elsewhere progress has been slow and patchy. The British Virgin Islands, in particular, remain a serious concern. Transparency International UK has warned that the British Virgin Islands’ proposed company register framework is not compatible with global transparency standards, with journalists being granted information on only a subset of data, rather than the beneficial ownership that they record, even baking in a tip-off for people being investigated, giving them a chance to object to their information being shared with a journalist. The Cayman Islands have also been slow to move from consultation to implementation. Although some good work has been done, substantial areas remain, including exorbitant costs and an unreasonably high threshold for granting applications from civil society and journalists.
The fact remains that some of the largest financial centres under the British flag are still operating secretive structures that enable tax evasion, sanctions evasion and kleptocracy. Occasionally, capacity restraints are cited. The UK Government rightly have an obligation to step in and provide technical support. There is also a suggestion that some jurisdictions do not want to fulfil their promises, lest they lose their competitive advantage.
To those naysayers, I say that the UK has an obligation to help its overseas territories to diversify their economies. It can be done, as in the case of the Isle of Man, where considerable work is under way to invest in offshore wind. Let me be clear: transparency has not hindered economies elsewhere. The UK has had a fully public register for years, and the sky has not fallen in. Research commissioned by the UK Government estimated that corporate transparency reforms produce data worth up to £3 billion to the public and private sectors. Look at Gibraltar, which has continued to grow, driven by insurance, gaming and fintech, even after introducing full beneficial ownership transparency.
I have a number of asks of the Minister. Last month, the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption champion, Baroness Margaret Hodge, visited the BVI to understand what progress it is making towards fully open registers of beneficial ownership. What update can the Minister give us on that visit? With November’s Joint Ministerial Council rapidly approaching, will he remind those overseas territories that continue to delay the implementation of publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership, with the maximum possible degree of access and transparency as per last year’s joint communiqué, of their commitment?
Concerningly, the 2024 JMC communiqué contained the following line:
“We note the UK Government’s ambition that Publicly Accessible Registers of Beneficial Ownership (PARBOs) become a global norm and its expectation that Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies implement full PARBOs.”
Will the Minister confirm that the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies are still expected by His Majesty’s Government to implement fully public corporate registers? If legitimate-interest access filters are an interim step, what assurances can he give me that journalists, civil society organisations and others with a genuine interest will have open and repeated access to company data in the overseas territories? Finally, will the Minister meet me and Yaroslaw from the Bolton branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain to reassure him that the Government are doing all they can to bring an end to Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine, including by enforcing economic sanctions in the OTs?
My speech does not seek to undermine the important constitutional relationship between the overseas territories and the UK. I welcome, for example, the £7.5 million recently provided by the UK to Commonwealth member Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa, alongside $1.2 million from the Cayman Islands. But partnership brings mutual obligations, which must include the shared commitment we have all made to openness, integrity and accountability, because every pound laundered through a BVI shell company and every mansion bought with stolen public funds is a stain on our national integrity.
Cleaning up this system is not just an act of international justice; it is a patriotic duty. We cannot build clean foundations for growth while our financial system remains a refuge for dirty money. Public, accessible and verifiable registers of beneficial ownership are not a burden; they are our competitive advantage. They enable cheaper due diligence for firms and cleaner supply chains for investors, they protect small businesses by making procurement fairer and fraud harder, they strengthen our economy by rooting out corruption before it takes hold, and they give the British people confidence that when they pay their taxes, buy a home or open a small shop on the high street, the system is fair and honest.
The autumn Budget is scheduled for 26 November. After her Budget speech, tradition dictates that the Chancellor will go to the Two Chairmen for a well-earned gin and tonic. That pub, which I hasten to add is not accused of any wrongdoing, is owned via the Isle of Man and leased to Greene King, which is itself owned via the Cayman Islands. I think that encapsulates just how out of hand the shadow financial system has become.
Sir Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
As vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group, I want to express my appreciation to the chairman, the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), for the brilliant way he has led the debate. He underlined that there must be an all-party approach, which he expressed with great eloquence and factual back-up. He made the point that we all have a constituency interest in this issue. We certainly recognise that in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield. I also thank his predecessor as chair, the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), who I note the Government have now neutered by putting on the payroll. As a former Government Chief Whip, I know exactly how these things work, and it is a recognition of his great abilities that he has now been put on the non-ministerial payroll.
I want to emphasise why this issue matters. We are talking about dirty money—money stolen from Africa and from Africans, money from the sex trade and money from the drug trade. Although Africa is my principal concern, because I believe that development is being held up by the enormous amount of money that is stolen from that continent, the hon. Member for Bolton West also made an extremely important point about tax. After all, in a few days’ time, the Chancellor will be looking for as much tax revenue as she can get. If she follows the hon. Gentleman’s advice, there is no doubt that billions would flow into the Exchequer, for the reasons that he set out.
For many years, we believed that closed registers were doing what was required. Closed registers enabled law enforcement authorities to dip into the details and, in the case of terrorism, get a response within 24 hours, but the publication of the Paradise and Panama papers showed definitively why we must have open registers of beneficial ownership. Without open registers, we cannot join the dots of who is doing what to whom. That is a very important point. The scales fell from our eyes when the Paradise and Panama papers were published—all praise to the BBC and The Guardian for doing so—as they showed precisely why open registers are absolutely essential. That is at the heart of this debate.
Let us be in no doubt, either, that we are talking about the Crown dependencies as well. They may come after the overseas territories in the Government’s enforcement action but, like the overseas territories, they are on the frontline of this issue. As the hon. Gentleman said, we are not talking about all the overseas territories. Many of them have implemented, or are implementing, registers in good faith; it is just a pity that some of them have not.
It is also worth saying that the UK has big questions to answer. From what the National Crime Agency said some years ago, we know that up to 40% of money laundering goes through London, the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies. That is one of the reasons why David Cameron made tackling corruption an important aspect of the G8 in 2016. Britain can be proud of leading that attack on dirty money. We should remember not only Britain’s leadership, but the fact that we have a dog in this fight.
I also want to emphasise how we got here. The hon. Member for Bolton West rightly said that the Government gave way because otherwise they would have been defeated—an embarrassing moment for me, as a former Government Chief Whip, to have led that rebellion with Baroness Hodge. With the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act we made it absolutely clear that, if the overseas territories did not accept the will of Parliament, it would be imposed through the ancient and arcane process of an Order in Council. Baroness Hodge and I took a legal opinion from some of the best lawyers in the country, including one of the most brilliant former Directors of Public Prosecutions, Lord Ken Macdonald. The opinion made it absolutely clear that the Westminster Parliament had the right, indeed the duty, to impose an Order in Council if the will of Parliament was not accepted in the overseas territories.
It so happens that the Foreign Office, with the skill and dexterity for which it is famous, interpreted that measure as meaning not that an Order in Council would be imposed after a year, but that it would be drafted after a year for imposition after another year—thus giving the overseas territories an extra year. That was condemned in the House of Commons by two former International Development Secretaries—myself and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn)—and by two distinguished former Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) and Baroness Hodge. It has still not been done. That is where we are now.
I echo the questions that the hon. Member for Bolton West asked the Minister. It is very important that we get a definitive approach from the Government to implementing that measure. The Minister is a good bloke. He and I have been discussing development matters for nearly 20 years, so I know exactly what his view is. I hope very much that he will stiffen up the relevant Foreign Office officials, who like to ensure good and harmonious relations, and who do not like a row. He must remind them that officials advise and Ministers decide. Ministers are the servants of Parliament, and Parliament decided as long as seven years ago why these matters must be brought to a head.
I have recently seen senior representatives from Bermuda and the Cayman Islands who, in my judgment, were truculent and disrespectful of the will of the Westminster Parliament. As the hon. Member for Bolton West rightly said, the BVI is one of the key countries that needs to accept that, if these overseas territories and Crown dependencies want to use the British flag and to have our monarch and our laws, they must also accept our values.
Although the hon. Member has admirably summed up the first of them, I will end my remarks by quoting three points in this excellent brief from the APPG, which I hope will be widely distributed. Backed by Transparency International, Tax Justice Network and others, the report deals with the impact of financial secrecy in the overseas territories on UK communities. The hon. Member spoke about Transparency International UK’s revelation that at least £5.9 billion-worth of suspicious funds have been used to purchase UK properties—an astonishing figure. Secondly, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation found that, since February 2022, over a quarter of all suspected sanctions breaches were made intermediary jurisdictions including the BVI and Guernsey. Finally, Transparency International UK’s research has linked to our overseas territories £250 billion-worth of funds diverted by rigged procurement, bribery and embezzlement in 79 countries, of which the British Virgin Islands accounted for 92%. What is more, Tax Justice Network’s report, “The State of Tax Justice 2024”, shows that countries are losing nearly £375 billion to multinational corporations and wealthy individuals using tax havens to underpay tax, with over £1 trillion in profits being shifted into tax havens.
Those are significant figures; they show why Parliament was absolutely right to vote for and implement the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. They show why today we need to hear the Minister say that his patience is running out, and that he will issue the Order in Council if the overseas territories do not accept the will of the British Parliament.
Several hon. Members rose—
Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
Because of the number of Members who have indicated that they wish to speak in the debate, with the authority of the Chairman of Ways and Means, I am imposing a time limit on Back Benchers’ contributions of two and a half minutes.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for his work in this House and outside it to combat fraud and corruption. His steadfast resolve is to be commended. I have probably wasted half my time saying that, but it needed saying.
As we have heard, financial secrecy in Britain’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies enables tax abuse, fraud and organised crime, draining billions from public coffers and weakening enforcement, but I shall talk about the impact that it has on our towns locally. In Leigh and Atherton and across our country, our high streets are being hollowed out by rogue traders using these opaque corporate structures. Dodgy vape shops, fake candy stores and unlicensed barbers are increasingly used to launder money, sell illicit goods and evade scrutiny. These businesses often phoenix overnight, reopening under new names to dodge enforcement. They damage the reputation of our town centres and erode public confidence.
That is why, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West, I want to highlight Operation Machinize, a multi-agency crackdown led by Greater Manchester police, co-ordinated by the NCA and supported by trading standards and our local authority teams. Across Greater Manchester, including Leigh, over 100 premises were targeted. The operation led to arrests, closure orders and the seizure of illegal vapes, illicit cigarettes and counterfeit goods. I thank all those involved.
Despite such action, the activity carries on and the authorities’ hands are tied. My office supported a raid in Leigh. It took over year to build the evidence and it was very clear, yet the business was reopened within an hour. That is why I have joined forces with my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) to launch a national campaign calling for stronger powers, better co-ordination and real accountability. Our communities deserve better.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for leading today’s debate with such a detailed, informative speech. We are all impressed by the way he set the scene.
This United Kingdom is made up of four countries that are directly impacted by public finances in how we can distribute allocated money and what we have the capacity to deal with, so this debate is important. There is already a strain on public finance; we all witness it every day. We see our public Departments struggling, especially health and education. Whether it is here or back home, the issues are the same. We must also note that the Chancellor has not yet ruled out tax rises ahead of the Budget. The public are already taking on the burden of the UK’s debt.
We have seen, and the Government are aware of, countless instances of tax evasion and avoidance by people in the United Kingdom, especially in the jurisdiction of the Cayman Islands. That contributes to lost tax revenues across the country. My issue is the loss of tax revenue—money that should be spent in this country on our own people. The UK Treasury loses billions each year to offshore tax avoidance. Northern Ireland relies on the block grant from Westminster through the Barnett consequentials for our devolved Government, so this tax avoidance and evasion means less funding for crucial sectors in Northern Ireland such as health, education and infrastructure. That is frustrating for people. [Interruption.]
Joe Powell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for joining the last debate we had on this topic in this Chamber seven months ago. Does he agree that the link we are discussing between the overseas territories and the sorts of criminal activity that we all see demonstrates that the British public would be on side with cleaning up this mess?
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the chance to get my cough sorted; I appreciate that very much. I agree with him.
There is obvious unfairness in taxation, especially because citizens face higher scrutiny than wealthy users of offshore arrangements. For example, the average person will at some point in their life be hit with a tax bill—that dreaded letter that comes through saying, “You haven’t paid enough tax.” The same does not go for those who partake in tax avoidance. The Treasury should do more to ensure that such people pay into the system just the same as everybody else.
The UK’s register of overseas entities 2022 revealed that several properties in Northern Ireland were held via entities in secrecy jurisdictions—more evidence of offshore-linked ownership of commercial and residential assets, especially in Belfast. Such investments can inflate property value and cause confusion over true ownership of property. That has a great impact on the ordinary person.
My focus and my responsibility are my constituents and the money that they must lose from their wages each month to increase Government spending. There must be more clarity and better insight. Government must do more to reinstate trust with the public, because there is disillusionment when it comes to finance. The Minister is a good and honest man. I look to him for an acknowledgment that Northern Ireland and the devolved nations suffer as a result of this and that he will endeavour to do more for this country to protect finance and, ultimately, my constituents.
Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this timely debate. It is timely for two simple reasons. Just yesterday, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that HMRC is apparently refusing to publish its official estimate of how much tax is currently being lost due to tax dodging facilitated by tax havens. The Public Accounts Committee, on which I sit, found in July that HMRC simply is not able to track down those individuals who stash their fortunes offshore in tax havens including overseas territories. The Committee has pressed for greater transparency concerning tax that is lost offshore. Without that information we will never be able to properly assess whether HMRC’s efforts are effective, or even adequately resourced. Even more crucially, without that estimate our tax authority cannot effectively pursue those who deliberately avoid or evade paying their fair share of tax. It is very simple: we should be able to assess what tax is owed and then go on to collect it. HMRC must be able to get a firmer grip on the scale of wealth that is currently stashed away offshore, and publish its findings openly. We need to bolster its ability to spot and stop tax dodging offshore by the super wealthy.
That leads me to the second simple reason that this debate is timely. With the Budget fast approaching, in a time when the global economy is uncertain and dysfunctional, collecting the right amount of tax is not just a technical matter; it is about ensuring that everyone pays their fair share for the public services that we all rely upon. Holding even one billionaire to account on their tax obligations can influence the wider public purse. Unfortunately, we know that there are many individuals not paying their fair share, such as the sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich, who has used a British tax haven—again, the British Virgin Islands—to avoid paying almost £1 billion in tax owed to HMRC.
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
This speaks to a wider point about Ukraine. Two years ago Chelsea was sold for £2.35 billion and now a company controlled by Roman Abramovich is demanding a repayment of £1.5 billion. The absolute secrecy and the intricacy of his controlled companies are having a direct effect on humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
Lloyd Hatton
My hon. Friend speaks the truth. Unfortunately, Roman Abramovich is just one of a great many tax dodgers. The only way to ensure that everyone pays their fair share is to finally throw open the books and end decades of secrecy in every British tax haven. The fact that most overseas territories do not publish information on who owns companies registered on their shores makes them a highly attractive destination for tax dodgers. We all know—it is common knowledge—that those tax havens are a go-to destination for would-be tax dodgers looking to reduce their tax liabilities.
As we approach two critical junctures, the autumn Budget and the Joint Ministerial Council, I hope that Ministers appreciate the cross-party strength of feeling on this matter. There must be consequences for failing to end this kind of financial secrecy offshore. At the moment it enables crime, undermines HMRC and deeply weakens our public services. We cannot fail to act any longer.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this important debate, and for his excellent introduction to it.
There is one particularly alarming case that we cannot overlook in this debate: that of Roman Abramovich. His activities epitomise how opaque offshore structures undermine UK financial integrity and global trust. In a letter to the Chancellor dated 10 September, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and I, as co-chairs of the APPG on Magnitsky sanctions and reparation, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West, as chair of the APPG on anti-corruption and responsible tax, warned that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich may owe HMRC up to £1 billion on profits from his multimillion-pound hedge fund investments. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that these hedge funds, although registered offshore, were being run from the UK. Under UK law, they should have been paying UK taxes. This investigation revealed that Abramovich benefited from a fraudulent scheme designed to evade €14 million in VAT due in Cyprus on his fleet of superyachts. Cypriot tax authorities have since filed criminal charges to recover more than €25 million in tax.
As our letter pointed out, HMRC has yet to respond to these findings. Even when journalists offered to brief HMRC’s permanent secretary, their offer went unanswered. That silence has raised serious concerns about the Government’s willingness to act decisively against those who use offshore networks and shield vast sums from scrutiny. The Government’s reply, sent in October, insists that
“everyone should pay the tax that is legally due”,
and highlighted new enforcement measures, including 5,500 extra compliance staff and the creation of a complex cross tax and offshore team. Those steps are welcome, but they do not answer our central question: why is there still no visible enforcement action in this case?
This is not just about one oligarch; it is about ensuring that our own financial system and the jurisdictions linked to it cannot be used to hide wealth, evade tax or escape sanctions. That £1 billion would build the 500 schools so badly needed in our poorest areas.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on the way he has framed this discussion, because we are debating the impact of these tax arrangements in the overseas territories on UK communities. Every penny being shielded from paying the fair share in these places is a penny that is not getting into our NHS and is not going to support local schools or improve public transport.
Hard-working people in North Norfolk pay their taxes fairly, but thanks to the shady systems of places like the BVI or the Cayman Islands, the multimillionaires and multibillionaires can squirrel their money away and pay very little tax at all. With their shell corporations and subsidiaries, trusts and transfer pricing, the fat cats can get away without paying their fair share. It is a tax system that is “pay to play”, and the billionaires are playing all of us.
The BVI, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda all have something in common: up there, in the top left-hand corner of their flags, is the Union Jack. Many look at this as a legacy of centuries past, but it must actually represent the existing British responsibility for—dare I say, complicity in—tens of billions of pounds of corporate tax avoidance and abuse. We still hold power over many of these places, and we can take steps to force their hand if necessary. Orders in Council have been drafted previously, which can require our overseas territories to take this action. Governments have been understandably reluctant to take this step, not wanting to appear as the colonial hand reaching across the ocean to meddle in the affairs of its territories. But if we are to provide defence and security for them, stand up for their interests internationally and support them in their hours of need, it is not too much to ask that the Governments of those territories play fair.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
The Panama papers, released in 2016, were so-called because the company whose papers were exposed, Mossack Fonseca, was headquartered in Panama. Is my hon. Friend aware that one out of every two companies listed in the Panama papers was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands?
Steff Aquarone
Yes, I am frighteningly aware, because I have tried to access these registers myself, and I have relied upon reports by other organisations to tell me what is really going on. When a country’s wealth in savings is a multi-hundred-times multiple of its GDP, that brings all this into sharp focus.
But to get back to my focus, when people in North Norfolk see their health services closing down, their children’s schools unable to buy glue sticks and the cuts to public services, and then they look at the billionaires and their yachts, mansions, football clubs and private jets, they smell a rat—they know something is not working here. Something has to change. That change is real, and it is possible, if the Government have the will and the guts to stand up for it. I hope the Minister and his Government can finally be the ones to end this scandal, secure money for our public services and stop these tax havens once and for all.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing the debate.
It is a simple principle: profits should be taxed where real economic activity takes place. Yet that simple principle is routinely violated, and multinational corporations move billions through paper subsidiaries, internal loans and royalty payments to places where little or no real business occurs. As we have heard today, the result is devastating. For the United Kingdom alone, it represents tens of billions lost—money that should be funding our hospitals, schools, transport and care.
Sadly, the UK’s current approach is still falling short, so what must we do? First, we need real transparency. Public country-by-country reporting must be mandatory. beneficial ownership registers must be complete, verified and accessible to all, and there must be comprehensive disclosure of cross-border affiliate transactions of intra-group pricing and payments in dividends flowing to low or zero-tax jurisdictions.
Secondly, HMRC must be properly equipped. The Department is dramatically under-resourced, so it needs resources, specialist expertise and the independence to pursue large-scale investigations without political constraint. The diverted profits tax should be strengthened, and penalties must actually bite.
Thirdly, we need structural reform at home. The UK must stop indulging secrecy within its own network of territories. It should require those jurisdictions to meet the same standards of transparency and accountability as the mainland. We must make domestic law fit for purpose by ensuring that multinationals cannot hide behind opaque structures, and that the UK does not act as a facilitator for profit shifting through low-tax dependencies.
Broadly, we must lead reform on the international stage. Britain should champion stronger global agreements—not merely a minimalist 15% tax floor, but a framework that stops profit shifting altogether. That means automatic exchange of tax information, higher global minimum rates, global minimum tax enforcement standards, pressure for jurisdictions that facilitate profit shifting to reform, and co-ordinated sanctions imposed against them if they refuse to co-operate. Fundamentally, this is about fairness, accountability and the very future of democracy itself.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on securing this debate and on his election to the chair of the excellent all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax. I thank other Members here and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for championing this issue.
We last met in this Chamber to debate this issue seven months ago to the day, so it is helpful to have another debate to check on progress and demonstrate to the overseas territories the strength of cross-party feeling about it. Such debates do have an impact. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West and I were featured in a cartoon in a BVI newspaper not long ago for bringing this issue up so frequently in the House—I take that as a badge of honour.
The Government’s commitment to make London the anti-corruption capital of the world, as opposed to a dirty money capital, is extremely welcome. I know the Minister is personally committed to that agenda, and I look forward to the anti-corruption strategy in the next few weeks.
Sir Andrew Mitchell
Although the hon. Gentleman may have been in a cartoon, Baroness Hodge and I were the subject of a demonstration in one of the overseas territories, with placards saying, “Let’s hang Mitchell and Hodge”.
Joe Powell
I am sure we all agree that we would not support that action.
I want to make a serious point about where progress has been made. Some of us recently met the leader of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo. Gibraltar now has an open register, and he told us that it has had no impact on investment there. In fact, it has attracted a different type of investor: those making sustainable, long-term investments into a reliable market where financial secrecy is not undermining the strength of the financial services.
I note that in the Public Gallery there is a representative of St Helena, which has made great progress—as others have said, we are also meeting representatives of the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Although it is not perfect, there has been political commitment from those leaders to make progress and work together.
But the harms are still severe: serious organised crime, drugs on our streets, the high streets issue that many hon. Members have spoken about, sanctions evasion, tax dodging, environmental crime, destruction of tropical forests and property. I invite Members to join me on our “Kensington Against Dirty Money” walking tour, which Baroness Hodge and I conduct in my constituency. The No. 1 source of foreign ownership of property—my constituency has 6,000 such properties—is the BVI. The question is: why? It is not a victimless crime, and we need to understand why it is happening.
Let me very briefly talk about next steps. I really welcome Baroness Hodge’s trip to the BVI. She is a fearless champion for this issue. It would be good to understand the BVI’s red lines for a legitimate interests test. I think it should be broad, reliable and repeated access for those journalists who have helped to uncover so many issues in the past, while maintaining the Government’s long-term goal of publicly accessible beneficial ownership registers as the gold standard.
The summit on illicit finance next year is a huge opportunity; it was great that the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed that on the world stage at the UN General Assembly this year. The summit will be 10 years on from the 2016 anti-corruption summit, where public registers of beneficial ownership for UK companies were first introduced. Could the summit be the moment when we finally move forward on this issue, too?
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this debate. I recognise that there are many British overseas territories that are trying to do the right thing, but as we have heard today, some are magnets for dirty money and safe havens for the wealth of autocratic aggressors, laundering billions under the British flag. We must put a stop to that now.
Let us be clear about what the offshoring of dirty means here at home, in my constituency of Bournemouth East. It is money stolen from the public purse. Billions are being siphoned away that could go directly into our hospitals and schools, and into lower tax rates. This is about our housing crisis. When the super-rich pour their ill-gotten gains into luxury property in our towns and cities, homes sit empty while families cannot afford a roof over their heads. Young people tell me all the time that they have to move away to get on in life because they cannot afford a home in Bournemouth.
This is about our high streets, where there are trust-owned properties, hidden behind secrecy, lying empty and untouchable. Enforcement officers cannot act because they cannot trace the owners. Our high streets lie empty, robbed of vitality. Indeed, where there is activity, it is in the form of candy or vape shops that are so brightly lit they can be seen from space, themselves a front for money laundering. This is about money being stolen from workers’ wages and from the Treasuries of the world’s poorest nations. Twenty years ago we said, “Make Poverty History”; let us make dirty money history too.
Where does the trail lead? Time and again to the British Virgin Islands. After investigation, I can share that the total number of properties in Bournemouth East reported as offshore entities stands at 82. These are owned through entities based in the Crown dependencies or the overseas territories, and unsurprisingly the BVI figures prominently. Where entities are required to declare their beneficial owners, the choice of jurisdictions appears to be selected for their secrecy. Fifty-seven have not reported the price paid—just 25 have done so. Even when beneficial ownership is shared, details about the person benefiting from the property are not always available to the public.
Lloyd Hatton
My hon. Friend speaks very eloquently on that point. Living in communities like Bournemouth or my hometown of Weymouth, individuals and businesses seemingly do not have a choice about registering a business and being transparent about who owns a property and what tax they pay. Does he share my concern that unless we see further action here, there will be one rule for the majority of people in our constituencies, and seemingly a whole separate raft of rules for the very wealthiest?
Tom Hayes
I could not agree more. In Dorset, we have constituents who want to play by the rules but are routinely let down by the lack of tax transparency.
For the 25 properties that have reported the price paid, the combined total is £7.2 million. With the 57 shrouded in secrecy, the total sums involved will clearly be significant. The BVI should be supporting action to track down crime. Instead, as we have heard, it is giving criminals a head start, tipping them off when there is an investigation under way. Because half the entities exposed in the Panama papers were linked to the BVI, Parliament acted decisively. A deadline was set and the will was clear. However, here we are years later, and Parliament’s will continues to be flouted by the BVI.
My question to the Minister, who I know is an excellent tax transparency campaigner of many years, is: when the remedy exists, are the Government open to using an Order in Council if progress is not made in the next year? Without transparency, we cannot follow the money, and if we cannot follow the money, we cannot truly fund our public services. Without action to correct tax secrecy, we cannot claim to stand for integrity, and without integrity, we cannot truly say that democracy works in the interests of everyone.
Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this debate. I also thank the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for all his work on this issue and for his good speech today. Indeed, I have enjoyed the contributions from all hon. Members so far. The common theme has been explaining that what goes on in the overseas territories impoverishes people in the UK and takes money out of their pockets, which we all want to see stopped.
The Government have an opportunity to improve financial transparency by working with the overseas territories so that they adopt the same standards as the UK. The deliberate masking of corporate ownership is used to dodge tax, accountability and responsibility. It inhibits law enforcement and prevents citizens, workers and journalists from holding the powerful to account for their corporate actions.
If Labour wants bad actors to be brought to heel and to stand up for people in our country and globally, this is its chance; it has the power to act. The world’s top three corporate tax havens—the British Virgin Islands, which have been much discussed, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda—are all British overseas territories. Tax Justice Network estimates that, in total, profit-shifting through the UK and its Crown dependencies and overseas territories accounts for nearly a quarter of all lost tax revenues globally—over £80 billion annually. The continued lack of transparency in the overseas tax havens, or overseas territories, including the absence of truly publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership, poses a real threat to the UK’s reputation and standing in the world.
Steff Aquarone
Does my hon. Friend agree that the documentation often exists to prove ultimate beneficial ownership, where it suits the individuals concerned? In some cases, we have a perverse situation where respectable UK financial institutions obtain that information in confidence when carrying out their required “know your customer” due diligence, without any obligation to pass on the details to UK tax authorities.
Charlie Maynard
I did not know that, so I thank my hon. Friend for informing me.
How can we ask others to get their own house in order when we enable these entities on UK sovereign territory to beggar their neighbour on a global scale? The UK Government bear responsibility for this lack of transparency, as British overseas territories are subject to UK law in certain respects. The Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, or SAMLA, requires the UK to support these territories in implementing public registers of company ownership, which are a crucial tool for combating tax evasion and financial crime. More specifically, section 51 of SAMLA allows the UK Government to make regulations requiring overseas territories to establish publicly accessible registers of the beneficial ownership of companies, and if they do not do so voluntarily, we have the power to enforce them to do so.
Sir Andrew Mitchell
On the point made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) about an Order in Council, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that his understanding is the same as mine, namely that an Order in Council is not a discretionary matter for the Government, and that it is there in the legislation that he just referred to? Parliament insists that if these territories do not comply and provide open registers, an Order in Council should be issued.
Charlie Maynard
Yes; I fully agree with the right hon. Gentleman.
Direct legislation should be a last resort, but it is necessary and we need to move quickly. SAMLA came into force in 2018, and we are now nearly in 2026. This is just playing for time, which is bad. Since 2022, the UK’s register of overseas entities regime has required that the details of all corporate trustees in the chain of an overseas entity’s ownership structure are registered and that the ultimate beneficial owners of real estate are identified. Information on the overseas entity and the beneficial owners should be accessible to all, online and for free.
I will review those top three overseas territories. Bermuda and the Cayman Islands now have registers of beneficial interest that are up and running. The BVI is getting there slowly, with existing companies having been given until the end of this year to file their information. However, and importantly, none of these three territories has a publicly open and accessible register. Instead, there is all sorts of obfuscation. I will give some examples.
Some of these registers require inquiries to have “legitimate interest”, whatever that may be. Access is possible only
“at the Commission’s Secretariat’s office by appointment, with no copying or scanning allowed, on written request, payment of a fee, and some limitations, during working hours”.
That is not complying with the spirit of the law—indeed, it is really unhelpful—and we have it in our power as a country to stop it. It leaves a strong impression that all three are doing their damnedest to withhold information on such a scale as to make the existence of the registers completely pointless.
Online, fully accessible and public access for all is not in place in any of the three jurisdictions, so I have two requests. First, can our Government set a deadline beyond which they will not tolerate a failure to provide an open, transparent register? They must use all their powers and leverage to work with these democratically governed British overseas territories to find a way to bring them quickly into line with UK standards of transparency and accessibility regarding these registers.
My second request is about the Crown dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. I understand that the Minister is here under the auspices of the FCDO, and they fall under the Ministry of Justice, but I hope that the Labour Government will very quickly look hard at applying the same UK standards to those Crown dependencies.
Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this debate. Given that he represents the constituency I was born and raised in, I follow his contributions in Parliament more than he probably realises. His contribution today was as knowledgeable and constructive as everybody has come to expect.
I will comment on two points from his contribution. The first point is around the high street shops that we all see being used as a front for moving money, criminal gangs or hiding assets. When I was the Lancashire police and crime commissioner, that was a huge concern not only for the local communities, because of the damage it does to their high streets, but for the police in terms of being able to actually shut down different elements of organised crime gangs. The second point, which is linked to that, is the cryptocurrency element and finding out how the money—the cash—that has been generated in the UK by organised crime gangs disappears. I have sat in the room with the economic crime units of the Lancashire constabulary, looking at the cryptocurrency maps, and I could see where the dead ends suddenly appeared.
I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for his long-standing work in this area and his articulation of how there has been a cross-party effort for a considerable time, particularly from the 2016 G8 onwards. It is always daunting to respond from the Dispatch Box with such an esteemed and experienced colleague sitting behind me.
We recognise that financial services are integral to the economies, employment and prosperity of many of our British overseas territories and Crown dependencies, as has been outlined today. The sector underpins livelihoods, sustains local public services and contributes significantly to overall trade within our shared British family, and we want to see it thrive.
From Gibraltar to Bermuda, those jurisdictions have been world-class financial centres. They attract investment, foster innovation and connect our economies to global markets. That success should be celebrated and, of course, accompanied by sound regulation and transparency to ensure that success can continue. Registers of beneficial ownership have been one of the most powerful tools in our fight against economic crime. They have enabled law enforcement here in the UK and in our overseas territories to track and expose those who seek to abuse our financial systems for criminal gain.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, those registers have been vital in tracing hidden assets, enforcing sanctions and going after dirty money, but there is clearly much more work to do on successfully and fully implementing them across all the overseas territories. Gibraltar already leads with a fully public register of beneficial ownership; the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands have now published legitimate interest registers; and others are due to follow in the next year or two. However, as has been recognised by my right hon. Friend and others, there is a significant delay.
The Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 and the new illicit finance campaign announced in 2024 all point to one shared goal—a clean, competitive and transparent financial system across the British family. There can be no place for dirty money, either at home or in British territories overseas.
The British family stand united against illicit finance. Together, we can ensure that our financial centres remain engines of good growth, rooted in trust and respected across the world. We want the financial services of our overseas territories and Crown dependencies not merely to survive but to flourish. However, they must be anchored in openness, accountability and the shared values that define our global reputation. I look forward to hearing the Minister answer the questions that have been posed by hon. Members, particularly on the Government’s approach to the countering illicit finance summit. At what point will the Government push harder for further measures?
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), for this well-informed and genuinely passionate debate. I have listened with great interest to a number of the examples that they raised. As he and others acknowledged, this issue is a personal priority for me, the Foreign Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government as a whole. We must ensure the greatest standards of transparency, tackle illicit finance and tackle global corruption.
Members referred to our plans for the illicit finance summit next year, which I am working on closely with ministerial colleagues, and the anti-corruption strategy, which I have been working on closely with colleagues in the Home Office, the Treasury and elsewhere. We hope to present that strategy before the end of the year, and I hope that it will allay many of the broad concerns that have been raised by Members. I also pay tribute to Baroness Hodge for her incredible work as our anti-corruption champion. She has worked on these issues for many years, and I had the pleasure of working on them with her, but she is an independent voice, a challenge to the Government and a partner. She genuinely wants to find constructive solutions, and that has very much been the tenor of her work in the role so far.
I acknowledge the nuance in the contributions of right hon. and hon. Members on the subject of our overseas territories family and our wider British family. They recognised that substantial progress has been made in a number of them, that there are challenges in others and that not all overseas territories are heavily involved in financial services—in fact, some are barely involved at all. Some substantial progress has been made by the Government as a result of pressure and questioning not only from Members of this House but from the overseas territories, the wider NGO media and the global community. They want to see transparency and action against corruption and illicit finance for the purposes that were set out clearly by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West, as well as by many other right hon. and hon. Members.
Many Members drew connections between their constituencies, the priorities of the UK Government and the priorities of the Governments in the overseas territories. It is important to remember that lack of transparency, reputational damage, and the activities of very problematic individuals and serious and organised crime gangs, including sanctioned individuals, do damage not only in our constituencies but in the overseas territories. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) pointed out, that also does damage elsewhere in the world, particularly in the global south, Africa and other locations that, as he knows, I share his passion for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West set out very clearly how this problem impacts growth, housing and property, security and national security, and our national standing. That is why it matters, and that is why I know that this debate will not go away. The elected leaders in the overseas territories and their Governments will have heard clearly the strength of cross-party feeling, although I note with interest the absence of one party in this Chamber. I will leave Members to make their own minds up about that, but those Governments will see the strength of cross-party desire for action.
I am glad to say that we are taking an approach of co-operation and collaboration with our overseas territories. It is important to remind all Members of the constitutional relationship with our overseas territories. The Government and I respect their autonomy, decision making and elected Governments. They have extraordinarily robust debates in their own countries, and it is absolutely right that they should do so. I have set out my respect for them and my principles about working with them in partnership, and that will be reflected in the Joint Ministerial Council. Of course, the nature of the relationship with the Crown dependencies is distinct, and is for colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and elsewhere to respond to, although I note the strong comments made on progress in the CDs.
It is also true that with our respect for their rights, the constitutional settlement and their autonomy, which I want to empower and strengthen, come responsibilities for overseas territories as part of the British family—responsibilities not only to the global rules-based order and the highest standards of financial transparency, but to their own populations and citizens. Hon. Members have made that point very clear.
Work in this area is vital. Illicit finance, corruption and kleptocracy are not abstract threats; they are direct challenges to our national security, our economy and the integrity of the global financial system. As has rightly been pointed out, these practices make it easier for criminal gangs to operate, undermine economies, make it easier to break sanctions and weaken the rule of law. The Government are leading the way when it comes to confronting these challenges, safeguarding our security and promoting integrity across the global financial system.
I was glad that hon. Members pointed out the excellent work on sanctions co-operation, including with the Cayman Islands. I had a chance to compliment the Cayman Islands on work on Operation Hektor on a recent visit there. We have also done excellent work with the British Virgin Islands, where our authorities have worked together on sanctions enforcement, and resource has gone into that. For all that to work effectively, of course, there needs to be transparency, because we cannot see what is really happening without understanding who owns what, where and how.
Sir Andrew Mitchell
Of course, the Minister is right about transparency—sunlight is the best disinfectant—but may I just pin him down on one point? He is heavy on collaboration and trying to get agreement, and he is right about that, but let us be absolutely clear that the constitutional relationship with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies is that Britain and Parliament are responsible for security issues and foreign affairs. These are security issues, and they relate directly to foreign matters. If the overseas territories do not agree to accept the will of Parliament, the Minister must make it clear to them that the Westminster Government will act via an Order in Council. That is not a voluntary thing; it is our duty. That is the nature of the constitutional arrangement, and the very clear legal opinion that Baroness Hodge and I secured underlines the point.
Stephen Doughty
The right hon. Gentleman is right about the legal and constitutional position. My position is that I want to work very closely and co-operatively, and that approach has succeeded in producing very welcome progress over the past year and a half. That is the way that I always try to approach our relationship with our friends in the overseas territories and the wider family. However, he is absolutely right, and the strength of feeling today should leave nobody in any doubt about the wider impact of the challenge and the concern, among many right hon. and hon. Members, about its direct impact in their communities. As I said, this is about the direct impact on citizens in the overseas territories themselves, as well as in the wider world.
I do not rule out any option in the future, but I hope that at first we can keep to and deliver on the commitments that were made at the Joint Ministerial Council last year. Some of those have been met; some have not. I have been very candid about that with the current president of the UK Overseas Territories Association, and have had very direct conversations with Premiers and others.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West asked three specific questions. He asked about a visit with Baroness Hodge. I do not want to divulge our personal conversations, but he can be absolutely sure that we have met to discuss her findings, which she shared in great candour, as one would expect. I will take those on board. My expectation is that we will discuss this matter at the Joint Ministerial Council. The Premiers and elected representatives understand our position. Our expectation on fully public registers of beneficial ownership has not changed; nor has our expectation about the functioning of legitimate interest access registers in the meantime. I can assure my hon. Friend and others that we are engaging in forensic detail on how each of those works. For example, I had constructive conversations with the Premier of the Cayman Islands on my recent visit about the progress that it is making, and I expect further improvements in the months to come.
We follow these matters extremely closely and offer technical support and other advice on how we can work together co-operatively to deliver the most effective registers. For a register to be in place, with the necessary legislation, is all well and good, but if it does not function effectively because of fees or other barriers to its usability in practice, that is a serious concern. Obviously, there are territories that are yet to introduce such steps; the BVI, in particular, was mentioned.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West asked whether I would meet his colleague from the AUGB and I would be happy to do that. The links to Ukraine that many right hon. and hon. Members mentioned are examples of why this matters. The Government’s recent action on Cambodian scam centres was mentioned. That was a shocking scam involving fraud against our constituents up and down this country, which involved property in London and involved a UK overseas territory, the BVI. I know the Premier of the BVI shares our concern about tackling that type of activity. It is in all our interests that we have the transparency to enable more of these scams—more of this shocking activity—to be exposed.
Many links were made to property, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell). I have seen examples in my own constituency of Cardiff South and Penarth, where residents faced with issues relating to fire and building safety have been unable to work out the original beneficial owners of large apartment buildings so that they can take appropriate action to ensure the safety of the buildings and their residents. Such issues impact every aspect of all our daily lives, including, as I said, in the overseas territories.
The BVI was mentioned extensively, so I want to be clear that the Government recognise some of the challenges. In August, a vessel owned by a BVI-registered entity transferred 2 million barrels of Iranian oil, which was delivered to China. Also this year, BVI-registered entities were discovered in the corporate chains of at least three sanctioned Russian oligarchs who own £35 million-worth of UK property, undoubtedly some of it in constituencies represented in this room. BVI-registered entities accounted for over 90% of identified suspicious funds invested through OTs into UK property between 2016 and 2024. We also have the challenge of inactive or dissolved BVI companies owning UK property. That creates substantial legal challenges around bona vacantia and ownerless assets, which many of us will have encountered in our constituencies.
As was rightly pointed out, in the three decades to 2018 more than 1,100 BVI-registered companies featured in corruption cases around the world. I know the seriousness with which the Premier and the Government there take these issues. I want to work with them in addressing them, because they impact all of us and they impact the BVI’s reputation, but to do that we need transparency and progress.
Colleagues made many important contributions and I will not be able to respond to them all in the time I have today, but I note the serious concerns about Mr Abramovich raised by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer). I am not able to comment on individual tax matters at the Dispatch Box, but we remain committed to ensuring that the proceeds of the sale of Chelsea reach humanitarian causes in Ukraine. We are deeply frustrated that it has not yet been possible to reach an agreement with Mr Abramovich and his representatives. The door for negotiations remains open, but we are fully prepared to pursue the matter through the courts if required, as we have said on a number of occasions recently.
Important points were raised, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), about HMRC. I am sure she will be able to raise her points with the relevant Ministers, but what she said about why transparency principles matter was very powerful. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) spoke powerfully about the impact on public services, on housing and on the high street, and about the challenges for our constituents. We have touched on all those points of nexus during the debate.
Financial secrecy is the oxygen that allows illicit finance to thrive and sanctions breaches to go undetected; it creates blind spots. It is, of course, a transnational problem. Dirty money pushes up property prices, making it harder for people to buy homes. Overseas corruption and illicit finance undermine economies, prop up kleptocratic regimes and threaten democracy. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield made clear, it is estimated that African countries alone lose around $90 billion a year in illicit capital flows. That is more than they receive in development assistance.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for his detailed response to the issues that we raised. I mentioned the properties in Belfast that were allegedly held by certain people. Will he ensure that there is a concerted plan, driven from Westminster, for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, to ensure that those people are held accountable wherever they may be in the United Kingdom?
Stephen Doughty
I absolutely agree. The hon. Member spoke powerfully for his constituency of Strangford, as he always does. The fact that this issue impacts every part of the United Kingdom has been made very clear during the debate.
I want to update the House on where there is progress and where challenges remain. At the last Joint Ministerial Council, overseas territories made important commitments to improve corporate transparency by widening access to their registers of beneficial ownership. As I set out in my written statement to the House on 22 July, all territories are making progress on their commitments to implement the registers, and that progress is welcome, but we need to keep up the pace and to challenge in cases where there has been real back-marking on the issue.
I compliment St Helena, which launched its fully public register on 30 June 2025. The Falklands has shown me its draft legislation and it will have that implemented by next year—there are some capacity constraints for its officials. As has been mentioned, Gibraltar has had a fully publicly register since 2020 without any damage to its economy; the Chief Minister speaks powerfully about that issue. I compliment Montserrat, which has had a public register since 2024. The Caymans launched its legitimate interest access register in February 2025, which allows access by a range of people, including journalists. Turks and Caicos launched an LIA register on 30 June, we understand that Anguilla will implement within the next few months, and we have talked much about Bermuda and the BVI.
I want to reassure all right hon. and hon. Members that this issue remains a major priority for the Government. The overseas territories will have heard this debate, and the strength of feeling. Our commitment on this issue sits alongside our commitments to the relationship with the overseas territories more broadly, and to tackling corruption and illicit finance globally, which will be highlighted by the summits that were mentioned.
Stephen Doughty
I am conscious that I need to leave time for my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West to wind up the debate, so I will not.
I want to reassure Members that this issue remains a major priority for me and other Ministers, and I am very happy to continue to engage with Members on it. I hope that we can celebrate the progress as well as providing resolute challenge.
Phil Brickell
I thank all Members who contributed to this well spirited, genuinely cross-party debate, including my colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax: the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell), my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton), for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) and for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), and my predecessor as the chair of the APPG, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell). I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt), the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and, for their thoughtful and impactful cross-party contributions, the hon. Members for Witney (Charlie Maynard) and for Fylde (Mr Snowden).
I especially thank the Minister for responding to the points that were raised. I know that he will continue to be a resolute champion for greater transparency in the overseas territories. I will do everything that I can to support him in that endeavour. I welcome his points that this issue is a personal priority for him; that the anti-corruption strategy on which he is working is genuinely cross-departmental with the Home Office and the Treasury; that elected leaders in the OTs will have heard and seen the cross-party strength of feeling here in Westminster today; that he has met Baroness Hodge on the subject of the British Virgin Islands—I will continue to support him in work in that jurisdiction—that the expectation around fully public registers of beneficial ownership has not changed; and that they have to function effectively. It is not just a case of having them in place; they must be properly implemented.
I acknowledge that the Minister recognised the scale of secrecy, particularly in the BVI, and the impact that has here at home. That is an important issue. As I outlined, financial secrecy in the UK’s overseas territories has real consequences on the streets here in Britain. Ultimately, this debate has been about fairness: fairness for the honest taxpayer, fairness for law-abiding businesses and fairness for every community that wants a level playing field. I look forward to working with colleagues from across the House, with Ministers across Government and with the anti-corruption champion to ensure that we are able to deliver fairness for everyone.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the impact of financial secrecy in the Overseas Territories on UK communities.
Bronze-age Heritage: Cambridgeshire
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister; I have not been notified of any such. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. I am keen that all interventions should be kept short.
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for Bronze Age heritage in Cambridgeshire.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and a privilege to speak in this debate on Government support for bronze-age heritage in Cambridgeshire. Before I start, I reiterate on the record, following the terrible attacks in our county this week, that my sympathy and thoughts are with the victims and with the first responders, police and others in Cambridgeshire, including in my constituency, who responded so valiantly and quickly on the night.
Cambridgeshire is home to some our country’s most outstanding bronze-age heritage, with 79 recognised sites of archaeological interest. That history tells us about where we have come from as well as how to protect our future.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Devon also has one of the highest concentrations of bronze-age settlements in the country. The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter plays host to the Pinhoe and the Dawlish hoards, two fantastic bronze-age treasures for residents and visitors to see. Does my hon. Friend agree that such local museums are a good resource for local people?
Andrew Pakes
I will come on to talk about the importance of local museums. One great privilege of this place is to learn of the rich heritage of so many different parts of Britain and Northern Ireland—
Jim Shannon
I will do what you tell me to, Mr Twigg. This great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is something to be incredibly proud of, and it must be protected and treasured for future generations. It is said that we cannot know where we are going if we do not know where we have been. Does the hon. Member agree that sustained funding must be given to celebrate and secure historical relevance in this modern United Kingdom?
Andrew Pakes
It is always a pleasure to take interventions from the hon. Member. I hope he will hear that this is a speech of celebration as well as of questions for the Minister.
Let us come back to Peterborough. Central to Peterborough’s story are the sites of Flag Fen and Must Farm, two of the most archaeologically and internationally significant bronze-age discoveries of our generation. Flag Fen is the only site in Europe where visitors can view a bronze-age causeway and a unique collection of bronze-age log boats, discovered in the lost course of the River Nene close to Must Farm. Peterborough Museum curates and has responsibility for the Must Farm collection. Flag Fen delivers the conservation and presentation of the River Nene bronze-age boat discoveries, and Must Farm is of both national and international significance.
Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery and Flag Fen are held in trust for the benefit of local people and visitors to the city. That model matters, because it embeds civic pride and ownership in protecting our common heritage. However, it does not come without challenges, particularly around local government funding and public service support for archaeology and archaeologists.
Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as an affiliate member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. Cambridgeshire Scouts’ Archaeology Squad in my constituency gives children a chance to get involved in archaeology and holds an archaeology day at Ely Museum. Does he agree that getting young people involved in archaeology in that way is vital for its future?
Andrew Pakes
I wholeheartedly agree. Fundamentally, we are talking about our shared heritage—the heritage not just of Peterborough, but of Cambridgeshire and of Britain and Northern Ireland as a whole. In that light, I want to talk about access, because it matters that young people in our area can access and learn from these sites. In an age where we focus a lot on immigration, Flag Fen and Must Farm are evidence that people have been coming to Peterborough as traders and neighbours for more than 1,000 years.
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
Must Farm is just outside my constituency, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), who I am very pleased to see here. It provides great support for people in Stanground in my area. Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming its contribution to the broader area and exploring how we can encourage more people to visit it?
Andrew Pakes
I certainly welcome that, and I also welcome the number of Cambridgeshire MPs who are here to celebrate our county’s rich bronze-age heritage.
Too often, young people are denied the chance to learn about their history because of the lack of public transport linked to places such as Flag Fen, and because of the pressures on school budgets restricting opportunities for visits and learning. We are beginning to turn that around, and I am proud of our record in Government so far, but there is more to do. A rich world on our doorstep is something that all students should be able to learn from, regardless of background or wealth.
Flag Fen’s story began with its discovery in 1971, when excavations ahead of the construction of Peterborough new town revealed an almost intact bronze-age landscape running along the edge of the drained fen. Then, in November 1982, archaeologists surveying the depths of the basin came across the timbers of what proved to be an internationally important site, Flag Fen. The rich archaeological collection and remains there are important in understanding the wider prehistoric landscape of the Flag Fen basin, and what was happening in Britain during the bronze age.
Almost since Flag Fen’s discovery, the management strategy has been to protect these remarkable remains by leaving them buried in the ground that has protected them for nearly 3,500 years. However, even then we knew that the land would not protect the archaeology forever, but that one day the precious vanished world would succumb to climate change and fen drainage, leaving nothing but dust. That goes to the heart of one of the challenges now: new evidence suggests that we have reached the point where, without intervention, we will move from protection to abandonment. We need a new approach to capture the value of places such as Flag Fen, and retain their special place in our community for the benefit of generations to come—a new mission, we might say, to create access on all levels through new interpretations and historical knowledge.
Cambridgeshire is also home to Must Farm; I am delighted that this week Peterborough Museum has been awarded a £250,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support a two-year initiative centred on the internationally significant bronze-age archaeology at Must Farm in Whittlesey. The discovery in 2015 of the Must Farm settlement, dubbed the “Pompeii of the fens”, provided an extraordinary glimpse into everyday life in the bronze age due to the exceptional preservation of its artefacts. This newly funded project, entitled “My Must Farm”, will encourage communities to bring those discoveries alive in imaginative and exciting ways for visitors from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and hopefully beyond.
I thank the Government for their commitment to heritage in Peterborough and more widely, but I want to highlight a few threats facing our heritage sector. I have already mentioned accessibility and the rural nature of the sites that I have referred to, but there are also socioeconomic barriers. Deprivation is a huge issue for many places, including Peterborough; families who are worse off could be barred from accessing the heritage right on their doorstep. Improved access will help to develop a stronger pride in place and open opportunities that can seem unattainable to some families nowadays.
The numbers of bronze-age wetland archaeology specialists are in decline, which puts future high-quality management of bronze-age discoveries in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere at risk. That speaks to career paths and pay for archaeologists. Increasingly, those entering the field are forced to make tough decisions about whether they can afford to be archaeologists or need to pursue other paths with better pay.
Finally, there is the issue of heritage crime. Flag Fen has suffered two catastrophic arson events in the last five years. The first destroyed a building used as an education room for visiting schoolchildren, and the second, in July this year, destroyed a replica iron-age roundhouse. The effect of both fires was to remove spaces that are used by schools for learning and “outside the classroom” programmes.
Heritage is our shared inheritance, and it is a privilege to represent a community in a county that has a rich bronze-age heritage.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)
I sense the hon. Member is winding up, but before he does, I would like to say that across the border in North Hertfordshire we also have some fantastic bronze-age heritage in places such as Arbury Banks and Therfield Heath, but we have had real difficulties in preserving that heritage because of the sheer number of finds we are getting from development locally. He mentioned the importance of museums; will he join me in asking the Minister to consider what more we can do to fund our local authorities so that they can properly preserve that heritage for our whole community into the future?
Andrew Pakes
Absolutely; that brings me on to some questions I have for the Minister.
Can the Minister set out the ongoing support the Government are providing and their commitment to regional museums and heritage and smaller artefacts in places such as Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire? We have wonderful national institutions, but out in counties such as ours we also have nationally significant places that people can visit, and I am keen to understand the Government’s commitment to those places. What is his thinking on how that funding will develop in future and how the Government will support it? It is really important, not only for the heritage, but to bring people into a city like ours.
There is a lot more going on in Peterborough than meets the eye, from Flag Fen and Must Farm to our majestic 900-year-old cathedral, and from Peterborough Museum, which sold over 17,000 tickets to its recent “Doctor Who” exhibition, to our art deco lido, which celebrates its 90th anniversary next year, and even our very own Oakham Ales, which just this weekend was rated one of the top taprooms in the country by The i Paper. These are all reasons why I love my part of the country, and why I honourably ask the Minister to set out the Government’s ongoing support for them.
We value our heritage locally, but we also know the contribution that Cambridgeshire and bronze-age heritage makes to our national and international reputation as a centre of culture. It is why I am proud to have the privilege of being named chair of the Peterborough tourist board, which has just launched the Discover Peterborough website. Together, we are changing Peterborough for the better and, with Government support, we will succeed.
The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts (Ian Murray)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg—particularly after last night’s result at Anfield, which will make you a happy Chair this morning. I am pleased to respond to this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) on securing it and on the way in which he delivered his remarks.
It is worth saying that my hon. Friend is an outstanding Member for his constituency. If I had a pound for every time he has mentioned Peterborough in the House of Commons or to Ministers, lobbying on behalf of his constituency, I would almost be able to afford the train fare from Edinburgh to Peterborough to come and visit all the wonderful things he spoke about. He mentioned the “Doctor Who” exhibition there, but the person who is regenerating Peterborough is my hon. Friend himself—if that is not too outlandish a “Doctor Who” pun. Like my hon. Friend, my thoughts are with those affected by the horrific events over the weekend in his county.
I welcome my hon. Friend’s desire for better access to heritage, in particular those close to home: the Flag Fen archaeology park and Must Farm. Flag Fen was discovered during the extensive fenland survey supported by the Government’s arm’s length body Historic England, known as English Heritage at the time. Flag Fen was discovered when lead archaeologist Francis Pryor tripped on a piece of wood lying in a drainage ditch. That would lead to the discovery of more than 60,000 timbers, arranged in five long rows to create a unique historical wooden causeway across the fenland, constructed around 3,500 years ago. It is hard to believe that, without those efforts, the site might never have been discovered—indeed, if most of us had tripped over a piece of wood, it would have led to a few expletives, rather than to such a discovery.
The significance of the Flag Fen site was officially recognised through its designation by Government as a scheduled monument, which recognises the site as nationally important and provides statutory protection. I share my hon. Friend’s horror at the two recent incidents of arson at Flag Fen, but I am pleased that Historic England’s work to tackle heritage crimes continues to go from strength to strength, in partnership with the police, other authorities and a range of other stakeholders, including a growing number of local authorities. I am pleased that Cambridgeshire county council is among the leading local authorities in looking at heritage crime.
It is important that we can all experience and enjoy the heritage that surrounds us, which forms the backbone of our shared national story. One of the priorities of the Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is to create richer lives with choices and opportunities for all, including by increasing access to heritage and culture. My hon. Friend mentioned that in his speech, and I know that learning and educational experience is close to his heart.
I am therefore delighted that Historic England is working in partnership with Flag Fen archaeology park, Peterborough city council and the University of Cambridge on a strategic plan to increase access to and economic development for the site. That plan will include new opportunities for archaeological investigation, engagement with local communities and learning programmes for younger people. It will create an immersive and enjoyable visitor experience for a wider audience, and physically connect more audiences to Flag Fen through improved transport links. Since the discovery of Flag Fen, Historic England has given it more than £530,000 and will continue to work with that important site so that many future generations can benefit from and be custodians of it.
Cambridgeshire is also home of the famous Must Farm site at Whittlesey in East Anglia, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay). That is of international importance and provides an incredible snapshot in time of sophisticated bronze-age domestic life.
Ian Murray
I do not know whether that is a reference to the site itself or to the right hon. Gentleman—we are about to find out.
Steve Barclay
I pay tribute to my Cambridgeshire colleague, the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes), for securing this debate. I am grateful that the Minister draws out that distinction. Must Farm, the 3,000-year-old settlement dubbed the “Pompeii of the fens”, is in Fenland in my constituency, yet the funding always seems to go to Peterborough next door. Some of that is logical, but will he clarify what share of this funding will go to Fenland residents so that they can benefit from a discovery in their local authority area?
Ian Murray
I will get back to the right hon. Gentleman with the specifics of the funding. On funding more generally, which my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough raised, we know that these are tough times for local authorities, which have been massively underfunded since 2010. There is a requirement to prioritise heritage, of which we are custodians for today and tomorrow—we want to pass it on to future generations. We need to work with the National Lottery Heritage Fund to make up the difference for local authorities. We should encourage local authorities to work together to ensure that everyone benefits.
The Secretary of State’s commitment to ensuring that there are arts and heritage for all, right across the country, should answer some of those questions, but I will write to the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire on the specific issues he raised. In general terms, we are very much committed to ensuring that all our heritage sites, and the custodians of them, are well funded. He mentioned that there was a sudden fire, earning the site the nickname “Britain’s Pompeii”. It boasts extensive structural remains and a range of material, giving us an insight into the way people lived nearly 3,000 years ago. This is a great advert for it, and people should go and see it: the circle of wooden houses are believed to be the best-preserved bronze-age dwellings ever found in Britain, and a further nine immaculately preserved longboats were discovered and excavated there in 2011. They range from the bronze to the iron age. The site is very much something that people should visit to educate themselves.
The major excavation, which took place almost a decade ago, was funded by Historic England and the landowner, Forterra. It received about £1.42 million of funding. The project won several archaeological awards, including rescue project of the year at the 2017 Current Archaeology awards, and best archaeological discovery at the 2012 British archaeological awards—snappily titled awards for that project.
I recognise the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough about the shortage of archaeological and heritage skills. That is a priority for the Minister for Heritage, Baroness Twycross. Such skills are essential to maintaining the fabric of these important sites. Baroness Twycross held a skills roundtable in July and is working to understand how the sector can benefit from a range of entry routes. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough raised skills with the Department, and this morning I have asked my officials to look at whether universities are producing enough archaeologists. In the last two days, I was at the informal meeting of EU Culture Ministers in Copenhagen, and the Cypriot Culture Minister raised her concern about the pipeline of British archaeologists. Places such as Cyprus rely on the archaeological expertise of the United Kingdom in preserving their own heritage. I will get back to my hon. Friend with more details as that progresses.
Earlier this month, the Prime Minister announced the 75 recipients of the £20 million museum renewal fund. I was delighted that Peterborough city council was awarded £168,000, part of which will help Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery display the world-famous Must Farm bronze-age collections. Everyone should go and see them when they are displayed.
My Department is responsible for designating heritage assets through listed buildings and scheduling monuments so that they are protected in law for future generations. In total, Cambridgeshire is home to 59 scheduled bronze-age monuments, mostly bronze-age burial mounds. The most recent is the remains of the Money Hill round barrow cemetery, which was scheduled only last month as a monument. I am delighted that the future of Money Hill is now secured through collaboration between Historic England and East West Rail, another stakeholder, demonstrating how effective planning discussions can ensure that development and heritage protections stand side by side. That is something that we are keen to protect.
The neighbouring city of Peterborough is home to a further 23 scheduled bronze-age monuments, including Flag Fen. Preserving and maintaining the rich heritage of Cambridgeshire, or any region across the country, poses challenges, many of which were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough. In addition to the previously mentioned funding, the Government and their arm’s length bodies, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England and others, have provided many millions to ensure the safety, maintenance and preservation of not only the region’s bronze-age heritage, but all of Cambridgeshire’s invaluable heritage assets.
Since the founding of the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 1994, it alone has awarded £153 million to 897 projects within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority boundaries, which shows the huge importance of that fund. That money has gone towards projects such as Peatland Progress, which received £8.8 million towards uniting the north and south halves of the Great Fen to safeguard biodiversity and support the region’s natural heritage. This Government are committed to ensuring the protection of our wonderful heritage and creating an inclusive national story that reflects the lives of extraordinary people from extraordinary places all over the country.
Local heritage is a powerful storyteller, defining who we are and forming the essential cornerstone of our communities. The Government strongly believe in supporting communities to celebrate and adapt the heritage buildings they value, ensuring that they remain as relevant today as they will be tomorrow. Earlier this year, to mark the 60th anniversary of the first arts White Paper, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport announced a massive £270 million investment to fix the foundations of our arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage sector nationwide.
Chris Hinchliff
While the Minister is talking about the brilliant work that the Government are doing nationally to protect and preserve our heritage, can I encourage him to welcome the fact that the now Labour-run North Herts council is choosing to prioritise investment in our museum storage, so that we can preserve our bronze-age heritage and local heritage more widely?
Ian Murray
I commend the local authority for that investment. Indeed, this subject comes up regularly; we had an Adjournment debate in the Chamber a few weeks ago on heritage in the east of England, and many of the comments were about how we protect those collections and show them to the public. What museums are doing across the country to give access to those collections is something that we should support to ensure that not only are they preserved, but that people can see them, enjoy them and gain education and knowledge from them.
As part of the investment, we announced in August that 37 historic buildings and sites in areas most in need will receive much-needed restoration and repair funding through the heritage at risk capital scheme, including Laurel Court in Peterborough, where funding will secure the building ahead of further renovation. We are also empowering local groups to own the heritage assets they treasure through the heritage revival fund, providing nearly £5 million through the architectural heritage fund to breathe new life into communities by repurposing historic buildings to meet present needs. In that way the past is preserved, and the buildings are used for the future.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough for securing this debate and providing me with the opportunity to discuss the importance of bronze-age heritage, and the Government’s commitment to protecting and enhancing all our shared heritage. Like my hon. Friend, I encourage more people to visit these historic sites and celebrate the history of Cambridgeshire. From the international significance of Must Farm to the local treasure of Flag Fen, it is important not only to honour our bronze-age heritage, but to recognise the positive impact that these sites have on the local and national community in the present. As a Government, and as citizens, we are custodians of our heritage for future generations to enjoy and learn from. We are committed as a Government to making sure that that very heavy responsibility is met fully.
Question put and agreed to.
House Building: London
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for housebuilding in London.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank all hon. Members who enabled me to secure this important debate. It could not be more timely, as house building in London has collapsed. In the first nine months of 2025, construction began on only 3,248 homes. Molior London predicts that just 9,100 homes will be built across 2027 and 2028—that is under 5% of the Government’s target for London. London is supposed to deliver more than a quarter of the Government’s 1.5 million homes target, but given the construction slowdown, that target appears to be dead in the water. That is the inevitable consequence of the Mayor of London’s disastrous London plan and the Labour Government’s anti-growth policies.
Three things have gone wrong. First, Sadiq Khan’s London plan has comprehensively failed to get London building. With more than 500 pages and 123 planning policies, the London plan makes it more complex and expensive to build in London. A 2024 review found that it takes seven weeks longer to determine major planning applications in London than in the next four largest cities. Sadiq Khan’s planning requirements also add to the cost of building in London. For example, the London plan goes beyond the national energy requirements, imposes carbon targets, and has policies on overheating and energy statements. Whatever the merits of those policies, they all add to the cost of building homes. In places, Sadiq Khan’s planning policies actively restrict house building. For example, the London plan effectively bans house building on large swathes of industrial land, often within walking distance of public transport.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
My hon. Friend is painting a really bleak picture for London. Does he agree that to build the homes that we need in this country, we should focus not only on increased density in our city centres, but crucially on brownfield sites? We are not seeing from the Government a determined brownfield-first approach to housing that would protect the green belts surrounding our towns and cities.
Mr French
I agree that we should have a brownfield-first approach, seeking to protect our green belt and countryside wherever possible. I understand my right hon. Friend’s concern and her representations on behalf of her constituents.
The Home Builders Federation warns that the London plan’s net zero requirements are imposing carbon offset payments of £3,000 a home. Even when building on brownfield land is allowed, it is fraught with problems. The mayor requires 50% of homes to be affordable, which, given the remediation costs on those sites, makes development unviable. Altogether, the London plan review in 2024 found that Sadiq Khan’s policies frustrated, rather than facilitated, development on brownfield land. That is why it is so disappointing that the Government stopped the mandated partial review of the London plan a year ago, saving their mayor’s blushes.
Secondly, Sadiq Khan’s affordable homes target has made many housing projects unviable in London. By demanding that 35% of homes built privately are affordable, he has made house building unviable in London.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
The hon. Member is painting a picture that I do not recognise in my London constituency. Is he aware that, as Mayor of London, Sadiq has averaged 10,000 more new homes completed a year than under Boris Johnson’s mayoralty? He has got house building going in a way that the Tory mayor could not.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
My intervention is similar. Under Sadiq Khan’s period in City Hall, there have been 8,236 Greater London Authority-funded affordable starts in my borough of Southwark, including 636 completions in the last year. That somewhat contradicts the hon. Gentleman’s statements. Rather than trying to pin it on the mayor, could it be that the hon. Gentleman’s council is failing on this front? Perhaps we could be working together, rather than trying to pin it on one man.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate; he is absolutely right to underline this issue. Older couples whose families have flown the nest want to downsize but cannot find an affordable house in a suitable area, and that problem is replicated throughout the United Kingdom. Does he agree that that is a critical factor in sorting out affordable housing provision in London or, indeed, anywhere?
Mr French
I absolutely agree, and I appreciate the hon. Gentleman making one of his well-respected interventions in this important debate. We have to make sure that across the country, we are building the homes that people want to live in and that people can afford, including people in older age.
Demanding that 35% of homes built privately are affordable has made house building in London unviable. The higher 50% target for industrial land also applies to public land, which, again, has effectively blocked development in the capital. This policy may seem like a good way to get London building more social housing, but it has hugely backfired. The policy is effectively a tax on house building. It makes some development unviable and deters investment. It ultimately means fewer homes and higher costs. If a developer cannot afford the target, they face six burdensome checks on the project’s viability before, during and after construction.
Wendy Morton
The key thing is that until the Government recognise that they need to put some support into brownfield regeneration, our green belt and our green spaces will always be under threat.
Mr French
I absolutely agree. We need to unlock brownfield sites in the interests of current and future generations that want to own a home.
If there is any surplus profit in the situation I was describing, the developer will lose it, but if they make a loss, the number of affordable homes required will not be reduced. For a decade, London Conservatives have warned that this policy will harm house building. Today, we see the consequences. Sadiq Khan’s failed London plan has created a perfect storm, compounded by failing demand, policy costs and regulatory delays.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr French
I am going to make a bit of progress, because I have been up and down quite a lot, and I am not fit enough to keep doing it.
Under this Labour Government, more and more first-time buyers are unable to afford a home, and they are the primary market for new builds in London. Over 3,700 new homes are sitting unsold. This is not a market where developers will build more. The Labour Government were wrong to slash first-time buyers’ stamp duty relief, costing first-time buyers up to £11,250 more in taxes. That is why the Conservatives’ plan to abolish stamp duty is the right one, and the Labour Government must rule out further market-suppressing tax rises.
Developers also face excessive policy costs—section 106 payments, community infrastructure levy payments, mayoral community infrastructure levy payments, carbon offset levies, biodiversity net gain requirements and the new building safety levy. The collective cost of those demands makes it too expensive to build. To make matters worse, on top of the burdensome London plan, the well-intentioned post-Grenfell Building Safety Regulator is now delaying building in the capital. It has rejected 70% of building safety designs, and some completed projects have had to wait 18 months for approval before people can move in.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. I have listened carefully to his analysis of the problem—I have waited to hear the full analysis—and I would be grateful for some reflection on why the deregulatory proposals he is making were not brought forward under the previous Government when there was clearly an opportunity to do so.
Mr French
I appreciate the argument the hon. Lady is trying to make, and I am about to come on to some suggestions to hopefully help the Government.
The mayor has had strategic planning powers in the capital for nine years, and he was awarded £9 billion of affordable homes money by the previous Government. We have to be clear about where blame in the capital lies.
Rachel Blake
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s argument about strategic planning, but I believe every Member present, including myself, has substantial experience in bringing forward new genuinely affordable homes. We all know that it requires finance and real delivery focus, particularly in local authorities. Can the hon. Gentleman reflect on his time in local government and how many genuinely affordable council homes were brought forward in that period? Obviously, the ability to deliver from a council setting is a key part of solving this important challenge for London.
Mr French
Again, I appreciate the point that the hon. Lady is trying to make. I have already outlined the Bexley position in response to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), so I do not need to go back into that—Bexley has been delivering affordable homes.
What can be done now? I am afraid that the recent measures announced by the Government and the Mayor of London—without consulting London’s 32 boroughs—to unlock house building are too little, and potentially too late. They will give developers only temporary, targeted relief from the community infrastructure levy on brownfield sites, but not from the more expensive mayoral levy. The changes to the affordable homes targets do not go far enough; at 35%, demand is still placed on industrial and public land, acting as a blocker on these sites that could host thousands of homes. While a temporary fast-track route for homes that provide 20% affordable housing is welcome, it is a minor amendment to a system that has ultimately failed.
More concerning are the proposals to give the Mayor of London the power to call-in applications for 50 homes or more and for developments on green belt and metropolitan open land. It is undemocratic to withdraw planning powers from local communities. It will backfire, eroding the little remaining public trust in the Greater London Authority, and it will confirm to outer Londoners that Labour’s plan is not to unlock building on well-connected brownfield sites, but to concrete over our precious remaining countryside.
Andy Slaughter
The problem I have with the hon. Gentleman’s speech is the implication that the Conservatives are in favour of house building, particularly affordable house building. I had the dubious distinction of having a Conservative council for eight years, which typically asked for 0% or 5% of homes to be affordable, and the Conservative Government’s permitted development rights meant that commercial property could be transferred into residential property with no affordable housing at all, even on major and important sites. Is that not the legacy of the hon. Gentleman’s party?
Mr French
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but I understand the argument that he is trying to make. Ultimately, my position is that the way to get truly affordable homes is not by setting artificial targets; it is by building more homes across London. That is how we bring prices down and unlock home ownership for more Londoners across the capital.
Why should Sadiq Khan, who has comprehensively failed to get London building, be given more powers? As I have outlined, his London plan has made it too difficult and complicated to build in London, and as a result, Londoners face higher rents and unaffordable housing prices. Now he wants to build on the green belt, while brownfield sites near tube stations sit empty. This is completely unacceptable.
Sadiq Khan and the Labour party may boast about his house building record, but the reality is that four fifths of the homes that were built in London last year received planning permission under Boris Johnson. The same is true of the majority of homes that were started last year—they were approved under Boris Johnson, not Sadiq Khan. We are nine years into Sadiq Khan’s mayoralty, and his predecessor is still building or unlocking more homes than him.
The answer is not to build on the green belt, and it is not to let houses in multiple occupation conversions run wild or to take more powers away from local communities. It is to make it easier and cheaper to build in London again, and that means scrapping Sadiq Khan’s failed planning policies. Home ownership should be a dream that is open to everyone, but in Sadiq Khan’s London it is frankly not. It is a moral imperative that the Government step in to fix his mistakes.
Several hon. Members rose—
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I am going to impose an informal five-minute limit, and we will see how we get on.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Over the past years, I have been working with constituents and campaigners who have long been concerned about ongoing disempowerment in planning and development processes, and deregulation of the building and developer industry. Londoners and my constituents have been priced out, with increasing gentrification and affordable homes that are not only in shortage but all too often just not affordable. That is the legacy of the previous Tory Government and their previous Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
That is why I warmly welcome the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, a much-needed law to increase tenants’ protections against unscrupulous and rogue landlords. That is also why I am concerned about the announced changes to affordable housing delivery in London, which will mean that developers can get fast-tracked planning permission for developments with just 20% affordable homes, compared with 35%, as had been the case for numerous years. I understand that the policy’s intention is to speed up the delivery of house building in London, but at what cost?
For so many across London, including in my constituency, the 35% requirement was seen to be an injustice, in and of itself, that contributes to sustaining the housing crisis across London, with rising rates of homelessness, insufficient social housing, soaring rents and associated poor-quality housing. The announcement that the requirement will be reduced to 20% therefore feels like adding insult to injury. Constituents see no benefit to them, but more profits for developers, at a time when London is experiencing record levels of homelessness. Shelter has said that more than 97,000 children are homeless in temporary accommodation, as I know acutely from my constituency casework. The demand for social rent homes is at an all-time high.
In asking questions to the Minister, I recognise that all that reflects the legacy and record left by the Tory party in government, but what alternative solutions to delivering social housing have been considered? Will there be any assessment of the impact of the 20% requirement on social housing supply in London? Importantly, how will social housing commitments in existing planning permissions in London be safeguarded and maintained to ensure that there is no reduction in the delivery of the social housing that Londoners need, in particular where developments are already approved? That is especially important in my constituency, where there has been a considerable delay to the Chrisp Street redevelopment plans. I am concerned that targets and previous commitments may not be honoured.
It is my strong view, and the view of constituents who have contacted me over the years, that development should be focused on solving the existing housing crisis and be driven in the interests of local people. Rather than relying on developers and lowering ambitions on social housing, the priority in London ought to be increasing direct investment in social housing, particularly council housing, for the present as well as the future. Housing is a right, and we must all have safe, affordable and secure housing. We need investment and empowerment in our communities, and to resolve the housing crisis we need a mass building programme of social and particularly council housing.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I salute my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for initiating the debate.
The debate is timely given the decision last week, by the Government and City Hall, to lower targets for affordable housing in developments, in exchange for the granting of supposedly faster planning permission. That is a real concern. The briefing that we have received from Crisis demonstrates that more than 13,231 people were rough sleeping in London during the last year—a record high and a 10% increase on the previous year. Some 70,000 households, including 90,000 children, are in temporary accommodation. Not only is that bad for the families, but it is costing Londoners and the taxpayer something like £5 million a day in London. In particular, money is being spent on bed and breakfast accommodation, which is not only unsuitable for families but expensive for London authorities to bear. There are 336,366 households on social housing waiting lists in London. The crunch is whether this decision is actually going to deliver any improvement in social housing.
Before anyone starts talking about the previous Government or the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, I remind hon. Members, particularly newly elected Labour Members, that I tried to carry through a Bill on behalf of Boris Johnson to increase house building in London. We were blocked by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), who is no longer in his place, and the hon. Member for Islington—I am not sure which.
Bob Blackman
No, the other one: the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). That meant that whole sites in London were not developed to provide housing when they should have been.
Clearly we have a serious problem here. In my constituency, there is a planning application that has been outstanding, after having been reviewed at various times, for nearly 10 years. It would provide housing units that we desperately need, but the housing association refuses to develop it. It is now trying to sell the site again to further developers.
Our other problem in London is where developments have taken place. There have been developments such as Battersea power station, around Wembley stadium and other areas where housing has gone up, but that housing has not been sold to local people; it is been sold to developers or owners abroad, then rented out at exorbitant cost to local London people, who then have to apply for housing benefit and depend on welfare payments rather than having a home of their own. We have to conquer this.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman made a very good point about overseas sales, although I would contest his statement that people are having to receive housing benefit to live in many of those developments because, as he probably knows, they are advertised overseas by yield. We are seeing homes in London as financial investment vehicles for people who have no connection with this country. Many of those landlords have never even visited the property. What would his party’s policy be to tackle this issue?
Bob Blackman
I do not speak on behalf of my party; I speak on my own behalf. As the hon. Lady well knows, I have been promoting building 90,000 socially rented homes a year across the country, and for the past 30 years Governments of all persuasions have failed to build the homes that we need at the prices that people can afford.
The sad reality is that we have to look at how we are going to deal with this. We could deal with the Transport for London land. TfL owns huge amounts of unused land that could be developed for housing, and that could be done in co-operation with City Hall, but the sad fact is—[Interruption.] Government Members need to focus on this: not only was Sadiq Khan as mayor given the money that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup mentioned, but he returned it to the Treasury; he could not spend it because he could not get development under way.
We have to look at what we are going to do across the House to make sure that houses are being built in London. I hope that we are not going to reduce the safety requirements for these buildings. That would be a disaster—we know of the terrible tragedy that happened in Grenfell. We should not even contemplate moving away from what has been done to protect people. Lessening those protections would be a mistake in many ways.
I have a couple of questions for the Minister. How are the Government going to ensure that the affordable homes that we need in London are provided when the restrictions have been removed and developers are therefore less likely to build affordable housing that we need? Before agreeing to this decision, what assessment has the Minister made of the impact it will have on those on the affordable housing waiting lists in London? That is a real crisis, and London councils right now are in desperate need of more finance to build more housing. There are possibilities to develop the brownfield sites that TfL and the Government own, but that is being restricted. There is a solution that we could advance. We hope the Government and the Minister, who I have a lot of respect for, can influence the Mayor of London to make that happen.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on getting this slot. As he can see, the subject is close to the hearts of so many of us; more importantly, it is close to the hearts of our constituents.
In Islington, those who want affordable housing have to have social housing. Nothing else works. In Islington, we therefore need to have a policy to maximise social housing. People can rent privately, but the only way they can afford to rent privately is by renting out one room each: that means having a single person sleeping in the sitting room, and other single people sleeping in the bedrooms. We have lots of large, dark, sad tower blocks that were built under the Liberal Democrats, which have been bought for investment purposes and are not used. Their lights are off at night, nobody is on the voter register —they are just there, and they laugh at the 17,000 people on the waiting list in Islington who desperately need social housing. Those are Islington people who want to live in Islington, and there is no space for them.
Frankly, politics in Islington begins and ends with housing. We have some very rich people, some lucky people and some very poor people in Islington, but moving to Islington is impossible for an ordinary person. We have a vibrant community. We are a tiny community—Islington is one of the tiniest boroughs in Britain. Let me give hon. Members some stats about it: Bexley borough is four times bigger and Bromley borough is ten times bigger than Islington. The Minister is likely to say that 20% of something is better than 35% of nothing. I get that, but I do not think that one size fits all, particularly in little brave Islington.
Since the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury was in charge of housing in Islington, we have had a policy that 50% of all new developments need to be affordable. We say to the developer, “Fine. The land is expensive. You’re going to make a killing on the flats that you build. But half of them have to be for local people, which means that they have to be affordable, which means they have to be social, because nothing else is affordable in Islington. We will let you have half, but half of it has to be for us, and that is how it is.”
We have been doing that, and it has not meant that we have got nothing. Since 2020, seven schemes have gone through in Islington, which has resulted in nearly 1,000 affordable homes. That may not seem like a lot, but it is in somewhere as cramped as Islington where the opportunities are as few as we get. I have the least amount of green space of any MP in the whole of Britain. I have 120,000 people crammed into the seventh smallest constituency in the country. We have 15,000 people per kilometre. Our opportunities for development are limited.
I appreciate that it has recently become more difficult for local authorities to build by themselves, but until recently the joke was that if someone left their garage in the morning to drive to work, by the time they came back the local authority would have built a flat there. It is a political and social imperative to build as much housing for our people as we possibly can, and that is what we want to do. Unlike the Bromleys and the other boroughs, we have only little infill sites. We do not have big developments. Please do not give everybody instructions to do exactly the same thing because that is not going to work.
I ask that we look at what can be achieved and allow Islington to continue to insist on 50% so that when we do get our tiny little sites available for development, we can say to a developer, “You are very welcome. Welcome to Islington. We are headbangers. We have 17,000 people on the waiting list. You have to build half of it as affordable housing. You know that because we have been saying it for 15 years and we will continue to do so.” We would rather the Government did not undermine that so that we can continue to do it.
It is more difficult to get those developments, and it may be that those sites will take a bit longer to be developed. However, we would rather such tiny sites as we have be developed for social housing and local people and take a bit longer to develop than yet another great big tower block that is empty, dark and owned by people in China who have decided to build to buy a flat in Islington instead of a gold bar. That is the reality of housing in Islington.
I know that the Minister knows what I am talking about. I know that he is very thoughtful and an absolute expert in housing and wants to do exactly what we want. We know that the housing crisis can be solved only by building more housing. Absolutely—he has my full support on that. But we need to have housing that local people can live in. The reality of the economy in central and inner London is that we must have affordable housing. Otherwise people will continue to come.
Whenever I speak about housing in Islington, I try not to cherry-pick; I just talk about the last time someone spoke to me about housing. Someone spoke to me about housing on Saturday. I knocked on their door and there was a terrible noise. There was a child in the corridor screaming and screaming. Mum had her headphones on because the child is clearly autistic. She came to the door and said, “Emily, I’ve been to see you so many times and you just cannot get me rehoused, can you? There’s five of us in this one-bedroom flat.” That is the reality. That is why we have to build more social housing in Islington. That is how people live, and it is wrong. Our absolute priority must be to build more homes that families like that can live in.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I call Peter Fortune, who I am sure will stick to the five-minute limit.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
Of course I will, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for his excellent speech, much of which I agreed with, especially about using the TfL space.
The TfL chairman is Sadiq Khan and, as Mayor of London, he is responsible not only for TfL but for house building in London. If we look at some of his promises in 2016, he said his first priority would be tackling the housing crisis. His first manifesto promised a step change in new housing supply, and that 50% of new homes would be affordable. Here we are nearly a decade later, and he certainly has not delivered that step change. House building has in fact ground to a halt—it is down 73% in London over the past year. The Government have had to step in to water down City Hall’s anti-growth affordability targets, because there is no way of avoiding it: despite Sadiq Khan’s boasts, he has comprehensively failed to build. After nine years at the helm, Sadiq Khan has nothing to show for it. Four fifths of homes built last year, as previously mentioned, were approved under Boris Johnson’s mayoralty. The average home in London cost £483,000 in 2016. Today, it is about £560,000. The average rent cost £1,292 per month in 2016. Today, it is £2,252.
As has been discussed, it is not a question of money: Sadiq Khan has been given nearly £9 billion to deliver on housing in London. It is not a question of powers; he has strategic planning powers in London. Instead, it has been about bad policy. His London plan is onerous and expensive to adhere to, and his affordability targets have acted as a tax on house building. The Government know this. Instead of addressing the problem, they are dancing around the issue. They scrapped a mandated review of the London plan after independent experts found it to “frustrate rather than facilitate” building on the brownfield sites that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup discussed.
The Government have cut the community infrastructure levy but kept the more expensive mayoral levy. Instead of taking powers away from the failing mayor they are rewarding him, giving him power to call in developments of 50 homes on green-belt sites. Instead of removing the obstacles to building on brownfield sites they are weakening green-belt protections.
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend speaks passionately about this, but does he not agree that this absolutely shows the problem with centralising not just targets but powers in the hands of one person—the mayor or a combined authority? We need much more involvement of local communities, and we need councils to have a greater say on planning matters.
Peter Fortune
I agree with my right hon. Friend. It is worth re-emphasising that the mayor has had responsibility for delivering housing in London for nine years and has fundamentally failed to deliver on his promises.
On weakening green-belt protections, which matters so much to those of us representing outer London boroughs, it is a bizarre decision to effectively block building on vacant former industrial sites in inner London near tube stations, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, and instead force thousands of homes on to poorly served farmers’ fields in Bromley. If the Government want to meet their housing targets, they need to realise that Sadiq Khan is not a builder—he is a blocker, and the record proves it.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this timely debate about Government support for house building in London.
House building is vital for growth, jobs and many businesses in our communities, big and small. However, it is much more than that, and we have heard from other hon. Members the testimony of constituents struggling with a broken housing system. When one in 50 Londoners is now in temporary accommodation, increasing to one in 21 children, that is a national scandal and requires urgent, emergency action.
I grew up in temporary accommodation—in bed and breakfasts and hotels—and know what that means. It is not just a statistic; it is not just a temporary house. It is a completely different life. The impacts for many can be quite scarring on their future. I welcome the Government’s sense of urgency in tackling this after 14 years of failure in the housing system.
Emily Thornberry
I did not know that about my hon. Friend, and I find it very interesting. Many of us who speak with passion about social housing do so because we grew up in social housing. I was saved because my family were made homeless and we were given a house by the council. My worry is that if a family made homeless come to see me now, their chance of getting a house from the council is vanishingly small.
Danny Beales
I thank my right hon. Friend for that contribution. It is true that many of my constituents tell me the story of turning up at the civic centre with a plastic bag of their belongings to be told there are no homes in Hillingdon. The best they can expect is temporary accommodation, often in communities far away, with no chance of returning.
The implications are significant: missed school opportunities, not being able to get to health appointments, and not keeping a job. Thousands of families are now being affected. There is also a financial impact on the local authorities in our constituencies: £5 million a day spent on temporary accommodation. The London boroughs’ homelessness budget was overspent by £330 million last year—double the previous year.
Let us be honest: the housing system in London isn’t working for anyone, whether a mortgage payer or a leaseholder. We have all heard the horror stories of increased mortgage payments since the Liz Truss mini-Budget, increased service charges and woes, first-time buyers locked out of the housing market, and private renters struggling with exponential rent increases.
I see social cohesion issues increasingly come to the fore in my borough. At the core, people feel that housing is increasingly inaccessible in the communities where they have grown up. That is not because anyone else is getting a council home, because they are not; it is because of a broken housing system that has not been fixed for decades. At the same time as increasing need, the rate of build-out with planning permissions has dropped to 10%. Thousands of homes are stalled; there were only 80 housing starts in Hillingdon in 2024-25. Whether it is the St Andrew’s site in Uxbridge, a concrete shell of a building laid derelict for two years, or the Morrison’s site in Yiewsley, also left derelict for years, with the council not determining the application, there is a need for urgency and action.
To move forward, investment is vital. We often talk about how expensive it is to act on housing. The truth is that we have spent a lot on housing but spent it in the wrong place. We have subsidised private landlords to the tune of many billions of pounds through housing benefit payments for years. It is right that the Government are shifting investment into the delivery of new homes. The record £39 billion investment, including £11 billion for London, is long overdue. When colleagues and I were building council homes, we were desperate to see such investment from the previous Government. Multi-year funding, stability and certainty on rent levels are also important steps forward.
I disagree that the mayor’s having powers on planning, and intervening in the local decision-making system, is wrong and to the detriment of house building. My borough —Tory-run Hillingdon—has one of the lowest levels of approval for housing delivery in the past 10 years: almost 50%, with one in two applications rejected. No wonder we have such a housing crisis in Hillingdon, when the local authority has not only failed to deliver itself but failed to support the private rented sector to deliver, too.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to reform the Building Safety Regulator, which was touched on quickly by Opposition Members. The introduction of the Building Safety Regulator and regime, although good in spirit, has been a disaster in practice. It has overwhelmingly clogged up the system of housing delivery. We had a debate here on that a couple of weeks ago, and I welcome the Government’s acceleration of reforms in that space.
To sum up, I fully support the Government going further and faster in their approach to delivering house building and unblocking the planning system. We need an interventionist approach from the Department where schemes—particularly large ones—are blocked and clogged up in the planning system. I would support the Department’s calling them in; referring them to the mayor or the Department; taking action to de-risk brownfield sites; and supporting developers to unlock blocked or half-delivered schemes. Londoners desperately need more genuinely affordable homes to buy or rent. I support the bold measures that the Minister and the Government have already taken. They have my full support in going further and faster.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on securing this debate on such a vital issue. I echo many of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). Her neighbouring constituency now includes a ward that used to be in my constituency—a ward where house prices are reaching £2.5 million to £3 million in some cases. That is one end of the scale.
At the other end of the scale we have a homelessness situation that is intolerable, with thousands of people on the waiting list. Exactly as my right hon. Friend said, every week I visit people in their homes, which is something that MPs do. We see people where they live, with the problems they have: triple bunk beds with little space for the third child to get into bed; five people in a room; and toddlers with no space to run around. I could give a different example every week, but a real one. This is what we need to resolve, so I welcome the Government’s plan to build more homes.
There are a lot of challenges. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the “brownfield first” approach as a priority. There are plenty of brownfield sites in my constituency. I say “plenty” but, like the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury, my constituency is very small in relative terms but expensive to build on.
House prices in Hackney are 18.5 times average income, so all the young professionals who might want to get on the housing ladder are stuck in shared accommodation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury said, and families are stuck in social housing, crowded and unable to go anywhere else because they cannot afford private rent, which gives no security anyway. Homeless families are increasingly in hostels for years. Only six years or so ago it would have been about six months before people had a chance of getting some sort of property, and now people are being moved out of the borough, wrecking their lives and opportunities.
We have 3,400 homeless households in temporary accommodation, which is a big issue for us all and costs the taxpayer a lot of money. It does damage to the families and the children’s opportunities. It breaks our communities, and all taxpayers have to fund that, so we need to resolve it. We have a total of 8,500 households on the council’s housing register, and the notional wait for a three-bedroom property is over a decade—it is a nonsense wait, because by that time the children have grown up. Around 44% of Hackney residents live in social housing. We have more private renters than homeowners and that level of social housing residents. Even though house prices are going up for some, the housing situation is worsening for many others.
Hackney council has been great at delivering properly affordable social housing. Affordable homes, which include both social rented and intermediate, make up 57% of council housing-led delivery. In crude terms, if Hackney council wants to build a home because of the land value, which I will touch on, it has to build one for private sale to pay for the one that is for intermediate or social rent. When I say to people, “We are working hard to get you a house,” they look at the houses I am pointing to on the neighbouring bit of land and say, “Will I get one of those?”, and I cannot, hand on heart, say that they will within any reasonable period of time. The devastation this is having is surely feeding into our special educational needs and health crises. It is just not long-term sustainable.
Since 2022, the current council period since the last council elections and between now and next April, 956 council homes for social rent have been in design, planning or acquisition or under construction. It is cheaper to buy back a leasehold property on a council estate than it is to build new, because it costs £450,000 in Hackney to build a new social rented home. It is no wonder we are having challenges delivering and no wonder that the Government and the Mayor of London are trying to work out a way to get more homes built. If they are all for private rent, we are going to exacerbate the problem, so we need to work that out. Construction costs are now around £5,000 per square metre compared with £1,000 to £1,500 a decade ago. That is being led by a number of issues globally, including Brexit, but this is the reality we are dealing with. When I looked at this in my previous role on the Public Accounts Committee, the Government’s own figures showed—I am sure the Minister is aware—that bricks and mortar subsidies offered the best value for money for the taxpayer to try to resolve the problem.
We need things not just on brownfield but on grey belt. I do think that the green belt has some grey belt —we need to be realistic about this. Bits of old car park that no one is using could be turned into homes. We need to be creative when looking at this.
Wendy Morton
The hon. Member makes a really important point about grey belt. I completely understand her example of a car park, but grey belt needs much clearer definition, because we are seeing cases of development that inspectors are now saying is grey belt when it is actually greenfield, and that is really damaging to our communities.
Dame Meg Hillier
That is a fair challenge, and I am sure that the Minister will pick that up. It is important that we all know where the goal posts are.
I would like to ask the Minister about the release of public land. This is something that I have looked at over the years. Whether it is the Ministry of Defence, Transport for London or the Department of Health and Social Care, the Treasury has, over many Governments, insisted that that money goes back to the Department. On one level, that is completely logical, but looking at hospitals or schools, if that land could be used for housing, it would help teachers, nurses or doctors to live locally.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I have long campaigned on that issue. I have a disused police station in my constituency, in Teddington, and we want to turn it into a GP surgery and social housing. I tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to ensure that public sector sites are redeveloped for public good. Unfortunately, I have had no response from the Minister. Does the hon. Lady agree that that would be a good amendment to make?
Dame Meg Hillier
I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I also recognise that there are financial challenges with the Treasury signing a fairly blank cheque to say that all public land could become housing. We need to be creative about this, and that is where we need a mixture of local knowledge and some flexibility from the Treasury. For example, the change of use of school sites was quite gummed up in the Department for Education under the previous Government. We need to make sure that any change of use can be dealt with relatively quickly. It will be better for health and education outcomes if we use that land for other things.
We need a national mission on housing, and I applaud the Minister for leading on that. Does he have any plans to limit further overseas purchasers buying these properties? It is great for developers, because they get that cash in, but we need to prioritise local people, and tax does not seem to be doing it. Does he have any thoughts about restricting Airbnb? I know well the blocks that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury was talking about, because during covid, people paid rent to go to those places to isolate, but they were not proper homes. That is having a devastating effect on school numbers across London. Could the Minister look at the costs of building? The long-term costs of not doing it will be enormous, and we need to support those families who desperately need social rented housing.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I ask our last three speakers to stick to their five minutes.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this important debate. Few issues affect Londoners more directly than the shortage of decent and affordable homes. I want to begin by talking about one of the clearest symptoms of that shortage: the rising cost of temporary accommodation. In Waltham Forest, the net overspend on temporary accommodation this year alone is £14.3 million. In my constituency, 7,300 applicants sit on the housing register, and the average wait for homes is irreconcilable—10 years for a three-bedroom home, and 14 years for a four-bedroom home. In neighbouring Redbridge, 3,000 families sit on the temporary accommodation register, and a wait for a three-bedroom home is 18 years, which is the lifespan of a child.
Behind those numbers are people. One of my constituents, a mother and a nurse, has been without a stable home since she was 13. For 20 years, she has moved between insecure rentals and temporary housing, despite working as a public health worker and a nurse, and caring for a child under treatment at Great Ormond Street. She faces eviction, instability and anxiety, all because of a shortage of social housing. That is what the housing crisis looks like for humans. The slowdown in house building has tightened competition for homes, driven up prices and pushed councils to rely on hotels.
The causes are many: the lingering impact of the pandemic, high interest rates since the 2022 mini-Budget, Brexit-related labour shortages, soaring construction costs, and the new fire safety and building regulation requirements. I therefore welcome the agreement by the Mayor of London and the Government to boost house building, which includes a £322 million injection from City Hall in the form of a developer investment fund, which will leverage private capital, and a wider £11.7 billion from the social and affordable homes programme, with low-cost loans from the national housing bank.
We must face the scale of the problem. London councils are trapped in a vicious cycle of rising costs while funding to cover them stays static. Councils even outbid one another for the same limited supply. Many constituents are now housed far outside their own boroughs—we read about that today in an article about Waltham Forest.
The situation is worsened by competition with the Home Office, which also relies on temporary accommodation for asylum seekers. The bidding war benefits a handful of landlords but leaves councils and communities footing the bill, and people from within our communities are sent outwith them. A constructive answer would be to re-establish co-ordination between the Home Office and London Councils, reinstate a cap on bids or prioritise boroughs with the greatest need. I therefore welcome the Home Office’s commitment to develop a more sustainable model of accommodation, but it must go further by reducing competition and expanding supply to restore fairness and stability to local housing markets.
Councils are not only victims of the crisis, but essential partners in solving it. Redbridge is delivering 600 council homes through its own affordable homes programme, and Waltham Forest has bold regeneration plans, particularly at Avenue Road and Montague Road, which I have spoken to the Minister about previously. At Avenue Road, the council could deliver 617 new homes, including 242 for social rent. Montague Road would add 223 new social homes and about 200 additional properties. That is more than 1,000 new homes in total, which would improve the lives of the wonderful community that lives there at the moment.
But like many London schemes, those have stalled. Across the capital, 111,000 homes are paused, and the rate of converting planning approvals into completions is below 10%. That is why our Government’s intervention is vital. It will not override local councils but empower them. Our Labour councils have a strong record of innovation, using infrastructure, finance and land value capture to support house building as part of the regeneration. With modest, well-targeted funding, Waltham Forest could unlock more than 5,000 new homes through estate renewal and redevelopment in underused sites.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Order. I have to draw you to a close there, Mr Bailey.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I commend the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French). Although we probably disagree on both the analysis and the solutions, I recognise his passion for his constituency and his concern about the issue in London.
In Cities of London and Westminster, which I am proud to represent, we recognise the appalling cost of temporary accommodation. As the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, it costs £5 million every day. The eye-watering average price of a home in my area is nearly £1 million. Given the average prices that the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) spoke about, we are looking at average private monthly rents of £3,221, so the housing crisis is felt acutely right here in the very centre of London.
We have heard powerful contributions about why this issue matters so much, but I want to reflect on the drivers of this debate: the green belt, greenfield land, the brown belt, the grey belt and brownfield land. Only 6.7% of the green belt is in an area that can be developed for housing. In fact, since 2013, just 0.2% of green-belt land has been brought forward. In London, 99.6% of development takes place on brownfield land. That reflects the London that we all know and love, and is one of the real positives of strategic planning in our great city.
However, we face challenging circumstances in converting planning applications into permissions, and permissions into starts on site. We have heard some really compelling contributions about that. We need to focus on stability in the sector, which is critical for ensuring development and delivery. We must recognise the important role of the £39 billion that the Government put into genuinely affordable homes. We need a stable rent-setting system that will enable councils and housing associations to plan, and a stable economy with interest rates going down so that people can have confidence that they will be able to get on to the housing ladder.
I will now focus my remarks on buy-backs. I welcome the contribution from my very respected hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) on how effective buy-backs can be in solving inner London’s very particular housing crisis. I commend Westminster city council for investing £20 million in buying back 45 former council flats earlier this year. This is something that we can do immediately. We have a short, medium and long-term challenge in recognising London’s and the UK’s housing crisis. Ifirmly believe that this Government, together with the Greater London Authority’s right to buy-back programme, can enable 1,200 homes to be brought into council ownership, and that will make a tangible difference to lives this week, this month and in the years going into the future.
The new programme brought forward by the Greater London Authority, the council homes acquisition programme, is aimed at helping local authorities to buy back 10,000 homes within just the next few years, and that can be supplemented with local authority housing funds. It is a really effective and immediate means of providing people with the home that they deserve and bringing down our temporary accommodation costs. I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on the conversations he is having on that very topic, the immediate temporary accommodation crisis that we face in London, and how together we might move forward by investing in current council homes to tackle that issue.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the second time today, Mr Mundell. I welcome this important debate and thank the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing it. I declare an interest, as my son is studying construction management at London South Bank University—I hope he will be one of the house builders of the future. I also do so because, like all the other hon. Members in this debate, this is one of the biggest issues for my constituency—for so many people who come to my surgery and whom I see every day when I go out and about in the constituency, but also for my own children. I do not know whether they would ever be able to afford to live in my area, and that is no way to build a community. People need to be able to know that their children and grandchildren will be able to live near them, to have work near them and to live in areas that they can afford. At the moment, we do not have that in London; we have a broken housing situation.
Tackling the housing crisis has always been a top priority for the Mayor of London. Despite some of the claims made today, the facts speak for themselves. Sadiq Khan has started more new council homes in London than has been the case at any time since the 1970s. Before the pandemic, he completed more homes than had been the case at any time since the 1930s. That is not luck; it is Labour leadership in action and working hand in hand with Labour boroughs, such as Wandsworth, to deliver for Londoners. Since 2018, 23,000 council homes have been built or are being built with the help of City Hall funding.
We know that the challenges are real. House building is facing a perfect storm: the legacy of Conservative under-investment and, in Wandsworth, Conservative total pandering to developers; sky-high interest rates; soaring construction costs; and the lasting impact of Brexit. Those pressures demand bold, urgent action. That is why I welcome the emergency, time-limited housing package announced by the Government and the mayor, working together, in October. It is a serious intervention, with £322 million of new investment for a City Hall developer investment fund, which will be used to keep affordable housing rates as high as they can be. Like other hon. Members, I hope that we will not just see more dark houses. It is really important that local people have first dibs on all the new houses being built. We need to have those stalled projects unlocked and getting shovels in the ground.
I will highlight two housing developments in my constituency that I think all hon. Members will be very interested in. This is good news. The first is New Acres, which is a £500 million, purpose-built neighbourhood on a brownfield site that has brought 1,034 new rental homes to Wandsworth; it was completed last year. The original plans were that 23% would be affordable. The mayor called the scheme in, and it is now 35% affordable, with 55% of that built in the first phase. It has not been a case of leaving it all to the next phase and then it perhaps not happening. It is there; it is real. It is in my community in Wandsworth. It is one of the UK’s largest build-to-rent schemes and it is—I underline—35% affordable.
The second development is the Alton estate renewal, which just two weeks ago, in the UK’s largest ever regeneration ballot, was overwhelmingly endorsed by residents—82.4% voted in favour. That is the result of the Labour council coming in and saying that the previous Conservative council’s plans just did not work and were being imposed on the community. The Labour council said, “Let’s start again and work with the community.” The community could see that the plans would provide what they wanted for their area. There will be new GP surgeries; dedicated youth facilities, which I am obsessed with; a family hub; improved shops; green spaces, and up to 650 new homes—the developer is the council, so it will be able to ensure that it has the affordable housing and that the whole development is what the community wants—thanks to £100 million in investment from the council and £16 million in Greater London Authority funding, with a focus on family-sized homes.
We need more affordable homes. I am grateful for the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, and for all the work the Minister did on it. I am also grateful for Awaab’s law and its extension to private renters, because the link between housing and mental health issues is very strong. But I agree with other Members that overseas sales need to be reduced. Buy-backs are very important, as is local government funding for repairs. Too many homes stay empty for too long between periods of use. Councils need more money to repair them along the way.
A Labour mayor with a proven track record of house building, backed by a Labour Government with the ambition to deliver, and a Labour council, as we have in Wandsworth, is how we will solve London’s housing crisis. That is how we will build a fairer, stronger city for future generations.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I call Luke Taylor on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. You have eight minutes.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
Thank you, Mr Mundell. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this debate. It is extremely timely, because it is less than a fortnight since I was last in this Chamber debating housing policy—it seems that I am the Liberal Democrats’ housing spokesperson for London. Contrary to what some in the Government seem to think, there is no inherent tension between the three most important tasks facing us: to build safe homes, to build green homes and to build affordable homes. The limitations or structural problems with the market are self-imposed by our lack of ambition and our worrying proclivity to shun innovation.
During the debate two weeks ago, the Housing Secretary and the Mayor of London were announcing the raft of measures that triggered this subsequent debate. The measures were announced not at the Dispatch Box, or even in this Chamber in front of what would have been a captive audience, but to the press, giving us no opportunity to scrutinise them and rendering that Westminster Hall debate moot. I invite the Minister to confirm that no subsequent major changes with such a profound impact on the local authorities that everyone in this room works with on a daily basis and on our constituents will be made outside of this place.
Frankly, those measures are not small fry; they hand developers a get-out while Londoners on waiting lists across our city continue to suffer, and they are a threat to the financial stability and forward-planning ability of local authorities across London. The Liberal Democrats are clear: the plans will not solve the housing crisis in London, but make things worse.
Munira Wilson
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the measures announced by the Mayor of London and the new Housing Secretary actually reward developers and do not incentivise them? Not only will the mayor be funding half of developers’ affordable housing if they meet the new target, but our local authorities will have their community infrastructure levy money slashed. In Richmond, we could lose £21.5 million of CIL money from the Stag brewery site. That comes on top of the Labour Government cutting our core Government funding under their so-called fair funding formula. Our communities are going to be left without the infrastructure they need and deserve alongside new housing developments.
Luke Taylor
I thank my hon. Friend for providing that example of the impact on a specific project, which shows how difficult this will be for our councils.
The announced measures will quietly reduce the requirement for affordable homes from 35% to 20%, forcibly slash the community infrastructure levy money, and barely scratch the surface of the bigger and more profound structural barriers to getting green, affordable and safe housing built. The Government have triggered great uncertainty and more financial instability for local authorities while achieving very little in the shake-up, seemingly because they think that big, decisive action with very little prep work and no consultation is the way to get things done. The Housing Secretary is clearly taking more than just headwear inspiration from a certain world leader—which would make sense if it were not his own zone that he is flooding with a substance that the courtesies of this House do not allow me to name.
In all seriousness, the housing crisis in London deserves more than a knee-jerk reaction. There are 330,000 households stuck on social housing waiting lists—more than the total number of households in our two largest boroughs, Barnet and Croydon, combined. As we have heard, London boroughs are spending £5 million a day on temporary accommodation, although I have heard that figure for about a year, so it must be considerably more by now. According to London Councils, there is a £700 million shortfall in the housing revenue accounts that fund new house building.
The proposed measures will simply make that worse, for two main reasons. First, the Government will facilitate the right kind of house building not by dropping the regulations that developers face, but by amending them and fixing the structural issues within the Building Safety Regulator. Secondly, the measures actively—and inexcusably—disrupt the already stretched financial picture for local authorities. I will take them in turn.
First, granting the right to reduce the level of affordable housing per project fails to recognise that the proliferation of a particular kind of luxury, unaffordable housing in London means that it is unlikely that new building accelerated under the scheme will ease upward pressures on house prices in the capital. Giving the mayor new powers to call in decisions and accelerate them almost on a whim does nothing to address the concerns that local authorities and local residents will have about their ability to object to new housing that will not contribute to solving the crisis. The measures seem to be imposed in an imagined battle against the nimbys, when most in London have lived experience of housing instability—either their own or that of younger family members, co-workers or friends—and, as such, are in favour of the kind of house building that actually addresses the crisis.
Danny Beales
I share the hon. Member’s view of the general public’s opinion on the issue, but as a cabinet member during seven years of planning and redevelopment in Camden, I rarely heard those voices in planning committees. Unfortunately, the voices that are heard are often disproportionately against development and do not represent the people on housing waiting lists. I just challenge the presentation of the public view through the planning system. Is it not true, too, that many local authorities take far too long to determine applications? In my borough—I have just had an email—it has taken six months to draft a section 106 heads of terms document, two years since the planning was approved. Is that not unacceptable?
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Order. Mr Taylor, you have taken two lengthy interventions. I am afraid that they will not be in addition to your time.
Luke Taylor
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but I will move on swiftly.
In my experience in Sutton we subscribe to the “yify”—“yes, if”—approach that I have spoken about a number of times. We do not need to water down community buy-in. We might need to make it faster and more efficient, but throwing out the baby with the bathwater will only lead to the wrong housing being built in the wrong places and leave us wondering, in 30 years’ time, why the mistake was not glaringly obvious to people today. That is not a new approach that has reared its head in these measures; the decisions to cut the portion of affordable housing expected from developments in the recent “Homes for Londoners” plan, and to set the annual national social house building target at just 20,000 social homes per year, show that the Government simply do not have a credible plan to provide the kind of housing the country needs.
We need an ambitious whole-of-Government approach to build up to 150,000 social homes each year. It can be done, and the Government need look no further than the Liberal Democrats’ plans. We would give local authorities the power to stop Help to Buy in their area and, as a last resort, to stop the right to buy too, and give them the first right to purchase all public land for social housing. We would also fix the Building Safety Regulator by ending the mismatch between fire safety standards and the Building Safety Act 2022, speeding up the backlog of confusion and incomplete assessments for remediation, while ensuring that the building safety levy covers all the costs so that leaseholders are protected from paying. As well as making it more affordable to insulate existing homes, we would ensure that all new homes are zero carbon and provide proper incentives for critical household infrastructure such as heat pumps. That is how we build more affordable homes—not by tearing up regulations with no regard to the impact, but by smartening regulations and intervening with serious, meaningful incentives to build the right kinds of housing.
Secondly, it will be news to nobody that the financial picture for London councils is dire. The city’s 32 boroughs overspent by £330 million on housing and temporary accommodation budgets last year alone—double the previous year’s figure. As London Councils has demonstrated, the cost of the London homelessness crisis is the greatest threat to the financial stability of London boroughs. Watering down the community infrastructure levy—perhaps the most notable way that councils recoup costs and benefits from house building in the short term—is simply another hammer blow in that regard.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Order. I think this might be the point at which you need to conclude.
Luke Taylor
Skipping ahead, I invite the Minister to tell us why anyone who cares about solving the housing crisis and protecting local councils in London should vote Labour at the local elections in May, particularly when the only party consistently standing up for those hit hardest by the housing crisis, and for our cash-strapped local councils, is the London Liberal Democrats.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and to take part in this debate about Government support for house building in London. As is the case for all hon. Members here today, this issue is of great importance to my constituents and to me, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this important debate. I also thank all hon. Members for their contributions.
London is Europe’s wealthiest city, one of the world’s most desirable destinations and the capital of our great country. I am deeply proud to have represented part of it for the past 28 years, having previously served for 23 years as a local councillor in a London borough—a period that overlapped with my 13 years as a London Assembly member—and been the Member of Parliament for the wonderful people of Orpington since 2019.
What we have seen in recent years in Greater London is a constantly worsening housing shortage, and a mayor seemingly completely incapable of tackling a problem that is spiralling out of control. Sir Sadiq Khan has been mayor for nearly 10 years, and continues to oversee one of the greatest housing failures this country has ever seen. I can remember sitting in the chamber at City Hall in his first year as mayor when he boasted about having negotiated the highest housing funding settlement in the history of the mayoralty. He was awarded £4.82 billion to deliver 116,000 affordable homes between 2016 and 2021, and a further £4 billion to deliver 35,000 affordable homes between 2021 and 2026. That is a total of £8.82 billion to deliver 151,000 homes in a decade between 2016 and 2026. Naturally, he gave no credit at all to the Conservative Government who gave him that money, but let us gloss over that.
Instead, let us focus on Sadiq Khan’s record. To date, 77,622 affordable homes have been completed from the two programmes—barely half of what was envisaged, with only six months to go. Including those programmes and other house building, in his almost decade-long tenure at City Hall, he has averaged 8,240 affordable homes per year. That compares with an average of 11,750 per year between 2008 and 2016 under his predecessor Boris Johnson. That is a 30% decrease under Sadiq Khan, despite what he boasted at the outset was the highest housing funding settlement in history.
The fact is that development has become so costly and over-regulated on Sadiq Khan’s watch that, incredibly, as my hon. Friends the Members for Old Bexley and Sidcup and for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) pointed out, 80% of housing developments finished in London last year received planning permission under the London plan set out by Boris Johnson before he left office as Mayor of London in 2016, rather than under Sadiq Khan’s London plan.
Gareth Bacon
I am afraid I cannot, because we are under time pressure.
A report recently released by the Centre for Policy Studies described London as
“The City That Doesn’t Build”.
It is impossible not to agree with that when the mayor’s record is put under scrutiny. Under Sadiq Khan, housing starts have collapsed in London, with the number of private homes under construction set to slump to only 15,000 in 2027—a mere a quarter of what should be expected.
Analysis from the Centre for Policy Studies has shown that, over the last financial year, only 4,170 homes have been started in London, amounting to less than 5% of London’s 88,000 home target. In the first half of this year, that has hardly been improved on, with just 2,158 private housing starts, again versus a target of 88,000 per year. Those totals are disastrous. The mayor, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister should be reversing those figures, not indulging or excusing them.
The picture becomes even worse when we look at affordable housing. Affordable homes had just 347 starts between April and June, which is around 15% of the total starts for 2023-24, and just 9% of the total starts in 2024-25. Prior to the general election last year, the Mayor of London was telling anyone who would listen that he needed £4.9 billion per year for the next 10 years to build affordable homes. The Government elected last July did not accede to his request. Given his appalling record over the past decade, I cannot say I entirely blame them for not trusting his ability to deliver.
At the last spending review in June, as has been mentioned, £11.7 billion was awarded for the next affordable housing programme, which will run from 2026 to 2036. At the last round of Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government questions, when I asked the Secretary of State what he was doing to hold the Mayor of London to account for his lamentable record of failure, he alluded to a pending announcement. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) noted, a written ministerial statement was snuck out without fanfare a couple of weeks ago that announced temporary reforms to London house building to try to cover the mayor’s decade of failure.
Some of those proposals are welcome, including the sensible removal of elements that can constrain density, such as dual aspect and units around the core of a building, as well as some of the changes to the insistence on arbitrary and unviable affordable housing targets. However, it is deeply concerning that the Government are proposing to reward the mayor’s decade of failure by giving him more power to intervene on democratically elected local councils and take planning powers away from them.
Most worryingly, that gives the mayor considerable additional powers to concrete over the green belt. There is nothing in the statement about facilitating brownfield development, despite the CPRE report published last month that shows that Greater London has the capacity to deliver in excess of 462,000 new dwellings on brownfield land. The Minister is a very decent man; he is respected across the House, including by me. When we hear him speak in a few moments, I am sure he will give us invaluable insight into how the Government justify these shocking figures. However, to me, they are simply not doing enough to build or to hold the mayor to account for his failures.
The Home Builders Federation has written to the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to say that, without changes to boost affordability for first-time buyers and tax cuts, the Government will miss their national housing target. Another study by the planning and environmental consultancy Lanpro suggested that, at the present of rate of building, the Government would fall 860,000 homes short of their national target—that amounts to missing the target by 57%. Together, the Mayor of London and, more recently, the Government have shown that they are anti-business and anti-growth, with spending and borrowing rising, and with inflation at almost twice the target level, as well as anaemic growth, over-regulation and rising taxation curbing any chance of a housing recovery at every turn.
As I have outlined, this is being felt most in our capital city. I am deeply proud to be a Greater London MP, to have been the London Assembly member for Bexley and Bromley, to have been the Conservative leader at City Hall, to have been a London borough councillor, and to live and work in this great city. That is why I care so much about holding this Government—and specifically their shambolic colleague, the Mayor of London—to account for their abject failures to get house building in London to flourish. Action is sorely needed and desperately wanted. The Government need to do a lot more, and they need to do it now.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I call the Minister to respond to the debate, and perhaps he can give Mr French a minute at the end to wind up.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on securing this important debate, and I thank other hon. Members who have spoken for their passionate and—with some notable exceptions—thoughtful contributions. It has been a good debate. I also welcome the shadow Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), to his place. It is a pleasure to debate opposite him, and I thank him for the kind words he said about me in particular.
It is not in dispute that house building in London is in crisis. The causes of that crisis are multifaceted. London has faced development challenges common to all parts England over recent years, including a significant increase in the price of building materials, a rise in financing costs, and planning capacity and capability pressures. However, it is important to recognise that the capital also faces a number of distinct challenges unique to its housing market that differ in important ways from the rest of the country.
Those challenges include the fact that London is overwhelmingly reliant on flatted developments that have become more challenging to deliver over recent years. It has depended over recent years on demand for international buyers and investors, whose appetite to purchase private market homes has diminished. It also has a higher proportion of landowners, and traders acting on their behalf, who are global investors allocating development funding based on competing returns globally and across asset classes. The combination of those and other factors has resulted in a perfect storm for house building in our capital. That perfect storm has real-world implications for Londoners in housing need.
As you will know, Mr Mundell, as part of our overhaul of the national planning policy framework in December last year, we addressed the fantastical housing target of over 100,000 given to London by the previous Government. That target was based on the punitive application of the now-abolished urban uplift, and it bore no relation whatsoever to addressed housing need in our capital. However, London is still falling far short of the more appropriate target of 87,992 homes per year, which results from the new standard method that we put in place.
We have heard the statistics cited by many hon. Members. Overall home starts in London in 2024-25 totalled just 3,990. In the first quarter of this year, more than a third of London boroughs recorded zero housing starts. I do not mean to single out the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup—this applies across the board—but in the borough of Bexley, construction was started on just 160 homes, and completions numbered just 210, in the whole of 2024. Those numbers are far too low. In short, London housing delivery is on life support, as is broadly recognised across the Chamber.
In the first 15 months of this Government’s life, we took steps to support the mayor and the GLA in addressing the house building challenges facing the capital. We withdrew the previous Government’s direction of March 2024, which required the GLA to complete an unhelpful, partial review of the London plan, and we have provided the GLA with certainty on grant by making it clear that up to 30% of our new £39 billion social and affordable homes programme will be allocated to London.
However, although those and other vital interventions were beneficial, the Government concluded over the summer that we had no choice but to take further decisive action. That is why, on 23 October, via a written ministerial statement, as is often the case—it was not snuck out; it was published on the Government website for all to see—the Secretary of State and the Mayor of London announced new emergency measures designed to arrest and reverse the collapse in house building in London by lowering development costs and improving scheme viability. The time-limited emergency measures, which I should stress to hon. Members are subject to consultation, are as follows.
First, we will introduce mandatory partial relief from borough-level community infrastructure levy charges for qualifying brownfield residential schemes that start construction before the end of 2028. As hon. Members will be aware, CIL funds strategic infrastructure, such as schools and health facilities, but if no development is taking place, boroughs do not benefit from CIL payments. The more schemes we can get moving, the more CIL funds flow into borough coffers. The reliefs we have announced will cover 50% of the CIL charges for schemes with at least 20% affordable housing, with greater relief for higher proportions of affordable homes, to incentivise house builders to deliver more.
Secondly, we will remove elements of planning guidance that can constrain density. The mayor, supported by Government, will consult on revising guidance in respect of dual aspect requirements, the number of dwellings per core and cycle storage standards. Looking ahead, the next London plan will streamline requirements to reduce duplication and complexity, making it easier to build homes quickly, without compromising quality.
Bob Blackman
Do the new standards apply to new planning applications that are being considered or to ones, already in the pipeline, in which developers have proposed developments with less affordable housing?
Matthew Pennycook
As I have said, there will be consultation on the specifics of many parts of this package, but I will address his particular point about the new time-limited planning route. This route, which will be open for two years, will allow schemes on private land in London to proceed without a viability assessment, provided that they deliver at least 20% affordable housing—importantly, with a minimum of 60% social rent. To incentivise schemes to come forward on this basis, grant funding will be made available for homes above the first 10%, which will remain nil grant.
Crucially, a gainshare mechanism on schemes or phases of schemes not commenced by 31 March 2030 will ensure that, if market conditions improve, communities benefit too. In our view, that is a pragmatic, temporary measure to unlock delivery now, while maintaining our commitment to affordable housing in the long term. It will sit alongside the GLA’s existing fast-track route, which retains its 35% affordable housing threshold.
Matthew Pennycook
I will give way in one second, because I am addressing my right hon. Friend’s point. She got to the nub of the issue, and she said that she recognises that 20% of something is better than 35% of nothing. There is obviously a judgment to be made about what the appropriate package is. We think we have come upon the right package, but it is important to say—again, I do not single her out in saying this—that Islington borough started 20 homes in 2024-25. It is not okay to say that we can wait for these schemes to come forward in the years to come and we can go slow. Such is the crisis that we do need to respond, and the guardrails we have put in place around this package will deliver, get those homes started and make sure that we see more social and affordable homes come forward.
Emily Thornberry
The Minister may know about the Barnsbury estate, which was due to be rebuilt but the building had to be stopped because suddenly we had to build a second staircase. If that had not happened, there would be many more starts in Islington. The biggest site coming is Moorfields, and our concern is that, if only a tiny proportion of that is social housing and the CIL money is cut, it will be a huge opportunity lost to Islington—the best opportunity that we have had for housing local people.
Matthew Pennycook
I recognise my right hon. Friend’s point. I cannot comment on specific applications, but it is important that I emphasise that applicants will be expected in the first instance to seek grant to maintain or increase the level of affordable housing in existing section 106 agreements. Only where that has been fully explored with the GLA, and has been demonstrated not to be possible, can schemes be renegotiated via a deed of variation with the aim of delivering at least the relevant level of affordable housing established in the new planning route, and on the same terms.
We are providing the mayor with new planning powers that expand his ability to intervene directly in applications of potential strategic importance in order to support housing delivery and maximise densities. Those powers are set out the policy statement that we published on 23 October. In response to the concerns raised around those specific powers, I think Londoners would expect, with the scale and severity of the housing crisis we have in our capital, the mayor to do everything he possibly can to ensure homes are not being ruled out without good reason on sites, and to ensure that sites are coming forward with appropriate density.
Matthew Pennycook
I will give way briefly, but it will be the final intervention that I accept.
Munira Wilson
Does the Minister accept that sometimes the mayor’s intervening slows down development? Earlier, I cited the example of Stag brewery in Mortlake. That development of 1,000 units would have started years ago, but thanks to the mayor calling it in, it was slowed down and it has still not been built.
Matthew Pennycook
I am not going to comment on the use of the mayor’s planning powers in specific instances. We think these additional expanded powers are a sensible response to the crisis in house building that London faces.
Finally, we are providing £322 million of funding to establish a City Hall developer investment fund. Building on the success of the mayor’s land fund, which has already delivered 8,000 homes five years ahead of schedule, this new fund will allow the mayor to take a direct, interventionist role in unlocking thousands of homes, driving regeneration and creating thriving communities.
It is also worth noting that alongside the implementation of this package of support, the Government intend to clarify the use of section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 so that an application under the section to vary a condition of a planning permission should no longer be used as an alternative means of reconsidering fundamental questions of scheme viability or planning obligations.
In the time available to me I am not going to be able to respond to all the points that have been raised. There have been a number of very good points. I could speak, for example, about what more can be done on TfL land. I think it is worth noting that Places for London is on site, constructing nearly 5,000 homes, 56% of which are affordable. It has already delivered 1,600, but there is definitely more we can do on TfL land around train stations. There is more that the Government are doing on the release of public sector land. I am happy to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) about that in particular. I can assure hon. Members that our new social and affordable housing fund will leave a role for acquisitions to be funded.
We know that there is no single simple solution to the development crisis that London is facing. Action to address the acute viability challenges facing residential development in the capital is a necessary intervention, but it is not sufficient. We know that a revival of house building in the capital is dependent on other factors, including increased demand for private for-sale homes, but taken alongside the reforms we are making to the Building Safety Regulator and the significant grant funding we are allocating to London for land, infrastructure and affordable housing, this time-limited package will give house building in London a shot in the arm, and the Government look forward to working with the mayor and the GLA to implement the package and kick-start house building in our capital.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Mr French, you have 30 seconds to conclude the debate.
Mr French
This has been a healthy cross-party debate, even if we have disagreed on some of the diagnosis. I thank the Minister for his response. I hope he will take away some of the points that have been raised on a constructive basis. I think we all agree that we have to get London building on brownfield again. People have a right to somewhere they can call home. I thank hon. Members for their contributions.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Government support for housebuilding in London.
Emily Thornberry
On a point of order, Mr Mundell. I should have drawn the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I rent out my late mother’s flat. We bought it for her so that she could release our council house back to the council.
Fresh and Nutritious Food: Inequality of Access
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I will call Gordon McKee to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. Two other Members have indicated that they may wish to speak, but they can make a speech only with the approval of both the Member in charge and the Minister. I proceed on the basis that those two Members have that permission. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention in 30-minute debates.
Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered inequality of access to fresh and nutritious food.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell, and I thank the Minister for being here today. Castlemilk is a proud and resilient community, built in the ashes of the second world war. It was first built to combat inner-city housing pressures in Glasgow. The development offered indoor plumbing, heating and what was then a vastly improved standard of living. The people who lived there built something that bricks and mortar could not: a community—a place where neighbours looked after each other’s weans, as we say in Glasgow, took in messages for grannies and coached football for the teenagers. That community spirit has built local organisations, rebuilt social housing and renovated a football stadium.
However, there is one challenge that Castlemilk has not yet overcome: the lack of a supermarket. That might sound like a simple ask, but to understand why Castlemilk does not have a supermarket, we have to take a step back. Let me paint a picture of what life is like for the 15,000 people who live in Castlemilk. It is one of the most isolated areas in Glasgow. Despite being just five miles from the city centre, there is no train station, just unreliable buses, and the nearest supermarket is three miles away. In an area where most people do not have a car, the options are a £6 return bus fare, if the bus turns up, and as a regular user of Glasgow’s buses, I can assure hon. Members that it often does not; a six-mile walk with heavy bags in the wind and rain, which I can also assure hon. Members there is lots of in Glasgow; or spending £20 on a return taxi journey.
For many people, that £20 is the choice between accessing healthy food and turning the heating on. For old people, young parents or people with disabilities, that journey can be impossible—imagine having a pram, a toddler and three shopping bags and having to get two different buses just to get fresh food.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am sorry to hear the story that is unfolding in the hon. Gentleman’s speech. In the area he is referring to, which I do not know, are there church groups or people of faith—whatever faith that might be—who would be willing to help? Has he been able to ascertain whether they could do something for the area?
Gordon McKee
There are many community groups in Castlemilk that are helping, including faith groups, and I will come to that later in my speech.
There is no supermarket, but there is an Iceland and a B&M and there are countless off-licences. If someone wants a bottle of vodka or a frozen pizza, there are plenty of options. If instead they fancy an apple or a banana, it is a six-mile round trip.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that community gardens, such as the Whitburn community garden, which provides fresh fruit and vegetables to the local community fridge, as well as West Lothian food bank’s garden, can sometimes be the only way some people are able to access nutritious, fresh food?
Gordon McKee
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am pleased to hear about those organisations in West Lothian. There are many similar ones in Castlemilk, and I will talk about that in a bit. But it is key that communities are not reliant on charity for access to fresh food—that is a very important point.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making a really passionate speech and is clearly a strong advocate for his local community. In my local community, we have areas that are very much isolated, in the way he describes. I pay tribute to the Uttlesford mobile food bank, but he is right to say it cannot just be about charity. Does he think that the community ownership model championed by the Co-op party—I should declare an interest, Mr Mundell, as a member of it—is one of the potential solutions?
Gordon McKee
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Community ownership and co-operatives are an important part of how we fix a lot of problems in this country, not least this one.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to the House, and he is being very generous with his interventions. He mentioned co-ops, so I want to mention Cooperation Town in my constituency. It distributes two tonnes of food to our community every week, and local members save up to 40% on their food costs, as well as benefiting from healthier, fresh food—I could not help but notice that my hon. Friend has a banana next to him. My constituents tell me that this is an extremely cost-effective way to transfer power and wealth from supermarkets to residents. Does he agree that co-ops play a vital role in making healthy food more affordable? Will he ask the Minister whether we should bring this model to more neighbourhoods across the country, including the one he is speaking about?
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I sense that a large number of people want to make an intervention, but they must keep them short; otherwise, Mr McKee will not get to deliver his speech.
Gordon McKee
Thank you, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She made a number of powerful points, and I am sure the Minister will come to them in her closing contribution.
Castlemilk is what is described as a food desert—a place with no access to healthy food—and it is not unique: 1.2 million people in the UK live in an area like it. People might think we are talking about rural areas cut off by their geography, but these areas are often in towns and cities across the country. They are isolated because they lack basic services that every other community takes for granted.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is painting a fascinating pen portrait of his area. Is he aware that, for people with coeliac disease, the weekly shop is 35% more expensive? Even the cheapest loaf of bread is six times more than a standard loaf. Does he agree—and maybe the Minister is listening—that people should not be penalised for their health conditions?
Gordon McKee
I agree with my hon. Friend; she makes a very important point.
If we look at a map of the areas with a lack of access to healthy food and a map of the poorest areas in Britain, we will more or less be looking at the same map. In those areas, rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease are much higher. Adults in the poorest areas eat almost 40% less fruit and veg than those in the richest areas. In Scotland, the poorest adults are 10% more likely to be overweight than the richest adults. So nobody will be shocked that life expectancy in Castlemilk is eight years lower than the national average. When the only option is ultra-processed foods, maintaining a healthy diet becomes not just difficult but financially impossible.
Perran Moon
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. As he suggests, those in the most deprived communities often face the highest obesity rates, and that is closely linked to limited access to fresh fruit and nutritious food. It may surprise some to know that coastal communities experience higher obesity rates on average than non-coastal communities. In my constituency, childhood obesity rates at reception and year 6 are significantly higher than the averages in Cornwall and the rest of the country. Without detracting from the challenges elsewhere, does my hon. Friend agree that entrenched inequalities in access to healthy food are particularly difficult to address in remote coastal areas?
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I am going to take it that that was your speech, Mr Moon. I will not call you subsequently.
Gordon McKee
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.
It is a problem across the country that frozen food and processed food are cheaper than fresh food. But the problem in Castlemilk is that people cannot even get access to fresh food, let alone that it is more expensive. Despite that, local people have a community spirit and a fighting spirit—they do not give up. Nobody shows that better than the Castlemilk Housing and Human Rights Lived Experience Board. Led by Anna Stuart, it has been campaigning for a supermarket for years. It even went all the way to the UN in Geneva to raise the issue. It told the world of the injustice that, in one of the world’s richest countries, millions are denied the basic dignity of nutritious and affordable food. A group of local residents should not have to go to the UN to ask for access to healthy food.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)
Does the hon. Member agree that one solution to the problem of access to sustainable and nutritious food would be the right to grow food on public land, as campaigned for by Incredible Edible, forming part of the wider campaign for community rights that is coming to this Parliament?
Gordon McKee
The hon. Member makes an interesting point, which I am sure the Minister will address.
It is not just Anna helping the community, but many others. In particular, I would like to mention Maureen Cope, the long-standing chair of Castlemilk community council, who has worked tirelessly for almost 40 years to try to get a supermarket in Castlemilk. Despite “retiring” last year, she continues to fight for access to good food every single day. She is a real community champion. Others include local councillor Johnny Carson, who is in the Public Gallery today, along with councillor Catherine Vallis. They are both fighting incredibly hard for Castlemilk, and have been for a long time.
It is not just adults doing that; it is kids too. The kids at Castleton primary school won an award for their film about the campaign for a supermarket, titled “It’s Just Not Fair.” In it, we follow Annas, a kid at the school who walks to the closest supermarket. In between, there are clips of the kids and parents reading out their biggest challenges: expensive bus tickets, having to eat unhealthy food and being unable to get nappies for babies. Annas finally arrives at the closest supermarket, an Asda, one hour and 15 minutes after leaving his home.
Despite all the hard work by volunteers, as is so often the case, politicians have let the people down. In 2022, the SNP-run council said that a supermarket was “imminent”. It has not been delivered. While SNP councillors were patting themselves on the back for something that would not happen, they were simultaneously cutting the opening hours for the swimming pool, refusing to reopen the indoor bowling club and watching on as the SNP Government closed the police station.
That neglect has consequences. When basic services are stripped away one by one and Governments do not deliver, communities suffer. I am pleased that the Labour Government actually want to fix the problem. There are innovative new solutions, such as tools to direct greengrocers to the worst-affected areas of food deprivation.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. In a past life, as a cabinet member for health in a local authority, I was active in promoting a voucher scheme run by the Alexandra Rose charity and the Beacon Project, which offered families in need vouchers they could redeem for fresh fruit and veg at the local market. Does my hon. Friend agree that targeted schemes such as that could make a real impact in increasing access to fresh fruit and veg for families who need it?
Gordon McKee
I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. The Government have done a good bit of work in looking at ways to support community food markets that provide affordable fresh food to communities. I ask the Minister, when she responds, to commit to visiting Castlemilk with me to meet those on the frontline of the fight against food poverty.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is rightly talking about access to proper food. In my constituency, FareShare helps to redistribute more than 325,000 meals a year to 11 local charities. That is a lifeline for families struggling to afford fresh food. Nationally, however, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of edible food still go to waste. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister to commit to supporting food redistribution as part of a fairer food system?
Gordon McKee
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.
Institutions and Governments have failed Castlemilk for far too long. The Labour Government can help change that, and I am determined to play my part. I will always stand by the people of Castlemilk in their fight for a supermarket, and with all those across the UK fighting for access to good food. I have met supermarket operators and landowners to find a solution. Unlike the many politicians who have come before me, I will not promise something that it is not directly in my gift to deliver, but I can promise that I will not stop fighting until the community I represent has the supermarket it deserves. The people of Castlemilk and 1.2 million others across the UK deserve better. They deserve the same access to fresh, nutritious and affordable food that the rest of us enjoy and take for granted. I am determined to make that a reality, and I will not stop fighting until it is.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I call Ben Coleman, who has up to five minutes.
Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)
Just yesterday, the Government came out with new figures showing that the prevalence of childhood obesity in the most deprived areas is more than double the prevalence in the least deprived. It may surprise many hon. Members to hear that it is a significant problem in my constituency. Although Chelsea and Fulham is among the most affluent constituencies in the country, it has huge pockets of deprivation and poverty, as do many parts of London. Just last week, the English indices of deprivation ranked the World’s End estate in Chelsea in the bottom decile for deprivation and in the second lowest decile for health outcomes. The fabulous residents of the World’s End estate live on one side of King’s Road, and literally just across the road, the equally fabulous residents of some wonderful, beautiful houses are in the top decile for income and health. I find it hard to understand, as I am sure everyone here does, why the children on the World’s End estate should be condemned to worse health outcomes than those living just across the road.
Sadly, the reason, simply put—as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) said—is access. He talked about transport access, but there is simply too little access to affordable healthy food. Healthy diets are simply out of reach for too many. Healthy foods are often twice as expensive per calorie as unhealthy foods, which manufacturers shove full of fat, sugar and salt. It is cheap, and it is poisoning people, leading to the obesity epidemic.
Of course, people do not make decisions in a void. It is not just about money; they are under huge marketing pressure to buy unhealthy food. The Health and Social Care Committee, of which I am a member, is conducting an inquiry into food and obesity, and I was told just this morning that the advertising budget of KitKat alone exceeds the entire UK Government budget for promoting healthy eating. Witnesses told the Committee that food manufacturers and supermarkets must do much more to be part of the solution, not just the problem. To do that, we need mandatory Government action. That would mean strengthening the Healthy Start scheme, supporting charities such as Alexandra Rose, which does wonderful work in my constituency, enforcing ambitious school food standards and building on the soft drinks levy.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
Earlier this year, in my capacity as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for food and drink, I hosted a roundtable on increasing access to healthy fruit and vegetables. Innocent Drinks has led a sector response on that inequality and has proposed a focus on access around schools. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must work alongside schools, particularly in disadvantaged areas, to reduce inequality in food access?
Ben Coleman
That is a very important point. The availability of fast food right outside schools needs to be looked at and curtailed. The food is cheap, but it is incredibly low quality, and it is not doing our children any good. And school food standards are not properly enforced. There is a lot of cheap school food, but in some of the schools I visit, it is just orange—it is not healthy. The Government need to do a lot more to provide resources to local authorities so that they can properly enforce food standards.
We also need to do other things. We need to extend the sugar tax and the soft drinks levy, and have a general levy on unhealthy foods. At the same time, healthy food must not go up in price. As we make unhealthy food more expensive, we should bring the price of healthy food down. That is a huge challenge for any Government. We have lots of creative people in supermarkets, who come up with wonderful ideas for pumping our food full of unnutritious substances, but I would love to see them take the same effort to bringing healthy food to the population at a price that can be afforded.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
I wonder whether the root of the solution is for local authorities and schools to have mandatory minimum purchases from local producers, thereby giving local farmers a supply chain into the local area and providing fresh food for children.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Can the hon. Member respond and also conclude, so that the Minister may respond to the numerous points that have been made in the debate?
Ben Coleman
I am grateful, Mr Mundell—I will conclude. The hon. Member makes a very helpful point, particularly for constituencies that are more rural than mine of Chelsea and Fulham—what he says certainly has validity in many parts of the country. My final point is very simple: families do not need lectures. They need a Government who are prepared to do a lot more to ensure fair access to healthy, affordable food.
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) on securing this debate, and I thank all those who have made relevant, if somewhat fast, contributions. It demonstrates how important these issues are, and how much more awareness has recently been raised about them.
We know that many households are struggling to afford food, particularly fresh and nutritious food, with some disproportionately affected, including low-income families and those with disabilities. We also know that our food environment is dominated by products high in saturated fat, sugar and salt, which are highly addictive, heavily promoted and readily available, as well as cheap, making it harder for people to make healthy choices.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South gave us a vivid example from his area of Castlemilk that shows how, even if people wish to make those choices, they cannot practically do it. The idea of having to make a six-mile round trip to buy a banana says it all, when other ways of getting to the nearest supermarket are so impossible for those on low incomes.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
Will the Minister give way?
Dame Angela Eagle
Of course, but I have very little time to answer some of these points.
David Chadwick
Apples and pears provide essential nutrients, such as vitamin C and folate, and they count as one of our five a day, as recognised by the NHS Eatwell guide. Does the Minister agree that any attempt to include fruit juice in the HFSS category risks sending the wrong messages to families at a time when fruit and vegetable consumption is already falling, especially among children and those on lower incomes, as she mentioned?
Dame Angela Eagle
Today’s debate is about those who do not have practical access to any such choice, because there simply is nowhere for them to go and buy it. The national child measurement programme’s annual report demonstrated the consequences of the inequality of diet. For reception and year 6 children, obesity prevalence was more than double in the most deprived areas, compared with the least. These trends have been allowed to increase over the last 14 years, and there is now a positive correlation between obesity and poverty, which we must break. That is why it is so important that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South has brought forward this small but perfectly formed debate on a really serious issue.
How can we bring to bear really creative solutions to these problems, such as the food deserts that my hon. Friend talked about? The Government have done some things. We have a food strategy that talks about how we can improve food price affordability and access to highly nutritious food. We are committed to making the healthy choice the easier choice, which is certainly not the case in Castlemilk in his area.
We know that the cost of a nutritious diet is currently too high, and we know, for example, that we can do some work on that through the Healthy Start scheme, which supports people to buy fresh or frozen fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk and infant formula, if they have children under four. Healthy Start makes a valuable difference to families’ ability to purchase healthy foods for their young children. The nursery milk scheme provides reimbursement to childcare providers for giving a daily portion of milk to children and babies.
We are taking action in schools, including by trying to improve the nutritional aspects of free school meals. We are reviewing the school food standards to ensure that schools provide healthy food and drink options and restrict foods high in saturated fat, salt or sugar, to reflect the most recent Government dietary recommendations. We have extended free school meals to all children from households on universal credit, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty and putting £500 back into families’ pockets ahead of the child poverty strategy later this year. Some 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education now receive a free meal on the basis of low income and an additional 1.3 million infants enjoy a free lunch-time meal. Our new free breakfast clubs will help around 180,000 children in the first 750 schools, around 80,000 of whom are in deprived areas. A free, nutritious meal every school day helps our children and young people to access healthy food and supports their education and chances to succeed in work and life. That is soon to be extended to 2,000 schools, with 500,000 more pupils being involved.
On the questions about food redistribution, we are looking at that in the circular economy strategy to see how we can make the best use of surplus food. On the point about KitKat’s marketing budget, you learn something every day—it is a bit worrying to contemplate that. There is new mandatory healthy food sales reporting for large food businesses. That will start to encourage the recalibration of food and its contents, which I hope will begin to make a difference.
We are restricting volume price promotions on unhealthy food—buy one, get one free promotions—which encourage less nutritious food to be even more available. We expect that to make a difference. We have given local authorities stronger powers to block fast food outlets near schools, and I want such powers to be used proactively. We are also consulting on a ban on the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children under 16, which tend to be bought by children who live in more deprived, low-income households and make it very difficult for them to concentrate. This is not just about policy generally but what we can do across the system to reduce food inequality and improve access to healthy, affordable food.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South talked about the really difficult choices that his constituents face. I am more than happy to meet him to talk about what might happen there. Many hon. Members have talked about the Alexandra Rose charity. There is an interesting thing going on across the river in Merseyside, in Liverpool, where a mobile greengrocer called the Queen of Greens takes food to places where there is no supermarket. It may be that in the interim, before he and his community in Castlemilk get the chance to have a new supermarket built, there are some creative solutions for taking nutritious choices to the community. That is why I agree so much with some of the points made about how local communities, community action and perhaps even co-ops might be able to make a difference in areas such as that. The more creative we can be in having faster solutions, the more we can ensure that the current generation get the nutritional support that they deserve, rather than having to wait perhaps years for a supermarket to be built.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South for raising this really important issue.
Dame Angela Eagle
There is no time.
I am sure that together we can come up with some really creative solutions to assist in ensuring that we have a better future for those now suffering from a lack of access to free and nutritious food, and that we can finally start to address the terrible link between poverty and obesity, which has become such a feature of our society in recent years.
Question put and agreed to.
Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Before we start proceedings, I want to say two things. First, this debate is oversubscribed, so not everyone will get to speak. I hope to call 10 Back- Bench Members to contribute for three minutes each. If Members take interventions, they will not get extra time because this is an hour-long debate. Secondly, we expect Divisions in the House shortly. The procedure will be to suspend the debate for 15 minutes for the first Division and approximately 10 minutes for each subsequent Division.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered UK participation in the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. Yesterday marked 75 years since the United Kingdom, a founding member of the Council of Europe, was one of 12 states to ratify the European convention on human rights. At the time, the world was emerging from the ruin of war and the defeat of Nazism, but new threats were emerging: a belligerent and confident Russia under the rule of a bloody dictator with his eyes on the west; proxy wars in south-east Asia; and mass population movements in the aftermath of war. The idea was to prevent these atrocities and abuses from ever being repeated.
Is the convention really so out of date and out of time, as its critics argue? Over the following 75 years, the Council of Europe and the ECHR have grown to encompass 46 member states in Europe, with only Belarus and Russia excluded. The Council of Europe has succeeded in bringing together a universal understanding of human rights, namely that human rights belong to everyone by virtue of their inherent dignity and worth as human beings. As we head into Remembrance Week, it is important to note that the convention is a cornerstone of why we say, “Lest we forget.”
I am proud to be a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE. The UK is represented by a formidable team of cross-party MPs and peers. I was inspired to run for the Council of Europe by former Stourbridge Labour party member, and former MP for Bromsgrove and later Birmingham Hodge Hill, the right hon. Terry Davis. In 2004, he was elected secretary-general of the Council of Europe and served until 2009.
The UK delegation in Strasbourg is incredibly active, and several Members have acted as rapporteurs, presenting reports and recommendations for adoption by all member states. In the most recent plenary session, in September, Lord German led an urgent debate calling for an end to the devastating humanitarian catastrophe and the killing of journalists in Gaza. Lord Keen of Elie presented a draft convention to establish an international claims commission for Ukraine, and to create a compensation mechanism, with a damage register and claims body, to fund the reconstruction following Russian aggression.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I do not often have a different opinion from the hon. Lady, but I do here. Our party, the Democratic Unionist party, is very much opposed to the European convention on human rights, and our opposition is primarily based on arguments about national sovereignty and the need for the UK to have full control of its borders and immigration policies, which is central to us. I may be at odds with the hon. Lady, but it is important that we recognise that people have different opinions on this issue.
Cat Eccles
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution.
Earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton and Winchmore Hill (Kate Osamor) reported on Europe’s demographic ageing and the decline in youth and working-age populations, highlighting the impact on the elderly, public services, labour markets and pensions. PACE adopted a resolution urging greater support for older people and called on member states to develop effective policies to ensure their wellbeing and quality of life. It also recommended improving policies to promote migrant integration and social cohesion.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
We are also celebrating another event: the 25th anniversary of the coming into force of the Human Rights Act 1998. Like the European convention, it is about the rights of the individual against the state, and it gives individuals in this country the right to enforce those rights. Those are both things that we should be celebrating.
Cat Eccles
My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne) is one of the longest-serving delegates. She sits on the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, fighting for gender equality, combating violence against women and girls and defending the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. She is a rapporteur for the committee and has overseen a report on the ban of so-called conversion practices, which will hopefully be passed at the next plenary in January. That report will provide model legislation for all 46 member states to pass and end that awful practice. Let us hope that this House is ready to enact those recommendations, as promised in our manifesto and the King’s Speech. As a member of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media, I have worked with colleagues on youth democracy, artificial intelligence, ethics in sport and media freedom.
The Council of Europe develops recommendations on issues affecting all member states, including the UK. We may be an island, but sharing best practice and developing common conventions strengthens rights, freedoms and democratic values across the continent. The Council of Europe continues to lead globally, abolishing the death penalty in Europe, supporting democratic transitions and exposing human rights abuses. It expelled Russia from the Council, declaring it a terrorist state, and Belarus for its support for Russian aggression. This summer, I witnessed history being made in Strasbourg as President Zelensky signed a bilateral agreement with the Council of Europe to bring a trial against Russia for crimes of aggression against Ukraine.
But what has the ECHR ever done for us? Well, it has ensured that the Good Friday agreement has lasted this long. The incorporation of the ECHR into Northern Irish law means that the people of Northern Ireland have an independent arbiter to trust in disputes over fault during the troubles, and that is no small thing. It is vital to peace, societal rebuilding and the end of sectarianism. Maintained rights can create faith in people and shine light out of darkness.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The European convention gives us the right not to be tortured, not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, to have a fair trial, to have privacy and to have freedom of expression. I ask all the people who are against it: what rights do they think the British people should not have?
Cat Eccles
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is difficult to see which of those rights needs to be updated, replaced or taken away.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The UK was instrumental in the creation of the ECHR. The Council of Europe now says that it is ready for reform. Is it not time for us to shape the future of human rights legislation in Europe, and absolutely the wrong time to abandon our place at the table?
Cat Eccles
The hon. Lady is absolutely right—we need to be around that table. We were there at the start, and we need to see it through and ensure that we maintain our place in that conversation.
Why not replace the ECHR with a British Bill of Rights? Well, we have one—the Human Rights Act 1998. The ECHR was drafted by British lawyers based on Britain’s common law and Magna Carta. In fact, during the negotiations on the Good Friday agreement, a British Bill of Rights was drafted and later rejected by right-wing politicians, to prevent a difference of rights across the Irish border.
It is because of the ECHR that a ban on gay people serving in the armed forces could be challenged and overturned by a young barrister whom we now know as the Prime Minister. A memorial was unveiled this week to commemorate those who served during that historical ban from 1967 to 2000. It is because of the ECHR that we got justice for the Hillsborough victims and were able to present the Hillsborough law, the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, in Parliament this week.
The ECHR allows us to hold Governments to account and seek justice when those in power try to cover things up or overstep their remit. We must ask ourselves, “Why would anyone want to remove a mechanism to prevent those in power from abusing that power?” How dark our future could be if that were allowed to happen.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. I was looking at some of the examples of how this mechanism protects people in the UK. For example, the injunction served on The Sunday Times preventing it from reporting on thalidomide was overturned by the European convention on human rights. Such cases show how important it is for checks and balances on our own Government. God only knows what the future will look like if we come out of the ECHR.
Cat Eccles
My hon. Friend has made a really important point. The convention covers so many parts of our life and we must maintain it.
Currently, our politics is consumed by the issue of small boats. Despite representing less than 2% of all immigration into the UK, the boats are suddenly the reason why we must abandon the convention and place our collective human rights at the mercy of Government. In many ways, the attempted attacks on our freedoms under the guise of liberation remind me of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. They say that truth is stranger than fiction, but I do not want to find myself looking from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, and finding that I cannot tell which is which.
Of course, even the conflation of small boat arrivals with the ECHR is a lie. Mr Mundell, did you know that the ECHR has nothing written down relating to immigration or asylum? There is no right to asylum in the ECHR. Did you also know that, since the Human Rights Act 1998, the European Court’s rulings against the UK have fallen dramatically? It used to average 17 a year; now it is fewer than four. Indeed, it ruled against the UK only once in 2024—when, in a very nice piece of irony, the ECHR protected the rights of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday to freedom of expression. Even the convention’s harshest critics come running to it for protection when they are under threat from big government.
The University of Oxford recently published a Bonavero report titled “The European Convention on Human Rights and Immigration Control in the UK: Informing the Public Debate”, which centres on misinformation, over-reporting and outright lies in the press that poison the debate around the ECHR. I highly recommend it to all Members who are wavering on whether the UK should stay in the convention or leave it because of immigration.
There are two articles of the ECHR that have been tied to immigration. Article 3 is applied so that we do not send individuals back to torture or death—I would like to believe that we can all agree on that. Article 8, the right to family life, is projected by the ECHR’s critics as the real villain of the piece. They argue that it stops deportations of foreign criminals, sex offenders and individuals who arrived in the UK via small boats. There really is a lot of rubbish written in the papers and online relating to article 8, using examples of how the ECHR is being used to stop deportations and erode national security and identity.
The most notorious example was in February this year, when an Albanian criminal was apparently granted appeal to deportation because his son would not eat foreign chicken nuggets. The ruling was made because the criminal’s younger child had sensory issues, food sensitivities and emotional difficulties, but the upper tribunal rejected the appeal as not strong enough to be considered unduly harsh, and the case is still under review. For the record, article 8 is primarily used for reunification of British citizens with family members who are foreign nationals.
Let us step away from that story and look at some statistics. From 2015 to 2021, the Home Office removed 31,400 foreign national offenders from the UK, and in that period 1,000 foreign criminals managed to halt deportation on ECHR grounds, roughly 3% of the overall figure. Less than 1% of those cases were ultimately successful, so the ECHR is hardly the immovable object blocking the UK’s will in removing offenders from its shores.
Furthermore, the Court has ruled only three times that the UK’s immigration rules have violated the ECHR in the past 45 years, but political and media pressure appears to be bearing down on our relationship with the ECHR. There have been noises about tweaking the convention and about opening discussions, the thought of which fills me with dread.
Why concede the argument that the ECHR is to blame for our impotence, when that squarely does not match the reality? Why put the EHCR directly in the limelight of the political will of the day? Why cost businesses an estimated £1.6 billion at a time when they are already struggling? Why abandon the soft power that our place in the convention and institution affords us?
If I may say so, this reminds me of David Cameron’s renegotiation with the EU prior to the referendum. He put Britain’s relationship with the EU at the forefront of the agenda and worked tirelessly to get a better deal for Britain, believing that if he could show that Britain can renegotiate, the crocodiles in his party and on the fringes would let up—but in the end he lost it all. I make a plea to the Minister and to the Government: “Let’s draw a line in the sand. Stand up and fight for the convention and our place in it. Do not concede. Do not think that you can find a middle course that will satisfy all parties and stem the anti-politics sentiment that is so prevalent in the UK today. Let’s be bold and argue for the UK’s role in the Council of Europe and the ECHR.”
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) on securing this debate.
I am pleased to speak about the ECHR and the UK’s membership of the Council of Europe. Across the political spectrum, parties are flirting with withdrawal. It feels like Brexit déjà vu, with the same hollow promises of taking back control, the same disregard for facts and the same blindness to consequence. The siren voices who said leaving the EU would be easy are now saying the same about leaving the ECHR, and thereby the Council of Europe.
Lord Wolfson’s recent report to the Conservative leader, for example, offers a threadbare fig leaf, based on an extremely narrow reading of the law that downplays the legal obstacles and, by his own admission, ignores the political ones. As Lord Wolfson knows, withdrawal would not be a technical exercise in legislative drafting, but a rupture in the constitutional fabric that binds these islands together. Reform, not rupture, should be our guiding principle; the convention can be updated to serve a modern democracy without sacrificing its founding principles.
Two practical measures would command broad support. First, the UK could lead efforts to clarify the scope of key provisions, particularly article 8, so that domestic courts can apply them with greater predictability and closer regard to parliamentary intent. Secondly, rather than withdrawing, we could work with other Council of Europe members to update the living instrument doctrine, ensuring that the Court’s interpretation better reflects democratic consent and contemporary realities. Those would be acts not of retreat, but leadership, strengthening Britain’s international role as a principled champion of the rule of law.
Despite what Lord Wolfson says, there are serious legal barriers to withdrawal. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Northern Ireland, I must warn of the profound risks to peace at home. The ECHR is embedded in the Scotland Act 1998, the Wales Act 2017, the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and the Good Friday agreement. Removing it would require overhauling devolution and entail legislative chaos. Turning to Northern Ireland, withdrawal would breach our international commitments, destabilise all communities, betray those who built peace and force renegotiation of the UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement.
I say this to the Tories, Reform and the Labour leadership: flirting with populism for political convenience endangers both our unity at home and our reputation abroad. As Brexit has shown, dismantling international commitments might sound easy and liberating—but, as we know to our cost, it is neither. It is a hugely damaging, expensive diversion that will only make our problems worse.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate. The ECHR has delivered extraordinary victories for British people. When Jeanette Smith and Graeme Grady were discharged from the armed forces simply for being gay, the English courts rejected their challenge, but the Strasbourg Court unanimously upheld their rights. Today the armed forces welcome all people regardless of sexual orientation.
The ECHR has protected children wrongfully taken into care; workers have won the right to express their faith and mental health patients have gained proper legal safeguards. Those are not abstract legal victories—they are real, and have changed people’s lives for the better. Yet many voices, including that of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place, paint the ECHR as our enemy and as a barrier to border control. They could not be more wrong. The truth is that we need the ECHR to manage our borders.
A common rights framework means that our European partners will work with us to tackle organised people smuggling and to protect our national security. We had the UK-France deal this summer, Bulgaria is intercepting smuggling boats at the EU border, and Germany is reforming its criminal laws to confront these shared challenges. Even Rwanda said that it will not work with us unless we observe human rights. Let us not forget that it was the failed Brexit project that destroyed the Dublin regulation, leaving us without any EU returns agreement. We then saw the number of dangerous crossings soar.
The ECHR did not stop the UK from removing 34,000 people with no right to be here in 2024, which was the highest number since 2017. Under 1% of foreign national offenders successfully appeal deportation on human rights grounds; since 1980, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge said, the Strasbourg Court found against the UK on deportation cases just a handful of times, only four of which concerned family life. The Reform and Tory policy of ECHR withdrawal is simply Brexit 2.0 and isolationism. It will not secure our borders. It will not solve anything.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
My hon. and learned Friend has listed a number of very good examples of what has been achieved as a result of the ECHR. Does he agree that we need to work together to highlight its benefits, as opposed to seeking to tear it down or tear it apart?
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Can the hon. and learned Gentleman conclude in 30 seconds, because there is no additional time for interventions?
Tony Vaughan
I will conclude by saying that, on this 75th anniversary, 300 organisations—from Liberty to Mind, Shelter to Amnesty—rightly defend the convention. It is up to this Government to demonstrate to the public that we can have both border control and compassion. Let us celebrate 75 years of freedom, and 75 more.
Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. What does the ECHR actually mean for British people? Let us go through a few examples. A convicted Sri Lankan sex offender was allowed to stay in Britain because he is gay and would be at risk of persecution if he was returned to his home country. I do not care. A Jamaican drug dealer was jailed twice but allowed to stay in Britain after claiming that his removal would breach his right to family life. I do not care.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
The hon. Gentleman is not taking that intervention, so let us continue.
Rupert Lowe
No. A Zimbabwean was jailed for killing a man in a car crash but allowed to stay in Britain after it was discovered that he had an illicit love child. I do not care. A convicted Indian paedophile was allowed to stay in Britain by claiming that the move would harm his children. I do not care. An Albanian criminal was allowed to stay in Britain partly because his son will not eat foreign chicken nuggets. I definitely do not care. We hear so much about the human rights of foreign paedophiles, sex pests and murderers—
Several hon. Members rose—
David Mundell (in the Chair)
The hon. Gentleman is not giving way. Members may disagree with what he is saying, but we will conduct this debate in an orderly way.
Rupert Lowe
What about the human rights of the British people? They have the right not to be raped, stabbed and killed by foreigners who should never have been in our country to begin with. Please spare me the continued moral outrage.
Yasmin Qureshi
On a point of order, Mr Mundell. The hon. Gentleman just mentioned that—
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I already know that is not a point of order in relation to the content of the hon. Gentleman’s speech.
Rupert Lowe
Please spare me the continued moral outrage. I am bored of it. The British people are bored of it. It is not cruel to deport criminals, and it is not inhumane to defend our own citizens. What is cruel and inhumane is allowing foreign killers and sex offenders to walk among us in the name of the human rights they should have forfeited the moment they committed their crimes. Hon. Members can sit here and persuade themselves otherwise, but one simple fact remains: the British people want those people gone—not some of them, not most of them, but all of them. What happens on their return to their own country is quite simply not our problem.
The solution is to take three straightforward steps. Step one: we should leave the ECHR and remove all other legal obstacles to mass deportation—Restore Britain’s new 100-plus page policy document proves it can be done. Step two—
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) on securing this important debate. As a fellow delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I can personally attest to her dedication in this area.
I want to bring a Cornish perspective to the importance of the Council of Europe and the European convention on human rights—one that shines a light on our membership. First, the framework convention for the protection of national minorities, although less well known than the European convention on human rights, is one of the most comprehensive treaties to protect the rights of national minorities, including the Cornish people. Leaving the European convention on human rights would call into question our membership of the Council of Europe. Those who wish for that departure either have not considered the implications for Cornish national minority status, or they have considered those implications and do not care about the Cornish.
There is also the European charter for regional or minority languages, which protects, supports and encourages minority languages such as Cornish, or Kernewek. These are important commitments to which the UK is a signatory. They are too often considered secondary, but they bring tangible social and cultural benefits to the people of Cornwall. If we lived in a world governed by the parties that wish to leave the European convention on human rights, we would risk leaving the Council of Europe altogether. Any move to withdraw from the European convention on human rights would likely cause us to leave the Council of Europe, putting at risk the protections and benefits on which Cornish people rely under those other conventions.
In his ten-minute rule Bill last week, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is regrettably not here today—I notified him that I was going to raise this—described leaving the European convention on human rights as “unfinished business.” Having played a key role in the economic damage caused by Brexit, it seems that he is back for more, determined to sever another vital limb of our international partnerships as he attempts to steer the country on to the rocks of isolationism.
Some voices on the right argue that basic human rights hold us back. I believe they do quite the opposite. The hon. Member for Clacton will not talk about the other guarantees under the European convention on human rights: the right to life, the right to be free from torture and the right to liberty. As has been mentioned, bodies such as the Bonavero Institute at Oxford University have rightly said that some of the commentary on the European convention on human rights is misleading, often based on incendiary anecdotes involving chicken nuggets and pet cats. In reality, court rulings are far more complicated.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) on securing this debate.
When politicians such as the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), Conservative Members or, indeed, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) want us to leave the European convention on human rights, it tells us something quite reassuring, which is that the ECHR is doing precisely the job it was designed to do to protect all of us from the whims of tinpot populists like the hon. Member for Clacton. When parties such as Reform, and indeed the Conservative party, rail against the ECHR, it tells us everything we need to know about why it is so desperately required.
Those politicians want to remove our basic rights in order to leave the disadvantaged unprotected and their authoritarian tendencies unchallenged. It is in situations like this, when our human rights are most under attack, that we must redouble our efforts to ensure that they are preserved. Let us remind ourselves of the company that the hon. Member for Clacton wants to keep: Russia and Belarus—perhaps that should not surprise us either. He spends half his time as an apologist for the Kremlin, and he has the slight inconvenience of his party’s treasurer in Wales having been found guilty of taking bribes from Russian interests.
Let us remind ourselves what this is all about. The ECHR was created from the ashes of the second world war. It was designed to ensure that the atrocities of that dark time could never be repeated. It enshrines our freedoms of speech, to assemble, to worship, to protest and to live our private lives free from interference, and it is a living instrument that evolves as our society evolves. It is everything that the populists despise. Most of the time, we are not aware of the ECHR—most of our constituents probably do not know what is actually in the document—but it is always there, guaranteeing our freedoms and our rights. It does not seek attention; it simply ensures that the Government—any Government—act in a way that respects our rights. It is our silent guardian.
Leaving the ECHR will not stop the boats or allow the Government to deport masses of our fellow citizens, but it will tear holes in our domestic law. Since 1980, the European Court of Human Rights has found against the UK in just 13 cases, only four of them concerning family life. But those politicians do not just want to leave the ECHR; they want to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 as well. They would seek to abolish its 16 core protections, leaving the UK as about the only country with no chapter on human rights.
I say this to Labour Members: instead of fully defending the ECHR, the Government accept the premise that there is something wrong with it—that it needs to be amended and made compliant with Government interests. They talk about article 8 as being redefined—
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles).
Let me begin by reaffirming my strong support for the United Kingdom’s continued commitment to the European convention on human rights. For more than 70 years, the ECHR has been a cornerstone of liberty and justice across Europe, defending free speech, safeguarding human rights and upholding the dignity of every individual. Those principles are as vital today as they have ever been, but supporting the ECHR does not mean turning a blind eye to where its application may have become unbalanced or detached from public understanding or support. I believe that the time has come for taking a serious and constructive view on its reform, not to weaken human rights, but to strengthen credibility and public confidence in the convention.
In particular, I believe that the interpretation of articles 3 and 8 has in a very small number of cases prevented the removal of foreign nationals with serious criminal convictions, even where their presence poses a clear risk to public safety. I hear that frustration again and again from my constituents in Mansfield. People who play by the rules expect those who break them to face the consequences, and when that does not happen, faith in the law and our institutions is undermined.
The status quo cannot remain, and my constituents in Mansfield are demanding action. That is why reform is needed—not to abandon our commitments, but to ensure that they reflect common sense, justice and the values of the British people in 2025. I welcome the recent comments by the president of the European Court of Human Rights suggesting that the Court is open to discussion and reform. That openness offers the UK a chance to engage and lead constructively, to modernise the convention, to clarify its boundaries, and to ensure that human rights protections continue to serve individual dignity, public safety, and what is more, public confidence. Let the UK remain a proud and leading member of the Council of Europe and the convention. That is the right and responsible way forward.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) on her outstanding speech, and other colleagues too.
I represent the city of York, which is England’s only UN human rights city, and our University of York hosts the Centre for Applied Human Rights. Human rights matter to my constituents, and human rights defenders from across the world come to our city. They come to our country because they recognise our strong framework around human rights. Human rights are in our DNA.
The Council of Europe’s work 75 years ago in establishing the European convention on human rights as the first instrument to crystallise and, through the Strasbourg Court, legally enforce the rights set out in the universal declaration of human rights, provided a vital route to justice—justice that must be upheld. We in our city have therefore developed our own framework around human rights, based on those established elsewhere, and we have called to account the institutions in our city on the issues of freedom, dignity and honest resolve.
The accountability of Governments, systems and actors is absolutely crucial. That is the role of the courts, and that is the role that the convention upholds. I have to ask why somebody would want to take away those rights or water them down. Is it because they want to subjugate? Is it because they want to violate? Is it because their interest is a world order where some should have fewer rights than others and where they have a God-given right to suppress the life of another and determine that their own flawed judgments should prevail?
I warn this Government, and all Governments in the future, not to mess with human rights. We need to uphold the dignity of all. We should never, never water down or undermine the frameworks that have served us so well for 75 years, and which must serve us well for 75 more.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate.
George Orwell said:
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
I am not mad when I say that the debate on leaving the ECHR is nothing to do with immigration; I am telling the truth, which is something I hope the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) will finally come to realise. The convention is not designed to interfere with immigration policy; it says nothing about immigration, and the Court has long acknowledged the right of states to control their borders. That is why Oxford University data shows that only 3.5% of deportations of foreign criminals were successfully appealed on human rights grounds. That is the truth.
The fundamental purpose of the ECHR is to protect people from Governments of all colours. It stopped the Georgian Government arbitrarily detaining people. The Polish state has had to compensate thousands of citizens who had property taken away. Children in the Czech Republic were given rights to school. The failures of the French Government to tackle modern slavery were addressed. That is why apologists for authoritarian Governments such as the Russians hate it, and why they use immigration as a cover for their attacks. Now people want us to make the same mistake again—of walking away, not being in the room and isolating ourselves, as we did in Europe through Brexit—by walking away from the protection the ECHR offers our citizens: the protection that helped the Hillsborough families get justice, the protection that helped the victims of the black-cab rapist John Worboys, the protection that secured human rights and abortion access in Northern Ireland.
Even if people do not care about victims of crime or of miscarriages of justice, or about those who have been forced out of our armed forces for being gay, they might care about taxes. In February this year, the Court forced the Italians to stop a series of tax raids on companies because it was against their human rights. All of that—those basic rights—are at stake. And that is before we even get to the fact that it is the foundation of our trade agreements, and why other countries want to do business with us, that we follow the rule of law and hold ourselves accountable to a shared standard. That is why the ECHR is the foundation of the Good Friday agreement and is written into the EU trade and co-operation agreement, especially the deals on crime and policing.
Ms Creasy
My apologies, but I will not.
The Court also recognises the jurisdiction of nations. I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) that if he has problems with how the ECHR is interpreted, we can pass domestic laws to address that. I know that some in this room want the Court to be a bogeyman, but the truth is that it actually respects our rights, including democracy. That is why we were able to vote on the issue of prisoner voting.
What is not true is that any Government writing their own Bill of Rights would offer the same protection to our constituents. Any fool can see that a Government who set out what rights we have one day can take them away the next. A Bill of Rights without someone external to ensure that it is enforced is not worth the paper it is written on. That is why the international rule of law matters. Leaving the ECHR would give a future Government the power to weaken the rights of our constituents. It would bring us back to the chaos of Brexit. It would be an attack on our freedoms, not an advance of them. The truth may hurt, but it also sets you free.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Sincere apologies to everyone I was not able to call. We now come to the Lib Dem spokesman, who has five minutes.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
Thank you, Mr Mundell. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate, and other Members—most of them, at least—for their contributions.
The Council of Europe is one of the post-war generation’s quiet triumphs. It was Winston Churchill, speaking in Zurich in 1946, who called for the creation of a Council of Europe to safeguard peace and freedom across our continent. Just three years later, the UK became one of its 10 founding members, and from the outset it represented something profoundly British: a belief that democracy, human rights and the rule of law should not stop at our own shores; they are international values.
Of course, the Council’s crowning achievement is the European convention on human rights. For decades, the convention and the European Court of Human Rights, which enforces it, have protected the rights of millions, including our own citizens—defending free speech and fair trials, advancing equality for women, securing justice for our military veterans, the LGBT community and those with disabilities, and holding Governments of every colour to account.
Today, the Council of Europe, membership of which is predicated on ECHR adherence, helps us to combat terrorism, cyber-crime, corruption and money laundering, as well as human trafficking and other forms of organised crime, yet there are some in this House who would turn their back on that legacy and those instruments. They would align us with Russia, a nation expelled from the Council of Europe in 2022 after its unlawful invasion of our close ally Ukraine. Russia, our clearest adversary—that is the company that some would have us keep.
Sarah Russell
The only other country that has willingly left the ECHR is Greece, under the fascist military dictatorship in 1969. Of course, once the dictatorship was overthrown, it rejoined. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is not company that we wish to be in?
Dr Pinkerton
It is truly shameful company for us to maintain, and there is nothing virtuous or patriotic about calling for our withdrawal.
Indeed, those calling for withdrawal, in pursuit of a single policy objective—ending illegal migration—should heed a deeper warning. In “A Man for All Seasons”, the playwright Robert Bolt, through the character of Sir Thomas More, observes of England:
“This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
If we cut down the laws that shield even the unpopular or the accused, we will soon find that there is no shelter left for any of us.
As authoritarianism rises and war returns to our continent, the Council’s role has never been more vital. Its expulsion of Russia was an act not of punishment, but of principle—a reminder that tyranny cannot co-exist with liberty. What becomes of Britain’s claim to moral leadership if we abandon the very human rights system we helped to build? What becomes of the rule of law, at home and abroad, if the United Kingdom decides that it no longer needs to be bound by it? Our rights—our particular British rights—have been formed over a millennium of conflict, struggle and reform. We surrender them at our peril.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate, which is extremely topical, because this matter is being debated across the United Kingdom at the moment.
There is no doubt that the intentions behind the creation of the Council of Europe and the European convention on human rights were noble. In the aftermath of the second world war, Europe lay traumatised by tyranny. It was with the backing of the then Opposition leader—indeed, one of the greatest figures in British and world history—Sir Winston Churchill that the United Kingdom took a leading role in constructing a system intended to ensure that totalitarianism could never happen again.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Andrew Rosindell
I will not, because time is very limited.
Yet Churchill had the foresight to say, on Europe:
“We help, we dedicate, we play a part, but we are not merged with and do not forfeit our insular or Commonwealth character…we are a separate—and specially-related ally and friend.”
I agree with Churchill. I believe in a Britain that co-operates, not a Britain that is subordinate to foreign judges and international bodies with no democratic accountability.
Those who claim that by leaving the ECHR we are somehow rolling back on human rights do a disservice to their ancestors, for Britain’s commitment to human liberty did not begin in 1950. It began centuries earlier—800 years before the convention was drafted, there was the principle of habeas corpus. Two decades before common-law courts were housed in the very hall in which we are having this debate today, Magna Carta of 1215 reaffirmed:
“No free man shall be…imprisoned…except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.”
We produced, in succession, the Petition of Right in 1628, the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 and the Bill of Rights in 1689, among a long list of other achievements.
We were the first nation in history that not only abolished slavery at home but dedicated the full force of our political, military and economic might to its global abolition. The crowning achievement was the island nation’s establishment of the premise of parliamentary sovereignty under a constitutional monarchy, which has been the envy of nations around the world.
Those achievements were not bestowed upon us by foreign courts or organisations. On the contrary, it was because of these British achievements that the ECHR came into existence, to instil in the nations of Europe that lacked such traditions the same freedoms that Britons had been enjoying for centuries. Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) introduced a Bill proposing our withdrawal from the European convention on human rights, which I was proud to sponsor.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked Lord Wolfson to conduct a thorough legal analysis of whether the United Kingdom can properly govern itself while remaining in the ECHR, with five core tests. It clearly indicated that the ability of the Government to control borders, to protect veterans from vexatious pursuit, to ensure that British citizens have priority in public services and to uphold Parliament’s decisions on sentencing and other matters without endless legal obstruction is significantly constrained by our ECHR membership. So a future Conservative Government will withdraw from the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act, so that the elected Government of the day can implement policies supported by the British people in a democratic election and uphold and strengthen human rights protections through our common law tradition, just as sovereign democracies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand do, based on institutions and principles that originate from this very nation.
This is about democracy. It is this Parliament that should decide, not international bureaucrats or international judges—it is the British people, via a sovereign Parliament. That is the entire history of this country, and to jettison and give away that power is a shameful negation of the democratic birthright of the United Kingdom.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Minister, the proceedings are due to conclude at 6.30 pm. You may wish to give Ms Eccles a few moments to wind up the debate.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
Thank you, Mr Mundell. It is a genuine pleasure to see you in the Chair today.
I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this lively and passionate debate. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing it, and for her powerful list of the work done by the Council of Europe on everything from Ukraine to the death penalty. She mentioned the role of the ECHR, giving examples from Hillsborough to the Good Friday agreement. I thank her and other Members here today who are delegates to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; it is a pleasure to engage with them regularly, and their work is crucial to our national interests.
In stark contrast to the polemical nonsense that we have just heard from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend made a fundamental point, which is that fundamentally the ECHR and indeed the Council of Europe are British projects. It is the treaty of London that established them. I was very proud to see the treaty of London on display at the European Political Community summit two weeks after we came to power last year—and to see it at Blenheim Palace, with its strong historical associations to the man the shadow Minister was praising. I think he would have turned in his grave at some of the things that the shadow Minister was saying.
I also want to issue a general challenge: things cannot be set in aspic; they must evolve and maintain the confidence of all the British people and respond to the challenges and genuine issues that we face today. The point many colleagues made about the company that we keep is very important. It is not surprising to me at all to see Reform on the side of the likes of Russia and Belarus. It was very sad to hear some of the comments the shadow Minister made and that he was proud to support the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage). Perhaps, like so many Tories, he is simply preparing himself for a rebrand under a new banner.
There were some strong speeches about the perils of leaving the ECHR and challenging the many myths and fake news, some of which we sadly heard in this debate. One of those is about the democratic nature of the Council of Europe, which is one of the most democratic bodies in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights is elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, including the UK judge, which flies in the face of what we heard from the shadow Minister and some others.
Other important points were made which have not previously had an adequate airing in debates on this subject. The arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) about the impact on national minorities were particularly strong. The ECHR ensures that all convention rights are enjoyed without discrimination, including on grounds such as race, language, religion or association with a national minority. Those crucial protections for national minorities could be lost if we left the ECHR. That is hugely important to Cornish and Welsh people and to those who speak our minority languages in the UK, including Cornish, Welsh, Gaelic and others. That is often forgotten.
Britain had a crucial and foundational role in establishing these institutions. Our pioneering Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, was a strong advocate for the body; Sir Winston Churchill was another leading proponent of the Council, while the British lawyer Sir David Maxwell Fyfe played a central role in drafting the text of the convention. The UK was among the first states to ratify the convention. We are proud of the moral, political and legal leadership that Britain showed in creating the organisation and drafting a convention that was designed to help Europe recover from the horrors of the second world war. I know that there is controversy today, but the Government fundamentally believe that since their creation both the Council of Europe and the ECHR have delivered significant benefits to British citizens, and continue to do so. We are not afraid to say that.
The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), spoke powerfully about the wider work of the Council of Europe and the ECHR. There are more than 200 conventions under the Council of Europe, tackling terrorism, cyber-crime and corruption, countering money laundering, protecting children from sexual exploitation, confronting violence against women and girls and combating human trafficking and organised crime. It ensures that medicines are safe and effective, encourages economic growth, good governance and the rule of law, and supports freedom of expression and ethical media.
Linsey Farnsworth
On the subject of criminal co-operation, before I came into Parliament I was an international liaison prosecutor. My job was to get evidence from overseas and help to get people overseas in Europe extradited to the UK for prosecution. That work relies on the ECHR, which underpins that legislation. Does the Minister share my concern about what some Members in this Chamber are proposing? Does he agree that they should be the ones who talk to a victim of rape about why her case cannot go forward because we cannot get the evidence from a European country, or tell a mother that we cannot get the murderer of her son back because we have left the ECHR?
Stephen Doughty
My hon. Friend makes some incredibly powerful and strong points, with which I concur. She highlights the very serious consequences that could come were we to leave the ECHR.
Before I turn to some of the other specific points, I want to compliment the wider work of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly in expelling Russia following the illegal invasion of Ukraine, supporting Ukraine and seeking to hold Russia to account for the atrocities it has committed. I also compliment its work on the register of damage, the international claims commissions and the special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine established under the auspices of the Council. Those, along with the activities that my hon. Friend just raised, all matter to the British public and to British public life.
Of course, the ECHR plays a crucial role in our constitutional framework. It is an important pillar of the devolution settlements, it underpins the guarantees in the Good Friday agreement, and it supports the safety and security of British citizens by facilitating cross-border law enforcement and judicial co-operation. The ECHR is often presented as some sort of foreign imposition that does nothing to help British people. That literally could not be further from the truth. It has contributed significantly to the protection and enforcement of human rights and equality standards in the UK. We are very proud that a Labour Government incorporated the ECHR into domestic law—that was, of course, a decision of Westminster—by introducing the Human Rights Act 1998, which came into force 25 years ago last month.
The ECHR has had a massive impact. ECHR rulings in 1982 led to the end of corporal punishment in schools in the UK and to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. As has been referenced, in 1999, following a landmark case brought by two British servicepeople dismissed from the armed forces simply for being gay, an ECHR ruling led to the law being changed to allow members of the armed forces to be open about their sexuality. Another very powerful example concerns the impact of the Hillsborough disaster, which the Prime Minister has done much to lead on in recent months. The families of the 97 who lost their lives relied on the ECHR’s right to life provision when they campaigned for the truth. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) spoke powerfully in this debate, including about the case of John Warboys. The benefits are not just historical; they affect live and significant cases that affect British people today.
Last, I turn to the question of reform. The strength of the convention is that, while the ECHR explicitly safeguards those at risk of harm, exclusion or discrimination, helps ordinary people to challenge unfair laws, and pushes Governments to respect rights, it is also entirely reasonable and appropriate for Governments consistently to consider whether the law, including the ECHR, is evolving to meet modern-day challenges, including on irregular migration, asylum and criminal justice. The ECHR was never designed to be set in stone and frozen forever in the time that it was created. That is why we are working with and engaging with European partners to look at ways in which reform can go forward, and why we are reviewing the way in which the ECHR is interpreted in UK domestic law.
Stephen Doughty
I will not, because I want to give time for my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge to wind up.
We need to ensure that we retain public confidence in our policies related to the ECHR, so we must look at where we can reform and evolve. Last week, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe was clear that he was open to discuss potential changes or adaptations—my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) raised that important point. Other Council of Europe member states share the UK’s view that the ECHR needs to evolve. We are talking to them about what might be possible, but we will not leave the ECHR. We recognise the hugely important role that it plays, and the hugely important role that the Council of Europe plays for people in this country. This is something that Britain was involved in at the start. It is not a foreign imposition; it plays an important role in the life of the British people. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to this debate.
Cat Eccles
I thank all hon. Members who have participated in this interesting and lively debate. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), the hon. Members for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) and for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart), and my hon. Friends the Members for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), and for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) for their contributions. I am sure that my hon. Friends who have not been able to contribute to the debate also had excellent points to make. It is clear that this discussion must continue.
In marking the 75th anniversary of the ECHR, we are reminded of its founding purpose: to safeguard dignity, freedom and justice. That remains as vital today as it was at the start. Far from being outdated, the ECHR has evolved into a cornerstone of European democracy, promoting equality, accountability and the rule of law across all 46 member states. Yet misinformation, false narratives and political opportunism now threaten to erode that legacy. Sovereignty gives us the right to be party to international treaties. The facts are clear: the ECHR does not hinder deportation or weaken our sovereignty. If we were to leave, it would be short-term gain for long-term pain. As pressures mount to dilute or abandon our commitments, we must stand firm. Britain helped to build the ECHR, and we must continue to defend it.