Westminster Hall

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 28 January 2026

[Matt Western in the Chair]

Local Authority Children’s Services

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.

I applied for this debate because of a 10-year-old constituent who was abused, tortured and murdered by those who should have loved and protected her. Her name was Sara.

Sara was found dead in the early hours of 10 August 2023. Her body was covered in bruises. She had a traumatic head injury, human bite marks and multiple broken bones, and she had been burned by a domestic iron. Next to Sara’s body, the police found plastic bags, packing tape and a cricket bat, all with Sara’s blood on them. The people who did that to Sara deserve a special place in hell. Sara’s death was not a one-off tragedy; it was the most extreme and horrific consequence of children’s services being hollowed out, fragmented and weakened over the years. Surrey county council is failing children left, right and centre.

Another example is what happened to my constituent Julia. She and her husband pleaded with Surrey county council for help with their daughter, Eloise, who had special educational needs. Surrey ignored those pleas and refused to give Eloise special educational needs and disabilities support, and eventually it took the parents to court because it was concerned that they were a safeguarding risk to their daughter. The court saw through that and sided with the parents. It said that it was Surrey’s lack of support for special educational needs that was failing the child, not the parents. Appallingly, Surrey tried to cover up its problems with special educational needs provision and push it on to a safeguarding failure.

Judith, another of my Woking constituents, was breaking up with her partner following many incidents of domestic and child abuse. She feared for her children’s safety if they continued to see their father. On the advice of Surrey county council, the family court gave the father visitation rights, and heartbreaking abuse followed. The court then took away the father’s right to see the children. That is why we need to end the presumption in favour of parental contact. Abusers should not care for their children. Surrey now insists that the father start seeing the children again. It says that it has a duty to explore whether contact would be safe by reintroducing the children to him. It looks like Surrey is rolling the dice and creating situations in which children can be harmed. This is supposed to be one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet this is what our services—the services for my most vulnerable constituents—are like.

The day before Sara was murdered, Surrey’s children’s services turned up at the wrong house due to an administrative error. In another case, the council failed to show up to a promised meeting about a child’s care. As a result, the child did not get the support they needed—there are real-life consequences for Surrey’s incompetence.

In November 2025, the child safeguarding practice review that I called for into Sara’s murder was finally released, and it confirmed exactly what I feared: the state, and especially Surrey county council, failed Sara at every stage. All the warning signs were there, but they were not acted upon. The authorities were fully aware that Sara was at risk. She was placed on a child protection plan before her birth, yet was a victim of domestic abuse from that day onwards. Surrey social workers wanted to take her away from her father, but they changed their mind, and the consequences will haunt us all.

After Sara’s murder, the senior officer responsible for children’s services at Surrey county council, Rachael Wardell, was offered and accepted a pay rise of £8,700. I do not know how that woman can sleep at night. It sends a message that failure carries no consequences; in fact, it is rewarded.

The safeguarding review highlighted that there were national issues as well. Children’s services in one in five local authorities across the country are not good enough, according to Ofsted. There is a range of spending across local authorities. York spends £35 million and its children’s services are rated outstanding, but just down the road, Bradford—which, I admit, is slightly larger—spends £262 million and its children’s services are rated as inadequate.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is speaking about very serious issues, and I commend him for not apportioning blame to one side or the other; he understands that, in different circumstances, there are different reasons to blame. The Government’s removal of the funding uplift for the most remote authorities will have an effect on children’s services, as it will on SEND provision and a whole range of council services. In Somerset, for example, it is 53% more expensive to provide home-to-school transport than in an average authority, yet the funding uplift has been removed. Does he agree that that is a shocking way to treat our most remote authorities?

[Mr Forster]

I do. Funding is an issue; I am concerned that we are not properly resourcing our children’s services departments. The Government’s recent decision to shift funding away from rural constituencies like my hon. Friend’s could have a dramatic impact, and the Government need to recognise that in different parts of the country, there are different funding challenges. Obviously, a suburban-urban seat like mine has challenges, but it will clearly be easier and cheaper to travel around than his.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an important speech on behalf of his most vulnerable constituents. Does he agree that rural and sparsely populated authorities can deliver good-quality children’s services only if special educational needs provision, health integration and transportation are treated as national responsibilities and not afterthoughts, as they so often are? On the funding piece, Westmorland and Furness council is receiving funding of £535 per head this year. In three years’ time, it will be £380 per head—a 29% cut in three years. Does he share my fear that that puts the safety of our children, particularly our most vulnerable ones, at risk?

[Mr Forster]

I completely agree, and that is why I called for this debate. We are not spending enough on vulnerable children, and that funding cut in Westmorland is absolutely shocking.

I highlighted the example of York and Bradford, which are two cities in the same region. We need to end the postcode lottery on the lives of children. Children should not be living with that abuse, neglect and fear, but in the awful situations where they are, we need local authority children’s services to have their back and step in to protect them.

Nowhere is that failure more despicable than in Conservative-run Surrey county council. My county council’s children’s services were rated good by Ofsted in March 2025—a decision that many fellow MPs, constituents and people across Surrey find bonkers. This “good” rating is clearly a thin veneer that covers up the rot within. Sixty-six local authorities in England are rated good. Based on what I know and what I have just said about Surrey, if that is good, what on earth is happening in the rest of the country? The Children’s Commissioner has been clear about this: her research shows huge regional disparities in child in need plans. In some areas, children receive early intervention and regular check-ups. In others, we see pointless bureaucracy, long waits and a revolving door of social workers who are poorly trained and supported.

Children’s services in local authorities cannot protect children because of significant loopholes in the home education system, as highlighted by Sara’s safeguarding review. It proved that Sara’s murderers used those loopholes to hide the abuse. When they could no longer hide the abuse from the school, Sara’s father and stepmother took her out of school, saying that they would homeschool her. The school could do nothing about that. The abuse continued—and there were tragic consequences.

The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a homeschool register to ensure that we know where the hundreds of homeschooled children across the country are and that they are safe. Some of them have never attended school—not once. We need a register of children not in school. That is backed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by the Children’s Commissioner, who have said that it would be an important step and tool to keep children safe.

Homeschooling can be hugely advantageous, and parents have a right to choose it, but we need a register and, above all, parents should lose the right to homeschool if there are safeguarding concerns. It is clear from Sara’s safeguarding review that repeated failures to share information are one of the key barriers to keeping children safe. The Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on this for years. We need to provide joined-up support to meet children’s needs. The mechanism is known as the single unique identifier, and it would help to ensure that there are no more appalling safeguarding cases like the ones I have highlighted.

Every area in our country needs to have a multi-agency safeguarding hub, so that all organisations can work together, share vital information and, above all, protect children. A key example of the need for that is Sara’s father and murderer. He was a taxi driver who passed a Disclosure and Barring Service check. He got his licence through Woking borough council—the licensing authority in my area—yet Surrey county council’s children’s services knew that he was a child abuser. It was foreseeable that he would be driving around children with special educational needs or other vulnerable people, including for Surrey county council, as it uses taxi drivers for home-to-school transport. Why are we risking vulnerable children’s lives because the computer says no? We need to share that information.

This Government’s recent spending review agreed a real-terms cut in the grant to local authorities for children’s services—that is appalling. We should not be cutting that funding; we should not be putting a price on a child’s life.

I have a number of asks to the Minister. We need better joined-up public services where information is shared quickly and effectively to prevent children from being put at risk. We need to ensure that local authorities are well equipped to deal with the upcoming changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, so that no child falls through the cracks. Does the Minister agree that something is clearly wrong in Surrey? I urge him to put Surrey county council’s children services in special measures.

I know that Surrey county council is to be abolished, and I am pleased that it is, but children’s lives are at risk now. We cannot wait for local government reorganisation. Surrey’s failures must have consequences for its leadership, not for my vulnerable constituents. From April of next year, my area will have a new local authority: West Surrey council. I do not want Surrey county council’s record of mismanagement and poor culture of serving the public to be transferred to the new local authority. That is why I urge the Minister to intervene to protect vulnerable children like Sara in Woking and across Surrey.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Matt Western (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. Clearly, there are quite a few Members so, on the basis of what I have seen, I ask Members to speak for four to five minutes—an informal application of a time limit—and we will see how we get on.

09:44

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr Western. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for representing his constituents so well in this debate, and in particular, given the horror story that he shared, I express my condolences to Sara’s family.

Colleagues may have heard York’s story, but those who have not are about to hear it. The hon. Member for Woking was right to say that York moved from the position of “requires improvement” to “outstanding” in one go. I have to point out to the Minister that our local authority has the lowest level of funding per capita after the fair funding review, which does not seem fair at all because we are not the most affluent place by far.

The catalyst for the change in York comes down to two people: Martin Kelly, the director of children’s services, and his deputy, Danielle Johnson. I pay tribute to them. If hon. Members want to learn about York’s journey and the outstanding achievements that have occurred, the director and his deputy are open to dialogue. At the heart of the change was a new practice model with a committed workforce. We moved from 45 agency staff to zero, on the basis that if someone was not committed to the service and the children, they had no place in the authority. A pioneering approach puts children at the heart, builds on co-production, innovates for change and evidences practice. Through reform, costs have been cut by £7 million. Through co-ordination across services, the local authority has built stability and made a difference to every child.

We are desperate to do more—to reshape services, drive change and press ahead with transformations. The model moves from transactional to relational, risk avoidance to risk management, safe certainty to safe uncertainty—that is just about being honest about risk—and short-term interventions to long-term outcomes. Every decision has the child at its centre and considers the long-term implications of each decision, developing resilience all the time. Its strength-based approach seeks out every opportunity for the child and is summed up,

“Our children belong in York, connected to the people they love and supported by the network around them.”

But the journey does not end there. A child or young person’s holistic needs should be met in one place, so here are my asks of the Minister. Mental health services must be integrated around the child, not separated in the child and adolescent mental health services, which is failing all our young people. We have a SEND hub in the city where all children can gather, along with parents and professionals, in an integrated way, but we need CAMHS as part of the conversation. That will remove the need for a diagnosis, because a label does not describe where a child is on multiple spectrums. We must have fully integrated support around a child’s needs.

We need to start young, so I urge the Minister to put the investment into the 1,001 critical days. We know that in the case of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, for instance, we need to ensure at the very start of life that we have got the right interventions around the parents, including during the nine months of pregnancy. We will then have a stronger opportunity to prevent care orders in future and ensure that there is appropriate antenatal care, as well as comprehensive support for the family.

We also need funding in York. I mentioned how low our funding is. We have eight areas in the lowest quintile of deprivation in our city. Everyone, including Ministers, talks about how York is a beautiful city, about the Vikings, and about the walls and the Minster, but that does not make a child safer. In fact, many of the children have never seen those assets, and many are struggling because we simply do not have the resources we need. When it comes to per capita funding, York is in the lowest 25 for schools and 23rd for higher needs funding. Our city needs more funding, because a child in York is worth as much as a child in Camden, and yet we have about a third of the funding to do things. More than that, we want to be able to push our model further, provide more services for parents and ensure that we can keep the family together, which is our objective as we seriously reduce the number of children in social care.

We also want to drive our model of good practice further, so that we can draw on the world’s best practice and bring it into York, particularly in the early years—those pre-school years—to support parents on their journey as well. We must work with a child’s developmental pathway, not against it. We therefore need to ensure that we have the right pedagogies in place. I was disappointed earlier in the week in the debate on play in education. To work with children we really need to understand the way that the mind develops.

My plea to the Minister is to look through a prism of poverty. We have significant areas of poverty in York, and yet if we put in the right investment, we know that we can make a difference to our children.

We are ambitious in York, and I am proud to showcase all that we have done, but we desperately want to go further. We know we can do it—in York, we have always been a laboratory of social change, a pioneering spirit built within all of us—and therefore I urge Government to work with us to deliver more not only of the Government’s objectives but of our own, for our children.

09:50

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. As of March 2025, nearly nine in 10 London councils were rated good or outstanding for children’s services. By contrast, in the south-west of England, the figure is barely half that.

Children’s services in Devon have faced serious challenges over recent years and in May 2025, Ofsted’s full inspection of Devon county council’s children’s services judged the service to be inadequate overall. That means that too many children experiencing neglect or abuse did not receive timely or effective help, too many plans drifted, and too many care leavers did not get consistent support.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) and I agree with almost all of what he said. For me, I want to make it plain that I would not criticise the people working in children’s services, because I feel that individual social workers are a bit like goalkeepers: all too often, rather than praising their work for the children they save, we condemn and lambast the individuals who have cases where things go wrong. Yes, there is failure, and yes, there are real errors of judgment at the local authority level, but my sense is that the fault and the blame—indeed, the sin that my hon. Friend points to—lie with the perpetrators.

Devon’s position is serious, but it is not static. In formal correspondence with Devon county council in December 2025, the Minister for Children and Families set out the Government’s position on the progress being made in improving children’s services in Devon. He explicitly noted the “improving picture” and the

“increasing evidence of improvement to social work practice”,

linked to stronger prioritisation and support from corporate and political leadership. He also pointed to Ofsted’s recent monitoring work, which recognised that

“the range and impact of support provided to care leavers in Devon has improved since the last inspection.”

I appreciate that the Minister said that from a place of caring deeply for children’s services, not just as a political leader, but as someone who has been a leader in this sector for well over a decade.

Workforce instability in children’s services in Devon, especially the high use of agency staff, has held the service back. Reports in 2023 show that about 50% of children’s social work posts were filled by agency staff, compared with the national average of about 18%. In Devon, a permanent children’s social worker costs roughly £23 per hour, while agency staff cost about £44 per hour. Closing that gap and reducing the reliance on agency staff is clearly urgent.

Devon has taken measurable steps in the past year to build stability in children’s services and to reduce reliance on agency staff. According to Devon county council’s latest People First strategy, the number of agency team managers has been cut by about 40% from 20 to 12 as of last April, improving leadership within frontline teams. Devon’s assessed and supported year in employment programme for newly qualified social workers, and the county council social care academy, continue to recruit and support newly qualified social workers, with roles actively advertised throughout 2025 and tailored development pathways to encourage permanent careers in the county, rather than the short-term contracts that we have seen before.

I will now talk about residential care.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Somerset council tells me that providers of residential homes for children in care can charge as much as £8,000 to £15,000 per week for one child, because they know that the council will have no other choice. Somerset council, however, is making good progress with its non-profit Homes and Horizons partnership. Does my hon. Friend agree that, to tackle profiteering companies, councils need more support to disrupt the market that provides residential homes?

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. His situation is similar to ours: in Devon, it is reckoned that those profiteering companies make a complete packet. Local Government Association analysis suggests that 20 of the largest independent children’s social care providers in England took in about £1.6 billion in fees in 2021-22. Roughly 19% of that—about £310 million—was recorded as profit. Plainly, there is too much money leaving this sector and not doing the right thing for children.

Devon’s children’s services are improving, but Devon’s children deserve services that are not just improving but consistently good, and moving towards outstanding.

[Matt Western (in the Chair)]

The four to five minutes was not kept to as tightly as I would have hoped, so we will have to go to a formal four minutes for speeches because of the number of Members who have indicated that they wish to speak.

09:55

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I commend the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for the compassionate way that he spoke, and the dignity that he brought to Sara’s memory. When we have to speak about horrific cases in this place, it can go one of two ways, and I think that he did justice to the young woman today.

Stoke-on-Trent city council is often at the top of league tables that councils would wish to be at the bottom of, and at the bottom of league tables that they would wish to be at the top of. That is a structural failing that we have had for many years, and our children’s services are no different. Although they were rated inadequate in 2019, they now require improvement to be good, and that is partly because of the leadership that has been shown since the 2013 local elections. It is normally us and Hartlepool that are No. 1 in terms of the number of children in care as an absolute number, but also per capita—per 10,000. It is a financial drain on our council, which the Minister has been made aware of, not least because I have told him.

This year, one in three pounds that the council spends will be spent on children’s services. Compared with our statistical neighbours, 1,086 children in care is a phenomenally large number. It is an anomaly that we cannot get to the bottom of. At this point, I want to commend the work of our chief executive at the council, Jon Rouse, who has worked nationally on these issues and has deployed as many techniques as we can muster to get that number down, but it has remained stubbornly high. It fluctuates around 1,000, but that just means that we are spending millions of pounds on children in care at a time when money is tight.

The Government have helped; since the 2023-34 budget—if the Government sign off on this year’s request—the council will have received around £70 million of exceptional financial support to balance the budget, to deal with the overspend driven exclusively by the demand in children’s services. We cannot work out why so many young people are being put into the care system. Our city does have poverty—a lot of places have poverty—and social capital is not high. We are not that dissimilar to our statistical neighbours, and yet our numbers are significant and not coming down at the rate that we want.

The Minister is not immune to the challenges that places such as Stoke face. He knows that there have been complex issues with small local authorities in densely populated urban areas where there are underlying socioeconomic factors, but that should not be a reason to accept these high numbers. It is bad for the city, but also for the young people in care; we all know that care-experienced young people tend to have lower social capital and lower opportunities, and their life chances are disproportionately impacted by the fact that they go into care. We need to work out a solution to that.

I have raised my asks to the Minister privately, but I want to put them on the record today. Can we look at a rigorous partnership working board for Stoke-on-Trent that brings together Government, local authorities and the expertise we have heard about from Members today, to get to the root cause of the problem in Stoke-on-Trent? I will be taking up the offer from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) to speak to her officials about how they have made their remarkable progress, because if we can learn from that, we absolutely will.

Are the Government willing to look at a rigorous, potentially academic-led investigation into the drivers of social care need in Stoke-on-Trent, so that we can get to the cause, as well as the solution? Can we talk about Ofsted? The city council was doing remarkably well, and then the Ofsted judgment came in and said that we were managing too much risk, so we instantly had to go back to a risk-averse situation that has driven those numbers up. Those are my three asks, and I thank Members for their time and attention.

09:59

[Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate. He made a powerful speech on behalf of his vulnerable constituents, and vulnerable people across the county of Surrey and beyond.

The central failing I want to highlight is this: Surrey county council—my constituency’s local authority for children’s services—repeatedly chooses not to use its statutory powers even when children are unsafe, out of education or legally entitled to support. Children and families across Guildford are feeling the consequences. Schools are often the first to spot safeguarding concerns. Headteachers and designated safeguarding leads do not raise alarms lightly. They do so because they are often the only professionals with consistent daily insight into a child’s wellbeing.

At a meeting last year, a headteacher told us that safeguarding thresholds in Surrey are far higher than in comparable authorities. Referrals stall and the council is reluctant to move from voluntary support to formal safeguarding processes. That is often justified by the family resilience model. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a strengths-based approach, but the issue is how it is applied.

One headteacher at the meeting described, with visible emotion, a child in her school showing clear signs of neglect and abuse. The headteacher followed safeguarding procedures and referred the case to Surrey but, instead of investigating, the council informed the parents that a safeguarding concern had been raised and the parents removed the child from the school. That headteacher told us that she lies awake at night not knowing where that child is or whether they are safe. That is not an isolated incident. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking referred to Sara Sharif, the most tragic example in Surrey.

Those safeguarding failures are deeply linked to failures in education. In an example from my constituency, a looked-after child is approaching a critical educational transition, but approval for an appropriate placement has been delayed because that child is in temporary accommodation outside Surrey due to a shortage of placements. Despite Surrey being the corporate parent, it treated geography as a barrier rather adapting the system. There are many other examples I could share.

I have several questions for the Minister but, given the time, I will write to him. Today, I simply want to ask whether he will commit to reviewing whether Surrey county council is meeting its statutory safeguarding educational duties, particularly in relation to thresholds for intervention. Children in Surrey need a system that acts without hesitation when their safety, welfare or education is at risk. I urge the Government to do all they can to ensure Surrey county council meets its legal responsibilities. I fully support my hon. Friend the Member for Woking’s call for the Government to intervene in Surrey to keep children safe.

10:02

[John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for making a powerful speech.

As a foster carer, a member of an adoption panel and a former lead member of a tier 1 local authority, I have seen at first hand the damage that austerity has caused to local authorities across the country, in particular to children’s services. The lack of resource and support has contributed to the number of children in care rocketing. That in turn has created a placement sufficiency crisis in children’s social care. The number of children in residential care more than doubled between 2010 and 2024. That has presented extra pressures on authorities, as children have to be routinely placed at a distance from their local area. Every day that the previous Government were in power, an average of 140 children—equivalent to nearly five full classrooms—entered poverty.

We now have a Minister for Children and Families who understands the problems we face, as he delivered the independent review of children’s social care. I will focus on some of the changes Labour has made to improve children’s services thus far. First, the continued roll-out of the Mockingbird programme, which brings new foster carers together with those who are more experienced, helping to create an extended family-like community around foster families, providing advice, expertise and support.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a group of foster carers about their experiences. Many told me of the positive impact the Mockingbird scheme had had on them. Therefore, I welcome the additional £40 million that the Government are investing in children’s social care, which is helping to ensure that programmes such as Mockingbird continue to be rolled out across the country. If we cannot attract enough new foster carers—and that is always a challenge—then we need to keep hold of and support the ones we have.

Secondly, the Government are bringing in important changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will protect local authorities from paying exorbitant fees to large, privately run children’s home providers. As I have said previously, many more children are living in residential care due to the placement sufficiency crisis. As has been mentioned this morning, in 2022 the largest 20 providers of children’s residential placements collectively made £310 million in profits. That was all off the back of the public purse. It is therefore welcome that, as a result of the Bill, large children’s placement providers will have to give regular financial information to a newly created financial oversight scheme. I am glad that the Bill will give the Government the power, if necessary, to cap the profits of private children’s home providers.

There are many other positive changes to highlight, including those ensuring greater oversight on home schooling for children subject to a child protection order. The roll-out of the Staying Close programme will give care leavers from residential care—the number of whom has grown significantly—extra support to stay in housing and to get education and work. New requirements will ensure that all local authorities offer family group decision making—a move that will keep more children out of care altogether, and which in turn will save authorities money. We are opening new Best Start family hubs in all English local authorities—something that we have really missed.

Taken together, the changes will alleviate pressures on local authority children’s services and give greater protection to our children and greater support to carers. It will, of course, take time for many of these changes to be felt. However, having been on the frontlines of children’s social care for more than two decades, I know that these changes will make a real and tangible difference to our most vulnerable and at-risk children.

15:33

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate and for his passionate and heartfelt speech.

I want to begin by acknowledging that Kirklees council has improved significantly since previous inspections. The most recent inspection in 2024 judged it as good overall for children’s services, and it has been allocated extra funding in 2026-27 to try and address some of the findings. However, the message to the Government is that the councils that have done all they can to get from requires improvement to good need extra support in funding and resources to then go and push further to get to outstanding.

Today, I want to focus on one area that may not otherwise be raised. We have heard that the pressures on local authorities are intense and growing. In Dewsbury and Batley, around 300 children are being raised in kinship care—cared for by grandparents, aunts, uncles or close friends who step in during moments of crisis. Alongside that, over 100 children are currently in local authority care in Kirklees. Importantly, Kirklees has lower numbers of looked after children than many of our neighbouring councils, reflecting long-standing preventive approaches and sustained investment in early help and family support.

We also have a higher proportion of children able to remain with their extended families, with greater use of special guardianship orders, which we know significantly improve outcomes for children. Kinship carers in particular provide a vital service in offering continuity, familiarity and love at a time of upheaval. Yet too often, they do so with insufficient support. Across Yorkshire and Humber, almost half of kinship carers rate the support they receive from local authorities as poor or very poor. Alarmingly, 12% say they may not be able to continue caring for their kinship children in the next year if circumstances do not improve. That will put almost 2,000 children at risk of entering formal care in Yorkshire and Humber. That is not just a human tragedy, but also a financial one.

Evidence shows that, for every 100 children supported in well-resourced kinship care rather than local authority care, the state saves £4 million a year, while improving long-term outcomes for those children. Nationally, children’s social care reforms are widely welcomed and have been shaped by the expertise of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. The renewed focus on multi-agency family support, early intervention and prevention is particularly welcome.

The proposed investment, through the Families First Partnership programme and wider reforms, has the potential to make a real difference, strengthening our ability to help families stay together where safe, deploy evidence-based interventions and deliver high-quality social care. But reform must be matched with sustained funding and genuine cross-Government co-ordination alongside real, sustained support on the ground. That means investing in early intervention, strengthening kinship care support, improving placement sufficiency and ensuring joined-up working across services.

My final point to the Minister is that, in the first year of being an MP, I raised the automatic off-rolling of children after 20 days of absence without authorisation. That really needs to be looked at—there needs to be a formal meeting and a review of why that child was out before just off-rolling them, because that can create safeguarding issues.

10:11

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. I congratulate the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) on securing the debate, telling Sara’s story so powerfully and allowing us the space to discuss one of our most important public services.

First, I pay tribute to everyone who works in children’s services across our country, but particularly in my two local authorities of Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland. Before entering this place, I was privileged to be the cabinet member for children in Redcar and Cleveland. I was impressed, every single day, by the extraordinary staff working in that department—under immense pressure, as has been discussed. I often used to say that the toddlers who lost early intervention services in the first wave of austerity were now teenagers coming into care with complex challenges, and I think we are still seeing that today.

I want to highlight the most recent Ofsted inspection in Redcar and Cleveland, which was published just this morning. In 2022, the department was rated as requiring improvement across all areas, and it was a top priority for the Labour council that came in in 2023 to turn that around. I was proud of Ofsted’s recognition of the work we were doing on that front in 2023 and, today, I am very pleased to see that Ofsted have rated Redcar and Cleveland as good, with strong practice and swift support for children and families. That is a big step forward, and a real credit to all the staff, the directors—previously Kathryn Boulton, and her successor Danielle Swainston—and the cabinet member responsible, councillor Bill Suthers. His leadership has been steady and co-operative, and he deserves recognition for that. It is obviously not the end of the journey, but it is a very important milestone in making sure that we serve the children we all have a duty towards.

That is especially welcome given the challenging context that councils face, which we have discussed today. The Institute for Government recently found that nearly every local authority is overspending on children’s social care, largely because placements with private care providers have become much more expensive. It has been described by the Competition and Markets Authority as a “broken” market, and it needs addressing. Private providers extract high margins while councils raid reserves and increase council tax, disproportionately in areas of high deprivation, just to keep children safe. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) mentioned Hartlepool; across the Tees Valley we have a cluster of local authorities under extraordinary pressure in this area, and no one in this Chamber thinks that that is a sensible way to run such an important public service.

There are answers; I welcome the new grant funding, the Best Start family hubs and the Families First Partnership programme. Important changes are coming forward from the Government, but we can do more to disrupt that broken market. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has given the Department powers to act. We can cap private providers’ profits and set up regional care co-operatives, as recommended by the MacAlister review—which the Minister, as its author, is very well acquainted with. That can improve commissioning and increase in-house and not-for-profit provision. In the Tees Valley, council leaders are exploring that idea together, to stop competing with each other, pool our buying power and shape a more stable local market to get better value for children and taxpayers.

I am convinced that this is a necessary step in our region, and it sits alongside work on prevention, family help and a more stable workforce. I hope that we can look at this. With the right national framework, the right investment and the confidence to try new models, we can build a children’s social care system that is stable, compassionate and worthy of the young people it serves.

10:19

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western, for what I think is the third time in three days—I feel very blessed. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) on securing this important debate, on his incredibly moving speech and on all his hard work and advocacy in this area. Woking is extremely lucky to have somebody fighting its corner as he does.

Too many families in rural areas face a system that they feel is too distant, too fragmented and increasingly under strain. Local authorities’ budgets are under immense pressure, particularly in rural areas, where delivering support is inherently more expensive. Delivering children’s services in rural areas costs more, sustainable buildings are harder to find, connectivity is weaker and long distances make everything from early intervention to crisis support more complex and expensive.

The funding formulas rarely account for those challenges. Per child expenditure varies hugely between authorities, with some spending three and a half times more per child than other areas. I welcome the Government’s commitment to invest £500 million to rebuild family services under the Best Start umbrella and the creation of Best Start family hubs, but children in rural constituencies like West Dorset need safe, accessible family spaces for children’s services to take place. Local authorities should be empowered to retrofit vacant buildings, such as the stationmaster’s house at Sherborne station, into family hubs that meet local needs, rather than centralised services that can be miles away.

I also welcome the extension of the adoption and special guardianship support fund into 2026-27, but short-term extensions are not enough. Children with complex needs cannot thrive without the certainty of long-term therapeutic support. The Koru Project, a local charity providing vital support in Dorset, warns that without long-term funding, children cannot receive the care they need. It has shared heartbreaking cases: a young girl in her fourth care placement who relies on her therapist as her only stable relationship; and another child, with severe additional needs, who sees therapy as her only safe space.

Professionals agree that, in complex cases, long-term Government support is vital. One constituent, Brenda, is a blind adopter raising a teenager with FASD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and developmental trauma. Specialist therapy funded through the scheme has helped her daughter to regulate her emotions and engage with her education, health and care plan. Kate and Dave, who care for two children with overlapping needs, face constant anxiety because, although assessments can be funded, the ongoing therapy that professionals say is essential cannot.

Local authorities must have stable, predictable funding and proper support and guidance from central Government to meet those challenges. That means recognising rurality in the funding formula, ending short-term fixes and ensuring that access to services does not depend on a postcode. Children in West Dorset and in rural communities across the country deserve services that are stable, accessible and fair.

10:17

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western.

For obvious reasons, we often hear in this House about failure, notably in the tragic case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster)—I congratulate him on securing this important debate—but I will focus on a local authority that has been able to turn its children’s services around. In 2017, a BBC report warned that children in Powys were being put at risk because of serious failings in the council’s children’s services. Inspectors found missed safeguarding opportunities, weak oversight and poor follow-up—concerns so serious that Welsh Government intervention was actively discussed.

That history matters, because it gives context to the progress that is now being made. Since 2022, under Liberal Democrat leadership of Powys county council, there has been a focus on rebuilding children’s services from the ground up—strengthening leadership, supporting the workforce and putting children’s safety back at the centre of decision making.

That work is now being recognised independently. A recent external assurance review concluded that Powys children’s services are safe and improving, with no serious failings identified. The reviewer specifically highlighted stable leadership, strong advocacy for children through independent reviewing officers, and high-quality performance reporting—precisely those areas that were found wanting in 2017. Staff report feeling supported and proud to work in the service, and Powys social workers and safeguarding professionals have been recognised at regional awards for their work protecting children and involving young people directly in shaping services.

No one is pretending that the job is finished. Pressures remain, particularly around funding and placements, but the direction of travel is clear and welcome. Powys has moved from a service once described as putting children at risk to one independently judged to be safe and improving. That is what sustained leadership looks like, and it is a positive example that this House should be willing to recognise.

The overlying point is that vulnerable children need a strong state to look after them, and functioning children’s services that keep them safe are essential. That is why I hold the Conservatives and Reform in complete contempt, because they do not believe in our state. They have spent the last 40 years bashing and cutting the state; they attack it over and over again, spreading their cynical poison that a small state is desirable. Well, a small state will end up endangering our nation’s children. It is essential that these services are funded properly and well to keep our children safe. That is why I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat, and I am proud of what Powys county council has achieved over the past few years.

10:21

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for setting the scene incredibly well. Our children’s services are so important, and the story he told has been well illustrated in the papers. It is almost inconceivable how that young child went through such brutality and violence. The story moved us all, and I thank him for sharing it with this Chamber; it is important for what we need to achieve. It could have been prevented, which is why this issue is incredibly important.

Local children’s services are essential to support, protect and improve the wellbeing of children, young people and families before any minor or moderate problems escalate into crisis situations. The early help approach has important benefits for parents and the community. I always try to give a Northern Ireland perspective to debates. I am mindful that the Minister does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland, but I like to add some comments to illustrate the problems we have and some of the helpful things we are doing. I will try to be on the positive side.

In Northern Ireland, and especially in my Strangford constituency, numerous services go above and beyond at all levels to serve children. The Ards Arena youth resource centre provides activities for confidence building, peer interaction and safe community engagement. There is also multi-agency support through the Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership, which brings together statutory, voluntary and community organisations to improve outcomes for children and families.

That is not to mention the Newtownards child social services team based in James Street in the town centre of Newtownards, the major town of my constituency. I know many of the staff personally, and the contribution they make to the lives of young people does not go unnoticed. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) referred to staff and what they do. It is important that we remember the many staff members who make fantastic contributions, and their focus must be on the perpetrators, as he rightly said, to ensure that issues are addressed.

As of 31 March last year, 22,243 children were known to social services as a child in need, which means they are assessed as requiring services to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development, or to prevent significant impairment. The pressure on local children’s services is intense, and support can range from marital break-ups to missing children and children with deteriorating mental health, or even children who have had to be removed from the family home. Some of those are desperate cases that certainly worry us.

Protecting children’s wellbeing and ensuring the necessary support is there before a crisis is critical to ensuring that young people feel safe and do not reach a point where they require an emergency service. We must strengthen families and provide services to keep young people’s lives stable. Research suggests that preventive services, community youth centres and support programmes improve health, education and social outcomes, so let us do our bit to ensure that those services are sustainable and fit for purpose.

Local support and children’s services play a proactive role in ensuring that children in my constituency and across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can thrive. Modern society and social issues can be hard enough for young people to navigate. The pressures on young children and families are incredible, so we must ensure they have the support they need. I want to do that, other right hon. and hon. Members want to do that, and I know the Minister wants to do it too.

I look to the Minister for a commitment to children’s services across the United Kingdom. Perhaps he can have some discussions with the Northern Ireland Assembly to see how we can do things better together.

10:25

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate and for his tireless dedication to ensuring that what happened to Sara Sharif never, ever happens to another child again.

We have heard a range of contributions today, and I want to start by saying that children’s services in local authorities across the country play a vital, statutory role in ensuring that all children, including the most vulnerable, receive the support and education that every child deserves and needs. Like the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) and my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), I pay tribute to those working on the frontline, who are often overworked, underpaid and under-thanked. They deserve our thanks, notwithstanding the systemic and structural failures.

As many hon. Members said, many local authorities face deep funding challenges. For some local authorities, that is exacerbated by what has been called the fair funding review. I fear we will see short-term decisions that ultimately cost the taxpayer more in the long run. The Liberal Democrats have always argued that we should see spending on supporting our children as an investment in our future—our society’s future and our economy’s future.

I will return to funding, but I now turn to where my hon. Friend the Member for Woking started. I listened to his powerful words about Sara’s story with tears in my eyes, and I was reminded that I felt similarly in May 2022, when the then Education Secretary—one Nadhim Zahawi—gave a statement in the main Chamber following the brutal deaths of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes. As is always the case after such horrendous stories, we said, “Never again,” and he promised that lessons would be learned.

When the Children’s Commissioner gave evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee last year, she said:

“Every time a child dies, we give exactly the same set of recommendations, including better multi-agency working and better join-up, yet time and again”—

including after Victoria Climbié, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Sara Sharif—

“we find ourselves saying the same things.”—[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 44, Q94.]

The Government must take action, and I welcome the fact that they are taking a number of steps in the right direction—I am very happy to acknowledge that. Last year, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) and I met Professor Alexis Jay to discuss the findings of her review into child sexual abuse. She impressed upon me two points: the importance of a child protection authority and the importance of data sharing.

I am grateful that the Minister has now announced a child protection authority, and I hope he will set out a bit more on the timelines and implementation. On data sharing, which was so critical in Sara’s case, I welcome some of the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, not least the introduction of a single unique identifier. The Liberal Democrats strongly support that because we believe that proper data sharing between services will improve child safeguarding. I hope the Government will continue to address some of the concerns that have been raised about privacy and data sharing, given the Government’s record at times of data loss and being hacked. I raised with the Home Secretary a few weeks ago my fear that there are people outside this place who are scaremongering and suggesting that this is digital ID for children, when actually it is about how we safeguard children, provide better services, and commission better services and research to support them.

Another measure in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently in the other place, is the children not in school register. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, the Liberal Democrats have long supported such a register, so that vulnerable children do not disappear from the system. However, during the passage of the Bill we have repeatedly set out our concerns about the amount of information that has to be collected for that register. This is not just about the impact and intrusion on families; even the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, in oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, was circumspect about the amount of detailed information that home-educating parents will be expected to supply. I have talked to councillors and local government officials, and they are worried about the huge burden this will put on local authorities in meeting their new duties. If the Government are going to put these duties on local authorities, funding needs to follow, so that they are properly resourced to collect the data and implement the register.

That brings me back to funding. As we have heard, underfunding is a consistent theme in children’s services. I talked about children being an investment. Unfortunately, politics is such that Governments think in electoral cycles. The return on an investment in a young child is often not seen for 15 or 20 years, so it is very hard to make the case for that investment to the Treasury. The Minister has my sympathy and support in that.

In his independent review of children’s social care, the Minister said:

“What we have currently is a system increasingly skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise.”

I recognise that the Government announced a children’s social care prevention grant last year, but I am afraid that money pales into insignificance when we hear so starkly today from my hon. Friends, many of whom represent rural constituencies that are seeing deep funding cuts through the reallocation of local government funding following the fair funding review, that the most vulnerable will lose out.

It is not just rural areas, but London constituencies, too. Government Members often say to me, “You represent an affluent area.” Yes, on the whole I do, but that does not mean that deprivation, need and vulnerable children do not exist. My local authority in Richmond is one of the worst hit in the country—it will lose about £47 million of Government funding over the next four years—and it is those vulnerable children who will miss out. The pots of funding the Government are making available for children’s services are welcome, but when we offset that against the losses, we are going to see children suffer. It is a real shame that we are seeing this money taken away in London, because between 2010 and 2023, London boroughs saw an 11% reduction in the number of looked-after children, while England as a whole experienced a 30% increase. The changes to the children and young people’s services formula in London risk undoing the very good work we have seen London boroughs do to give our children the best start in life.

Obviously, I will always argue for more money to be spent on children’s services, but I recognise that there is not a magic money tree, and we face a difficult fiscal situation, not least as a result of the previous Conservative Government. There are ways that savings can be made. Early intervention is one of them, and I know the Minister is very supportive of that approach. There are a number of great measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, such as family group decision making. I ask the Minister to look at the amendments tabled in the other place by my noble Friend Baroness Tyler, who wants to ensure that local authorities have a duty to support parents after a child is taken away from them, so that they not only overcome the trauma and grief but make a lasting change. The data shows that half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who have already been through proceedings with another child. We need to take action early to prevent the same thing from happening again.

A number of Labour and Liberal Democrat Members have talked about the eye-watering cost of private social care providers and fostering agencies, which are bleeding local authorities dry. I welcome the backstop power in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill for the Government to put a profit cap on children’s social care providers. I urge the Minister, as I have again and again: please extend the profit cap to private special schools, which are also bleeding our local authorities dry. When one school charges more than £100,000 a year in fees plus transport, while state-maintained alternatives do it for £25,000 for the same cohort, that is an obvious place that the Government can save money. The answer is capital investment in state-run specialist provision, in the same way that it is in state-run children’s care homes. I know the Government have already started on that, but they need to go further.

[Edward Morello]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful point. It reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my council about a group of 10 to 15 parents with autistic children who definitely did not need to be in specialist schools and needed local provision. Because of the different pots of money, it was easier for the council to pay a private provider £100,000 and have the children travel 20 to 30 miles, because it could not afford the capital cost of £1.5 million to set up a local school. It wanted to do that, but it did not have the money, which disadvantages parents who now have kids travelling vast distances.

[Munira Wilson]

It is a familiar story, and I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I am getting an indication from the Chair that I am already overrunning, so I will try to cut my last points short. The Minister is aware that I have long campaigned on kinship care. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill takes welcome steps forward, but there is much further to go. As he knows, putting a child with a family member in the short term is not just better for their long-term outcomes; it would save local authorities around 50% of the cost of putting them in care, even if they gave kinship carers allowances on a par with foster carers. That has to be an urgent cost-saving intervention. The Minister must also restore the adoption and special guardianship support fund grants, as we heard so clearly from my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), who talked about the long-term impact.

I will conclude by quoting the Minister’s own words at him. In his review, he stated:

“How we care for our children is nothing short of a reflection of our values as a country.”

We have heard today that we are falling short on that. We stand ready to work across parties to ensure that his vision becomes reality.

10:36

[Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate, and for his powerful and thoughtful contribution, particularly in relation to the tragic case of Sara Sharif.

We have heard thoughtful contributions from right across the House this morning. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke passionately about her city, about sharing best practice and about the importance of the first 1,001 days of a child’s life, which are critical. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) talked about the variation in children’s services around the country and how it is a postcode lottery, and in particular about the difference between London and the south-west. It is heartening to hear that services in his Devon constituency are improving.

There were calls for joined-up thinking from right across the House, led by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) supported the hon. Member for Woking by raising concerns on behalf of her constituents regarding the quality of care from Surrey county council. I was particularly moved by the personal commitment to looked-after children by the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby), who brought his experience to bear.

Themes we have heard from right across the House include support for kinship carers, the need for long-term funding, the lack of places, and the fact that we need processes in order to learn the vital lessons of the past. I associate His Majesty’s loyal Opposition with those themes and, in particular, with Members’ tributes to frontline staff. There may be systemic issues, but we know that frontline staff do their best under difficult constraints. They are overworked and underpaid, and deserve all of our support.

I think the nature of need in the country is shocking. Local authorities in England are supporting around 400,000 children in need. That is roughly one in 30 children. As of the end of March last year, around 49,000 children were subject to child protection plans, and more than 80,000 were in local authority care. Those figures should give us pause; one in 30 children is the equivalent of a child in every classroom. But this debate is not about numbers; it is about children—the most vulnerable, at-risk children in our communities. It is not about statistics, but about lives—and, in the case of Sara Sharif, a life lost.

Sara was living in Woking when she was murdered by her father and stepmother. The hon. Member for Woking has rightly been a passionate advocate for change, particularly since the publication of the local child safeguarding practice review. I commend him for that work. Nine of the 15 recommendations in the review were wholly or partially local, and I echo the call for Surrey county council to implement them swiftly but thoroughly. It is our responsibility in this place to ensure that where national recommendations are made, children’s services are properly equipped to meet their statutory duties. I welcome the work that has begun, but there is more to do.

Nationally, the scale of pressures on children’s services is clear. According to the Local Government Association, the number of children in care is 18% higher than a decade ago. Councils now carry out more than 600 child protection investigations every single day. But despite increased budgeted spending, councils have been overspending on children’s social care by an average of 14% each year, and planned budgets for 2025-26 show a further 10% rise in costs. At the heart of this lies a fundamental problem: a shortage of high-quality placements for looked-after children. Demand continues to outstrip supply, driving up costs and putting intense pressure on social care, SEND services and care leaver support.

Under the previous Conservative Government, the proportion of local authority children’s services rated good or outstanding rose from 24% in 2015 to 60% in 2024, according to the Institute for Government. That progress matters, but it is equally true that around a third of local authorities still require improvement or are judged inadequate. This is about children’s safety. Having listened to hon. Members from across the political spectrum, I hope I speak for many in saying that we all want the Government to succeed in this area. Getting children’s services right underpins so many outcomes and, most importantly, helps prevent tragedies like Sara’s from ever happening again.

The hon. Member for Woking may know that part of my constituency is in the Surrey county council area. The council has committed to implementing all the local recommendations in full. I share some of his concerns about the culture in that team and the need for joined-up services, so that children do not fall between the cracks. Encouragingly, Ofsted’s most recent inspection, in 2025, highlighted some improvements at the front door of services. Inspectors noted that referrals to the children’s single point of access received “timely and proportionate” responses, and that there was effective partnership working with the police, particularly in cases of domestic abuse and missing children. Multi-agency strategy meetings were found to be “timely and well attended” leading to considered decisions. Those are vital steps forward and I welcome them.

I have met the new lead member, Councillor Jonathan Hulley, to discuss this matter. I have a great deal of personal confidence in him, and he recognises the scale of change required in this area. I was heartened to see that a motion calling for an independent expert review of the improvements made at Surrey county council following Sara’s death was passed unanimously by the council last month, with cross-party support. That independent scrutiny is essential to providing confidence that reforms are effective, lasting and properly focused. I will be watching closely for its outcomes, as I know the hon. Member for Woking will be, and I hope that we can all embrace the cross-party approach of our county colleagues across Surrey and within the council to drive sustained improvement.

As well as Surrey, in my constituency I also deal with children’s services delivered by the royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and by Slough borough council—I do not know whether I am unique in having three different children’s services. Ofsted rated the royal borough’s services as good in October 2024. By contrast, Slough has been inadequate since early 2023, although subsequent focus visits, including in July 2024, found that children in need and those on child protection plans were receiving timely and appropriate services.

These neighbouring authorities illustrate a simple but uncomfortable truth: children’s services remain a postcode lottery. Where services are well led, outcomes can and do improve under the existing framework; where they struggle, the causes are often leadership, capability and delivery on the ground, not the absence of legislative powers. That is why we should be careful and cautious about assuming that more legislation on its own will necessarily lead to better outcomes for children.

I wish to talk briefly about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which continues its passage in the other place. I welcome the Government’s acceptance of several amendments responding to the recommendations from the Sara Sharif review, particularly proposals to pilot meetings with parents before deregistration from school, and the option of a visit within 15 days of a child starting home education. However, there remain serious concerns. As drafted, the Bill would not fully address the specific safeguarding loopholes identified in Sara’s case. Baroness Barran is doing excellent work in the Lords to close those gaps, and I hope that the Government will think again on some of those issues. I welcome the Government’s introduction of unique child identification, as we previously called for. More broadly, the principle of a register of children not in school, as raised by the hon. Member for Woking, has long enjoyed cross-party support. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that.

Education matters and school attendance should be the norm, but parental choice also matters. Elective home education is a legitimate option for many families. As it stands, the Bill does not strike the right balance. I have received numerous representations from constituents concerned that the proposals would place excessive and unnecessary burdens on responsible home-educating families. The requirement to detail exact hours of education, on pain of breaking the law, is particularly intrusive and fails to reflect the reality of flexible home-based learning. Safeguarding measures must be proportionate and focused on identifying genuine risk, not on creating layers of bureaucracy that stigmatise families who are doing the right thing.

I urge the Government to go further in tightening the conditions under which a local authority may withhold consent for elective home education. Government amendment 120 to the Bill, which would apply where a child has been on a child protection plan within the past five years, does not go far enough. Local authorities should also consider whether a child has ever been subject to care proceedings, even where those proceedings did not result in a care order, as tragically was the case with Sara.

If the Bill is to honour its stated purpose, it must focus relentlessly on protecting children at genuine risk, not on sweeping up responsible families into an overly prescriptive system. Getting this right matters; as we have heard today, children’s lives depend on it.

10:46

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing the debate and for his powerful and heartfelt contribution. I have met him on a number of occasions, and I am sure we will continue to meet to discuss these and other related issues.

I express my own deep sorrow at the tragic death of Sara Sharif. By all accounts, Sara was a bright happy girl who should have gone on to enjoy all the things in life she had ahead of her. Instead, her life was brought to a brutal and painful end by the actions of her father and stepmother. In such circumstances, it is small comfort to know that those directly responsible for Sara’s death have been brought to justice and will spend most of the rest of their lives in prison. I pay tribute to all who gave evidence that ultimately proved beyond doubt that her death was the result of lengthy and increasingly sadistic abuse.

We in this place must also reflect on the fact that, as set out in the local child safeguarding practice review, there were opportunities where Sara’s appalling mistreatment could have been identified and stopped. I have already committed to write to the hon. Member for Woking, setting out the Government’s full range of actions in direct response to the recommendations of the LCSPR.

I will take a moment to recognise the hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly praised the fantastic work of Martin Kelly and his team in turning around services in York, beyond simply looking at the Ofsted inspection results. The transformational change for children and families in that city is down to that team’s brilliant work. My hon. Friend also rightly identified the concept of safe uncertainty. As we have heard, we are trying to legislate for and resource a system that needs to act decisively when there is significant harm, and support families where there is not significant harm, but there are concerns. Getting that balance right requires practitioners to occupy a very difficult position of safe uncertainty: not knowing, but holding competing hypotheses and ideas in mind about what might be going on for a family, and doing so in a calm, methodical and skilled way.

The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) made a point about social work judgment, which neatly summarised that reflection. Devon’s performance is an ongoing concern—for far too many years, it has not been able to reach a level of providing good enough services for children and families. I welcome his summary of some of the progress that has been made, in particular in workforce stability. I will keep a close eye on that to ensure that we get Devon to the point where it is no longer under an intervention by the Department—but that intervention will continue for as long as necessary to get services to the place where his residents and the children he represents need them to be. Like many other hon. Members, he mentioned residential care and the concerns about profiteering, which I will return to in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) was absolutely right to highlight the situation in which more than 1,000 children are in care. If we were to take a step back and ask whether some of those children could have grown up with people who already loved them and could keep them safe, if we had the resources and intervention available to support the family network, I am convinced, as he is, that the answer would be yes. I welcome the spirit in which his offer was given; he has raised that offer with me before, which is not being defensive about the challenges that the city faces, but asks whether the Department will take a proactive approach in offering improvement support, doing it in a slightly different way. I confirm to him that yes, we will, and I am happy to have further conversations with him. Similarly, with Ofsted, I wish to ensure that its inspection framework and the chief inspector’s approach are totally in line with the Government reform programme. I am pleased to confirm that such work is very much under way.

The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) wants to write to me about the situations that she raised. I am happy to look into them. She is also right to raise the crucial role of education as part of that partnership for safeguarding children.

As a foster carer, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) knows better than anyone the importance of getting fostering right, so that we do not need to rely unnecessarily on residential care, with all the consequences of that. He was right to highlight the amazing work of Mockingbird constellations to support foster carers. In the coming days, I urge him to keep a close eye on any announcements that may be welcomed positively on both those fronts.

The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) rightly highlighted the progress that has been made in Kirklees council and stressed the need to fund further reform, which is the action that the Government are taking with £2.4 billion to roll out the Families First programme. He made a point about off-rolling and children not on the school register, which I will return to directly in a moment.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) in congratulating the local Labour team and the children’s social care staff there on their work to turn around those services. Like him, I want to take action to disrupt the broken care market. I encourage local partners in the Tees valley and across the whole north-east to come forward with proposals for a regional care co-operative, which the Government will certainly consider.

The hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) was right to highlight the rural dimension of much of the debate. I, too, represent a rural constituency, and the way in which children’s social care is delivered needs to reflect the benefits of dispersed access to services. On the adoption and special guardianship support fund, the Government will set out very soon actions to give more certainty and improvements to that fund into the future. I shall keep Members abreast of those updates.

The hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) was absolutely right to highlight the improvements not just in English local authorities, but in his own Welsh constituency in Powys. He rightly highlighted the centrality of advocacy for children, in particular for those in care.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right to highlight the dimensions beyond just England. In fact, the UK Government have brazenly stolen Northern Ireland innovations in support of children in residential care. We look to bring the model of step-down care in fostering in Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK.

I will now answer directly some of the concerns expressed by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). I appreciate the spirit in which she offered to work collaboratively with the Government. She highlighted a number of the issues where the Government have been listening and responding, not least with regard to the children not in school register, where we have tabled a number of amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to address the specific points around burdens for families.

On funding, the hon. Lady quoted my report at me, so I will quote it back at her. I called for £2.6 billion of funding over a four-year reform programme. I am really proud to say that the Government have invested and met that and, in some cases, exceeded it. The Families First programme has received £2.4 billion on top of previous spending, and hundreds of millions of pounds will be spent to improve the care system. The job now is to make sure that that investment is spent well and has a lasting effect.

I recognise the point that the hon. Lady makes about private special schools and the profit cap. We will be setting out the full range of reforms that we will be making to the special educational needs system shortly. We have heard the point that she has made on that. We have also announced £3 billion of capital spending for local authorities across England to increase special educational needs provision.

Finally, the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin), talked about the scope of the children not in school register. I appreciate the cross-party nature of his remarks, but it is a challenging position to occupy to say that there are too many burdens on families while also advocating for amendments to the Bill that would dramatically widen the scope of the children not in school register to more families. The Conservative amendment that he referred to, tabled in the other place, would cover all families who have ever had a child protection investigation. Under a third of those investigations identify significant harm, so it would be a significant widening of scope. I will happily have a further conversation with the hon. Member about that, but I have concerns about the scope.

In the light of the time available, I will briefly summarise the specific action that the Government are taking to address concerns about the child protection system in England. It is absolutely essential that we build a more confident, decisive and expert-led child protection response that learns, not only from Sara’s appalling abuse, but from the experience of many other children who have been referenced in this debate.

We need to make sure that the children not in school register closes the loopholes where families are deliberately seeking to abuse their children. We need to build, as we are, multi-agency child protection teams that bring agencies from across different services, work in lockstep with the police, health services and social care, and make those judgments with only the most expert staff in their units. We are resourcing those and rolling them out as we speak. We need to make sure that well-resourced family help provision is in place for those families.

Nationally, we have just finished the consultation for the child protection authority. The national panel will be transferring to take on that function with a wider scope, in the light of Alexis Jay’s report. My ambition is to make sure that, in as many cases as possible where there is significant harm, we have a group of experts from across different services who can zoom in on that abuse and act decisively with the family court system, so that we have far fewer of these cases in the future. At a national level, my ambition is to make sure that we are able to rewire information sharing, including through the single unique identifier, so that we do not end up in that situation in the first place. I will finish by thanking the hon. Member for Woking for triggering this important debate.

10:58

[Mr Forster]

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Western. I called this debate for several reasons: to highlight the failures of Surrey county council and call for its children’s services to be put into special measures, to push for national changes to keep children safe, and to give parliamentary colleagues the chance to raise their constituency stories about children’s services in local authorities. I believe I have done that.

The Government are taking action. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill should make some progress on child safeguarding, but I urge the Government to go further and faster in taking action to protect vulnerable children. I am pleased by and want to thank everyone for their kind words—I think we have had 15 speakers today. There are 15 recommendations from the Sara Sharif safeguarding report. I will continue to campaign to ensure that Sara’s legacy is that she is the last person who was killed by people who should have loved and cared for her.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.

Animal Testing

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered non-compliance animal testing incidents in laboratories.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. The uncomfortable backdrop of today’s debate is that animal experimentation results in legally sanctioned animal suffering. That is the fact that we must keep at the front of our minds, especially as we pride ourselves on being a nation of animal lovers.

At the 2024 election, I was proud to stand on a manifesto commitment to work towards phasing out animal testing. The stark reality, however, is that more than 5 million animals have been approved for use in experiments over the coming years. Behind that large headline figure lie individual cases that are often deeply distressing, such as primates being subjected to invasive brain surgery. That said, the focus of this debate is not on the legality of licences, contentious though they might be, but on what happens when even the limited legal protections are not upheld. In the current system, legally sanctioned animal suffering is compounded by systemic regulatory failure.

On 12 December 2025, the Home Office Animals in Science Regulation Unit—ASRU—published its 2024 annual report, which provides a window into the shocking suffering that occurs when our animal testing safeguards fail.

[Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Reports have shown animals accidentally crushed in a compacter, a primate dying after being trapped in a cage unnoticed, animals falling out of a vehicle and being lost, and many dying of thirst or hunger or drowning in flooded cages. Does my hon. Friend agree that those cases of non-compliance are unacceptable, that more must be done to avoid them happening in future and that the people who allow them to happen must face the consequences?

[Michael Wheeler]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and of course I agree.

ASRU is tasked with licensing animal experiments and, importantly, ensuring compliance with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. The reason for the Act is to protect animals and to require the use of non-animal alternatives wherever scientifically possible, yet the report shows far too many incidents in which animals were harmed, injured or killed because licence conditions were breached or basic standards were not met. These are not minor administrative errors. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) said, we are talking about animals drowning, starving to death, being left to die without veterinary care or being accidentally disposed of as waste.

In 2024 alone, there were 146 recorded cases of non-compliance in British laboratories. Although that figure represents a modest but welcome decrease from the previous year, the incidents still involve more than 22,000 animals. Analysis from Animal Free Research UK suggests that at least 542 animals either died or were euthanised as a direct result of those failures.

[Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)]

I have also worked alongside Animal Free Research on these issues, including to introduce a private Member’s Bill representing its version of Herbie’s law. As my hon. Friend says, incidents of non-compliance in 2024 involved 22,204 animals. Does he agree with me that the Government’s recent “Replacing animals in science” strategy sets out a pathway for elimination in certain areas, but that in reality we should also still be enforcing compliance across the sector, and where possible, as with Herbie’s law, moving further than we are at the moment?

[Michael Wheeler]

Of course. It will surprise my hon. Friend not at all that I agree. I will come to the wider context and wider solutions, but at this time, although we can look to improve the situation, we must absolutely look to make sure that current regulations are enforced as we speak, and not let slide, because there have been hundreds of animals whose suffering breached the current legal framework and should have been prevented.

Some of the most disturbing incidents involve something as basic as access to food and water. In 2024, there were nine separate cases in which animals were not provided with adequate food or hydration, and 24 animals died as a result. In another case, a mother was removed from her cage and killed, leaving seven unweaned pups to starve to death. The report catalogues a litany of serious failures. Animals were reused, in second experiments, without proper authorisation. Others were kept alive past what most people would consider a humane end point. They were left to suffer as tumours grew too large, or body weight fell dangerously low. In one case, misidentification of sex led to regulated procedures being performed on seven pregnant mice.

The failures affect a wide range of animals. Primates suffered injuries from faulty equipment, had tails trapped in cage doors or were left without food overnight. A freedom of information request revealed that in one case an incident deemed by ASRU to be a “minor breach” involved a dog being kept alive despite having suffered severe swelling of the parotid salivary glands as a result of the procedures that it had been through, before eventually being euthanised.

Given the gravity of the incidents, we should expect robust enforcement. Instead, we see a regulatory regime that is alarmingly weak. In three quarters of non-compliance cases, the only response was “inspector advice”.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman. He is bringing forward some very harrowing stories, and they are certainly hard to accept. Non-compliance with animal welfare laws on farms in Northern Ireland was detected in more than 21% of those inspected. It is clear that welfare inspection is the key to making them acknowledge the regulations and to ensuring that they do what they should be doing. Does the hon. Member agree that non-compliance is best detected through inspection and that there must be more focus on inspection rates, to ensure that issues can be dealt with?

[Michael Wheeler]

I of course agree, and I have some information that will illustrate the point and the importance of inspections. In 2024, just 68 establishments were audited across Great Britain. Only 10 of the inspections were unannounced. That represents just 15% of inspections, which is down from 63% of inspections in 2018. The issue is further exacerbated by some elements of those audits being carried out remotely. Nearly 70% of non-compliance incidents were self-reported, which raises a troubling question about how much more is going undetected in the absence of regular, independent spot checks.

ASRU’s current regime of regulatory reform includes increasing the number of inspectors by March to 22 full-time equivalents, up from 14.5, but incremental tweaks to oversight will not solve the underlying problem. In 2024 alone, 2.64 million scientific procedures were carried out on animals. That scale of activity cannot be meaningfully overseen through marginal staffing increases.

The wider issue is that we continue to allow legally sanctioned animal suffering. For instance, some licences permit deliberate deprivation. Primates’ entire daily food intake can be restricted so that food can be used as a reward for correct task performance during sessions lasting up to six hours. Rats, meanwhile, can go without water for up to 22 hours a day, over a week, to encourage them to consume liquids containing potentially aversive substances. Thousands of procedures still rely on controversial tests such as LD50 toxicity testing and the forced swim test—an outdated model that the Government acknowledge has limited scientific value. Licence summaries reveal the severity of authorised suffering: thousands of animals undergo painful procedures without analgesia because pain relief might interfere with the results.

Equally concerning is the failure to uphold the core legal principle at the heart of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Section 2A is clear that scientifically satisfactory non-animal methods must be used wherever possible, yet an expert report commissioned by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research identified a “system-wide failure” to replace animals where alternatives already exist. Home Office summaries show that licences have been granted even when non-animal methods are clearly available. In one example, animals were being used as an intermediary step in heart disease research, despite well-known anatomical differences that limit the relevance of that research to humans.

It is time for us to find another way. More than 92% of drugs that succeed in animal tests do not end up being used by patients. That is primarily due to poor efficacy and safety issues that were not predicted by animal testing. We are now at the point where human-specific technologies, using human cells, tissues, artificial intelligence and advanced modelling, offer faster, safer and more relevant results. Pioneering work projects have been taking place for decades, leading to breakthroughs such as mini-hearts that accurately model human cardiac disease without harming animals.

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend; he is making a powerful case, and a very traumatic one. Does he agree that if we are really to fulfil our 2024 manifesto commitment and enable a transition to more modern, human-specific technology, we should introduce Herbie’s law without delay?

[Michael Wheeler]

I think it will come as no surprise to my hon. Friend that I do agree with him, and I will be making that very call.

We are in a good place when it comes to the development of alternatives. I therefore welcome the publication of the Government’s “Replacing animals in science” strategy in November.

[Irene Campbell]

I should have said this earlier, but I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on phasing out animal experiments in medical research. Does my hon. Friend agree that the evidence is there, and that we can move much more quickly towards a place where animals are no longer needed in research?

[Michael Wheeler]

I thank my hon. Friend for another valuable intervention. I agree with her.

The Government’s strategy contains a range of positive measures, such as increasing funding for human-specific technologies, but we can move faster—more, we have an opportunity to grow the strategy by supporting cutting-edge, world-leading new technologies that are developed right here in the UK. I urge the Government to go further. I urge them to commit to the replacement of all animals in medical research in the UK by 2035. As colleagues have said, that is known as Herbie’s law, after a beagle bred for the laboratory but saved before he was used.

Herbie’s law would provide a practical, collaborative pathway to deliver the Government’s manifesto commitment to phase out animal testing. It would set a clear ambition to replace animal experiments in medical research over the next decade. It would establish expert oversight and support scientists through the transition. It has been carefully drafted by legal experts, is backed by more than 155 of our colleagues here in Parliament and enjoys strong public support.

The non-compliance incidents detailed in the ASRU report and the fact that those incidents regularly cause serious animal suffering in this country should shock us and prompt reflection and action. Ultimately, the only way to eliminate those incidents completely is to end animal testing once and for all. We need a research and innovation system that is scientifically excellent, ethically robust and animal-free. I urge the Government to strengthen enforcement, ensure the law is upheld in practice, and deliver a clear, timeframed road map to phase out animal testing.

11:15

[The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles (Michael Wheeler), who has given us a powerful depiction of what happens when things go wrong. He highlighted the importance of making sure the Government ensure an oversight and licensing regime so that things do not go wrong. He touched on different areas of policy, to which I should respond. I will start with his stories of where things have gone wrong, the push for Herbie’s law, and how we go further and faster on the removal of animals from scientific testing.

We can all probably agree that we want to phase out the use of animals in science and the strategy that colleagues in other Departments have introduced to replace animals in science shows the direction of travel. There are calls to go further and faster and of course we will listen and work with colleagues on that.

[Irene Campbell]

I thank the Minister for giving way. The strategy is of course hugely welcome, but there are no timelines associated with much of the strategy. For it to work effectively and get us to where we need to be, we need timelines. Is there any indication of when timelines are likely to be made clear to us?

[Sarah Jones]

I will certainly take that question back to my colleagues who are implementing the strategy, and I have heard from other colleagues the call for a faster timeline. The science is developing, and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles mentioned the transformational technology that we have and the opportunities for growth. We do not know the answer to some things because the science is not yet finished, but I hear the point about pushing for change as soon as possible.

The purpose of the strategy is to phase out animal testing. That is this Government’s ambition and intention. The relevant human alternatives that we want to replace it with have to continue to protect public health and product safety, and we have to be sure that replacements are able to do that. Uncomfortable though it is, we know that the use of animals in science has enabled us to develop medicines that we would not have been able to develop otherwise would. To replace that, we need to make sure that what comes afterwards is robust. It is everybody’s ambition to have a revolution in research and innovation in this country, and to build on that and use our expertise to make sure we go as fast as possible, but I hear the call for timelines and I will talk to my colleagues about how we try to do that. The strategy has a tiered approach to identify which animal test can be replaced soonest, and which are the easier ones to get done first. I very much hear the call for a timescale for a longer-term road map.

There is great public interest in making sure that we treat animals as they should be treated when they are used in research. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles talked a lot about the work of the regulator, and how we should take a robust approach to regulation. The regulator is overseen by the Home Office Minister Lord Hanson, who signed off on a package of reform to it last year, which my hon. Friend mentioned. My hon. Friend was slightly more dismissive of it than perhaps we would be, and I heard what he said, but there has been an increase in the number of people who are able to ensure oversight and a new focus through the reform programme. It has just begun, and we need to give it a bit of time to see whether it works more effectively. I hear loud and clear his calls for the Government to ensure that the regulator is as robust as it can be.

It might be useful to look at how the regulator currently works, and then we can work together going forward. I do not know if my hon. Friend has met the regulator, but it might be worth convening something with other interested MPs, to have a conversation about the reforms and where we think things will improve. The regulator is set up to prevent compliance breaches and investigate them. If non-compliance is confirmed, the regulator has a broad range of sanctions available. There is a conversation about whether it is using all those sanctions in the way that it could. The sanctions range in severity, and my hon. Friend mentioned those at the lower end, but the regulator does have more extensive powers to act.

It might be useful to have a conversation with the regulator about how we balance self-referral. Self-referrals often come in; we have very good and honourable people doing research and using the system as it should be used. I also hear the slight question about self-referral, and whether we are in the places that we need to be as much as we should be. There is a balance in the regulatory approach and how punitive the approaches can be. We want the sector to be open and transparent, so we have to get that balance right. I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that. If we are disproportionate—if that is a risk—then work gets offshored and goes elsewhere, where the systems are not anywhere near as powerful as they are in this country. We need to have proportionality in our approach to non-compliance.

We also need to understand that self-reporting is not a bad thing, but a good thing. We want a culture of care that is respectful of animals. Most incidents of non-compliance are self-reported, as I have said, and the decisions taken after that are then proportionate. Where there are more significant breaches, the sanctions are there, and we could have a conversation with the regulator about when those sanctions are imposed and when they are not.

I thank colleagues again for raising this issue. We have a strict and rigorous licensing regime, which I am partly responsible for, both for the 100-odd companies that are able to test on animals and the 13,000 individuals who have a licence to use animals in testing. The regulator is going through reform and has had its functions beefed up over the last year. We have an ambition as a Government to end the use of animals in science, but, as a Minister, I will always commit to push for more and will always listen to my colleagues for advice.

The good takeaways from this debate are that we need to understand where the regulator is coming from a bit more, what the balance is for proportionality, how we can all move forward, and, having heard the calls for more timeliness in ending the use of animals in testing, how we can work with colleagues across the Government to deliver that.

Question put and agreed to.

11:25

Sitting suspended.

Defence Industry: Environmental, Social and Governance Requirements

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[ESTHER MCVEY in the Chair]

10:49

[Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of environmental, social and governance requirements on the defence industry.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the Minister and hon. Members for making time to attend what I hope will be a consequential debate.

Last week, we all heard the Canadian Prime Minister speaking at Davos. He is not quite my flavour of politics, but he spoke a truth: we live in a much more dangerous world and we cannot rely on the international rules-based order to protect us. We are quickly learning an ancient truth that hard power is the most material reality. If we continue to play by imaginary rules while our enemies, and sometimes even our allies, are playing a different game altogether, we are destined to lose, with disastrous consequences for our country and for our children.

Sadly, many of those old assumptions are embedded and entrenched in our financial services industry, universities and politics. In turn, that is having a deeply damaging effect on British defence companies and ultimately on our ability to defend ourselves.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Defence firms such as Leonardo in Yeovil are happy to invest in environmental and social products. Leonardo has invested heavily in Yeovil college and entertainment venues and is building its own solar farm—but does the hon. Member agree that, if defence firms are to meet those obligations, the Government need to award contracts such as the new medium-lift helicopter, and that, if not, we will lose the benefits for our community forever?

[Jack Rankin]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point about Leonard, which builds helicopters in his constituency, and I am sure the Minister has heard his pointed remarks.

Parties of both colours have pledged to increase defence spending. This Labour Government have committed to an uplift of 3% in the next Parliament, but when will we see it? What proportion of it will simply make up historical military pensions? How much is actually going to cutting-edge research and development? Currently, only 4% of defence spending goes to small and medium-sized enterprises, which often lead the way on innovation.

What if I told the Minister that there is billions of pounds in funding waiting to be unlocked that would cost the taxpayer nothing, be a huge boost to the economy and improve our national security? It is sitting in the private sector. The importance of private investment was recognised in the strategic defence review, but we are not properly utilising it. Right now, British defence companies are deprived of much of that potential investment because funds of various descriptions prioritise sustainable investment or environmental social governance —ESG—regardless of return. Sometimes those funds actively rule out defence, explicitly or implicitly, in the rules they set.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I want to correct what I hope was a slip of the tongue when he mentioned parties “of both colours”; he means “of all colours” because I believe the Liberal Democrats have come forward with a proposal for £20 billion-worth of defence bonds in order to properly finance the rapid scale-up in defence manufacturing that we need in the UK.

[Jack Rankin]

I am delighted to correct the record; it is good to see that parties of all colours are backing increased defence spending in a more uncertain world.

The ESG system implies in some sense that defence investment is unethical, but there is nothing less ethical than sending British sons and daughter into battle under-equipped. That is not a blue, red or yellow party political point; I am proud to represent the parts of Slough borough not covered by the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), we have discussed this very point, with which I understand he and his Committee all agree.

Many on the Government side of the House also see the problems of ESG. In March last year, a group of 100 Labour Members of Parliament wrote to banks and fund managers urging them to prioritise defence investment and class British defence investment as ethical. I welcome the presence of the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) in the Chamber today; I know he has discussed this matter both directly and with the Financial Conduct Authority, and I look forward to his substantive contribution in the debate.

I gently point out, however, that some of the ideology is pushed by some of those on the left who might take woolly views on certain conflicts, specifically Gaza. We should do what we can in this place to challenge that culture, and I suspect that there are many of those naive rules made in this place—perhaps under different geopolitical circumstances—that we should reassess.

To fix this problem, we must first acknowledge just how bad things are in some instances. I am a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, and a few weeks ago we were able to question Warrick Malcolm of ADS Scotland, which represents Scottish defence businesses, about the chilling effect that progressive authoritarianism has had on the businesses they represent. When he attempted to host a Scottish parliamentary reception to highlight science, technology, engineering and mathematics apprenticeships —broader than just defence—200 protesters shut down the Parliament, allowing no one in or out, and essentially cancelled the whole event. Those people who did squeeze through the melee outside, many of them apprentices in their young 20s, came in in tears because of the abuse they faced.

Sadly, only the Scottish Conservatives supported the reception, while all others steered clear. What message does that send to those in the industry, those hard-working constituents of Members of the Scottish Parliament, when their representatives have no time for them and effectively shun them. Mr Malcolm also talked to the Committee about how a company he represented was vandalised, reducing its capacity by 75%. How will that business remain viable? We can think of careers fairs at universities being shut down, and damaging the attractiveness of defence as a sector to work in; it is a sector that keeps us safe, but it is often not one that employees feel safe to work in.

[Edward Morello]

I thank the hon. Member for humouring me with a second opportunity to intervene. He raised the important point that many defence manufacturers, especially in the South West, provide high-skilled job opportunities for local people. My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) has already mentioned Leonardo in Yeovil, which also employs vast numbers of people in my West Dorset constituency. Those links with local schools and higher education institutions are vital to creating a pathway for people in the south-west, especially those in rural communities, who might not have another avenue into high-skilled labour.

[Jack Rankin]

Of course the hon. Member is right. We have a collective responsibility to advocate for these businesses, as he just did, but as a nation we must also face down this pernicious culture.

To return to the point about financial institutions, the culture we set in Parliament influences them. We do not need to look too far from ourselves to see where the problem is—our own parliamentary pension fund de facto excludes British defence companies by investing in sustainable funds. Its single largest equity holding, the BlackRock low carbon equity fund, fully excludes nuclear weapons, which in reality excludes nearly all defence.

What does our pension fund invest in instead? Tencent Holdings, the parent company of WeChat, which largely considered to be part of China’s surveillance state. That is the very nub of the issue, and illuminates the great irony of the situation. The FCA will unequivocally say that there is no conflict between ESG and defence; while that might sometimes be technically true, the reality often paints a different picture. We just need to follow the money.

The Devon county council pension fund—which I picked because I thought the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) might have been the Minister responding to the debate, and it covers his constituency—states clearly that it prioritises return on investment and does not impose ethical exclusions. However, if one follows its investment down the rabbit hole to its pool provider Brunel Pension Partnership, which handles 93% of the council’s pension funds, we find Paris-aligned pooled funds with carbon thresholds and controversial weapon screens. As we can see, the system is set up against the defence industry. In that system, smaller companies have no chance, because the filtering happens long before capital ever reaches them.

It may well be that pensioners also end up short-changed, given that major British defence companies BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Babcock have made returns of 50%, 100% and 146% respectively this past year. This issue extends to our most sensitive areas. While I hope we never need it, I think most sensible people in this country support the backstop of our nuclear deterrent, and ESG potentially threatens that.

We currently have retained EU law that adopts the Paris-aligned benchmarks that exclude nuclear as a controversial weapon. For a fund to be considered Paris-aligned, it will have to meet that benchmark and, by retaining that law, we are encouraging that. Although the Government nominally prioritise Trident, around 1,500 businesses in the supply chain are implicated and will therefore be potentially excluded from finance. As long as we continue to tolerate this madness, we are fighting with one hand behind our back.

We have discussed access to capital, but that is useless for SMEs without a bank account. Defence companies in this country are being debanked. I first came across the issue when meeting a defence SME in my constituency, which had been debanked three times by high street banks. That business makes ammunition for Ukraine. Think of the message that sends to a defence start-up: an entrepreneur just would not go near it. Some of the problem is being driven by the B Corp certification, and I urge the Minister to look at that. “Know your customer” and anti-money laundering operation checks are also a huge issue that needs to be addressed. All that is downstream of the same negative approach to defence that I have described.

This culture has, at least in part, been brought about by successive Government policy, and can also be reversed by it. As a start, the Government should insist that all publicly managed funds should not be investing in funds that explicitly exclude defence. That would be a clear statement of intent about the Government’s expectations, and it would encourage others to do the same. We should also have clearer rules about the exclusion of nuclear so that the SMEs vital to the Trident deterrent are not unfairly cut out.

Much as it pains me to say it, perhaps we could even learn from France, which treats the defence sector as strategically vital. The Chancellor could write to the FCA today and change its remit. Just imagine the change if we were to approach defence as we have approached climate policy over the past 20 years. I am aware that the Government passed legislation in October to permit the FCA to regulate the ESG sector from 2028; although that might seem like a positive step, it could simply entrench the concept legally and say that ESG is sanctified by the Government. If we are serious about rebuilding our defence infrastructure and about national security, we must get serious about the self-harm that ESG culture has done, and is doing, and be prepared to take steps to address it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. We will go to the Front-Bench speakers at about 3.30 pm. I am aware we are expecting a vote, which might come as early as 3.30 pm; I will obviously suspend the sitting when that happens.

14:42

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I genuinely thank the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) for securing this debate and for his kind words. We can work cross-party to change the culture across financial services with our voices from this place. May I also say what a pleasure it is to be here with my hon. Friend the Minister? I thank her for all her work on Op Courage and Op Ascend, and on veterans’ homelessness.

I want to be clear: ESG does not need to get in the way of lending to SMEs. It is important to say from the outset that many conflate ESG rules with broader ethical and commercial decisions that firms make; I will perhaps come back to that. I speak from some professional experience: I was acting head of compliance for a fintech where day in, day out, I had to make calls on whether to do business with some of these customers. ESG can, in limited circumstances, be interpreted as blocking lending to SMEs, something that is inconsistent and increasingly at odds with our national security, industrial strategy and economic resilience.

I will touch on what I believe is an artificial distinction between so-called dual-use military technology and single-use military equipment. I come across so many main high street lenders that find this difficult. British high street lenders have every right to put up their hands and say, “We do not want to lend to any company that is involved in chemical weapons or cluster munitions.” They have every right to look at some of the United Nations weapons conventions and say, “We do not want anything to do with them.” However, many lenders are not lending to dual-use military equipment makers.

I will give some examples. I met a fantastic company, Needles and Pins Aerospace, at Defence and Security Equipment International. The company has found banking, insurance and finance very difficult. It produces the insulation that goes on military helicopters—helicopters, by the way, engaged in humanitarian aid missions around the world. The insulation that goes in those helicopters is not an ordnance or a bomb; it is there to protect our British armed forces. It is worth bearing in mind that these lenders and their compliance departments—and I was from that parish—should really get to know the products and services that their customers want to seek finance for.

Another example from my constituency is Edmund Optics, which produces prisms and lenses. There are medical, aerospace, commercial satellite and civilian aircraft applications for those. However, some of those products and services have a dual use—there is also a military use to them. Again, lenders get caught up in a very binary distinction; they should be spending more time understanding the products and services that companies provide.

I want to give another shout-out, this time to 4GD, a data-driven defence training SME with which I have worked extensively, along with ADS, the industry trade body. I saw 4GD’s founder Rob yesterday, and he has told me countless stories about being debanked. His business is about training British armed forces to do what they do better, so that they are more equipped against our adversaries, safer and more resilient. There is nothing more ethical than that. The fact that high street lenders have closed their doors to that commercial opportunity shows the inherent laziness among some people in compliance departments, who refuse to understand the products and services for which their prospective customers are seeking finance.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Windsor for referencing the work I have done alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker). Last year, along with 100 Labour parliamentarians, we wrote to fund and bank managers about ESG. I was really pleased that two things came off the back of that. First, some funds marketed as sustainable said they were going to invest in defence companies, because they found nothing in the rules that inherently disbars sustainable funds from investing in defence—there is nothing in the regulator’s rulebook that does that. That is just a fact, and that fact was ultimately confirmed by my old employer, the Financial Conduct Authority. I am immensely grateful to its chief exec, Nikhil, for his speech last year on defence, and for the FCA’s statement. The FCA has been rock solid and clear that there is no tension between ESG regulatory rules and defence financing—none whatsoever. I say to the financial services practitioners who are listening: please take heed of that.

As I mentioned, there have been some good shifts, but ESG and broader ethical considerations are only part of the structural barriers facing defence firms. Recent work by colleagues across the House, including a report I co-authored, “Rewiring British Defence Financing”, makes the point clearly. That work shows that ESG considerations sit alongside and are outweighed by deeper, more persistent problems across access to capital, commercial lending risk, cash-flow pressures, contracting structures and compliance complexity. Defence SMEs are not failing to secure finance because they are somehow irresponsible actors, but because they operate in an ecosystem defined by long payment cycles, sometimes single dominant customers like the primes, uncertain procurement pipelines and fragmented support across Government.

On that last point, let me turn to the work of my hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, who cannot be here today. He has done some phenomenal work setting up the office for small business growth in the Ministry of Defence, which is designed to break down some of the contractual complexities and the fear factor that many defence SMEs face when trying to contract with the MOD. I am happy to confirm to the House that one company in my York Outer constituency, Flyby Technology, will be part of the new OSBG’s shaping cohort, to get into the nitty-gritty of how we can streamline the contracting processes for SMEs, in line with the Government’s mission to increase the direct spend in defence SMEs across the country.

I want to touch on the role of primes when it comes to SMEs in particular. Sometimes the cash-flow challenges created by defence primes are not acceptable. The primes are great employers in this country. I have been to Barrow-in-Furness and seen at first hand how BAE Systems is transforming the fortunes of that town. The primes have a great understanding of their tier 2, 3 and 4 suppliers, but they need to make sure that they pay SMEs on time and quickly.

This is not a mundane point. Were Members to sit down with the chief financial officers of these SMEs and look at their cash flows, it would be clear: a 90-day payment term with a prime, or even a 120-day payment term, increases working capital requirements. The company then has to go out to lenders to try to get financing to cover the shortfall, because the primes are really slow. In turn, that means that when defence SMEs try to get loans for inventory or asset financing, they are often offered worse terms. Primes have a duty to start paying the wonderful SMEs of Britain quickly, because improving their payment terms will create a cyclical effect. Some great primes are better at it. Overall, the result is a system in which highly capable, export-ready firms struggle with the basics—securing bank accounts, insurance and working capital—not at the margins but as a matter of course.

I am worried that some insurers are becoming increasingly hesitant about insuring defence companies because of the risk of political violence. I have worked with Aviva and others on this issue. It is interesting to note that some of the protesters who target the insurers may well themselves have insurance policies with them, or their defined-contribution workplace pensions may well be held in one of these insurer’s accounts. There is a degree of hypocrisy there. Insurers should have every confidence from Members in this place that they are doing right by the defence sector in supporting its growth and development.

Why do all these complexities matter? As the hon. Member for Windsor touched on, they create serious consequences, because if challenges mount up, they could undermine our sovereign defence capability. If British firms cannot raise capital here, what will they do? They may choose to scale abroad or sell to overseas buyers rather than to the British base, or fail altogether. We could become more dependent on foreign supply chains for critical technologies. The Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), has done some really strong work on critical minerals and our sovereign capability in that respect. We have to ensure that there is a sovereign financial base to support our sovereign defence industry.

The challenges we have talked about in procurement, ESG and access to finance hit SMEs the hardest. They do not have big teams of financial experts, and the larger primes can navigate the challenges more easily as they have access to wider capital pools that the smaller firms do not. There is a risk of strategic contradiction, because on the one hand we are asking defence firms to scale, innovate and deliver at pace, but on the other hand we seem to be tolerating a financial system that treats some firms as a reputational liability. That is not sustainable, to borrow a term. The issue is not necessarily ESG principles themselves, but the absence of clarity in how lenders apply their risk tolerance to defence. ESG concerns are only one part of the financing challenge facing defence firms, alongside credit risk, contracting structures and cash flow, but they are the tip of the iceberg. Because these issues are often poorly defined, they create uncertainty that deters lending.

What is missing is a shared understanding across Government, regulators and financial institutions that defence, when conducted lawfully, in line with UN weapons conventions and in support of democratic security, is not a problem but a public good to be enabled. The hon. Member for Windsor touched on the theme of their being nothing more ethical than lending to defence companies that are equipping our Ukrainian friends. Other countries around the world understand that. The US has been much more explicit in aligning its financial system with its national security priorities, particularly in terms of single-use and lethal military equipment.

What needs to change? There is an overwhelming case for a multilateral defence bank—such as the proposed defence, security and resilience bank—that would meet some of the financing challenges. We cannot just look at incremental fixes. I do not want to take up too much time on that, but there is a role for multilateral development finance.

As the report I wrote sets out, private capital alone is not filling the gap, particularly for SMEs in the dual-use space, and where finance does flow, it can be short term. I do not want to get into the details, but we need to make sure that the institutions of the state, be that the NSSIF—the national security strategic investment fund, an arm’s length body that is part of the British Business Bank—or the National Wealth Fund or UK Defence Innovation, sing together and make sure that their finance comes into innovative technologies.

We need to learn the lessons from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in the US. I heard that a significant proportion of US GDP growth comes from the DARPA investments of the 1980s—of course, that agency invented the internet, the smartphone and so many other underlying technologies. Let us learn from the leadership role of DARPA.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman plainly knows a great deal about this subject and is educating a few of us on it. He talks about the US example; could he also reflect on the European Union regulatory regime around ESG, given that the EU is about to start investing considerably more in defence?

[Mr Charters]

When it comes to our European friends, we have to have cross-border financing. I have met some of the main German commercial lenders that want to come in; likewise, British financial services are investing in success stories such as Rheinmetall and some of the great European defence brands. We have to come together, not just with our European friends, but with Canada and other allied nations around the world, to approach defence financing on a multilateral basis. That is the real lesson.

Let me touch on what our adversaries are doing. They know that they need to innovate quickly when it comes to building up their own financing capabilities. Russia is moving towards more off-balance-sheet lending to a lot of its defence sector. Russian advance manufacturing companies are increasingly gaining access to the Chinese bond market. In general, the Russian war economy is mobilising at pace. Clearly, when it comes to some of our adversaries’ financing mechanisms, they are daring to do things differently—according, of course, to the rule books and ethics of their particular countries. We need to be agile enough to reform our own financing capabilities at pace, too. I am very concerned that we risk forcing British defence SMEs to seek foreign ownership, to offshore their operations or to seek finance overseas simply to survive. That is strategic self-harm when it comes to our sovereign defence capabilities.

You will be pleased to hear, Ms McVey, that I am about to close. In an era of renewed geopolitical competition, the question is not whether the state should play a role in defence finance, but whether we are prepared to act now in order to do so with the seriousness that our security environment demands. I believe that a strong defence financing sector acts as a deterrent to some of our adversaries and means that, where we need to scale industrial capability much quicker, we are ready to do so, if we have a defence financing revolution. This is not a choice between values and security; it is about recognising that, in the world we live in, the two are inseparable.

I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to set out how the Government can encourage lenders to turn on the taps for some of the innovative defence SMEs, no matter whether they are producing prisms, training our special forces or insulating our helicopters. There is nothing more ethical, in our modern world, than supporting the defence SMEs that are maintaining our collective security.

15:00

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) on setting the scene and the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) on his excellent contribution; both had plenty of knowledge and information. It is always nice to see the Minister in her place, and I wish her well in her role. I remind her gently of the invitation to come to Beyond the Battlefield in Portavogie in my constituency; maybe she will be able to confirm that shortly—it is nothing to do with this debate, but I wanted to take that opportunity to remind her.

Our armed forces protect our freedoms and deter aggression in a world that has become increasingly volatile. The defence sector employs tens of thousands of people across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, while sustaining thousands more in supply chains, and underpins our sovereign capability. In today’s climate, where threats have become much more serious and less predictable than at any time since the end of the cold war, the 2025 strategic defence review highlights the importance of private investment, stating that the sector must make a

“concerted effort to unlock private capital and expertise”,

and outlines the environmental, social and governance role in this sector. I am reminded that the pastor of my church, the Baptist church in Newtownards, said last year that there are 67 wars in the world. It is a world at war, in the truest sense.

From June 2028, ESG ratings providers will be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, with new rules on transparency, governance, conflicts of interest and stakeholder engagement. There has been a significant shift towards identifying those factors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is always in our minds; the pictures and stories from Kyiv in the paper today remind us of the pressure the Ukrainians are under. Morningstar data shows that exposure to aerospace and defence has increased across European funds, including those with ESG labels. That reflects a growing recognition that a strong defence industrial base is essential for security. This Government’s defence industrial strategy sector plan must emphasise the importance of making the defence sector more attractive to private investment, as the Government continue to support and increase it, which I congratulate them and the Minister on. The money they have allocated for Northern Ireland is very welcome, and I appreciate it.

I want to highlight two important examples in Northern Ireland that demonstrate both the challenges and the opportunities. Thales UK, located in east Belfast, is a key player in defence innovation. I have visited Thales on several occasions with my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). I remind the House of the £1.6 billion deal announced in March 2024 for 5,000 lightweight air defence missiles, which are one of the reasons why Ukraine has been so successful in holding her own. Production of those missiles is currently supporting approximately 700 jobs at Thales, while also supporting Ukraine’s defence efforts in the current conflict.

The work done at Thales highlights Northern Ireland’s key position in, and contribution to, the UK defence industry. As I said to one of the Minister’s colleagues in the Chamber, I am very keen to ensure that Northern Ireland’s defence sector can see more of the contracts and opportunities. I know the Government want to do that—I am not saying they are not doing it—but I emphasise that again.

Thales has been proactive in engaging with ESG principles by contributing to the drafting of the UK defence ESG charter in 2024 through ADS Group, integrating ESG criteria into supplier selection and supporting the UK’s low-carbon transition through energy-efficient technologies and cyber-resilience. Far from being restricted by ESG, Thales continues to demonstrate that responsible, ethical practices do strengthen capacity to compete, while attracting local talent and building investor confidence in a sector that is vital to our national security. I am very encouraged by Thales’s introduction of apprenticeships this year, which it is committed to. Thales pays some of the apprentices’ fees, and they get a good wage. That is really constructive and positive, and it comes through the business that the Government here do with Thales and what Thales does as a company.

I am proud to raise another example of Northern Ireland’s contribution to our defence industry: the historic Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, which is one of only three naval shipyards in the UK equipped to carry out major Ministry of Defence work. We are very pleased that it is central to Government policy once again. In 2023, Harland & Wolff became part of the Team Resolute consortium with Navantia UK and BMT, after having been awarded a £1.6 billion contract by the MOD to build three fleet support ships for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service.

The impact on the shipyard will be significant. It will include upgrades such as new automated panel lines and advanced robotics, and the technology will move forward to meet the ESG criteria. Harland & Wolff is committed to long-term, ethical production and sustainability while providing jobs in Northern Ireland, and it is really proactive in meeting those criteria. If we want to move forward with a policy, we have to bring companies with us, and that is clearly happening in Northern Ireland. To be fair, I think it is happening across the whole of the United Kingdom. I urge the Minister to commit to issuing joint guidance with the Treasury and the FCA to financial institutions to clarify that responsible investment in UK defence companies, which is vital for national security and jobs in places such as Belfast, can be fully compatible with ESG principles.

I will conclude with this comment. I very much welcome the fact that the Government are prioritising private investment in defence, but we must build on that by providing clearer policy guidance. It is in the national interest of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to ensure that our defence industry continues to be supported by Belfast-based firms such as Thales and Harland & Wolff. I ask the Minister to identify and support measures that unlock investment, increase contractual opportunities for businesses in Northern Ireland, in particular, and maintain our defence sovereignty.

15:06

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) for securing this important debate and introducing it so eloquently. It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who always makes important contributions to debates about defence matters, and my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters), whose knowledge of defence financing is extremely granular.

This debate is a chance to make it clear that the highest form of corporate social responsibility is for a company to be involved in the defence of the country. To me, it is quite bizarre that people and institutions would put the provision of proper equipment for our armed forces or our allies who are fighting against fascism in Ukraine in the same category for divestment as tobacco, pornography, modern slavery or forced labour. That just seems perverse.

Investment in the task of keeping the British people safe from the growing threats posed by hostile actors is not just legitimate, but a moral necessity. In the context of the strategic defence review, which correctly identifies the urgency and significance of unlocking private capital to drive the investment in defence that we need to meet the growing and complex threats facing the country, the impact of environmental, social and governance ratings on securing finance for defence must be looked at more closely than ever before.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the whole point of having the strongest possible defence capability is to act as a deterrent. We are not aiming to use these weapons; we are using them to try to prevent a war from happening. I am sure that I do not need to point out to Members the ethical, environmental and social harm of conflict. I know they are acutely aware that the best way to avoid war is to prepare for one. Only by projecting strength and showing our enemies that we are ready to fight can we deter the worst-case outcome.

As the hon. Member for Windsor said, back in March 2025 I and 100 other Labour MPs signed a letter, which was co-ordinated by my hon. Friends the Members for York Outer and for Aldershot (Alex Baker)—she is disappointed not to be able to join us today—calling on Britain’s bank and fund managers to do away with rules that class investment in defence, notably in supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression, as somehow unethical. As the letter stated,

“There can be no more ethical investment than giving the Ukrainian people every ounce of support that can be mustered by their allies.”

That same standard, of course, applies to our own defence —one of the core tasks our constituents send us to this place to take care of. Ten months on from that letter, today’s debate is a prime opportunity for the Minister to update us on what consideration the Government have given to this issue, especially with regard to what I hope is the imminent defence investment plan.

As a Member of Parliament for a constituency in north-east England, I am particularly excited by the opportunities that the Government’s increase in defence spending can create for my constituents in North Durham and across the region. Less than a third of the Ministry of Defence’s spending with British industry is directed to London and the south-east, so defence can be an engine for growth in the regions.

I share the Labour Government’s ambition for defence spending to act as a key engine for economic growth, especially in more deprived, post-industrial parts of the country, which have borne the brunt of decades of deindustrialisation, including my North Durham constituency. It is worth noting that, during the cold war, there were tens of thousands of jobs in the defence sector in north-east England. There was Swan Hunter shipyard, and there was a very large factory, Vickers, producing land systems—it is still a very good factory, under Pearson Engineering, but a lot smaller. People remember the industrial contribution the north-east was making to defence.

Unfortunately, the north-east now has the lowest per capita defence spend of any region or nation, according to the MOD’s own figures. I would go so far as to argue that there are significant ethical and social benefits from the kind of defence investment that would bring jobs to our area, upskill my constituents and provide them with the opportunity to make a good living in exercising the patriotic duty of pitching in by equipping the people who are defending our country. Can the Minister update us on the impact of ESG ratings on directing capital towards areas such as the north-east, where there is a heritage of industrial jobs and skills, and where investment would bolster the Government’s agenda of tackling regional inequality and bringing opportunity back to places such as County Durham?

When they go wrong, ESG ratings can act as a drag on crucial investment in defence, but that does not mean we should write off the importance of ethical considerations when financing the defence of our nation. It is right that, even when investing in defence capabilities, we do all we can to operate in line with, for instance, the planet’s environmental limits. Indeed, many defence companies have already changed in line with ESG considerations. Through the UK defence ESG charter, the defence sector in the UK has collaborated to drive ambition and action on sustainability. The charter promotes greater transparency, dedicating firms to working together to meet commitments focused on climate transition, clean technology, societal impact, and governance and ethics. The charter was shortlisted for the 2025 Trade Association Forum awards in the ESG initiative of the year category.

To give one example—it is actually the company that the hon. Member for Strangford talked so eloquently about, because it has a site so near to his constituency—Thales in the UK sources all its electricity from renewables, and ESG forms at least 15% of its supplier selection criteria. The platinum medal from EcoVadis places Thales among the top 1% of all firms in its rankings. Clearly, the moral grandstanding of backing away from defence investment on ethical grounds does nothing to improve the ethical footprint of the defence industry. Instead, we ought to be working with industry to incentivise better practices, such as those I have just outlined. With that in mind, will the Minister elaborate on the positive role that ESG can play for defence companies? How can we ensure that the industry takes the greatest possible consideration of its impact on the planet, without getting in the way of its No. 1 priority, defending our nation?

Thankfully, ESG standards are becoming less and less of a roadblock to defence spending, with ESG-labelled investment in defence rising steadily since 2021. However, broader structural issues continue to act as a barrier to unlocking growth in defence. SMEs, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer mentioned, face particular challenges in accessing finance and banking, because of banks’ own compliance policies rather than ESG ratings. Will the Minister expand on how the Government can address those challenges, and encourage banks to adjust their compliance policies to better ensure that defence SMEs can access the capital they need to get off the ground?

We must never lose sight of the moral case for the defence of our nation, which I know matters so much to my constituents in North Durham, many of whose family members are veterans or serving in the armed forces; indeed, one in 10 of the households in my constituency is in that position. We must do all we can to secure the capital that our defence industry needs to rearm the country at pace and stand up to the growing threats we face. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how we can ensure that ESG requirements do not act as a barrier to this moral and practical necessity, and I hope to continue working with Members across the House to drive investment in the British defence industry, especially in the north-east of England.

15:14

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Ms McVey, to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) for securing this important debate.

It is often said—including by my hon. Friend in his opening speech today—that we are living in an ever more dangerous world. In fact, it is the most dangerous world in my lifetime or that of my hon. Friend, although he never tires of reminding me that he is a year younger than me.

The Government’s own 2025 strategic defence review stated:

“The threats we now face are more serious and less predictable than at any time since the Cold War”.

Clearly, therefore, we should do everything in our power to ensure that our armed forces are well-staffed and well-equipped. The defence of the realm is the first duty of any Government. However, for that to mean anything, defending our nation must take priority over other aims. Yet far too often we have seen our armed forces and the companies that supply them being forced to put social value requirements ahead of their existential duty to keep us safe.

As crazy as that sounds, it is no exaggeration or hypothetical concern. In 2022, the Royal Air Force paused recruitment of white men to try to raise its proportion of women and ethnic minorities. The RAF quite literally and explicitly would rather have hired nobody to defend this country from the air than hire a white guy. That is lunacy.

Cruel or unpleasant behaviour towards women is repulsive and clearly should have no place in our armed forces, their suppliers, or indeed any workforce. Where women want to jobs that have historically been filled by men—where they can do them; many roles in the armed forces have physical requirements that cannot be compromised—there should be no barrier to them doing so. I applaud those women, as I applaud the men who are willing to risk their lives for our freedom. However, to abandon our defence of the skies in the name of diversity quotas is completely and utterly mad. The RAF has since apologised for its decision, but I mention it today because it is crucial in the context of this debate. It shows the climate in which British companies that want to supply equipment to our military must operate.

As has already been said by many hon. Members, in order to trade in the UK, defence companies must comply with the general ESG regulations set out under the Companies Act 2006. If they wish to sell their equipment to the British Government, they must comply with the rules set out under the Ministry of Defence’s climate change and sustainability strategic approach. That includes the publication of a carbon reduction plan and compliance with rules designed to minimise environmental impact. If the firms wish to be publicly listed, they must wrangle the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules on ESG ratings.

Generally, defence companies are not considered to be an ethical investment, meaning that they are often scored badly for the purposes of ESG ratings, as my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and several other hon. Members have already said. Given that the FCA has consistently pushed funds to focus on ESG-compliant investments, that is clearly a significant cause for concern.

Just last year, some of the country’s largest investors, including the National Employment Savings Trust, which is the workplace pension scheme set up by the Government, reiterated their determination to refuse to invest in defence stocks, in the name of “ethics”. What exactly is ethical about shunning those companies that dedicate themselves to equipping our defence forces and protecting our freedom? As the FCA moves to standardise rules for ESG ratings providers, we still have no clear indication about how it intends to treat defence companies for the purpose of ESG ratings. In pursuit of secondary aims, we are making life more difficult for British defence companies and, in turn, for the armed forces that we expect to keep us safe.

One way or another, our armed forces will need to procure the equipment they need to do their jobs. While ESG requirements continue to stifle the British defence industry, we are forced into choosing one of two options, neither of them good. We could pay over the odds for equipment produced in this country. The compliance costs created by ESG rules and the disincentives to private investment created by the ESG ratings regime could force many defence firms to put up their prices, meaning higher costs for the British taxpayer, should we wish to rely on military equipment produced here. This situation also makes our kit more expensive and therefore less desirable to our allies; having fewer customers will drive up prices even further. Alternatively, we will have to rely on equipment from overseas, leaving us dependent on other countries.

Neither of those outcomes is acceptable. The status quo is bad for our armed forces and bad for the British taxpayer. The answer, of course, is to reject this dichotomy entirely. We should unleash the natural strength of the British defence industry, including by scrapping those ESG requirements that make life more difficult for British defence firms.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that, as heavy manufacturing firms, British defence companies are also likely to be disproportionately damaged by the energy policy that the Government are pursuing, which has produced the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world.

We know that our defence industry has the capability to be one of the best, if not the best, in the world. As recently as 2013, this country’s defence industry was second in the world in the export of military equipment when measured by total value of new orders. Today, partly thanks to the growth of the regulatory burden on defence firms, we have fallen to seventh. That is bad for our own military, which must now choose between importing its equipment from abroad or paying over the odds for equipment produced in this country, and it is bad for our interests overseas. After all, militaries around the world will always need new equipment. I would much rather they were able to buy British than from competitors in Russia or China.

It is clearly true that the problems the British defence industry now faces did not begin under this Government, or even under the previous Government. But it does, of course, now fall to this Government to address them. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us whether the Government have any plans to exempt defence firms from existing ESG regulations or to make changes to those regulations for all companies. I hope she will also be able to offer us some insight into whether the Government have engaged with the FCA about the classification of defence firms for ESG purposes ahead of the consultation deadline on 31 March.

15:21

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) for securing this important debate.

Private investment is the lifeblood of our defence industry—now more than ever. In an era defined by geopolitical volatility, from Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine to the unpredictable actions of global leaders, defence preparedness must be at the heart of the Government’s agenda. The landscape is shifting. World leaders are recalibrating their strategies, and the private sector is doing the same. ESG-focused funds are increasingly recognising the strategic and ethical imperative of investing in defence. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, exposure of ESG European equity funds to aerospace and defence has surged by a factor of 2.7. That is not an anomaly; it is a trend.

There is often confusion from some stakeholders who claim that ESG rules exclude defence companies from sustainable finance, but ESG disclosure and labelling rules do not require defence exclusion. Let me be clear: ESG rules do not exclude defence companies. The confusion is misplaced. Many sustainable funds invest in defence, and those that exclude it typically do so for voluntary ethical reasons or because of reputational concerns, not because ESG rules mandate it. I am pleased that the Government have been clear that they agree there is nothing contradictory between ESG considerations and defence. This position is shared by the Liberal Democrats, who see the industry’s broader structural problems, such as political uncertainty over defence procurement, long production cycles, export controls and delays in Government payments, as the much bigger issue.

Having met many defence companies, including SMEs, I have heard how they are lacking long-term certainty, making it difficult to invest in capacity, innovation and workforce development. Take Labour’s recent indecision on the new medium helicopter contract, which my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) recently alluded to. Delays risk jobs and investment. Meanwhile, the defence investment plan remains unseen. Will the Minister confirm when the plan will be published?

Defence companies, especially SMEs, need certainty. They need to invest in capacity, innovation and their workforce. The war in Ukraine has shown what is possible when industry and Government work together at pace. Yet our current system is failing them. Will the Minister commit to replacing rigid defence reviews with a flexible, continuous assessment of security threats? As part of this, the Government must look to improve collaboration with European and NATO partners to develop new technologies, equipment and training, including via the northern group. Will the Minister therefore give us an update on the UK’s access to the Security Action for Europe fund? Prioritising interoperability with NATO allies and other strategic partners means that we can support each other during peace and war; in times like these, that is paramount.

SMEs are the backbone of the UK defence industry, providing flexibility, innovation and supporting high quality jobs across the UK. However, they face unique challenges that limit their potential to contribute fully to defence capability and UK prosperity. They receive just 5% of the procurement budget, with 42% of contracts going to the same 10 suppliers. That is not just unfair; it is short-sighted, so will the Minister update us on the defence office for small business growth?

We know that the previous Conservative Government bungled defence procurement in our country, overseeing budget overruns and insufficient equipment supplies. It is time for a concerted effort to get behind the defence industry. That means no more delays to vital contracts, and timely and relevant investment plans. That is why the Liberal Democrats will partner with industry to provide the confidence to boost private sector investment in research and development, training and facilities, securing key skills and employment opportunities and ensuring that the economic benefits build the prosperity of UK regions.

To incentivise defence spending, we have also shared our plans for war bonds. Members of the public could loan the Government money in the form of a bond that would run over a period of two to three years and pay out the same interest as standard Government bonds. The bonds could raise up to £20 billion for the military, and would give the public a chance to support our defence patriotically, so has the Minister reviewed those proposals and will she set up a meeting to discuss it in more detail?

The world is changing rapidly. We can no longer rely on old certainties, and thanks to Donald Trump, we can no longer depend on our closest allies. The UK’s defence industry must come first. Will the Minister stand with defence businesses of all sizes and private investors and commit to making the UK a global leader in defence, innovation and resilience?

15:26

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. We all know the world is becoming more dangerous. We talk about it all the time. We have these conversations in Parliament. We have them at home with constituents, family and friends, but we all know that words and conversations alone will not protect us.

We need to make the hard choices now to ensure that the state fulfils its most fundamental role: protecting its citizens and its borders. Failing to do so puts the rest of our country at risk: our NHS, our education system, our markets and our way of life. That is why this debate is so important. I am genuinely thankful to my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) for securing it, because it goes to the heart of a culture that must change rapidly if we are to stay safe. We must ensure that those countries that pose a threat to our democratic way of life are not inadvertently enabled by structures we have imposed on ourselves.

There have been a number of fantastic contributions. My hon. Friend set the tone for the whole debate. The world is becoming more dangerous, and the system of international law that we have lived under, as well as the processes that underpin it, are disappearing rapidly, and we need to change to keep pace. He talked about challenging the culture and the need for the House to push that cultural change, so that money is flowing into the defence industry. He made a number of points about how ESG is being used in different ways, from university campuses to pushing back defence industries from job fairs. I think we can all agree that that needs to change.

The hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) has deep knowledge of this issue. He has worked at the coalface of the industry to understand how these contracts are formulated across Government and industry. He talked about the distinction between funding for things that go bang—hard, single-effect capabilities—and for dual-use technologies. I thank him and the hon. Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) for their work on the “Rewiring British Defence Financing” report. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about how that is impacting the work on the defence investment plan.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) adds to defence discussions in the House on almost a daily basis. He spoke again about Northern Ireland and about companies, such as Thales and Harland & Wolff, which are at the heart of shipbuilding and aerospace defence. He spoke about how ESG is being used by those companies to ensure that they stay on Government frameworks. I would love to speak to him afterwards to understand how those policies may be impacting their business outputs.

The hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) spoke powerfully about deterrence and about investing in defence now to keep us all safe. I think we can all agree that no one wants to go back to war. A number of the Members who have spoken in this debate are veterans who have experienced war, and they know that we do not want that for our country. To ensure deterrence, we must allocate capital to put ourselves in a strong position for the future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) talked specifically about how ESG was used in the RAF to socially engineer certain outcomes, for which the RAF apologised. It should always be a meritocracy of the best man or woman for that job and nothing else should get in the way. She went into the nuance of the national legislation, the FCA and the red tape wrapped around companies.

Lastly, I completely agree with the points raised by the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire), about the need for the Government to give defence companies a firm contractual push so they know what is coming down the track. I would like to hear more about the bonds idea, which was raised in the Chamber two nights ago on Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill. When we asked where the money would come from and what budgets would need to be cut to repay two to three-year bonds, we did not get a clear answer, so I would like to hear more.

Organisations that have a role to play in our collective national defence must recognise that investing in defence is both patriotic and necessary. Anything that prevents them from doing so should be stripped away. I truly believe that that cultural shift must begin in earnest in this place.

The three pillars of ESG examine how a company treats the environment, manages relationships with stakeholders, and governs itself. At first glance, that all makes sense. It is easy to see why those pillars send a signal to the markets about an organisation’s priorities, but here is the problem: the framework has evolved in a way that increasingly treats national defence as a negative, somehow signalling a bad actor. Defence-focused investments have been lumped together with industries such as tobacco and gambling. The hon. Member for North Durham added pornography to the list. How did we reach a position where we have forgotten that spending on defence and providing deterrence is the foundation on which everything else we value in society rests?

I often speak about this with my dad, who was born in 1942 in Plymouth, a city that was bombed heavily during the blitz. Some of his earliest memories are of being under the stairs listening to the drone of Luftwaffe bombs overhead. His generation was the last in this country to experience borders and national security as fragile and uncertain, but as was raised a few times today, if we fast forward a few generations, for young people, the idea that they might have to fight for what they love is an abstract concept at best. We have lost our emotive memory of war, which puts us in a precarious position.

I also fear that we draw the wrong lessons from history. When we mobilised during the first and second world wars, we did so with an existing industrial base. Factories could be repurposed quickly and critical resources were within reach. Closer to home, the lessons from covid further muddied the water. A debilitating pandemic was high on the national risk register, yet it was not given the seriousness it deserved. What followed was denial followed by urgency. Companies such as Dyson switched to producing ventilators and we scrambled internationally to source protective equipment for our NHS. In great British fashion, we muddled through.

With the risk of international conflict rising by the day, however, I do not want us to have to muddle through again. We all have a responsibility to ensure that the state fulfils its primary duty: keeping our countrymen and women safe. Everything else is secondary. I do not want to wait until we are punched in the face before we react. That is why this debate matters. It is about the practical steps, such as where the money for increased defence comes from and how we cut the red tape that is holding back our defence industry.

We also need to look hard at how we better align the capital allocation industry with defence. The Chief of the Defence Staff warned of the £28 billion gap between our current resources and our defence ambitions, so we must get serious. Concerns have been raised that only a small fraction of recent defence contracts have gone towards weapons and armour, fuelling fear in the defence industry of an effective procurement freeze at precisely the moment we should be accelerating rearmament.

The private sector and private capital are not a silver bullet, but they are a major part of the answer. The Government are reported to be exploring public-private partnerships, but those will not progress while markets continue to view defence as unethical or constrained by ESG stipulations. That must change through Government contracts removing such prohibitive clauses and the Government being seen as a reliable partner where returns can be guaranteed.

That means having defence spending that matches the rhetoric, and contracts awarded at the scale required to meet the growing threats. It is encouraging to see parts of the defence investment space already working to shift that culture. The UK Private Capital trade association has had a defence working group for nearly a year to educate the capital allocation industry about what national deterrence, both defensive and offensive, really means—a point raised by the hon. Member for York Outer—and why investment must include hard capabilities that keep us safe, not just dual-use technologies at the edges.

We must also be honest about the barriers that remain. Societal pressures and perceptions around defence, particularly under the S pillar of ESG, have led to real reticence. Many high-street financing providers maintain restrictive policies towards defence firms, often requiring higher levels of due diligence. Increasingly, investment funds are developing ESG policies that exclude defence under blanket terminology around weapons or nuclear and extend deep into the supply chain, rather than acting in a targeted way. These unregulated exclusions are inhibiting defence investment at exactly the wrong time.

I acknowledge that work is in progress to address that. As referred to by the hon. Members for York Outer, for Strangford and for North Durham, industry has developed initiatives such as the UK defence ESG charter and the HM Treasury and ADS trade body joint taskforce. However, I believe that more parliamentary support is needed to help investors understand the realities of the sector and encourage responsible investments. The Government must provide clear demand signals for both industry and finance. The outcomes of the defence industrial strategy and the strategic defence review will be crucial in setting the tone for where, what and how the UK intends to spend with the defence sector.

I do not want to fall into the trap of opposing the Government for opposition’s sake. I want Labour to do well. I want the Defence Ministers to do well. If they do well, the UK does well, and we should all be on team UK. That is why I offer the following comments constructively. I hope the Minister receives them in that spirit.

My party has done some hard work over the last 18 months. We have set out clear plans to boost defence spending through a sovereign defence fund of up to £50 billion, funded by reallocating existing expenditure currently directed towards costly environmental projects. That would enable the procurement of drones and new technologies at a far greater pace and scale, transforming the capability and lethality of the British armed forces. Crucially, it would help to deliver the industrial capacity we need here at home.

To enable that ramp-up in domestic production, the sovereign defence fund would mobilise billions in public and private funding to overhaul the defence industrial base. There are practical steps we can take: taking stakes in UK defence start-ups, investing in dual-use companies, and building resilient supply chains to reduce reliance on hostile states such as China.

This is a fully funded plan based on repurposing existing Government expenditure towards this national priority. It comprises three elements. First, £6 billion would be reallocated from the research and development budget in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to the Ministry of Defence. As we all know, and has been touched on today, defence innovation has spillover benefits to other sectors, from communications to transport. Secondly, £11 billion would be ringfenced from the National Wealth Fund to become the national defence and resilience bank. That funding is currently allocated to a number of non-vital eco-projects; the remainder would stay focused on national resilience such as water and transport. Thirdly, approximately £33 billion would be mobilised from private finance through the same model already used by the National Wealth Fund, unlocking billions more in investment.

We all know that other countries are doing this. Countries such as the United States and Germany are already allocating huge funds for defence and bolstering their domestic manufacturing and technological bases. We must do the same, because if we do not we will become prey to those who do not value our way of life. The Government must act with urgency, match words with action and help to drive the cultural shift that will allow our country to be properly defended. That is why this debate matters so much. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor again for securing it. I look forward to working with colleagues across the House to progress this agenda.

15:39

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Louise Sandher-Jones)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I will take a minute to put on record my deep sadness about the death of Captain Philip Gilbert Muldowney on Sunday. My thoughts, and the thoughts of everyone here, are with his loved ones.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) for initiating this important debate, and for highlighting the unduly negative light in which defence can sadly sometimes be viewed in investment and academic circles. All hon. Members here, including me, care deeply about our society, environment and good governance, but I welcome this opportunity to set out why defence, rather than being incompatible with those values, underpins all three. I am sure that if we asked families in Ukraine whether greater spending on defence and deterrence over the last decade would have had a positive or negative impact on their society, environment and governance, we would get only one answer.

I will speak quickly to some of the points raised in this debate. The hon. Member for Windsor rightly spoke about the importance of more money for SMEs in the defence industry. The Government have a target of spending £7.5 billion with SMEs by 2027-28, which is a 50% increase. As somebody who used to work for an SME that had some interest in defence customers, I know how difficult a challenge it can be in that space, without any unfair negative attention being paid to the industry we were in.

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) spoke about the importance of support for Leonardo and for helicopters, and I will make sure that his comments are passed to the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry. The Secretary of State met representatives from Leonardo last week, and I know that the Minister will continue the dialogue with them and the hon. Member. I will also ensure that the comments of the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) are passed to the Minister.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) for his excellent work on this issue, and for working with other hon. Members across parties, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker), to highlight how important it is that we understand how defence is underpinning environmental, social and governance issues, rather than acting in opposition to them. He rightly highlighted the positive impact SMEs have in his constituency, and particularly noted Needles and Pins Aerospace and Edmund Optics. It can be difficult for the average person to understand exactly what we mean when we talk about defence SMEs, and he highlighted their work in areas as niche as helicopter insulation or lens manufacturing, and in training support.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer also rightly spoke about debanking. Whether it is access to funds, access to banking or access to any other financial services, it is important that we understand exactly the issues that SMEs may be facing. He was also right to highlight the particular challenges for SMEs that come from the long payment cycles of primes. Again, having worked in an SME, I know how frustrating it can be when an SME has a product that the customer wants and that the SME can provide, but what would be a good deal is prevented by a long payment cycle and difficulty with funding.

I will no doubt speak to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) after the debate about his point on Beyond the Battlefield. He noted the proud history of Northern Ireland and Belfast in the defence industry. I am delighted that the lightweight multirole missiles contract has further secured that industry, and I know that the future continues to be bright. He also highlighted the huge importance of the defence industry for apprenticeships and having those highly skilled, technical pipelines where young people leave education and start on fantastic careers where they learn skills and earn a decent wage. Apprenticeships are hugely important in his and my constituency, and in the constituencies of many hon. Members here, so he is right to note them.

Let me turn now to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) on the impact on the planet. As he knows, the MOD and our partners are absolutely committed to safeguarding our national security first and foremost. However, we must also recognise the impact of addressing climate-related risks, and when we look at the intersection of climate-related risks and defence, we know they are inextricably linked.

We must also look at reducing environmental impacts, and I know I am not the only Member of this House who has fond memories of doing their bit by picking up brass from training areas. However, we must make sure that the MOD is also doing work across the board to ensure we understand and consider its impact on the wider environment. My hon. Friend will know that our financial reporting is aligned with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures frameworks, ensuring that we understand climate risks to both the MOD and our supply chain, which are ultimately not acting in opposition, but are inextricably linked.

Let me turn to my hon. Friend’s point on compliance policies. We are absolutely committed to mobilising private investors to take a fresh look at defence. That comes alongside the certainty of our own record long-term uplift in defence spending. That is particularly crucial for SMEs looking to scale up their concepts, ideas and prototypes. As with any bank-to-SME relationship, we recognise that there will be commercial considerations and compliance processes, which will include ESG and no doubt other regulatory considerations. None the less, we welcome the Financial Conduct Authority’s statement, which confirmed that there are no rules in its regulations that prevent

“investment or finance for defence companies.”

The Defence Office for Small Business Growth—which the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry launched this week in Scotland—the £2.5 billion spending target by 2027-28 and the defence innovation unit all mean that, as well as proactively engaging the investor community to further build market confidence, we will collaborate on investment opportunities.

Turning to the points made by the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), I note her underlining of the importance of defence for the nation. It is not always helpful to conflate ESG and diversity and inclusion. None the less, I thank her for raising the previous Government’s record of failure on recruitment and for highlighting their poor record on defence exports and their failure to improve our sovereign energy capability.

I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for her strong statement that ESG and defence are not contradictory. As she rightly notes, there are challenges for the defence industry, and having stability is hugely important. She also raised the importance of continuously assessing threats, so I think she will note my comments about the need to balance long-term stability with assessing threats—there would be a balance and trade-offs between the two. Along with other hon. Members, she also mentioned the defence investment plan, and I can assure her that we are working flat out to deliver it as soon as possible.

Let me turn now to the hon. and gallant Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed). His commitment to this topic is plain to see, and he is evidently passionate about it. He rightly noted the importance of allocations of capital, and that we must act equitably in this space and underline the important role the defence industry plays in the security of this nation and the prosperity of the individual nations within it. He also rightly noted the importance of defence industries being able to go into academic spaces such as universities. We of course note the right to peaceful protest, but companies should none the less be allowed to go into universities and show the huge opportunities they can offer those who seek careers in defence. Finally, he rightly noted that we should not equivocate between dual-use military technologies and core defence capabilities. He was right to say that weapons and ammunition are just as important as helicopter insulation, and we should not equivocate between the two. I note his call for us not to do that. I will make sure that his wider suggestions are passed to my colleague the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry for full consideration.

The Government believe that investing in defence, and the deterrent effect that that buys, provides the stable foundation on which everything else in this nation depends, from our economy to our ability to go about our daily lives. Across this House, we must never stop reminding people that defence investment prevents wars, and for only a tiny fraction of the cost of fighting one.

Therefore, in our more dangerous and unpredictable world, as we implement the largest increase in defence spending since the cold war, and move towards a footing of warfighting readiness, we must dismantle all barriers that might hold back defence investment. That is why we have come into government determined to forge a much closer partnership between industry, innovators and investors, and to work together to find ways to unlock that investment.

Although we acknowledge the debate raging about the extent to which ESG considerations can be a brake on investment in defence, it is important to note the FCA’s statement on how its own rules do not prohibit financing investment in the defence sector. However, we have to note the anecdotal evidence that negative perceptions and a lack of understanding of the rules are acting as a drag on defence investment by individuals and financial institutions.

As part of our consultation on our defence industrial strategy, we heard from smaller defence suppliers about their difficulties with access to finance, whether in opening a bank account or securing a loan. That is wrong; it harms British jobs, British firms and our national security.

We have been loud and clear about the valuable economic and social contribution of the defence sector. Indeed, my colleague the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry is frequently heard to use the phrase “engine for growth” as he talks about the importance of defence investment. I have already spoken about the work he did on Monday in launching the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, which will work with small and medium-sized businesses to address the barriers hampering them at the time when we need them most.

Through the strategic defence review and the defence industrial strategy, we have been clear about the societal value of defence investment. We have been very clear—I say this on the record and as clearly as possible—that defence is an ethical investment. We have illustrated how defence investment has repeatedly led to huge leaps forward in dual-use technologies, from advanced materials and computing to clean energy technologies. In a high-tech age of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, such dual-use opportunities are magnified, as in turn is the potential for defence investment to stimulate jobs and economic growth.

When we discuss ESG, it is important that we do not completely dismiss ethical concerns. We have only to look at Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities to understand that there can be a basis for legitimate concern about how weapons are used. This Government believe that the answer to such concerns in relation to UK-made equipment lies in robust export controls and international law, not in harming our own security by starving our defence industrial base of the investment it needs.

We have set in train an evidence-led approach to dismantling the barriers we have talked about. We have a much closer partnership with the financial sector, and are working together to find new ways to unlock investment. The Defence Secretary convened a first-of-its-kind meeting with venture capitalists last April. We brought together venture capitalists, private equity and other key financial services at our defence investment summit in September, and that group of experts is also helping to inform our defence finance and investment strategy. That will reflect the work we are doing with the FCA and the Pensions Regulator to explore the impact of all regulations on defence financing and investment.

We will also set out steps we can take to tackle the perception, which some hold, that defence is an unethical investment. Many of us have spoken about the importance of the pipeline of skilled and talented innovators, so we must make sure we address negative perceptions of defence in the education sector. To do so, we have committed to establishing the defence universities alliance, which will bring together a network of universities, the MOD, armed forces and the wider sector to promote defence careers and support defence research.

For too long, the defence sector has had an unearned and unfair reputation that is likely to have harmed defence investment. This Government are determined to change that narrative, and we are working hard to do so. Yes, war is brutal, but the best way of avoiding it is to invest in deterrence, which means investing in defence. In doing so, we fuel the virtuous circle of investment, jobs and growth, benefiting communities right across the country and making ourselves more secure at home and stronger abroad—something that I know everybody in this room can get behind.

15:53

[Jack Rankin]

I thank all hon. Members from across the Chamber for their considered contributions, and particularly the hon. Members for York Outer (Mr Charters), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam).

Speakers have emphasised slightly different things, but we all support a safe and confident Britain and understand that the first responsibility of His Majesty’s Britannic Government is the defence of the realm. Investment in defence is patriotic, it is necessary and it helps to make war less likely.

I thank the Minister for her comments. Given the increasingly dangerous world we live in, we should take action today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of environmental, social and governance requirements on the defence industry.

15:54

Sitting suspended.

Ivanhoe Line: Restoration

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

16:06

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I will call Amanda Hack to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of both the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention with a 30-minute debate.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered restoration of the Ivanhoe Line.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey.

I am pleased that colleagues have joined me for what I believe is the first ever debate solely about the Ivanhoe line—a train line that would reopen a direct passenger link between Leicester and Burton upon Trent. The line has a long history. Before the 1830s, Coalville did not exist; it was known as Long Lane and included the four medieval parishes of Whitwick, Hugglescote, Snibston and Swannington. When William Stenson, the proprietor of coalmines in Whitwick, returned from a trip on the Stockton and Darlington railway, he carefully studied the land between Long Lane and Leicester. Taking into account the mines in Ibstock and Bagworth, he planned the line of a possible railway.

Stenson enlisted the help of George Stephenson, “the father of railways”, who delegated the construction of the Swannington-to-Leicester railway to his son, Robert. It became the sixth steam railway in the country, linking Leicester and Long Lane so that coal could easily be transported between the two. Some estimate that around the same time the town became known as Coalville. The line traditionally transported coal before it was opened to passengers.

Fast forward to the 1960s, when what was then called the Ivanhoe line was closed during the infamous Beeching cuts of 7 September 1964. Since then, there have been many campaigns to get it fully back up and running, especially as it remained open to freight traffic until only recently.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing forward this matter. I spoke to her before the debate, and I now rise to support and encourage her.

I hail from a rural constituency that once had a railway line but now has none whatsoever. Sometimes the bottom line is not the financial one, and sometimes obligations need to extend to more than profit margins. Does the hon. Lady agree that there must be an obligation —if necessary, a statutory obligation—to provide a rail service in isolated areas?

[Amanda Hack]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Later in my speech, I will talk about how we can connect our communities, which is really important.

Lack of maintenance on the Ivanhoe line led to the gradual withdrawal of freight services, although the private section, from Bardon Hill quarry to the rail network, is still operational; in fact, the quarry has recently extended its lease. There was an opportunity to get the line up and running in the 1990s, but any hope of doing so was thwarted by the break-up of British Rail when it was privatised. Throughout all this change, there has been continuous local pressure to deliver a passenger rail service for my constituents. The most recent business case was supported under stage 1 of the restoring your railway fund, of which Lord Hendy, the Minister of State for Rail, was the chair.

The project originated from a successful bid by the Campaign to Reopen the Ivanhoe Line, or CRIL, and was one of the 12 projects nationally to receive restoring your railway development funding. I want to take a moment to thank everybody from CRIL for all their hard work to get to this stage.

The project, which was in phase 1 of restoring your railways, was for a partial reopening from Coalville to Burton upon Trent, with stations at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Castle Gresley and Coalville. That would have finally reconnected two of the largest towns not connected to the rail network: Coalville and Swadlincote. Those two towns have also seen the highest growth in homes and employment in the last decade. The east midlands has grown by 8%, yet my constituency of North West Leicestershire has grown by 12% and South Derbyshire has grown by 13%.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. She has been a fierce champion for this campaign since before becoming an MP and has been relentless since—and I love her for it. I also thank the members of the Campaign to Reopen the Ivanhoe Line who live in South Derbyshire.

Swadlincote lost its original Midland Railway station in 1947, leaving it a disconnected town. There are very few places the size of Swad in the UK without a train station. The nearest train station, for anyone who wants to get anywhere, is in Burton. Anyone who wants to get a train directly to our capital city would have to go to Tamworth, over 15 miles away and 30 minutes away on a good day. East Midlands Parkway is over 30 minutes away, and there are many others.

I want South Derbyshire to continue to grow, with great tech jobs and opportunities. Does my hon. Friend agree that reopening the Ivanhoe line for passengers, as well as the railway station in Castle Gresley, would help to create a two-way gateway and opportunity for people in Swadlincote and the surrounding areas?

[Amanda Hack]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and her support during the campaign. The main thing is that large towns need the infrastructure to match. There are certainly other examples of investments in railways to connect towns that are exceeding their passenger targets, such as the Northumberland line.

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

What my hon. Friend is talking about reminds me of an issue that affects my constituents. The line between Liverpool and Preston crosses the line between Southport and Manchester. Up until the 1960s, the two lines were linked by two curves at the town of Burscough, just outside my constituency. For 60 years, there has been a campaign to get the curves reopened and to reinstall the commuter link between Southport and Ormskirk, and also between Southport and Preston, which would add huge amounts of GVA to the local area and create an economic powerhouse for the north-west. The cost of rebuilding and reopening the Burscough curves has been estimated at just £35 million. Does my hon. Friend agree that that would be £35 million pounds very well spent?

[Amanda Hack]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I do not know a huge amount about his line, but that certainly seems to be good value for money, and it adds to the point about towns that need infrastructure. What does that infrastructure do? It gives those people opportunity.

On that point, I ask the Minister what work has been done to assess the impact on growth and investment in large towns like mine, and those of my colleagues, that are not connected to the rail network. North West Leicestershire, alongside other parts of the east midlands, is outside the East Midlands combined authority and does not benefit from the city region allocation, which, for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, is £2 billion. Although part of the Ivanhoe travels through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), it ends in Burton, which is also outside the combined authority, yet the Ivanhoe line would give my constituents the opportunity to get to Derby via Burton and vice versa.

The money allocated to Leicestershire is limited to public transport and some long overdue road improvements. If Leicester and Leicestershire were allocated city region funding at the same rate as the combined authority, we would have £1 billion to invest in Leicester and Leicestershire. We cannot just accept that the mayoralty alone gets the increase, when we know that the east midlands lags behind in terms of funding.

Research has shown that, had the east midlands received the same funding as the UK average between 2019 and 2024, we would have had about £10 billion extra for transport. Will the Minister highlight how areas such as Leicester and Leicestershire, within the most poorly funded region for transport investment, will be supported to ensure that services can be provided?

Now I want to talk about the value of the train line for our communities—the exciting and most important bit. MPs can get really competitive when it comes to who has the prettiest constituency, but mine is at the heart of the national forest, and it really does not get much better than that. The National Forest Company transformed the post-industrial landscape into a thriving success story of environmentally led regeneration in the midlands. Reopening the Ivanhoe line has the potential to create a beautiful train line travelling through the greenery of the national forest. The National Forest Company reached out to me before the debate and shared its recent research. It found:

“The second highest contributor to CO2 emissions within the National Forest is resident travel, with car travel accounting for 14% of the residents’ consumption-based footprint—higher than the National Average”.

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend stressed the importance of rail freight. The Railways Bill, currently in Committee, will introduce a target to increase rail freight. Does she share the concerns relayed to me about the potential for this line to be closed to freight? Does she agree that we should be getting lorries and haulage off our roads and on to rail freight, as we are doing with Great British Railways?

[Amanda Hack]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will come to freight in a little while; he has pre-empted my speech.

The National Forest Company also shared that 99% of the over 200,000 annual visitors to Conkers, which is one of the key attractions in the national forest, travel by car. It feels counterproductive that the only option to make the most of our green spaces is driving, and there is certainly opportunity for investment along the line at Moira to assist with changing that.

The reopening of the Ivanhoe line through the national forest is critical if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions in this part of the midlands. There is also a local idea of changing the name from Ivanhoe to the National Forest line; I think that has a good ring to it. Last year, I did a survey, and about 400 people in my constituency responded: 90% said they travelled by car because of poor public transport, 72% said that they were prevented from travelling to where they want to go because there were no public transport options, and 97% supported the restoration of the Ivanhoe line.

My constituent Karen pointed out that there are many attractions and services in Ashby and that the rail line would be a valuable asset, bringing people to the castle, leisure facilities and the array of shops, pubs and cafes. Ashby is a pure market town. Unsurprisingly, a lot of respondents also said that the reopening of the line would help them to access job opportunities outside the area. One of my constituents told me that she is disabled and wants to work in Leicester but struggles on the buses to Ashby. Another told me how a train line would help him to see his young daughter more, connecting and putting his family back together. Another works for the management team at a homeless charity and explained on behalf of their clients that the reopening of the line would remove some of the barriers to accessing accommodation, attending appointments and securing local job opportunities.

It is fantastic to hear that the Government have stressed the importance of apprenticeships and fulfilling education and job opportunities for all, but how are my younger constituents going to get there? When I meet young people like William across my constituency, they tell me that public transport is a huge barrier to getting to the training opportunities and apprenticeships they deserve.

Buses are also leaving people stranded. Dave contacted me over the weekend. He went to watch a Leicester City match and got the last bus home to Ashby. However, the bus stopped in Coalville, and the passengers were told to get off and walk to another bus stop. They waited and waited for a bus that never arrived. He quite rightly says:

“where a simple bus ride can’t get people home, a train line would help enormously”.

North West Leicestershire also does not have a main hospital. My constituents travel to Derby, Leicester, Nottingham and Burton, and having to rely on services as unreliable as the one I just described is a real problem. As one constituent said in the survey:

“It’s harder to think of reasons NOT to reopen the line”.

I understand that, ever since we have come into office, we have had to battle to deal with the financial mess that the previous Government left behind. On that point, I want to segue on to another rail project: HS2, which has been marred by significant delays and cost overruns. It would have literally just gone through my constituency—it would have moved a dual carriageway in my constituency, but it would not have brought us a train station.

HS2 Ltd owns 74 homes in my constituency, more than in any other. I have written to the Secretary of State on this issue, and would be grateful if my constituents could get a definitive answer on how that money can be reinvested. Can constituencies with assets purchased for HS2 be allocated the appreciated asset value as well as the rental income that is coming in? Setting aside that money for rail improvements would make such a difference.

HS2 was about providing capacity. For the east midlands, Ivanhoe was the only project to progress in restoring your railway, creating rail capacity for both passengers and freight. It is outstandingly different from many other rail infrastructure projects, because we already have a track in place, and therefore it is quick to deliver. I have been engaging with CRIL, Network Rail, Midlands Connect, East Midlands Railway, Siemens Mobility, the East Midlands combined county authority and the National Forest. I have had numerous meetings with Ministers in the Department for Transport, and have mentioned the Ivanhoe line whenever possible here and in the main Chamber.

North West Leicestershire has so much potential, and we have to make it count. We sit in the heart of the UK, with great people, an ever-evolving community, tons of aspiration and an industrial past we are proud of. We have a real sense of looking forward. Significant levels of investment in UK logistics have not gone hand in hand with as much infrastructure investment as our community needs. In fact, the line would go through the golden triangle freight logistics area, which has the most intense concentration of warehousing in the country, so we should take the opportunity to improve public transport to this important employment hub.

North West Leicestershire is in some ways a great set of contradictions. We have an international airport, yet poor public transport. We have the East Midlands rail freight terminal, yet no passenger rail. We have great road networks, yet local roads have been poorly invested in. We are enhancing our environment, with the National Forest planting more greenery and trees to tackle carbon emissions, but we are cancelling that out because have only the car as an option. Siemens Mobility, the train signalling company, is based in my constituency, yet none of its staff can get to work on the train.

We have a line, and we have the stations reserved in the local plan. The delivery from start to finish would be very short. The biggest contradiction is that we have gone back on public transport connectivity since the ’60s while growing exponentially. The reopening of the Ivanhoe line would be beneficial to investment and growth in public transport, but I also recognise that we have to prepare for the population growth that is already contained in the local plan, quite apart from the new growth in progress.

I promised my constituents that I would continue to push for the rightful restoration of the Ivanhoe line all the way from Burton to Leicester and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

16:22

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Keir Mather)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) on securing the debate, and thank everyone for their contributions, including my hon. Friends the Members for Southport (Patrick Hurley), for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier), and for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), as well as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

On a practical point, may I say that I will chase the correspondence that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire referred to in relation to HS2? More broadly, I thank her for her work in advocating on behalf of her constituents and championing their need to have public transport that serves their interests. She rightly points to the fact that this Government believe that transport is not just a means of getting from A to B; it is a key way in which we fulfil the lives of people in the United Kingdom and connect them to greater economic opportunity and to their families. We will use the transport network as a catalyst for economic growth and for making sure that we have the housing people need. My hon. Friend appears to be laser-focused on those principles in her work and advocacy, and I thank her for that.

I am grateful for the passionate case that my hon. Friend made for reconnecting the towns of North West Leicestershire in the heart of the National Forest, such as Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Coalville and Swadlincote, with passenger railway services to Burton-on-Trent and Leicester —bringing back services lost in 1964 where only quarry freight services still operate today. Transport connections such as the ones that she mentions underpin the core missions of this Government, whether that means kick-starting economic growth, unlocking housing delivery, or breaking down barriers to opportunity to transform lives.

Our objective is simple but ambitious: to build a stronger, more connected transport network that works for everyone, wherever they live. We believe that local authorities are best placed to make decisions about the investment priorities in their areas, but too often, places such as North West Leicestershire have faced fragmented funding and limited flexibility. That is why, from April, we are providing all local transport authorities with more consolidated funding settlements, giving them the ability to align transport investment with local priorities and wider regional objectives, accelerating projects that matter most to their residents, businesses and visitors.

The Ivanhoe route cuts through Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire. In Leicestershire, for example, this means that a total of more than £251 million of vital investment—across highways maintenance, active travel, electric vehicles, bus services and other local transport—will be delivered through consolidated funding by 2029-30. Elsewhere along the line, Staffordshire will receive £342 million, and the Mayor of the East Midlands will receive more than £2 billion by March 2032.

That said, I will take away the point, which my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire made very powerfully, about the disparities between funding in mayoral combined authorities and the local authorities that directly border them. That is something that we are working on through the Railways Bill, to create more democratic accountability, irrespective of mayoral arrangements. I think that point was very well made, and I will take it away from this debate. However, that settlement will support transport authorities, including those outside of MCAs, to strengthen their road, public transport, walking and cycling links between towns, cities and rural areas, and ensure that improvements are felt across the entire region.

Soon, we will embed that approach right across the country through our integrated national transport strategy. The strategy will champion transport that is designed, built and operated with people at its heart, recognising that different places face different connectivity challenges and therefore need different solutions, but also that they have different opportunities. My hon. Friend made an important point about the latent potential of the tourism industry in her constituency, and how the Government must work hard to realise it in partnership with her.

We want to focus on making transport safer, more reliable and more accessible, giving more people confidence in the network and confidence that it will work for them. Crucially, we will also align transport more closely with housing and with public services, recognising that poor connectivity entrenches inequality, while good connectivity expands opportunity.

I commend the work of my hon. Friend in championing the case for reinstating passenger services on the Ivanhoe line, building on previous work to assess the viability of the scheme. While the Chancellor took essential steps to help balance public finances in 2024, closing the previous Government’s unfortunately unfunded commitments in the restoring your railways programme, we welcome transport authorities using local funding to develop the business case for their important local priorities. Indeed, authorities can work with Network Rail to develop and present business cases and investment proposals for consideration through the rail network enhancements pipeline, the Government’s funding portfolio for rail upgrades, at any stage of development. That process ensures that funding decisions are affordable and represent good value for taxpayers.

The Government are also keen to facilitate third-party investment in railway infrastructure that could support local development and housing plans. I urge local transport authorities to make best use of the funding we are making available to them, and to make the right decisions for improving transport connections across all modes, for Ashby, Coalville, Swadlincote and elsewhere.

Recognising the importance of improving transport connections in the wider midlands region, the Chancellor committed in the July spending review to progress to the next stage of the midlands rail hub, which will unlock thousands of homes and drive economic growth, with better connections and more reliable journeys for passengers. The first phase will create capacity in central Birmingham to improve reliability and enable additional trains both locally and to Worcester, south Wales and the south-west. We are working closely with Network Rail to ensure passenger benefits as soon as possible. Depending on future investment decisions, the later phases of the rail hub would also mean major benefits for the east midlands, with extra trains between Birmingham, Derby and Nottingham, including possible stops at Burton-upon-Trent and between Birmingham and Leicester.

East Midlands Railway’s new bi-mode Class 810 Aurora trains have already started to enter passenger service on the midland main line through Leicester and will continue with a phased roll-out through 2026. These new trains will bring a step change in the customer experience and will support growth. Once all those new trains are up and running, they will provide a 46% uplift in capacity, with more seats and carriages.

To conclude, today’s discussion has been an opportunity to reflect not only on the case for the restoration of the Ivanhoe line but on this Government’s priorities for improving transport connections to help people get about and to access the opportunities they deserve, and on how we can support local authorities in the east midlands to deliver on the transport priorities of their communities.

Although I feel that I may not have been able to answer the noble and ambitious aspirations that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire has put forward today, I encourage her to keep the conversation going and to continue to hold DFT Ministers’ feet to the fire on this most important of issues. She is a tireless champion on behalf of her constituents and of their ability to get where they need to go, realise economic opportunity and lead richer, more fulfilled lives. I encourage her to continue in those efforts and I will watch with interest as she does so.

Question put and agreed to.

Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical Markers

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of mandatory medical markers for firearm licence holders.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Ms McVey, and have the opportunity to raise such a critical issue.

In 2021, three-year-old Sophie Martyn was one of six people in Plymouth who lost their lives in a mass killing. At the inquest it emerged that the murderer’s GP had not placed a marker on the medical notes when requested to do so by the police. The murderer had already had his gun taken away previously and concerns about his health had been reported by his mother, who was the first person killed. When it mattered most, the system failed. That cannot be allowed to happen again.

Almost a year after the anniversary of those horrific killings, the previous Government rolled out medical markers for new firearms licence holders. Medical markers, once applied to a patient’s record, flag that an individual has a firearms licence and automatically alerts doctors if there has been a relevant change in their medical situation. That could include a change in their mental health or evidence of substance abuse. That allows the GP to have a conversation with the patient and, if necessary, inform the police. Here is the catch: those markers are not mandatory. There is currently no obligation on GPs to use the marker. Their use is left to the best endeavours of GPs. I have written to the Minister for crime, policing and fire to ask for the number of GPs who have downloaded the marker, but I have yet to receive a response.

That is a missed opportunity to save lives, to safeguard vulnerable adults with access to firearms, and to protect public safety. A survey carried out by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners found that 87% of existing certificate holders believe that GPs should inform the police if they become aware of a change of health that could impact a certificate holder’s ability to own a gun safely. Why are the Government dragging their feet?

In 2008, Christopher Foster shot his wife and teenage daughter. He then shot the family animals and burned his house down, dying of smoke inhalation. He had previously seen his GP on several occasions to discuss his depression and suicidal thoughts. Markers on medical notes for firearms owners were not then available, and there was no way that his GP could have known that he had licensed firearms. With medical markers still being optional, if that horrific attack were carried out today there is still no guarantee that a medical marker would be on his GP record.

Our country is home to proud rural communities and individuals who rely on gun ownership for their work. The shooting industry makes up a vital part of the rural economy.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this issue forward for debate. I, like others, always try to be helpful in my contributions. At a meeting with key stakeholders, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation in Northern Ireland met the Department of Justice and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They routinely acknowledge that the Northern Ireland firearms licensing system, which includes medical checks, is one of the most robust systems—if not the most—in the world. It is clear there is no need for change there. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is essential to liaise with shooting organisations such as the BASC and Countryside Alliance to get insight from their expertise? Could the Minister potentially look at the system in Northern Ireland as the catalyst that the hon. Lady is seeking to achieve?

[Helen Maguire]

It is interesting to hear that there is another system in Northern Ireland, and indeed, I urge the Minister to look at that and see whether it could be applicable here.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)]

I should perhaps clarify for the House that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation. I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she agree that one of the critical reasons that medical markers are not yet compulsory—I entirely agree that they ought to be—is that some doctors do not want to do it because they think it will put them in a decision-making position on whether a person should have a shotgun or firearms certificate? In fact, that is not the case; the decision maker is the relevant constabulary, and, in law, the chief of that constabulary is ultimately responsible for the decision.

[Helen Maguire]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. This is about safeguarding the public. There are many other examples of doctors having similar abilities to use this information.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The hon. Member has prompted the second point that I want to make. Doctors and other medics are perfectly happy to do medical checks on people in relation to driving licences. That is an issue of public safety. Why is there inconsistency in doing it for firearms?

[Helen Maguire]

I absolutely agree, and I will be coming on to that further in my speech. Let me be clear that this debate is in no way about firearm ownership—the Government are consulting on that separately, and that is its own debate. Today’s discussion is about how we can ensure that medical professionals have the information required to best support the individuals they serve.

Emma and her daughter Lettie Pattison, who lived in my constituency, were shot and killed by Emma’s husband almost three years ago, before he turned the gun on himself. Before his latest shotgun licence renewal, George Pattison had used an online doctor to receive a “significant amount” of propranolol between 2019 and 2021. However, despite his change in mental health, the online doctor was unaware of his firearms licence, and the medication was not disclosed to his GP, which meant that neither professional was able to intervene. If they had, maybe Emma would still be working at Epsom college and Lettie might have celebrated her 10th birthday this year.

Robert Needham killed his partner Kelly Fitzgibbons, and their children Ava, age four, and Lexi, age two, in West Sussex in 2020. In Needham’s case, as a result of changes to gun licence guidelines, a flag was initially inputted and then removed. A statement from Kelly’s family following the inquest into their deaths described the monitoring and sharing of information between police and medical professionals about Needham’s shotgun licence as a “shambles.”

Having corresponded with medical organisations, I recognise that balancing the need for patient-doctor confidentiality is paramount. In the first instance, the GP should always ask for the individual’s consent before contacting another authority, such as the police, about how the issues they are facing may impact their ability to safely possess a gun. However, doctors can break confidentiality when it is in the public interest. According to the British Medical Association, public interest is likely to be justified where it is essential to protect other people from risks of serious harm or death.

GPs also must already abide by several safeguarding protocols and laws. The Care Act 2014 sets out six key principles of safeguarding, including prevention, noting that it is sometimes possible to act before harm has come to an individual. With those existing guidelines, mandatory markers are not an attempt to reinvent the wheel; they are simply a way of flagging vital information that is key to the patients and public safety. The Royal College of General Practitioners considers it valuable to have those digital markers in place, and notes that software systems should develop, implement and secure the functionality of the markers in patient records. The college recommends that the Government work with the providers of GP systems to resolve this issue.

The BMA also supports medical markers. They told me that doctors have a professional responsibility to share information that might impact on the safety of someone holding firearms in the community, and we need effective systems to do so. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s office welcomes the digital medical marker and recognises the work of bereaved families who have lobbied tirelessly to ensure that action is taken to prevent future harm and further loss of life. The British Association for Shooting Conservation and the Countryside Alliance, who have a combined membership of over 200,000 people, both support the introduction of mandatory medical markers.

June 2010, March 2020, August 2021, February 2023—these dates are etched in the memories of families torn apart by gun violence: each one a failure of the system; each one a life that could have been saved. The Government have a choice: they can listen to the families of victims, to medical professionals, gun owners and the organisations working to end violence, or they can continue to leave the door open to tragedy. The Liberal Democrats believe that mandatory medical markers are a proportionate evidence-based safeguard. They allow concerns to be flagged early if someone’s health changes, rather than waiting years until a licence renewal, and can save lives. So I ask the Minister today: will he finally release the data on how many GPs are using the markers and will he commit today to making them mandatory?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in the debate.

16:40

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I reiterate my congratulations to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this important debate. I have campaigned for medical markers for at least 20 years, long before the technology that now exists to do them digitally, which of course makes the whole thing far easier than having to put them on manually. In those early days, a few put them on manually, but now, with digital technology, there is no reason why the Government could not have an agreement with the BMA that all GPs and some other health professionals should put them on digitally. To add to what the hon. Member said in her excellent speech, I am chair of the all-party group on shooting and conservation. To make it absolutely clear where I am coming from, I have been a shotgun and firearms certificate holder for over 50 years.

I have been campaigning with the BASC on the issue of medical markers for many years, and have written articles and delivered speeches on the subject, so it is not a new one for me. I fully support a strict licensing system that works effectively for everyone—the police, firearms and shotgun certificate holders and, most importantly, the wider public, our constituency—because it is in no one’s interest that we should have any of the tragic incidents that the hon. Lady so powerfully alluded to. If we had a proper firearms certificate system with medical markers, then clearly, as she demonstrated, some of the tragedies could possibly have been avoided, so I wholly support her in that.

The terrible incident at Epsom college highlights exactly why we need a robust system of medical markers. I will explain a little more how it works. The current two-stage system makes it possible without adding any financial burdens to the GP. When a patient comes in for a consultation with the GP, the medical marker automatically flags up on his or her screen that Mr X or Ms X has a firearms or shotgun certificate, and the GP considers what they have come to see them about. If it is a medical condition such as a propensity to wanting to commit suicide or manic depression, or if domestic violence is involved, that would automatically flag up in the GP’s mind whether the person was a suitable person at that time to be holding either a firearms or shotgun certificate.

As the hon. Lady said, having had it flagged up in the GP’s mind, he or she would have a conversation with that person: “I see you are a shotgun certificate holder. You tell me you are feeling terrible and that you sometimes have feelings of wanting to commit suicide. We’re going to do our best to provide treatment for you, and it may be that in future you could return to a normal position where you could hold a shotgun, but at this particular time, do you think you are a fit person to be holding that shotgun certificate?”

One of two things then happens. If the patient is a belligerent sort of person, he or she would say, “Of course I’m a fit person.” The GP would then be in the position of having to say, “Well, I’m very sorry, but I don’t consider that you are, and I’m going to have to report your medical condition to the police.”

On the other side of the coin, there could be a more sensible conversation with a more rational person, who would say, “Doctor, I hear what you say, and I think it is a concern. I will now take steps either to transfer the guns that I hold in my gun cabinet to a person who has a certificate, to a firearms dealer or to the police, until such time as you and the local constabulary think it is fit for me to repossess those weapons.” That is how it ought to work; that would have prevented a lot of these tragedies.

I think the Government have a role here. As the hon. Lady made clear, the lacuna in the system is that not all GPs currently operate a medical marker. She was quite right to ask what percentage of GPs operate a medical marker, and it would be really interesting to hear the answer from the Minister. If he and the Department of Health and Social Care do not know, they should send out an inquiry to all GPs to find out, and then he could begin to have a negotiation with the General Medical Council and the BMA about whether doctors should operate this service when the Government next sign a contract with them.

There are two principal reasons why doctors do not operate a medical marker—something that is actually very easy to do and involves very little work. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Lady, the first is that there is a widely held concern among the people who will not do so that they will be regarded as the decision maker. They do not want to be the decision maker because, at the margin, it will be quite difficult to decide whether a person should possess a shotgun or other firearm. But that is not the case, as I made clear in my intervention; the chief constable of the constabulary that granted the certificate is the final decision maker. Of course, the normal appeal rights apply to the chief constable. If he has decided that somebody’s firearms licence should not be granted or should be revoked, the affected person has the right to appeal against that decision. It is quite clear that the GP is not the decision maker, and I therefore cannot see any reason why they would not want to operate the medical marker.

The second reason that GPs do not want to operate the medical marker is that they are very busy people—they are overworked—and it is another thing that they have to do. But if they are going to do it for driving licences, heavy goods vehicle licences and a number of other categories, I cannot see why they would not do it in the public interest for firearms.

My sister was a GP and the senior partner of a GP practice. One of her partners was a conscientious objector to people having guns, and she ended up having to do all his casework to do with firearms. Even if a GP is a conscientious objector, they still ought to be interested in public safety as an overall priority of their work, so it would be reasonable to require them to just look at a person’s medical notes and take account of whether their medical condition made them a suitable person to hold a firearm.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making those really important points. I am the chairman of the British Shooting Sports Council, which brings together 15 leading shooting sports organisations, and an enthusiastic shooter, and I wholeheartedly agree with him. I have yet to find anybody who disagrees with the points that he is making.

My hon. Friend made a point about the wider licensing regime. This issue is partly about the licensing regime for firearms, but there is an interesting carry-over. I also have a pilot’s licence, and the pilot’s licensing regime—particularly the commercial pilot’s licensing regime—takes into account medical fitness to fly, which includes mental health. There are examples out there of how this can be done if we get the licensing regime right and get the buy-in of GPs.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I was coming on to the wider firearms licensing regime. BASC thinks that there are about half a million shotgun certificate holders and about 150,000 firearms certificate holders, so this is a large and costly job for the 43 forces to undertake.

There have recently been increases of 250% in the fees for firearms and shotgun licence renewals and grants, so I understand—and I am Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee—that the system is largely self-financing at the moment. I make one plea to the Minister. That big 250% increase came as a great shock, particularly to some firearm and shotgun holders of modest means. When the PAC had our hearing on recovering fees and charges, we found that it is much better to gradually update them each year rather than leave them with no update, as has happened for 12 years, which is why that very large increase was needed. An update every year would be appreciated.

It is a large task to license 650,000-odd firearms and shotguns. There is an opportunity here, with the announcement of the White Paper this week on reforming our police forces. One would need to think carefully about this, but there is a case for considering more centralisation of shotgun and firearms certificates. The centralisation of the police would be an opportunity to consider that. It would relieve the local police, who often struggle—

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I will just make this point first. Local police often struggle to have well-trained people in their firearms department. It is quite an onerous task; they have to know a lot about guns to work out whether a gun is the one on the certificate or not, and there are a number of other questions. Centralising the processing part of firearms and shotgun licences could make a lot of sense.

There would still need to be a local inspection regime. The local firearms officer came round recently, because I have just renewed my certificates. She talked to me at some length, to make sure that I was a sane person with no obvious mental problems, but equally she looked at the guns and she jolly well thoroughly checked that the guns on my certificate were the guns in my cabinet. She looked at the cabinet and at the amount of ammunition I had, and she questioned me about how much I had used and where I had used it. This was under the firearms regime, which is a different subject, but the Government are consulting on aligning the shotguns regime with the firearms regime. There are a considerable number of problems with that, and it needs to be very carefully considered.

I happily give way to my fellow member of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Rachel Gilmour]

Thank you, darling Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

As vice-chair of the Country Land and Business Association’s rural business and rural powerhouse APPG, I fully support the idea of a centralised licensing system. It is interesting that the chair of the APPG is a Liberal Democrat MP like me, so I am pretty confident that it is a sensible and practical idea and that it would prevent the awful sort of deaths that we had in Plymouth a few years ago. It is a very good idea, and the Chair of the PAC obviously agrees with me; I thank him for raising it.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am very grateful for the support from my fellow Committee member. She is dead right: it is a sensible idea that the Minister and the Government should seriously consider.

This complex process, with a very large number of shotgun and firearms certificates, could be made considerably more efficient—the best forces do this already—by proper IT. The problem is that the best forces have the IT and do it really efficiently, but the worst are really not geared up properly with that IT. That is why, in the discussion about fee increases, we wanted to make sure that they were based on the best performance and not the worst.

In our recent PAC hearing on police productivity, as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) knows—our report is out shortly—we found that a lot of forces, particularly the smaller forces, could not afford to upgrade their IT properly. That is a really serious issue, because as our Committee has found, if police forces do not have properly upgraded IT, that not only makes processes such as shotgun certificate licensing more expensive, because it is more inefficient and they have to do it manually, but makes the police force more liable to cyber-attacks. It cannot operate the proper AI learning systems and so on if there are not the proper systems to operate them on.

All in all, this is a really sensible proposal. We know that the number of homicides by licensed shotguns and firearms is very low in this country. Nevertheless, every death and every wounded person is one too many and is a tragedy for that person and their family. It is incumbent on the Government to take this proposal seriously. I congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell again on bringing it before the House.

16:55

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for securing this debate. We have all watched with great sadness the recent shootings in the United States—scenes that should have shaken any civilised society. Thankfully, Britain is not a trigger-happy country, nor do we aspire to be.

Let me be absolutely clear: this is not about restricting lawful firearm ownership. As a liberal, I am not in the business of banning things for the sake of it. As a rural MP, and having spent almost all my life in the west country, I am a creature of the countryside. I know that guns are part of rural life, but they are tools, not toys.

Balancing responsible gun ownership with public safety is a delicate dance. Gun owners already undergo rigorous checks and we should avoid excessive bureaucracy, but the system is inconsistent and leaves gaps. Mandatory medical markers would close those gaps. Shooting organisations themselves recognise that: the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, among others, supports the use of medical markers because it reinforces what they know from experience, which is that licensed gun owners are overwhelmingly responsible and pose no risk to the public. That is precisely why their call for compulsory markers reflects a desire for a system that is robust, consistent and trusted by all.

We must also consider the wider context. Mental health is a growing concern in rural communities such as mine. Farmers are among the most resilient people in the country, but resilience does not make anyone immune to pressure. Rural life can be hard and isolating; it involves long hours and financial uncertainty. That is not to pathologise farmers—quite the opposite—but acknowledging the pressures they face is important.

The introduction of mandatory medical markers would be quite simply a win-win for gun owners, the public and the medical professionals who play such a vital role in the licensing process. It would strengthen trust, enhance safety and reinforce the responsible culture that already exists in our shooting communities.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I missed a really important point in my speech: at the moment, there is no check between the renewing or granting of a shotgun or firearms licence and the re-grant five years later. Does the hon. Member agree that introducing medical markers would, in a sense, introduce a check between grant and renewal if somebody turned up to their GP with one of the health conditions that would be prejudicial to holding a gun?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I thank the hon. Member for his intelligent and incisive comment.

Mandatory medical markers help to support the rural community. They ensure that if someone is struggling, the licensing process is equipped to respond swiftly and sensitively. The public understand that. Some 70% of firearms licence holders support mandatory markers. Among the wider public, support shoots—pardon the pun—to 86%. Crucially, these markers are not a barrier to gun ownership. They do not make the process more difficult; they simply make it safer. I say to the Minister that it is common sense.

16:58

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this important debate, on her hard work on the topic and on her very moving speech.

This debate is about lives that should not have been lost. It is about a system that failed, when it could have made the difference between safety and tragedy. When warning signs exist but are not seen, when safeguards are optional rather than embedded and when responsibility is fragmented across an overstretched system, the consequences can be fatal, as we have heard. I support my hon. Friend’s call for change. The Liberal Democrats want to ensure that firearms licensing in this country protects public safety while remaining fair, workable and, most importantly, proportionate for those who hold licences responsibly and lawfully.

I want to begin by acknowledging the unimaginable loss suffered by the family and friends of Emma and Lettie Pattison. It should not take such a tragedy for us to act, but we owe it to them and to the public to learn lessons and make changes that will prevent further harm. The inquest into their deaths found that George Pattison was legally permitted to hold a shotgun licence despite having concealed relevant medical information. He had obtained significant quantities of medication for anxiety through online services entirely outside his GP’s knowledge, and when he renewed his licence there was no effective mechanism to identify that risk. The senior coroner issued a clear warning that unless gun ownership laws are tightened, the risk of future deaths will remain. That warning must be taken seriously.

Mandatory medical markers for firearms licence holders are a proportionate and evidence-based safeguard. They are not about punishing responsible gun owners; they are about ensuring that when someone’s health changes in a way that may affect their suitability to possess a firearm, that risk is identified early, rather than years later at the licence renewal or not at all. Effectively, as the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) outlined, it is an ongoing safety check against changes in an individual’s circumstances.

The legal framework already recognises the importance of medical fitness. Under the Firearms Act 1968, police must be satisfied that a person can possess a firearm

“without danger to public safety or to the peace.”

Medical information is already part of that assessment; the question before us is whether the system is robust enough.

In 2022, an important step forward was taken when GPs in England were given access to interactive medical markers that can be placed on medical records for firearms certificate holders. Making those markers mandatory would help to better identify individuals whose medical conditions may temporarily or permanently impair their ability to handle a firearm safely. Current guidance includes

“post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal thoughts or self-harm or harm to others, depression or anxiety, dementia, mania, bipolar disorders or a psychotic illness”

and neurological conditions such as alcohol or drug abuse. When assessed, that marker alerts a GP that a patient holds a firearms licence and allows concerns to be flagged to the police where appropriate.

The system works. It respects professional boundaries. GPs do not decide who holds a licence; that decision rightly remains with law enforcement. It imposes no financial burden on surgeries. It enables safeguards throughout the life of a licence, not just at the point of renewal. But there are flaws in the system: its use is voluntary, it may not account for online workarounds, which people are adept at using, and there is no obligation on GPs to apply the marker. That is because under the previous Government, the Home Office declined to make it mandatory. As has been outlined, we do not even know how many practices actually use it.

The evidence strongly supports change. The police support mandatory markers. The Countryside Alliance supports mandatory markers. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation supports them, and has suggested that they be incorporated into GP contracts. The British Medical Association now recommends their use. Perhaps most compellingly of all, 70% of firearms certificate holders support the change, according to a survey by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, and among the wider public that support is at 86%. It is a sensible proposal enjoying widespread support among the public and the sector.

In 2016, Christopher Foster killed his wife and daughter before taking his own life. He had discussed depression and suicidal thoughts with his GP, but there was no way for the GP to know that he owned a firearm. In Plymouth in 2021, six people were killed with a licensed firearm. The inquest found that a marker had not been placed, despite the police requesting one. Thankfully, in the UK, murders, suicides and deliberate injuries by licensed firearm owners remain mercifully low. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of licensed gun owners in this country are responsible gun owners, but there is no ignoring the fact that lives could have been saved in those cases if medical markers had been mandatory.

Medical markers are about early intervention. They protect the licence holder as much as anyone else. They ensure that when someone is struggling with their mental or physical health, support and safeguarding go hand in hand. Having safeguards in place is important because of the wider issues at play. The process for approving or refusing a firearms licence is currently slow, inconsistent, expensive and, in large parts of the country, under huge strain. The processing time varies wildly depending on where a person lives, fees differ, and huge backlogs exist in some places.

Firearms licensing is a specialist function delivered by local police forces, yet rural police forces such as mine in Dorset, which are responsible for areas with high levels of gun ownership, are under the greatest financial pressure, struggling with overstretched resources. Firearms in farming communities are not recreational; for most farmers, they are an essential tool of their trade. When renewals are delayed, livelihoods are affected.

There are further challenges. The Home Office is consulting on merging section 1 and section 2 licensing. This may be well intentioned, but it risks adding complexity, cost and delay to an already fragile system unless carefully handled. Licensing is already expensive, and delays already undermine confidence. That is why I believe we must look seriously at proposals for a dedicated firearms licensing agency. The Government’s recent police reform White Paper acknowledges that firearms are a specialist area and that concentrating such functions in centres of excellence could improve effectiveness, consistency and value for money.

A centralised body could standardise fees, reduce waiting times, ensure the consistent application of medical markers and take the pressure off local police forces, freeing them to focus on their job—frontline policing. A specialist agency would be better equipped to process licences efficiently, apply safeguards properly and respond to risks swiftly. It would also ensure that reforms such as mandatory medical markers were implemented consistently and effectively, rather than, as at the moment, unevenly across the country.

The Liberal Democrats are proud champions of rural communities. We support responsible gun ownership. We are also clear that safeguarding must go hand in hand with support. We will always stand up for people experiencing mental ill health or addiction, but that is precisely why early identification and intervention matter. Mandatory medical markers are about not punishment but protection.

At a time when mental health services are under immense strain and online medical services can be used to bypass safeguards, it is more important than ever that our licensing system is joined up, informed and proactive. Will the Minister release the data that my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell has requested? Will he give consideration to centralised licensing systems and to making medical markers mandatory? Will he ensure that public safety measures are not undermined by a system that is slow, inconsistent and overstretched?

17:06

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey.

I usually respond to matters related to the Department of Health and Social Care, but it is a pleasure to be here to debate a more rural point. I represent Farnham and Bordon, which is a semi-rural seat. It will be no surprise to hon. Members that I must declare that I am a supporter of the Countryside Alliance and a member of the Conservative Rural Forum.

I thank the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for securing this debate and for her expositions of very many tragic cases, especially her powerful remarks about the appalling case of Emma and Lettie Pattison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for his very practical approach to this debate; I think the Government should take on board the number of issues he raised.

Likewise, my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) discussed the synergies between gun licences and other licensing regimes—in his case, for pilots. I look forward to him taking me on a trip at some point. I also thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for her, as ever, interesting contributions, drawing on her rural experience.

Whenever we decide to create new rules that restrict the behaviour of the many in response to the actions of the few, we must be extremely careful. Where genuine loopholes exist because of data silos, or because of how long-standing rules interact with novel cases, it is right that they are closed. As has been mentioned, while the firearms marker is not mandatory, a digital version has been rolled out to all general practices in England, with implementation completed in May 2023.

The key point that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell mentioned was that the Government must continue to monitor the efficacy of the current system to ensure that only those who are suitable are able to hold a firearms licence and, more especially, to publish the data surrounding that. As has been mentioned, many organisations are supportive of mandatory markers, and I have a lot of sympathy with that, but we must have the data to take an evidence-led approach.

Protecting the integrity of the firearms licensing system is essential for public safety, but any measures must remain proportionate and avoid placing unnecessary burdens on medical professionals or responsible licence holders. As we have seen so often in recent years, the net result of successive, well-intentioned changes to the law can be a system that makes life unduly difficult for the vast majority of law-abiding people, while failing to stop the criminal minority.

Unfortunately, under this Government, we have seen a renewed assault on civilian firearms ownership, which is set to directly punish those in rural communities who rely on firearms as tools of the trade. For farmers, land managers and pest controllers, firearms are part and parcel of everyday life, and access to those tools is vital. Without them, it would be impossible to protect livestock and manage the local population of certain animals, as farming communities have done for centuries.

None the less, without any particular justification, and without ever proving that it would actually prevent criminals from getting hold of firearms, the Government have announced that they plan to regulate section 2 firearms, such as shotguns, under the more stringent regime that previously applied only to section 1 firearms. We have heard vague gestures in the direction of public safety, but no clear case has been made for the substantive measures proposed, and we certainly have had no indication from the Government that they have considered the particular needs of rural communities.

If shotguns are to be regulated like long-range rifles, how do the Government expect farmers and pest controllers to continue their work? Given that, as we have heard, many police firearms licensing departments are overwhelmed by the volume of applications, has there been any consideration of the delays that extra work for these departments would create?

One of my constituents recently submitted a renewal application within the timeframe recommended by the police, allowing more than six months for processing. The only response received was, by return of post, an extension of the existing licence, as the department acknowledged that it would be unable to issue a new licence within the six-month period. The routine use of licence extensions is concerning because it allows firearms to remain in circulation without a timely, full reassessment of suitability. Meanwhile, some of the Government’s proposals will not help with public safety, but will put additional burdens on the police force or make them more likely.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Throughout this debate, we have talked about proportionality. Everybody who has spoken has agreed that compulsory medical markers would be totally proportionate to try to make the public safer. However, the proposal to move shotguns from section 2 to section 1 is totally disproportionate. The current law was framed as it is because a shotgun is lethal at only a relatively short range, whereas a firearm, even a .22 if shot straight, is lethal at up to a mile with high-velocity bullets. They are two totally different tools of the trade and are used for different things.

[Gregory Stafford]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. It seems to me that this is a knee-jerk reaction from the Government, without them understanding the logistics or the mechanics of the difference between the long-range rifles and shotguns used by our rural communities—[Interruption.] And, as my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position, without actually seeing the evidence for it. Whether we are talking about medical markers or the changes to the shotgun licensing regime, the key thing is that it must be done on the basis of evidence.

I therefore ask the Minister: has there been any consideration of the disruption that these delays will cause to those in rural communities who rely on firearms for work? Have these questions been asked at all within the Home Office or, as in so many other cases, have the Government simply failed to consider the needs of rural communities? It is clearly true that, wherever possible, our firearms licensing rules should prevent weapons from falling into the hands of those who wish to use them only to do harm to others, but any new changes to the law must account for the fact that life in the countryside is very different from life in our largest cities. We must afford some space for discretion and for recognising the particular needs of certain communities.

We must also always be sure that new rules would actually make life more difficult for wrongdoers, instead of allowing good intentions to lead us into making life more difficult for the law-abiding majority. Far too often it is the law-abiding who are punished by rules that are created in this place, even when those rules were designed with the most sincere intention of targeting the criminal few.

Can the Minister provide clarity on when we can expect the consultation on the proposed changes to shotgun licensing? Can he assure us today that the final verdict of the consultation will take full account of those across rural Britain, whose livelihoods will be rendered impossible by these proposals? Can he further assure us that, before considering any new regulations, the Government will first consider a renewed focus on enforcing the law as it already stands?

I think there has been clear agreement in this debate on the need for a licensing system that protects the public, does not overburden the police or the NHS, stops and punishes wrongdoers, and recognises the special need that people in rural communities have for responsible gun ownership. Therefore, I urge the Minister to approach this issue with an evidence-based, proportionate and fair attitude, protecting the public and protecting our rural way of life.

17:15

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mike Tapp)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for securing this debate, and I thank all the other Members who are here today for their well-argued, compelling, considered and sensible points. I will address those points as best I can in my response, then I will move on to address the shotgun issue near the end.

As we know, firearms licensing controls are crucial to minimise the risk of harm and to keep the public safe. Medical checks and the use of firearms markers are an important part of those controls. Although I understand why there are calls for such markers to be mandatory, the Government do not consider that to be necessary at this point, and I come on to the reasons why. It should be recognised that the decisions in all firearms application cases are taken by the relevant police force. Medical information provided by GPs is very important, but it is just one part of the information that is considered by the police.

Before I address the specific points that have been raised during the debate, I reassure Members and their constituents that work continues to make the firearms licensing system as robust as it can be. Although public safety is and will always be the priority, it is also right to acknowledge that the large majority of firearms licence holders—there are some in the Public Gallery today—do not cause any concern. The challenge is to have an effective system in place to identify individuals who might cause harm.

Of course, the tragedy at Epsom college in February 2023 shocked us all. In discussing these issues today, I know that we all have the victims of that crime—Emma Pattison and her seven-year-old daughter, Lettie—and the victims of other such crimes well and truly at the forefront of our minds. The perpetrator at Epsom college was Emma’s husband; he was a licensed shotgun owner, who then killed himself. He had suffered from anxiety, but his GP and the police were unaware of that because he had sought treatment from an online doctor, as was explained earlier. He did not disclose that information when he applied for his certificate renewal.

The medical checks for firearms licensing have been significantly strengthened in recent years. Medical information for firearms licensing has been a requirement for every firearm and shotgun licence application since November 2021, when the new guidance for chief officers of police on firearms licensing was introduced. An applicant’s doctor must now provide details of any relevant medical conditions, such as depression, dementia, mental health issues or drug or alcohol abuse, that the applicant has experienced. A firearms licence will not be granted without this information.

A digital firearms marker is placed on the GP patient record when a certificate is granted. This means that if a certificate holder has a relevant medical condition during the five years’ validity of the certificate, their GP can alert the police, who will then review whether that individual is still suitable to have a firearms licence, and—if necessary—revoke the licence. Initially, the marker was in the form of a paper marker on a person’s medical record. However, because of concerns that a paper marker could easily be overlooked by a busy GP, work has been done to replace it with a new digital firearms marker.

Use of the digital firearms marker is not a core health requirement for GPs and is not part of the GP contract, nor is it a legal requirement, but the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners support its use, and the BMA issues guidance to GPs about it. Therefore, any GP who fails to engage with the process would be going against the advice of their professional associations, as well as taking a significant risk.

The available data indicates that most GPs in England are applying the digital firearms marker as they are expected to. We have received very encouraging data from NHS England about how the marker is being used by doctors, and we continue to work with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to assess whether there are any regional variations that could signpost whether greater engagement between police and doctors at local level is needed in certain areas.

The data provided by NHS England gives figures for the number of active digital firearms markers applied by GP surgeries in each of the last three years, and—

[Helen Maguire]

rose—

[Mike Tapp]

And I will go through the data now, before the hon. Member intervenes and asks for it. If there are any gaps in it, I will welcome an intervention at the end, and I will take note and we can write back.

In 2022-23, 93,700 new digital markers were applied, in 2023-24 that figure was 85,650, and in the latest year for which data is available, 2024-25, 98,690 new digital markers were applied to medical records. Those are broadly the numbers we would expect when compared with the data for the number of firearms licence applications and renewals made each year.

We also have data on the number of cases where a GP has notified the police of a medical concern about a certificate holder following a review prompted by the digital marker. In 2022-23, 1,180 cases were referred by GPs to police forces as a result of the digital marker, in 2023-24 that figure was 1,040, and in 2024-25 it was 1,140. That data is also broadly where we would expect it to be when compared with the annual figures for revocations of licences by police forces, and it gives us confidence that GPs are using the digital firearms marker as it is designed to work.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am sad to hear that the Minister is not following the logic for making the digital marker compulsory. Without compulsion, the system is weak and public safety is undermined, as is demonstrated by the tragic cases that have been mentioned today. A quick google tells me that there are 38,000 to 39,000 fully qualified GPs. I think the Minister said that the number of GPs using the medical marker is around 18,000, which means that 20,000 GPs are not using it, so the system is not anything like as effective as it should be. As I said, if a compulsory system were introduced, there would be a check between the granting and renewal of shotgun and firearm licences.

[Mike Tapp]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments. I cannot comment directly on the data that he provided from his quick google—GPs may be qualified but not practising, and I would not want to jump to any conclusions—but that can certainly be taken away. It is the Government’s position that it is not necessary to make use of the firearms digital marker mandatory. If there was compelling evidence of systemic failure by GPs to engage with the digital marker, the case for mandatory requirement would be stronger, but that is not the picture painted by the available data. In fact, it shows that the digital marker is already being applied and used by most GPs.

[Helen Maguire]

I am listening intently to the Minister, but if he is saying that the number of people who have been referred to their GP with potential conditions and the number of markers are as expected, I cannot understand what difference it would make if the marker were mandatory. It seems as though it is sort of happening already, and if there were no additional cost to making it mandatory, then I struggle to understand why it is difficult for the Government to change their position.

[Mike Tapp]

We need to bear in mind that the governing bodies that oversee GPs are against this, given the potential for liability if a GP failed to disclose something to the police. I assure the hon. Member that the Home Office will keep our approach under review, as we do with all aspects of firearms licensing control, but we believe that the data available at this time shows that mandating is not necessary, and that the digital marker quite simply is being applied and used by most GPs.

[Edward Morello]

Without wishing to labour the point, and accepting that the data may in fact show that we are getting the level of penetration that we would expect, there is undoubtedly an unquantifiable risk of another tragedy happening. Given the level of uptake in a mandatory system, and given the requests of the sector—and, in fact, the BMA—for use of the marker to be made mandatory, it seems to me, purely from the perspective of de-risking it for the Government, that that would be a logical and relatively simple thing to do, so that, when we inevitably return, at some point in the next three to five years, to talk about another tragic death, it is not laid at the feet of this Government for following the mistake of the previous Government and not making it mandatory.

[Mike Tapp]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very well-made point. This is of course being kept under review. Today’s debate is important and will of course be listened to by the Home Office, but as it stands our position is that the evidence is showing us that GPs are using the marker as we would expect them to.

I am conscious of time, so I will move on to the points made on shotguns, because I am sure that the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) would not want me to miss them. We know that shotguns are used for a range of legitimate purposes, such as target shooting and hunting, and that the vast majority are used safely and responsibly. We also recognise that shooting contributes to the very important rural economy.

However, legally held shotguns have been used in a number of homicides and other serious incidents in recent years, including the fatal shootings in Plymouth in August 2021. That is why we have committed to a public consultation on strengthening the licensing controls on shotguns, to bring them more into line with the stringent controls on other firearms, in the interest of public safety. We will publish the consultation shortly—I do not have the exact date today. We will carefully consider all the views put forward in response to the consultation before taking any decisions on whether—and what—changes may be necessary in the interest of public safety.

[Gregory Stafford]

I do not want to prolong the debate, but I do want to impress something upon the Minister. When he spoke about the uses of shotguns, he talked about target shooting and hunting. I gently say to him that these firearms are needed for far more than sport; they are used for land management and for farming. I encourage him, if he has not already, to meet the organisations that represent rural communities to understand how vital shotguns are for rural land management.

[Mike Tapp]

I thank the hon. Member for his points. I think that was covered in my point about the rural economy—the maintenance of land and pest control, for example, feed into that—but I take the point.

We will also provide an assessment of the impact of any changes that we intend to bring forward, including for policing, certificate holders and rural communities, at the relevant time.

In closing, I thank all Members who have contributed to what has been a thought-provoking debate—I mean that—on an issue that is central to public safety. I am grateful for all contributions. We have strong firearms licensing controls, and we are taking action to improve them further where the evidence shows that that is necessary. As I have said, we do not believe at this point that there is a compelling case for making the digital firearms marker mandatory. However, it is very important that all aspects of firearms controls are as effective and strong as possible, and our controls are kept under constant review.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Tapp]

I am conscious of time, but I will.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I can assure the Minister—and you, Ms McVey—that this will be the last time. What is the equivalence between not making medical markers mandatory, when doing so would not cost anything, and yet going ahead with the consultation to move shotguns from section 2 to section 1, which will cost the industry a significant amount of money? The shooting community is all in favour of medical markers being compulsory, but it is opposed to moving shotguns from section 2 to section 1. These actions seem designed to make the shooting community very discontent.

[Mike Tapp]

This is about evidence, and the evidence that I have presented today suggests that GPs are abiding by the digital marker. The evidence that shotguns have been used in violent crime also exists. But of course, as I laid out, this will go to consultation. The Government are committed to public safety, and we remain open to any steps that could aid us in that effort.

17:30

[Helen Maguire]

I am disappointed that the Minister will not be considering making use of the medical marker mandatory. I hope that he will go away and reconsider, particularly because, as many hon. Members have alluded to, there would be no additional cost to doing so. There is a lot of consensus here; making the medical marker mandatory would be common sense and improve public safety. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) said, it would be a win-win.

I thank the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for his personal insight and his continued campaigning on the issue, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead for the valuable points that she raised about the rural community. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) said, there is evidence, and the police agree with the proposal, as do the Countryside Alliance, the BMA, police and crime commissioners and firearms certificate holders. I do not want to be here again talking about another incident. I truly hope the Minister will go away and really consider the matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of mandatory medical markers for firearm licence holders.

17:31

Sitting adjourned.