House of Commons
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
Bills are too high and the cost of living crisis is the biggest issue facing the country. That is why, at the last Budget, we took decisions to raise taxes on the wealthiest, which will enable us to take an average of £150 in costs off household energy bills from April. That builds on the fact that the price cap and average energy bills were lower in real terms in 2025 than in 2024.
Sir Desmond Swayne
We were promised a reduction in bills of £300, but they have actually gone up by just shy of £200. The impact assessment of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) Order 2026, which we passed last week, states:
“we estimate that cost-pass through for most sectors could feasibly be at 80-90%”.
That is a euphemism for even higher bills, isn’t it?
Ed Miliband
I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman’s first point is wrong; he is taking one quarter—summer 2024 —and comparing it with today. If we look across 2025, bills are lower than in 2024. Actually, I had hoped that he would support the £150 that we have taken off energy bills, but the Opposition oppose all the measures making that possible.
Claire Young
The Government’s consultation on alternative heating that ends today does not cover installation costs, yet that is what is stopping many of my constituents in off-gas areas from switching away from oil. With National Energy Action warning of an £18 billion funding gap to meet fuel poverty targets, what action will the Government take to ensure that those least able to afford alternative forms of heating are not left dependent on fossil fuels and paying sky-high bills?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to our consultation. From talking to my ministerial colleagues, I know that we will take into account the points that she has made. We want to allow as many as people as possible across the country to convert to cheap, clean power. That is the point of our warm homes plan, and that is the point of the consultation she mentioned.
Aphra Brandreth
A recent survey conducted by Censuswide shows that two thirds of households with heat pumps say that their heating costs have increased, driven by electricity prices that are four times higher than gas. With energy bills now £190 higher, despite this Government promising to cut them by £300, does the Secretary of State acknowledge that his choices are making it harder for households to make the switch to greener heating options, and that, unlike the Conservatives’ cheap power plan, they are leaving households with higher bills?
Ed Miliband
I congratulate the hon. Lady on reading out the Whips’ handout. No, I do not, and I will tell her why. The Chancellor’s action in the Budget to take the renewables obligation off bills and put it on to public expenditure was the biggest single cut in the cost of electricity that we have seen dating back to even the Conservatives’ time in office.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The costs of new infrastructure are a pressure on bills, as the Secretary of State knows. He deserves enormous credit for the results of the allocation round 7 auction today, in which the strike price of renewables was less than half what it would have been with new gas. What is the approach to rolling out extra grid—and, indeed, maintaining the existing grid—which is so crucial to the plans, given that there is so much to make up for following the failure to invest over the many years since privatisation?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to this morning’s auction, which saw record amounts of solar power. It is the cheapest form of power that we could possibly have in this country, and it costs less than half the price of building and operating new gas. On the point about infrastructure, he is right that we inherited a terrible legacy, and we are building the new infrastructure that we need.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
My constituents in North West Leicestershire will soon benefit from an average £150 cut per household to energy bills, and a number will be able to access energy efficiency schemes. Can the Secretary of State outline in more detail the expected changes to the fixed elements of our bills, such as the standing charges, which impact those in fuel poverty so much more than the rest of us?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend draws attention to the really important issue of standing charges. We have been consulting on moving the warm home discount from fixed cost standing charges to unit rates, which has been welcomed by Martin Lewis, among others. We want to bear down on standing charges, and we will announce the results of that consultation soon.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
Last year, I teamed up with the local Labour council cabinet member for the cost of living and my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) to launch a free local pension advice service, which has delivered over half a million pounds to eligible pensioners in Derby. It has helped with pension credit, home heating tips, fire safety advice and utility deals, and has even provided free draught excluders and radiator insulators. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure people know about the support they can get to reduce household bills?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to this important issue. As part of our warm homes plan, we are going to set up a warm homes agency to give people proper information, advice and guidance on what they can do to cut their bills. We have made the biggest public investment ever seen in this country to help people cut their bills and upgrade their homes, and we will make sure people know about it.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Chris McDonald)
We recognise that high energy costs remain a significant pressure on UK businesses. We are acting now through the British industry supercharger and the new British industrial competitiveness scheme to reduce electricity costs for energy-intensive sectors, while delivering our clean power 2030 mission to cut bills for good. We also intend to consult on further options to reduce costs and make low-carbon heat economically competitive.
Lincoln Jopp
Ametek and SSS Gears are two quite rare breeds—they are manufacturing companies in my Spelthorne constituency, inside the M25. One employs 200 people, while the other employs 43, and they seek to export around the world. How does the Minister expect those companies to be competitive in a global market when energy prices in Ashford, Middlesex are four times higher than those in Ashford, Alabama?
Chris McDonald
It is exactly that disparity in international energy prices for industry, which the previous Conservative Government left us with, that we are addressing through our clean power 2030 mission. However, we recognise that as clean power is coming online, industry will need further support. Both Ametek and SSS Gears are exactly the sorts of manufacturing businesses that this Government wish to support through initiatives such as our British industrial competitiveness scheme. The consultation for that scheme has just closed—I do hope both of those businesses responded to that consultation—and we will publish the results shortly.
Dr Pinkerton
Small and large businesses in my constituency of Surrey Heath—everything from small cafés to care providers and large manufacturers—tell me that they are being crushed by high energy costs. Given that the wholesale cost of gas has fallen substantially since its peak in 2022, can the Minister indicate what proportion of a typical business energy bill is driven by wholesale costs, network charges and policy costs, and which one of those is likely to be borne down on over the next year as a direct consequence of Government action?
Chris McDonald
The hon. Gentleman is quite right to point out the impact of energy costs on small businesses. As we have seen, that has been largely driven over many years by the linkage between energy costs and gas prices, which is something that this Government are determined to deal with as we pile on renewable energy as part of our clean power mission. UK gas costs are competitive with Europe after policy costs are included, but of course we want to remove businesses from having to rely on the whims of the fossil fuel market and enable them to rely on low-cost, secure, home-grown energy.
Zöe Franklin
A third-generation advanced manufacturer in my Guildford constituency invested in a solar-covered, energy-efficient factory to cut emissions and expand, yet overall operating costs have risen sharply, including business rates increasing from £130,000 to £570,000. That business is doing everything right, including switching to renewables and working to become more efficient. On top of the crippling hike in business rates, the straw that breaks the camel’s back is energy costs, so what discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Chancellor about reducing industrial energy costs and the associated costs so that firms investing in clean growth are properly supported?
Chris McDonald
Of course, it is central to the Government’s policy that businesses are incentivised to invest in renewable energy and electrification where that is possible, so that they can access the lower-cost electrical energy that is coming on stream as part of our 2030 clean power mission. The hon. Lady mentioned that the business was a manufacturing business, so it is possible that it could qualify for our British industrial competitiveness scheme, which we will bring forward in 2027. The results of the consultation on that scheme will be published shortly.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
In Cornwall, after our groundbreaking critical minerals strategy, there is the possibility that floating offshore wind could power critical minerals processing plants. This is a fantastic opportunity. Will the Minister look closely at the proposals and see how the Department can help something like that to happen?
Chris McDonald
My hon. Friend does a grand job of championing the critical minerals industry in Cornwall and the potential for floating offshore wind in her constituency. She highlights a great opportunity, where investment in energy and industry side by side can reduce the cost of capital for both parts of the supply chain and so create an economic opportunity. I thank her for the representations that she has made to me on behalf of her constituents prior to today. I will continue to work with her in trying to realise this opportunity.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
To transition away from fossil fuels, we need zero emission vehicles on the road. Manufacturers such as Alexander Dennis should be leading that transition, although it currently operates with a gas-intensive production process. To stay competitive against imports, those manufacturers need greater support. The British industrial competitiveness scheme is hugely welcome as it will reduce industrial electricity costs, but will the Minister consider supporting a dual fuel discount that includes the cost of gas to support the automotive advanced manufacturing sector, including Alexander Dennis?
Chris McDonald
I am very concerned about gas-intensive industries, and the Government’s policy is intended to ensure that they are given the support to decarbonise by electrifying, where that is possible, whether that is through confidence in long-term energy prices owing to the delivery of our clean power mission or through support to invest in their business.
Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)
I know that the Department is working hard with the Department for Transport to decarbonise shipping, but the current system works against businesses. One of our ferry companies is having to pay £12 million up front for a shoreside connection and then wait for up to seven years. Will the Minister commit to reviewing this system to speed up electric shipping for places such as the Isle of Wight?
Chris McDonald
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for engaging with me on this topic in advance of the recent changes to the emissions trading scheme to include maritime emissions. It is incredibly important that domestic maritime emissions are included, so as to incentivise the investment required to decarbonise. I am aware of the issue in the Isle of Wight. On one route, two vessels will be affected. I know that he has invited me to visit the Isle of Wight and meet the businesses concerned, and I am allowed to make the commitment from the Dispatch Box that I will do that.
Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)
Businesses and public services in the north of Scotland pay among the highest commercial energy prices in the whole UK. The Government have had 18 months to try and fix that. Why do they still think it is okay to discriminate against people in the north of Scotland in that way?
Chris McDonald
In fact, the Government are taking an approach across the whole United Kingdom to deliver the energy infrastructure and energy generation capacity to guarantee low-cost, home-grown, secure energy for the future, ensuring that the jobs and benefits from that are seen across the country. I would have thought that the hon. Member might wish to welcome those jobs in Scotland. There will be 20,000 additional jobs by 2030 in clean energy industries in his community and mine.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Time and again, small manufacturing firms in my constituency of Llanelli tell me that high energy costs are making it difficult for them to be competitive, and they feel that they are on the edge. Given the lack of investment by the previous Conservative Government and the fact that this Government are playing catch-up, when does the Minister think that enough new sources of energy will be generated to bring down prices? How soon will interim help arrive?
Chris McDonald
My hon. Friend is right to champion the small manufacturers in her constituency, which I know well from the time that I spent working in south Wales. It is important to note the announcement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State this morning—it will shortly be the subject of a statement to the House—about allocation round 7. It demonstrates our commitment to putting on new solar farms, new onshore wind and new offshore wind. Every single one of those installations contributes to our energy security and to reducing the cost of energy for domestic consumers and industry alike.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The cost of electricity is still too high, and, as we have heard, businesses are struggling to pay their energy bills. While the Government have offered help to the energy-intensive industries, it is the small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency and around the country that still feel overlooked and forgotten. Liberal Democrat researchers have estimated that 3.1 million SMEs saw a total bill increase of £7.6 billion when the Conservative Government ended the energy bill relief scheme. When will this Government finally help SMEs—the small businesses, the backbone of our economy—to see off their crippling energy bills?
Chris McDonald
The hon. Lady and I agree that more needs to be done to alleviate the high energy costs for small businesses. I used to run an energy-intensive small business myself, and I know how difficult that is. She is also right to point out that this is the legacy that the last Government left us.
We are pushing forward to 2030, when we will have lower energy costs and more secure energy in the UK, but we recognise that more needs to be done to support small businesses—although we are already helping with measures such as our zero carbon services hospitality trial, which is now delivering support for 600 hospitality SMEs across the UK, and the provision of £200,000 to fund improvements in the UK business climate hub and help SMEs with their carbon emissions.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)
As we explained in our solar road map, the Government consider effective community engagement to be crucial as we scale-up solar deployment throughout the country. Developers must consider local community views as part of their applications, and the quality of that community engagement is taken into account by decision makers.
Calum Miller
Just across the border of my constituency lies Southill Solar, a scheme that works with the local community, pays a direct return to residents, funds local projects, and has even won awards for its landscape and environmental design. By contrast, Botley West, one of the largest solar farms ever brought forward in Europe, would have a profound and long-lasting impact on a rural area, but local people feel that the level of developer engagement and transparency, as well as the community benefit on offer, falls far short of the scale of that impact, and the Planning Inspectorate recently described the absence of key information as “very disappointing”. Does the Minister agree that community benefit should be proportionate to the scale and impact of solar development, and will he agree to meet me to discuss how those operating large-scale solar schemes can listen better to rural communities so that clean energy is delivered with, not against, local consent?
Michael Shanks
I have had many productive meetings with the hon. Gentleman, and I shall be happy to meet him again to talk about these issues. The Government absolutely believe that communities that host infrastructure should benefit from doing so. We have consulted on mandatory community benefits and we will respond to the consultation in due course, but today we have published the local power plan: the biggest shift in power and wealth that we have seen in the energy space in British history, which will ensure that the hon. Gentleman’s community and communities throughout the country benefit from the ability to own their energy infrastructure, and that the benefits of that flow into those communities. That is the ambition that we have set out as a Government.
Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)
A solar farm is planned for my constituency, and the developer has engaged well with local residents. Yes, it will power 20,000 homes, and yes, it will get carbon emissions down, but most important of all, it will make our bills more affordable because solar is 50% cheaper than natural gas. Does the Minister agree that when it comes to renewable energy, Members in all parts of the House should say, as I say today, “Yes in my constituency, and yes in my back yard”?
Michael Shanks
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I warmly welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. He takes seriously the issue of how we can build the infrastructure that the country needs for our energy security, but he also rightly draws attention to a fact that Opposition Members seem to ignore completely: the fact that renewables are the cheapest and quickest form of power to get on to the system. Just today, the new auction has resulted in 4.9 GW of capacity. That, taken together with the offshore wind results, makes it the most successful renewables auction in British history. The entire Opposition Front Bench used to agree with this. These renewables are 50% cheaper than the new-build gas that is now championed by the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), which would add money to the bills of people throughout the country. This is the right plan for bringing down bills, for our energy security and for providing jobs throughout the country.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I do not think the Minister fully appreciates just how much communities threatened by large-scale solar up and down the country feel that they are having things done to them and not with them. The No. 1 complaint that I have heard from campaign groups represented by Stop Oversized Solar up and down the land, including some in my constituency, concerns the threat to food security. When they try to engage, they keep being given this bogus figure of 1%, but if we carry on in the direction the Government are going in, by 2035 an area the size of Greater London will be covered in solar. That is equivalent to nearly 2,000 farms capable of producing 2 billion loaves of bread. When are we going to get the truth about the threat to food security from solar?
Michael Shanks
This is just the most absurd nonsense from the Conservatives, who I see are now crowdsourcing their energy policy on Twitter. It is not surprising that they come up with that sort of nonsense, when that is the information that they use. Even in the most ambitious deployment scenarios, all the statistics suggest that 0.4% of UK land would be occupied by solar. The Conservatives come to this House time and time and time again calling for bills to be brought down, but their policy would put them up and turn away the investment that is driving jobs and opportunities across the country. They had no answers in energy policy for 14 years, and they have learned absolutely nothing in opposition.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Katie White)
This Government are absolutely committed to supporting the NHS to be at the heart of our decarbonisation effort in order that, first, it gets to reduce its emissions and that, secondly, it can reduce its dependence on expensive fossil fuels. That is why Great British Energy has already supported over 260 NHS sites with up to £130 million of funding. GPs are not part of NHS sites but under the boiler upgrade scheme they can access £7,500 towards heat pumps and £5,000 towards biomass boilers.
Helen Maguire
Primary care accounts for around 25% of the NHS’s carbon emissions, with many GPs working in ageing, energy-inefficient buildings with high running costs. Research from the Royal College of General Practitioners reveals that only five GP practices in England and Wales have accessed the boiler upgrade grant scheme since May 2022, and most are unable to access the public sector decarbonisation scheme. GP partners across the UK identify a lack of capital funding as the main barrier to decarbonisation, yet 260 NHS trusts are rightly receiving Government funding for new solar panels. Will the Minister meet me and the Royal College of General Practitioners to discuss how GPs can access decarbonisation schemes, and will she expand GB Energy’s investment model to GPs?
Katie White
I thank the hon. Member for raising this really important issue, and for raising the figures. I think she would agree that we have an ambitious plan. Today’s announcement of the local power plan may well meet some of the needs that she raises. I will take this issue away and have a look at it. We recognise that retrofitting commercial buildings can be costly and complex, and we are looking at other levers to do that, including accessing private finance and exploring novel options such as property-linked finance. Today’s announcement will help, and I am very happy to discuss it further with her.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
It was fantastic to see GB Energy invest in new, clean, bill-saving technology for the Bedford Road health centre in my constituency last week. That comes on top of the investments already seen at Lister hospital and Bedford hospital, which serve my constituency. Solar is good for the NHS and for the planet, so how can we get it on to more public sector rooftops right across the country? Crucially, I have some fantastic examples in Hitchin where we would love to see further action.
Katie White
I applaud my hon. Friend for all his ambition and championing of the opportunities that are presented in our low-carbon transition plan. Today’s announcement of the local power plan is a real opportunity to turn the dial on this issue, for local communities to become involved, and to make the best of the benefits of the low-carbon transition. I look forward to working with him further on it.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Chris McDonald)
The carbon pricing emissions trading scheme is set by the market, rather than the Government. The price is effective at driving investment in carbon abatement measures, but it is for individual operators to decide whether the costs of abatement in a project are effective for them.
Sarah Olney
Last week the Government updated their carbon values to reflect their latest net zero emission target, but the UK emissions trading scheme does not take into account the updated figures. In 2021, it was predicted that carbon abatement for a third runway at Heathrow would cost £100 million, and costs will have only risen since. According to the emissions trading scheme, just 15% of the clean-up costs of expansion will be covered by Heathrow; the rest will fall on the taxpayer. Will the Minister update the UK emissions trading scheme to reflect the carbon abatement costs of major projects such as Heathrow expansion, so that the taxpayer can understand how much they will have to pay for a third runway?
Chris McDonald
The Government do not comment on or interfere with the carbon price. Ultimately, the price is set by the market to ensure that the ETS drives decarbonisation where it is cheapest. In this way, it can act most effectively as a financial incentive to decarbonise, without specifying the particular technology.
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it is great to see you back on your feet.
Last week, the Labour party voted to increase the carbon tax, which increases costs for households and industry, and those costs have already doubled because of its policies. It is absolutely shameful for the Government to say that they have had no impact on the carbon tax whatsoever. It now accounts for over 10% of household electricity bills, and the rise is in effect a £5 billion a year tax on the British economy. Can the Minister explain why the Labour party wants to tax our industrial jobs out of existence, leaving Britain reliant on dirtier imports from abroad?
Chris McDonald
I am not sure if the shadow Secretary of State is conflating the various carbon taxes with the emissions trading scheme, but to be clear: the Government do not set or comment on the value of the carbon in the emissions trading scheme. That is a matter for the market. It is of course a policy on which the previous Government were very keen, because it drives the most efficient forms of decarbonisation. Ultimately, it places a price on carbon emissions that ensures private capital floods into the right places to decarbonise, as we have seen so successfully with the power sector in the UK.
Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
There is huge potential from small modular reactors for both our energy security and jobs. I am proud that the decisions this Government have taken have enabled us to fund the UK’s first SMRs at Wylfa, supporting up to 3,000 jobs on site and thousands more across the supply chain. We want every part of the country to benefit from this potential, including Scotland.
Irene Campbell
An SMR and new nuclear at Hunterston power station would make a huge difference to my constituency, given that nearly 650 people are already employed in highly skilled and well-paid jobs in the civil nuclear sector there. I was concerned to read a BBC article about a Scottish nuclear worker who relocated from Hunterston to Hinkley because there is no new nuclear in Scotland. Does the Secretary of State agree that we are losing talent and investment because of the SNP’s continuous opposition to nuclear?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend speaks incredibly well on this issue. It is just common sense to have nuclear as part of our energy mix. We know why it is not going to happen in Scotland under the current regime. It is because SNP politicians, for dogmatic reasons, have set their face against it. They are even embarrassed to have this policy. The answer to it is to vote Labour in May.
Mr Speaker
Order. Jim, you were not here—you have just appeared—and the problem is that I think you missed the first part of the question. [Interruption.] Do not worry, Jim—just get on with it!
Jim Shannon
I thank the Secretary of State and I know he is interested in small modular reactor schemes, which we are very interested in having in Northern Ireland. The shadow Secretary of State has also giving a commitment to them. Can I please ask the Secretary of State what discussion he has had with the Northern Ireland Assembly—Gordon Lyons, in particular—to ensure that we can also benefit?
Ed Miliband
Obviously, this is devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, but I think the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Throughout the United Kingdom, there is huge potential for SMRs. This is the technology of the future, and it can play a really important role in our energy mix across the UK.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is unusual—indeed, unheard of, in recent months anyway—for the Secretary of State and I to agree on anything on energy policy, but it is probably not the first time this week that he secretly agrees with a Scottish politician. I know he agrees that new nuclear, particularly SMRs, offer huge potential for the UK and for Scotland. This week, Trade Unionists for Safe Nuclear Energy launched a petition addressed to the First Minister of Scotland, calling on him to lift the ban on new nuclear development in Scotland. Can that group expect the Department’s support?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Gentleman is right about this. Let me put it this way: given the scale of the climate change challenge, only those who are dug in dogmatically can oppose new nuclear. Given the scale of the challenge we face, we need all the tools at our disposal. It provides good jobs and energy security, so it is only for dogmatic reasons that the SNP Government oppose it. There is one difference between him and me, and that is that he promised SMRs, but we are delivering them.
Andrew Bowie
The difference is that this Secretary of State’s ambition for nuclear pales in comparison with our ambition when we were in government.
When I served as the Minister for nuclear, it was a source of the greatest frustration that, despite the many countless—indeed, huge—strides we took to kick-start the new nuclear age in the UK, none of the investment or the jobs would be seen north of the border. The Scottish National party is most at home refighting the battles of the past—they tend to be the battles of the 14th century—but in this age of nuclear revolution across the world, the aversion to nuclear is inexplicable. It is a luddite approach. The SNP is anti-science, anti-progress and anti-jobs. There can and should be a future for nuclear in Scotland. Does the Secretary State not agree that this is the time for the SNP Government to drag themselves into, and to move Scotland into, the 20th century—let alone the 21st century—change course and lift this ridiculous ban?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Gentleman makes his point in his own way. As I say, I believe the SNP’s position makes no sense. I gently point out to him that although he might have had grand ambitions, with no delivery they are completely worthless—and that was the Conservatives’ record on nuclear.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)
Great British Energy’s mission is to power Britain with clean, secure and home-grown energy. It has already started that work, with Great British Energy and the Government funding around 250 school and 260 hospital solar installations, including at Rakegate primary school and Ormiston NEW Academy in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Warinder Juss
In my constituency, almost one in five households have been living in fuel poverty, struggling to heat their homes this winter. I welcome the Government’s commitment to lifting 1 million more households out of fuel poverty by 2030, which will have a significant impact on my constituents. Will the Minister please outline what other tangible changes my constituents can expect to see over the next year thanks to GB Energy, so that by the time we come to next winter they can feel comfortable that they can now afford to heat their homes?
Martin McCluskey
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I know that he is focused, as I am, on reducing energy bills for his constituents and people across the country. I have already spoken about the extensive investment in solar not just in his constituency but across the country. People in Wolverhampton and across the country will also be benefiting from our action to reduce energy costs by an average of £150 this April. That is in addition to continuing the warm home discount for nearly 6 million eligible households this year.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
There have been numerous references to the cost of energy and reducing that cost in the United Kingdom. Has any assessment been made by the Minister or the Department of the comments made by the International Energy Agency in the past few days, which seem to indicate we have one of the highest prices in the western world?
Martin McCluskey
I think where the IEA and I would agree is that we need to get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuels and ensure we are investing in clean home-grown energy that people across the country can take advantage of to lower their bills.
Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Katie White)
As set out in the recent northern growth strategy, the north-east is at the forefront of our clean energy revolution. Our industrial strategy’s clean energy industries sector plan sets out measures which will support investment and growth across the UK. Great British Energy has supported grants to mayoral strategic authorities, which will enable locally led energy projects.
Dame Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for that response. For 100 years and more, skilled workers in the north-east have relied on high-paid energy jobs, be they in coal, gas or oil in mines, factories, ports and rigs. Labour’s clean power mission can bring new jobs to existing supply chains, but companies and workers need help to transition. Will the Minister tell me how she plans to future-proof the north-east’s energy supply chain and deliver secure, well-paid and unionised jobs?
Katie White
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to highlight the huge opportunities for the north-east in the energy transition. We estimate an additional 10,000 jobs by 2030, building on those that are already in place in offshore wind in the Port of Tyne and in nuclear Hartlepool. She is right to point out the importance of the transition for both existing workers and the next generation. That is why we have introduced a clean energy jobs plan to ensure that that transition is as successful as possible. I highlight the work of Mayor Kim McGuinness, who held an excellent green jobs fair in the north-east, which has provided a blueprint for the rest of the country, and the importance of our work, hand in hand with the trade unions, to ensure that we deliver the most effective transition possible.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)
Great Britain’s electricity distribution network is highly resilient and the Government work closely with industry to maintain that. Energy resilience is a top priority for the Government, which is why my Department will publish an energy resilience plan in 2026.
Mary Kelly Foy
Constituents in areas like Esh Winning, Witton Gilbert, Brandon and Waterhouses and increasingly businesses in Durham city regularly contact me about repairing power outages. They have been told by Northern Powergrid that temporary repairs will be made, but that clearly offers no reassurance to those who are elderly, live alone or rely on their electricity supply for medication or to power medical equipment. Recent storms cannot be blamed, as many of the outages were reported during spells of fine weather. Will the Minister say what work the Government are carrying out to improve the resilience of the electricity distribution network in Durham so that my constituents are not constantly worried about when their power will next go out?
Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend asks an important question. I completely understand the frustrations of people who are without power and the disruption that it has on people’s lives. My Department has had a number of conversations with Northern Powergrid on the particular issues in my hon. Friend’s constituency and I am advised that many of the power outages across Waterhouses, Brandon and Esh Winning were caused by trees contacting overhead lines. This is all feeding into work that is being done to ensure that the resilience of the network allows us to avoid those situations in the future. We are also working on how we can upgrade the network where possible to ensure it is resilient. There is always more that we can do, but the grid does remain hugely resilient across the country, and we will work to support communities such as that of my hon. Friend where, unfortunately, there are power outages.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
There are two things that the Government could do to improve energy resilience, particularly in communities like mine in Cumbria. First, they could support Electricity North West by ensuring that it buries its cables where possible to protect them against wild weather, which, as the Minister knows, we have from time to time. Secondly, they could accelerate local energy markets so that in places like Coniston, which the Minister and I discussed in our meeting yesterday, they are able to provide energy for the community they are embedded within, thereby enhancing the resilience of the network. Will the Minister do those things?
Michael Shanks
I think Electricity North West is considering exactly that question, looking at where the lines can be buried to avoid repetition of the issues that have been caused so far. I will follow up on that point in particular with it. I had a fantastic meeting with the hon. Gentleman yesterday to talk about Coniston and local energy markets. I encourage him and Members across the House to read the local power plan, published this morning, which sets out our ambition to look at innovative ways in which communities can own and invest in their own energy while also having the resilience of local energy networks and smart energy systems that help the grid both nationally and locally.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)
This Government’s actions mean lower bills for people across Scotland and lower levels of fuel poverty; in April, because of the Government’s actions, households across Scotland will see an average of £150 of costs removed from their energy bills. Just last week, we announced the extension of the warm home discount to 2031, meaning £92 million of support for some of the most vulnerable people across Scotland every year into the next decade.
Dave Doogan
The energy market in Scotland operates in surplus in both generation and transmission, whereas the energy market in England operates in shortage in both generation and transmission. Unfortunately, that means that in a GB energy market, Scotland gets sucked in to subsidising energy costs for English consumers. Over and above that, Energy UK has made it clear that there will be no meaningful reduction in energy bills until some indeterminate point in the 2030s. Will the Minister recommit—just before the Scottish elections—to energy bills in Scotland being £300 lower in 2029 than in 2024?
Martin McCluskey
Bills are coming down, and yes, I will recommit to that. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman does not want to listen to me about the impact of our policies, he might look at the Scottish Government’s own modelling of the £150 off energy bills, which says that the number of people in fuel poverty in Scotland will reduce by 9% and the number in extreme fuel poverty will reduce by 12.5% this April. That is because of this Government’s actions, not because of anything the hon. Gentleman or his colleagues are doing.
Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
It was good to see you walking in today, Mr Speaker.
I welcome the publication of the local power plan, which will be keenly read in my constituency—the heart of the Atlantic—where communities are taking their share in the wealth of wind. To renew and expand community energy, we need to get connected to the grid. I welcome what the local power plan has to say about setting up tailored support for communities, but there must be priority support from Ofgem, the grid operators and this Government to ensure that communities benefit from the wealth of wind.
Martin McCluskey
I know that my hon. Friend is a real champion for local community power in Na h-Eileanan an Iar. I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy will have lots to say on the matter soon on his visit to the Western Isles.
Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
The first-of-a-kind clean industry bonus as part of allocation round 7 is set to crowd in up to £3.4 billion of private investment in supply chains and support up to 7,000 jobs across the country. After a legacy of failure under the previous Government, we are determined that the clean energy future is made in Britain.
Sir Mark Hendrick
What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the jobs generated through the clean industry bonus are directed towards communities formerly dependent on fossil fuel industries and that workers at risk of displacement during the transition are supported into those new opportunities?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend makes an important point. One great thing about the clean industry bonus is that it will be focused on the industrial areas of our country, including those that are based on oil and gas. We also have, as part of our North sea future plan, a whole set of plans to help displaced oil and gas workers into these areas. There is huge potential in this innovation, as it rewards companies that invest in our country.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)
One of the best ways to ensure accurate billing is by using a smart meter, which automatically records energy use in every half-hour period, allowing bills based on actual rather than estimated usage. That is why more than two thirds of non-domestic premises are already using a smart meter.
Cat Eccles
Small businesses across my constituency have been mis-sold commercial energy contracts by brokers. A business in Lye was recently locked into a three-year contract in which it found itself paying more than double the market rate. An independent café in the Merry Hill centre recently had to close due to the £1,500 a month in energy bills that it was forced to pay. Will the Government strengthen the law to protect small businesses against unscrupulous energy brokers and consider introducing a cap on business tariffs?
Martin McCluskey
I am sorry to hear about the experience of businesses in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The short answer to her question is yes, we will strengthen the law in this area. Rogue energy brokers have been allowed to use predatory sales tactics for too long to take advantage of customers. That is why, once parliamentary time allows, we will be introducing new measures to stamp out that exploitation.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)
On 4 February, the Government published the advanced nuclear framework, which establishes a pathway to market by introducing the UK advanced nuclear pipeline and clarifying the enabling policy landscape to unlock privately financed advanced nuclear projects in the UK, which is all part of our new golden age of nuclear power.
Mr Brash
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the publication of the advanced nuclear framework. It is an important step forward, providing a clear pathway for credible projects such as the one that X-Energy and Centrica are delivering in my constituency. Will he ensure, though, that the right balance is struck between backing those projects that are most robust and mature and recognising that Government support will be particularly important to unlocking private investment for the first project of its kind in the UK, which will make Hartlepool a trailblazer for our country?
Michael Shanks
Let me pay tribute to my hon. Friend who is an absolute champion for Hartlepool. I was delighted to be at an event recently as part of Nuclear Week in Parliament, where I met some of his constituents who pay tribute to him for the work that he does in this place and outside it to bring nuclear investment to Hartlepool. The framework that we have announced enables credible, mature privately led projects by providing the clarity needed to attract private capital. To join the UK advanced nuclear pipeline, projects must meet the readiness assessment, gaining in principle the endorsement of deliverability. Therefore, his point is hugely important and we look forward to these private-led projects coming forward as part of this huge investment in new nuclear.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)
I am proud that the Government have extended the warm home discount to an extra 2.7 million households, taking the total to around 6 million. Last week, we announced that the scheme would continue supporting households for a further five years to 2031. This will make a vital difference to so many families this winter, including an additional 190,000 households in Yorkshire and the Humber.
Mr Charters
I will never forget my mum renting a house in York with ancient heating, freezing rooms and an evil prepayment meter that drained her finances. In York, over a third of fuel-poor households rent privately. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that the warm home discount reaches them and ends the unfair penalty paid by many simply for renting?
Martin McCluskey
The experience that my hon. Friend outlines is still all too common in our country, and I know that he continues to raise this issue on behalf of all his constituents. The warm home discount is available to eligible private renting households on prepayment meters, and through the warm homes plan we are taking significant action to increase the minimum energy efficiency standards for the private rental sector, so that every private renter in my hon. Friend’s constituency and elsewhere benefits from a warm home that is cheaper to heat.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Katie White)
This Government take energy security extremely seriously. We run one of the world’s safest, most reliable energy systems, and we are a top destination for investment. Investment in our energy infrastructure undergoes the highest level of national security scrutiny.
Gregory Stafford
Given reports from Norway and Denmark that Chinese-manufactured electric buses contain remote kill switch technology, and that the recent UK-China engagement appears to have delivered an embassy for the Chinese and little more than a Labubu for the United Kingdom, how can the Minister be confident that Chinese-made energy infrastructure does not pose similar national security risks? What steps is she taking to remove our reliance on Chinese-made infrastructure?
Katie White
That is slightly audacious, given that when we left government in 2010 we had, I think, three of the top solar companies in the world, but when we came back into office we had nothing—there was no supply chain. National security is this Government’s No. 1 overriding priority. We are engaging constructively with every opportunity and all actors but at the same time making sure that every single decision takes into account our national security, which comes first above anything else.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Domestic production of clean energy infrastructure technologies insulates us from Chinese security issues. In Cornwall we are on the cusp of significant geothermal baseload energy production. Geothermal Engineering Ltd in my constituency will imminently open the UK’s first ever geothermal electricity plant, producing energy and lithium from beneath our feet. Will the Minister ensure that there will be ministerial representation at this key milestone in the UK’s clean energy transition?
Katie White
From China to Cornwall, Mr Speaker! I thank my hon. Friend for his continued championing of Cornwall, geothermal energy and critical minerals. This Government support geothermal, and we will engage constructively at any key moment.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
This morning we have announced a record-breaking auction for solar and onshore wind, and we are launching our local power plan. That follows a month in which we secured the biggest offshore wind auction in Europe’s history and launched our warm homes plan. We are determined to deliver lower bills and good jobs as we take back control of Britain’s energy.
Olivia Blake
I welcome the Secretary of State’s leadership in restoring momentum on net zero. Will he outline how the Government’s energy and climate strategies will be underpinned by clear delivery plans, milestones and transparent reporting to Parliament?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend speaks with great eloquence on these issues. As she knows, that is the great thing about the Climate Change Act 2008, which was passed with the support of all parties. David Cameron—my nemesis—was a great supporter of that plan. The Act gives us the milestones that my hon. Friend talks about. On top of that, we have our clean power action plan.
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
Last year, the Secretary of State signed a secret energy deal with China, which he has refused to publish. This is simply unheard of. We have heard repeatedly from intelligence services that China might seek to disrupt our energy system, so it is crucial that the public get to see what he has signed us up to. Will the Secretary of State commit to publishing the full text of his secret energy deal with China, and if not, will he tell the House what it is that he is trying to hide?
Ed Miliband
May I give the right hon. Lady a piece of advice? Wacky conspiracy theories that she gets on the internet are no substitute for a proper policy.
Claire Coutinho
That is frankly another patronising non-answer from the Secretary of State. I am not sure whether he got the memo, but his party is fed up with the sexist boys club. What is crucial is that the public have lost faith in the Labour party. This is a serious moment. Does he accept that when he stands at the Dispatch Box and tells the public that by his calculation their bills are falling, not rising, they simply do not believe him? Does he also accept that when he does not set out what any of his plans—such as doubling the carbon tax or clean power 2030—will do to bills, he makes a mockery of his party’s pretence that it cares about the cost of living? Does he not reflect on all this—the £300 nonsense pledge, the Great British Energy fig leaf—and realise that when it comes to loss of trust, he is not their salvation but their problem?
Ed Miliband
We will take no lectures from the right hon. Lady on the cost of living crisis, because her Government presided over the worst cost of living crisis in generations. Let me tell her what we are doing: £150 off bills; the warm home discount extended; the warm homes plan. We have done more in 18 months to cut bills for people than they did in 14 years.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Chris McDonald)
My hon. Friend does a good job of standing up for workers in his constituency and, following the statement that I made in the House before Christmas, he will know very well the views of the Government on this closure. I was pleased to attend the local taskforce recently with my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward). Along with the investment that the Government are making in Grangemouth and the guarantee of an interview for workers from Mossmorran at Grangemouth, our focus is on supporting the workers and the local community. A significant investment by the Government in the local area stands in stark contrast to the SNP Scottish Government, who have limited their support to £3 million a year.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Trump’s national security report made it clear that he wanted to use America’s gas to project geopolitical power. We must not replace Putin’s gas with a reliance on Trump’s gas. That is why signing the Hamburg declaration was a step in the right direction, strengthening energy co-operation with our European neighbours. We need to go further, and we should host the next North sea summit, demonstrating UK leadership. Has the Secretary of State managed to get the Treasury to see sense and agree to hosting the next summit?
Ed Miliband
Not yet, but the hon. Lady makes a really important point, which is that energy security from home-grown clean energy is important here, but that we should also work with our European allies.
Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Witherden, think about other people, not just yourself, please. We have to get more questions in.
The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)
My hon. Friend was at a Westminster Hall debate on this issue a few months ago, and what I said then remains the Government’s position: we work closely with the Welsh Government on this issue. We are content with the Welsh Government’s position that this area is already regulated and sufficient, but we obviously keep these things under review.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
Michael Shanks
Again, we have had a meeting to discuss that issue. I will not get into Ofgem’s decisions, but any planning applications or further processes will be dealt with by the Government and by Ofgem in the usual manner.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
As a Labour and Co-operative MP, I am absolutely delighted by the publication of the local power plan. I have seen that work in action through local energy projects such as Bo’ness scout group, which is reducing its bills with 40 solar panels and delivering funding support for young people. What steps will the Government take to increase accessibility and community capacity to deliver local power plans, and will the Secretary of State join me on a visit to Bo’ness scouts?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I congratulate the scout group. The Minister for Energy promises that he will visit, and that is now on the record in Hansard.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Michael Shanks
The hon. Lady will not be disappointed because, as she said in her question, I will not comment on the application. However, we set out clearly in response to the Finch ruling how scope 3 emissions will be taken into account. That process is now under way, and I cannot comment on those applications.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
The 2025 EU-UK summit set ambitions for the UK to join the single electricity market. Does the Minister agree that close and easier energy interconnection between the EU and the UK constitutes a key strategic component of our continent’s energy security, and reduces costs for UK businesses and customers?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Katie White)
At the recent North sea summit, we committed to a joint ambition of 100 GW of offshore renewable projects with our European neighbours, including through co-ordinated energy infrastructure planning. We are determined to work closer than ever with our European neighbours to maximise our joint clean energy independence. Strategically planned, interconnected and efficient electricity trading is a key element of that plan.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Ed Miliband
This has happened because of the fossil fuel crisis presided over by the previous Government. All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are doing absolutely everything we can to help his constituents and others. We recognise the scale of the problem and that there is more to do.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
My local workforce desperately needs new nuclear at Dungeness. Does the Secretary of State agree that the way we protect nature and habitats must be reformed in the way recommended by the nuclear regulatory taskforce, so that we better protect nature while also providing the skilled jobs and energy security that my constituents deserve?
Michael Shanks
We want to improve regulations and processes for new nuclear projects while continuing to protect the environment. We will present a full Government response, and an implementation plan, by the end of this month, taking into account our national security and environmental considerations.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)
We are working closely with heritage organisations to tackle precisely that problem. The hon. Lady will see in the warm homes plan that there is specific advise about retrofitting historic buildings. [Interruption.] Although they are not in her constituency, I will be visiting some projects soon.
Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)
Morwind recently received funding to conduct an important feasibility study for a major offshore wind hub at Portland. If built, the hub would be a key part of the west country’s manufacturing supply chain, and it would create hundreds of well-paid green jobs for local people. Will the Minister work with Morwind and me to deliver the hub at pace, and will he come to Portland to meet the key players and get the ball rolling?
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Michael Shanks
Of course, all projects that are consented and licensed have to follow the law, and the North Sea Transition Authority as a regulator makes that happen. I will not comment on projects that are currently going through the consenting process.
Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)
In Blackpool, around 75% of privately rented homes have damp or mould. It is a huge problem in our town, so I was delighted when the Chancellor announced £30 million in the warm homes plan. Can the Secretary of State outline for my residents when Blackpool will receive that money and when this plan will finally get under way?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What is really important is not just the funding we are providing but the regulation we are introducing in the warm homes plan—promised by the last Government but never delivered—so that people who are privately renting get the decent, warm, comfortable homes they deserve.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
I must raise a very important issue with the Secretary of State: there is concern about thermal runaway in batteries, especially those on prime agricultural land. Heavy metals vaporise at 900° and thermal runaway burns at over 1,000°. What research and assessment has been done on the evaporation of these heavy metals, which would poison agricultural land?
Michael Shanks
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. All the evidence points to the fact that the fire risk from batteries is less than in residential homes, but we take safety incredibly seriously. I recently convened a roundtable of those involved to look at what more we might do in the regulatory space, and DEFRA is looking at environmental regulations on batteries. We obviously take fire safety incredibly seriously.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
I welcome the news this morning of Imerys’s success in auction round 7. What steps is the Minister taking as part of the local power plan to ensure that local communities share the spoils of Cornwall’s great renewable energy potential?
Ed Miliband
If my hon. Friend stays tuned, he will be hearing all about it in an hour’s time.
Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)
Many of my constituents are anxious about the consultation process and the environmental impact of the Peak Cluster project in rural Cheshire. Will the Secretary of State commit to meeting me and local representatives to ensure that community concerns are properly addressed before the development consent order is submitted?
Michael Shanks
As I have said repeatedly, any projects that are going through the planning system have to demonstrate community engagement and that they have engaged genuinely with that feedback. That is part of the process, and projects of any kind are assessed against that. I will not comment on individual applications for obvious reasons.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
What progress is being made on carbon capture, usage and storage and hydrogen projects in the Humber?
Michael Shanks
Given that it is topical questions, I might struggle to say all the progress that is being made, but the Government have committed in our energy strategy and in decisions made by the Chancellor to fund hydrogen and carbon capture, to ensure that those are important parts of our energy mix. I will be visiting projects in the Humber soon, to see exactly what is happening on the ground, but we are committed to carbon capture, usage and storage and the jobs that go with it.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
Rendesco is a brilliant renewable energy business in my constituency. Just before Christmas, it was awarded a £2 million grant from UK Research and Innovation, but since then the phone has not been working at UKRI’s end. Can Ministers have a word to see whether this money can be unlocked, to ensure that Rendesco’s product can be brought to market and that jobs are not lost?
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Working with Councillor David Branson, I have been pushing to get more support for our local schools to cut their bills. I am really pleased that Great British Energy funded new solar panels for Sunnyside academy in Coulby Newham last year. Will Ministers meet me to see whether we can get more support so that more of our local schools to cut their bills?
Ed Miliband
I congratulate Sunnyside academy. This Government and GB Energy are delivering a policy opposed by the Conservative party.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Last week the Government pushed through the imposition of the emissions trading scheme on domestic shipping. That will have a huge impact on Northern Ireland, because so many goods are brought into Northern Ireland from GB, or sent there, on ferries. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact this will have on consumer prices and manufacturing costs in Northern Ireland? Does he recognise that Northern Ireland will face heavy costs because of this net zero policy?
Chris McDonald
The right hon. Member and I debated this at length in the Delegated Legislation Committee last week. On the impact of this measure on Northern Ireland, I am sure he will be pleased to welcome the fact that we are providing a 50% reduction on the carbon tax associated with the extension to domestic maritime for journeys to Northern Ireland, to ensure that they are not disadvantaged when compared with journeys to the Republic of Ireland.
Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)
This year Teddy Grays in Dudley celebrates 200 years in business, with five generations of the same family keeping that local sweetshop and mainstay in Dudley. However, as with many small businesses, energy bills are a constant threat to its success. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that Teddy Grays can enjoy another 200 years of sweet success, and will he meet me to discuss this further?
Chris McDonald
That was an extremely sweet question, and I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the issue further and outline many of the initiatives that the Government are taking to support small businesses. Perhaps it would be best to do that on site, where I can get my favourite chocolate limes.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
“Our Governments seem stricken, almost delusional, in the face of onrushing disaster,”
and we are seeing
“arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history”.
Those are the words of the GMB’s Scotland Secretary about the Government’s determination to tax and regulate the oil and gas sector out of business. Does the Minister agree with the words of his union friend?
Michael Shanks
I recently had a useful meeting in Aberdeen, in which the GMB participated, about building up the future of the North sea. What I never hear from Conservative Members is any support for industries that will invest in the North sea in the future, and in the tens of thousands of jobs that will go with it. Perhaps at some point they should support the future in the North sea.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
As the Secretary of State knows, there is a fantastic site on the edge of the M1 at Ratcliffe-on-Soar—the last of the coal-fired power station sites to be decommissioned—which will make a superb site for clean energy generation. Will he commit to meeting me and Claire Ward, Mayor of the East Midlands, to discuss it further?
Michael Shanks
I visited Ratcliffe-on-Soar for the closure ceremony. It was a good example of a just transition done well, and an historic moment of consensus, delivering the phase-out of coal across our country. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend. I recently met the mayor to talk about the future of that site, which has huge potential.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Returning to the imminent imposition of the emissions trading scheme on domestic shipping, why will consumers in Northern Ireland face the imposition of a carbon tax, whereas consumers in Scotland who equally depend on ferries for their supplies are obtaining an exemption? Where is the parity?
Chris McDonald
The Government were pleased to provide an exemption for the islands around Scotland for a number of reasons, but particularly because of the small populations on those islands and the non-competitive nature of the ferry services.
Ministry of Defence: Palantir Contracts
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
(Urgent question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his Department’s contracts with Palantir.
The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry (Luke Pollard)
Palantir is a strategic supplier to the Ministry of Defence, providing secure data integration, analytics and AI platforms that help to support operational planning and decision making.
In 2022, the Conservative Government signed a three-year enterprise agreement with Palantir, in light of the growing significance of faster operational decision making, and the impact that that technology has had in operations, including in Ukraine. This Government negotiated a new enterprise agreement to update the one signed in 2022, and that was published in a transparency note in December last year.
As part of the development of the new enterprise agreement, the MOD negotiated a strategic partnership with Palantir last September. The SPA reaffirms the strong relationship developed between UK defence and Palantir over the past decade, and includes new commitments that this Government secured from Palantir, including £1.5 billion investment into the UK, a new UK defence tech SME mentoring scheme to help companies grow and access the US market, and a commitment that London is to be the company’s European defence headquarters.
This Government took over what the Tories started in 2022, but we made it work better for Britain and better for our forces. As the Defence Secretary has said, the contract was his decision, and his alone. Peter Mandelson had no influence on the decision to award this contract. The deal that we struck with Palantir will significantly reinforce the innovation of our forces, and reinforce the safety of this country as we move towards warfighting readiness.
James Cartlidge
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. Before I turn to the detail, let me say that the Mandelson scandal is truly shocking. When debating these matters, it is incumbent on all of us to remember the victims of Epstein’s crimes.
Following Peter Mandelson’s sacking as US ambassador, serious questions surrounding his influence on MOD contracts have emerged, to which we have had no meaningful answers. Specifically, the MOD signed a contract with the US firm Palantir in December 2025 worth £240 million. Critically, at a time when UK defence companies are struggling for orders from their own Government, this contract did not involve a competition with British firms, and was granted to a US company by direct award. Why was that?
For the record, this is not about Palantir or any other US company. From my time as the Defence Procurement Minister, I recognise the huge mutual gain to us and to our closest ally that results from our strong defence relationship. It is true that many contracts in the MOD are rightly let on a single-source basis, but this is about transparency. Above all, the question is: to what extent did Peter Mandelson and his firm Global Counsel, in which he was a controlling shareholder at the time, benefit from privileged access not available to potential UK competitors—access that was used to deliver a defence contract of some £250 million to a client of Global Counsel without competition?
Regarding the meeting between the Prime Minister, Peter Mandelson and Palantir in February 2025 in Washington DC, is it true that no minutes were taken? If they were not taken, why not? Crucially, at the time of the meeting, was the Prime Minister aware that Palantir was a client of Mandelson’s firm? The Minister must answer that. In the build-up to the US state visit, we understand that Peter Mandelson lobbied the UK Government for deliverables. Will the Minister commit to publishing what those deliverables were? Did they involve any clients of Global Counsel?
Finally, let me mention the actions to take. Given the public interest in this matter, will Defence Ministers follow the lead of the Health Secretary and publish all their correspondence with Peter Mandelson? In addition, in the spirit of the Humble Address, will the Government publish, as part of the Mandelson files, all relevant material relating to this contract award?
Luke Pollard
As I said in my first answer, Peter Mandelson had no influence on the decision to award this contract; it was a decision made by the Secretary of State, and it was his decision alone.
As the shadow Secretary of State well knows, this enterprise agreement builds on the one that Conservative Ministers signed with Palantir back in 2022, and he knows that the MOD uses Palantir tools and technology on a daily basis to support operations and wider data analytics. I am sure he is not suggesting that we should not be maintaining access to those vital capabilities. Is he saying that his Government were wrong to formalise the relationship with Palantir in their 2022 agreement? I do not think he is.
It is really important that we publish the information. Last time I was in Washington, the then ambassador unfortunately was not available to meet, or was not there, but the Prime Minister has been clear at the Dispatch Box that the public and the House deserve transparency. We intend to publish as much material as we can, as soon as reasonably possible. The Cabinet Office is working with the Met police and Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to ensure that the release of any documents does not prejudice the Met investigation, or the UK’s national security and international relations. That process is under way, and that is in addition to the other actions that the Prime Minister has already taken.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
In this evolving security environment, it is clear that developments in artificial intelligence and tech are changing the world at a rate of knots. Those things are integral to defence, but that must not come at the cost of transparency, trust and British businesses. Hon. Members who have served in this House for quite some time will know that dealings with Palantir have been the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation for several years. The key question is: why was this particular contract not subject to the usual competitive procurement processes?
Luke Pollard
The Palantir enterprise agreement was a direct award, justified under the Procurement Act 2023. The agreement covers existing services and areas in which there is a robust technical justification for using Palantir products and services for defence outcomes. All procurement procedures were followed, and a transparency notice was published.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
In 2020, Palantir accepted a fee of £1 for trialling its data collection services during covid. Since then, the company has amassed contracts with the NHS and the MOD worth more than £500 million. Given the growing scale of Palantir’s involvement in the UK, transparency around its operations is vital, yet the Government have consistently chosen to obfuscate, rather than clarify. Such transparency is especially important when it comes to technology that may lock the UK into dependency on one supplier. In respect of the recent £240 million contract awarded to Palantir, I ask the Minister one more time: will he tell the House why there was no competitive process? Was the Defence Secretary aware of Peter Mandelson’s commercial links to Palantir when this decision was taken solely by him, as the Minister has said?
Last month, Donald Trump threatened a NATO ally with annexation. Despite that, the Government have chosen to green-light a multimillion-pound defence contract with a company co-founded by Trump’s billionaire backer, Peter Thiel. We must be alert to the genuine risk that data collected by Palantir in the UK could be fed back to the White House. Will the Minister provide firm guarantees that all data collected by Palantir will not be shared beyond our Ministry of Defence?
Luke Pollard
The hon. Gentleman will have heard the answer I just gave to the Chair of the Defence Committee about the procurement process. As I set out, the decision was made by the Secretary of State alone; he has been clear about that. The hon. Gentleman will know that the UK has a strong security and defence partnership with the United States. We are clear that we will continue to invest in that strong security and defence partnership, while we deepen partnerships with our European friends and allies further afield. On data, UK defence data used and developed in Palantir software remains sovereign to the UK and under the control of the MOD, and it resides in the United Kingdom. We have clear, contractual controls in place to ensure that, and we have control of the data system that Palantir software sits on. No change can be made to that without the consent of the MOD.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
When I was in opposition, I raised concerns about Palantir and the £1 deal that was made. It was always a trap to ensure that Palantir got its foot in where no one else could. The co-founder of Palantir is mentioned in the Epstein files. I think that anyone who is mentioned in the Epstein files should be fully investigated by this House and by the police; the scandal is an absolute disgrace. The Minister must ensure transparency and robust safeguards. Palantir and AI organisations have the ability to bamboozle Ministers, unless we have concrete ways to ensure that they cannot abuse their power.
Luke Pollard
My hon. Friend is right that investigations are under way. As the Government made clear to the House last week, we will co-operate fully with those investigations, and we will ensure that the information that the House requires to be published is published in a way that creates the transparency that we all seek. There are already safeguards in place around the use of artificial intelligence in Ministry of Defence decision making, and we are looking at ways to enable new opportunities, especially for UK firms, given the growing requirement in the Ministry of Defence for faster decision making and better data management. I understand her concerns about AI and safeguards, and I will continue to update the House as the AI strategy that Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has published is rolled out.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Most British scandals are fairly pathetic by international standards—they are about things like serving a piece of cake to the Prime Minister—but this scandal is monumental because it involves somebody in service to the Government using his position for commercial gain. In my long experience of such scandals, what brings down Presidents and Prime Ministers is not the original scandal, but the cover up. My advice to the Minister is to answer the perfectly sensible questions that are being put to him, particularly by the Chair of the Defence Committee about the lack of competitive process, and by the Opposition spokesman about the meeting in Washington. Will the Minister now answer the questions put to him?
Luke Pollard
I have answered those questions. I say politely to the Father of the House that the partygate scandal, which is not the subject of today’s urgent question, is not a trivial scandal, and it is important to put that clearly on the record. It undermined confidence in the Government at a time when we were being asked to do something that the decision makers were not doing themselves. I agree with him that transparency is necessary and important. The MOD publishes its procurement decisions in the usual transparent way, continuing the theme from when his party was in office. We will continue to do that, and I am happy to continue to take questions about the transparency of this contract.
Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
Given the scale of the contract—it is for almost a quarter of a billion pounds—and the fact that Mandelson had had a contract with Palantir, and attended a meeting in Washington with the Prime Minister and Palantir after he became the ambassador, questions inevitably arise. May I ask the Minister explicitly whether all the papers relevant to the Prime Minister’s visit and the contract will be made available to the Intelligence and Security Committee, as we believed we decided last Wednesday? I am aware that at least five or six senior civil servants in the Ministry of Defence have gone to work with Palantir. Can we have an assurance that there are proper firewalls in place to protect the interests of the public, as against the private interests of Palantir?
Luke Pollard
My hon. Friend asks valid questions. I say to him clearly that this Government will stand by and honour the agreement on the publication of information that was struck last week during the debate on the Humble Address. If there are documents from the Ministry of Defence that need to be published, we will continue to support the cross-Government effort to do so. On employees, when anyone who has worked in defence moves over to a defence contractor, be it Palantir or any other, we make it clear that they have certain obligations, and there are certain requirements. Palantir employs an awful lot of UK veterans; it has made employing veterans a point of principle. It is a good principle, and that should be done by all defence companies, in my view, but I take his point and I agree with it.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Minister know whether or not minutes were taken at the key Washington meeting in February last year? If they were not taken, why not? Why was Lord Mandelson, a political appointee, not required to sever any links with his former activities and business that could have given rise to a conflict of interest in his role as ambassador?
Luke Pollard
Peter Mandelson has let us all down in this House. The question about the minutes is being looked at by Downing Street, and it will be for Downing Street officials to publish more in due course.
Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for reply to the urgent question, and want to press him on safeguards. On contracts being held to ransom or a lock-in, what safeguards are there to protect our data and its sovereignty? Is there an exit strategy, if the Minister wants to choose a different contract in future?
Luke Pollard
We take vendor lock-in very seriously. We will build a more comprehensive AI framework in the Ministry of Defence; we will be using AI more frequently in more aspects of defence, just as the wider economy is doing. We want to ensure that our data sovereign. Our contract with Palantir retains the sovereignty of that data, and of decision making about the systems that the data sits on. That data resides in the United Kingdom, and no changes can be made by Palantir without the consent of the MOD. It is because we take the data issues so seriously that that is locked into the contract.
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
The Select Committee said that DSIT was in the loop when it came to buying things, so I challenge the Minister’s statement that it was purely the Secretary of State who made the decision about the contract. This contract with Palantir is nearly three times the value of the previous contract with it. The MOD transparency notice sets out that “only Palantir” can run the service, and that there would be a “significant cost” to changing all the analytics services, so we are entirely locked into a contract with a company that is now hiking up the price. What is the exit strategy?
Luke Pollard
We signed a contract with a supplier to provide a service for which there is clear military need and clear utility, in order to strengthen our armed forces. We keep all contracts, not just those with Palantir, under constant review to ensure that they are delivering what they were signed up to deliver, and we will continue to do that. We want more companies to provide AI services, so we are looking at how we can support more British AI companies to interact with defence. We recently stood up the Defence Office for Small Business Growth because there are many AI companies that are not yet defence AI companies but could be, and we are trying to make it easier for them to access defence contracts.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
This deal with Palantir stinks. It stank before Peter Mandelson was involved, and it stank when those now on the Opposition Benches initiated the NHS and defence contracts. Peter Thiel is an oligarch who despises democracy, and the company has had widespread allegations of human rights abuses made against it. Even the Swiss army has rejected Palantir as a platform on national security grounds. Surely, after Greenland, now is an opportunity for our Government to begin to distance themselves and pivot away from companies, such as Palantir, that are so closely connected with Donald Trump. It is time to move away. Will the Government commit to such a pivot?
Luke Pollard
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s passion on this matter but, as I have set out to the House, we will continue to maintain a close defence and security relationship with the United States—it is in our national security interests to do so. In signing any agreement with a US company, just as would be the case with a French, German or Australian company, we ensure that the agreement is in the UK’s national interest, and that controls are in place on the sovereignty of data, particularly with AI contracts. We will continue to ensure that those standards are upheld in all contracts, but we will also continue to work with international partners where no UK provider could deliver that work, or where the services they offer are in excess or deliver a defence capability faster, better or cheaper than one provided elsewhere.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
I want to return to a question that was initially asked by the Opposition spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). When the Prime Minister met Palantir and Peter Mandelson in February 2025 in Washington DC, was he aware that Palantir was a client of Peter Mandelson’s firm Global Counsel?
Luke Pollard
As I said in reply to the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), that is a matter for Downing Street to publish in due course. I am afraid that I have spent the last three days in Saudia Arabia, so I am just catching up on these events. I have been clear about where that information will come from, and I point my hon. Friend in that direction.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
There is a pattern with Palantir: its £1 covid contract with the NHS expanded to a £330 million contract under the last Government, and its Ministry of Defence contract tripled in size to £240 million, without due process or competition. As we have seen, the links with Global Counsel are now on the record. Will the Minister ensure that all contact with Global Counsel from his Department and across Government—Palantir has a total of 34 contracts with public sector bodies—are published, so that we can understand the revolving doors around Peter Mandelson, Global Counsel and this Government?
Luke Pollard
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s direction of travel and passion. We followed due process, in accordance with the Procurement Act, in awarding those contracts. As I have clearly set out, we will comply with the agreement made last week on publication of data and documents.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
It shows yet more extraordinarily poor judgment on the part of the Prime Minister that he met personally with Palantir—a highly questionable organisation that is complicit in the ruination of Palestine and the devastation wreaked in the US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Palantir are into the United Kingdom taxpayer for half a billion pounds, half of which was not competed. We should be concerned about Palantir, full stop. We should be concerned, in addition, about a direct award. We should be further concerned by the company being a client of Peter Mandelson and then having a meeting with the Prime Minister—for which there are apparently no minutes. When will Downing Street come up with a confirmed position on whether minutes were or were not taken in that meeting with Mandelson?
Luke Pollard
As I have been clear to the House in a number of answers, we will continue to have a security and defence relationship with the United States, and it is in our national interests to do so. We are a party that takes defence and security very seriously, which is something that I hope the hon. Gentleman’s party would do more of, although I have much respect for him. I will continue to ensure that we get the best services for our armed forces as we move to warfighting readiness. I have answered the question about minutes, and it will be for Downing Street to publish that in due course.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome this Government’s record funding for our defence, and I also recognise that the US is one of our closest allies. In this House we often talk about energy security, but I sometimes think that we do not talk enough about the security of security. What more can this Government do to invest in UK tech firms so that we are less reliant on foreign firms?
Luke Pollard
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we should look at security, data security and the opportunities here. In the strategic defence review, we set out our direction of travel in defence, and investing in new technologies, including artificial intelligence, is key to securing our national security. I want to see the best-in-class products used by our armed forces, and I also want to see more British small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular, being able to access this area. We have set up the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, and we are looking in particular at how we can support small defence AI companies to onboard their software in a whole range of defence utilities. We will continue to do so as we look to spend more of our rising defence budget with UK SMEs.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
The Minister and the Secretary of State have said that Peter Mandelson was not involved in the decision on Palantir. However, the issue is not the decision itself but the run-up to it. We know that Peter Mandelson, or executives from Global Counsel, were flown into embassy parties, and we need to understand more about whether Peter Mandelson, in pushing for deliverables for the state visit, was pushing for deliverables with Global Counsel clients. Will the Minister confirm that Peter Mandelson was not involved in any way, at any stage, in the decisions on the contracts given not just to Palantir but to Anduril Industries?
Luke Pollard
I am afraid that looking for deliverables ahead of a state visit is pretty standard practice, and it is something that the right hon. Gentleman’s Government looked at just as much as we do. We will continue to have conversations with our ambassadors in all circumstances, as he would expect. The right hon. Gentleman raises questions that should be answered by the publication of the information. We as a Government have committed to publish the relevant information that the House asked for last week, and we stand by that.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
The Government’s ongoing relationship with Palantir is deeply concerning, given the company’s involvement in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Palantir’s AI technology has been used to destroy entire neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals. If we claim to want an ethical foreign policy and pride ourselves on being a rules-based nation, why are we still signing contracts with such a company?
Luke Pollard
I entirely appreciate my hon. Friend’s position. Palantir provides services to the United Kingdom that keep our troops safe and enhance our national security. We have a range of contracts with US firms in procuring not only services but platforms. All those contracts go through the necessary rigour and assessment before they are signed. Some are subject to competitive tender and some, for other reasons, are subject to direct award. We will continue to work with our US partners.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The co-founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel, maintained a close financial and personal relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. There are profound ethical concerns about the web of connections between Thiel, Epstein and Mandelson. The hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) is absolutely right: the MoD’s contract with US-based spy-tech giant Palantir absolutely stinks. Will the MOD now cancel that contract? Will we get a fast and independent inquiry into the Government’s contracts with Palantir, as it currently has several billion pounds-worth of further framework contracts with the UK Government? Will we find out whether Mandelson shared privileged information with Palantir? If it is true that Palantir is hosting a party in Mayfair tomorrow for MOD officials, as The Times has alleged, will the Minister get that stopped?
Luke Pollard
The hon. Lady’s position would be stronger if the Greens were not so soft on defence. We will continue to invest in our national security, and we will invest in the contracts that keep our troops and our country safe. That will involve investing not only in UK firms, but in international partners at the same time. I have been clear at the Dispatch Box that we will comply fully with the agreement made on the Humble Address last week, and we will publish information in the right way in due course. I hope that will be able to provide more of the answers that the hon. Lady is looking for.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does the Minister appreciate how appallingly bad it looks for the Prime Minister of this country and the then ambassador in Washington, the disgraced Peter Mandelson, to have met Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir, in February last year without any written record of the meeting being made? Is he at least able to say which officials—other than, of course, our then ambassador—were present at that meeting?
Luke Pollard
The right hon. Gentleman will have seen the photographs that appeared on No. 10’s Twitter feed, to which I referred in response to the earlier question about the publication of information. He will also recall—perhaps from his time as a Defence Minister—that in 2021 the then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, also met Alex Karp.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Does the Minister really understand the depth of anger and feeling across the country when people read and hear about Palantir—the way in which it has wormed its way into Government contracts and the national health service, and its behaviour on behalf of the Israeli Defence Forces in the destruction of Gaza and other places using artificial intelligence technology? Do we really want to be involved with a company like that? Can we not just distance ourselves from Palantir altogether and have an ethical procurement policy across Government—not just in the Ministry of Defence, but in other Departments as well?
Luke Pollard
I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s long-standing position on a number of the items he asks about. I have been clear to the House today that we will continue to work with our US friends—they are our closest defence and security partner. Where appropriate, we will look at working with US technology firms that can provide best-in-class products that deliver increased defence for our armed forces and our nation. We will continue to do that, as well as investing in UK firms.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I am not qualified to make observations about the enduring value for money or effectiveness of Palantir, but I am concerned that Mandelson’s dynamics with every aspect of this Government have toxified the integrity of their processes. Unless the Minister can make absolutely clear what quiet, unspoken influences Mandelson had on this follow-on order with Palantir, people are bound to question the integrity of the process. To respond to the Minister’s earlier point, if we are to have a viable alternative and meaningful competition in future, he will need to do a little more to advance the case for alternatives, beyond just saying that he has an SME strategy.
Luke Pollard
The right hon. Gentleman is right; it is important that people can have confidence in the system, including the procurement system. As I have set out to the House, the decision to extend the contract with Palantir was originally signed in 2022 by the previous Government, of which I think he was a part at the time. That decision was made by the Secretary of State, and by the Secretary of State alone.
I do want to see more British AI companies working in defence—something we have been very clear about. Indeed, I think even the last Government set out an ambition to do more in that space. We have stepped up to make sure we can grow our own indigenous AI industry, with its software and services able to be onboarded into a more AI-friendly defence environment, because AI provides a decision advantage for our forces that is necessary to keep our country safe. However, I take very seriously the points that the right hon. Gentleman has made, and when we publish the information that we have committed to publish, that will hopefully answer some of his questions.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
Palantir has links to Peter Mandelson, to Peter Thiel and to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and it is extending its web of influence across multiple parts of our public sector. It is extraordinary that the Government are so reluctant to have this deal properly scrutinised. Does the Minister come to this place today feeling any shred of embarrassment that he cannot tell us why there are no minutes of the February 2025 meeting? We do not know whether a future contract was discussed, or whether the Prime Minister was aware of Mandelson’s links to Palantir.
Luke Pollard
I am absolutely happy that we have signed a contract and conducted that process in the appropriate way. Scrutiny of that process is not something I am afraid of. I actually think it will show that the decision was made by the Secretary of State, and by the Secretary of State alone, and that the extension of the contract—which was originally signed by the Conservative Government in 2022—delivers a benefit to the United Kingdom and secured £1.5 billion of investment in the UK. It also supplies onboarding routes for more SMEs and makes the UK Palantir’s European headquarters, which will help to support our economy and our armed forces in the future. As I have mentioned a few times, publication of the minutes is a matter for Downing Street, but it is pretty standard for Ministers to meet defence suppliers.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
In a call with investors a couple of weeks ago, Palantir’s chief executive officer Alex Karp said that
“we are super proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about…Palantir is here to disrupt…and when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them.”
Palantir’s share price has almost doubled over the past year, so can the Minister confirm whether Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister, any Cabinet Minister, any member of this Government or of the Ministry of Defence, or any public official currently has shares in Palantir and will financially benefit from the Government contracts it has been awarded?
Luke Pollard
I am afraid that the role of defence is to disrupt our adversaries and to secure our national security. To do that, we possess capabilities that can disrupt, deter and, if necessary, defeat our adversaries. That includes killing our adversaries at times—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. First, do not walk across the Member who is asking the question. [Interruption.] Just sit down. Secondly, if you have asked a question, please wait for the answer—do not keep interrupting. We have to treat people with respect and tolerance in this House.
Luke Pollard
Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is the role of defence to keep our country safe; as part of that, we do procure lethal capabilities, but not all the capabilities we procure are physical capabilities to secure our national security. AI will continue to be an increasingly large area.
Turning to the hon. Gentleman’s question about the transparency of our shareholdings, Defence Ministers have to publish all of our shareholdings with the relevant standards commissioner. I do not hold shares in Palantir, and no Defence Ministers are allowed to hold any shares in a company that interacts with defence businesses.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
In 2024, Leicestershire police signed a contract with Palantir worth close to £1 million for an intelligence and investigation platform. From what I can deduce through the work I have done, there was absolutely no formal tender process. I raised this concern in the Chamber in June 2025, along with my concerns about Palantir’s racial profiling and civil liberty abuses, which we are seeing in ICE raids now. The written response I received did not address any of my concerns, so will the Government now ensure that all the information about that contract is released immediately? Can the Minister confirm that Peter Mandelson played absolutely no role in unleashing this dystopian contract on the residents of Leicestershire?
Luke Pollard
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s focus on that particular contract. As a Defence Minister, I do not know about Home Office policing contracts that were secured by individual forces, but I can direct him to my colleagues in the Home Office, who might be able to help more.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I have been trying to follow the Secretary of State’s responses regarding relationships with political parties and others. There are issues with regard to some companies. For example, the Quadrature hedge fund has massive investments in Palantir and donates to political parties in this country, including the Labour party, to which it made a £4 million donation in 2024. Will he take away the question of what influence that had on the decision-making processes for the award of contracts?
Luke Pollard
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and for the inadvertent promotion he has given me. He is right to talk about the necessity of ensuring that political donations are transparent and in order. That is an area in which the Government have already set out some changes, and I want our politics to learn lessons from the experiences of the past to make sure that donations are clear and transparent, which was not always the case under the last Government. However, I take seriously the issue that he has raised, and if he writes to me with the detail of that particular donation, I would be happy to look into it.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answers. He is well known for his decency; he is a good Minister, and always tries to answer well. As he knows, I have been a firm supporter of the need to enhance defence—both physically and in the cyber world—so I welcome the defence contract. However, public confidence is at an all-time low due to the Mandelson debacle, and his connection to Palantir naturally raises questions, which is why this UQ has been tabled today. How can the Government assure us that this firm was awarded the contract not due to any connection, but because it can provide the best program and the best defence for our nation?
Luke Pollard
I am a big fan of the hon. Member, too. I have been clear in my answers today that the decision to extend the 2022 contract signed under the previous Government was made by the Secretary of State alone. It was his decision to do so. We are procuring new AI capabilities to speed up our delivery of outcomes within defence. We know that our adversaries are using AI in how they position themselves, and it is necessary that we do so, too. He is right that as we deploy more artificial intelligence, not just in defence, but across our wider economy, we need to secure a level of confidence in the contracts and in the technology itself. That is a bigger debate than this one, but I understand precisely where the hon. Gentleman is coming from.
Court Reporting Data
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the implications for open justice of the impending deletion of the Courtsdesk court reporting data archive.
The Minister for Courts and Legal Services (Sarah Sackman)
I am committed, as are this Government, to greater transparency in our justice system. I am also committed to putting the dignity of victims first. As Courts Minister, I have a concern that people should know what goes on in our courts. It is a way of enhancing transparency and of informing and educating the public, and that is why His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has made and continues to make information available to accredited journalists so that they can keep the public informed about what is taking place in our courts.
In 2020, a company called Courtsdesk entered into an arrangement with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to conduct a pilot providing a new service. That agreement, made under the previous Government, was essentially to take some of the data that we routinely provide—and continue to provide—to journalists, and to re-provide it in a more accessible and easier to search form.
HMCTS was working to expand and improve the service by creating a new data licence agreement with Courtsdesk and others to expand access to justice. It was in the course of making that arrangement with Courtsdesk that data protection issues came to light. What has arisen is that this private company has been sharing private, personal and legally sensitive information with a third-party AI company, including potentially the addresses and dates of birth of defendants and victims. That is a direct breach of our agreement with Courtsdesk, which the Conservatives negotiated.
I believe that everybody in this House would agree that that agreement should be upheld. The Government take our data protection responsibilities seriously. It is for that reason that we decided to stop sharing data with Courtsdesk, a company that was prepared to put victims’ personal data at risk. We instructed it to remove that data from its digital platform. This is about preserving dignity for those who are in our justice system, be they those accused of crime or victims going through the court process. I know that the whole House would agree that that is incredibly important.
Let me be clear: the cessation of our agreement with Courtsdesk does not change the information available to the public about what carries on in our courts, nor does it change the information available to journalists. I recognise that the sort of service that Courtsdesk provided was useful for journalists, because it collated the information and presented it neatly. It is for that reason that officials in my Department are continuing to work, as we had always planned to do, on an alternative platform that allows us to make the information available, but to maintain the guardrails on data protection. I hope to update the House on that in coming weeks. As I conclude, this decision—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. and learned Lady will know that she had three minutes, which she has used. I call the shadow Minister.
Dr Mullan
Here we are again. Not even one week after this Government had to be forced to release the Mandelson files—looking out for themselves and not for victims—we are back with a Government who preach transparency and practise the opposite. The pattern is clear. They will not release migrant crime data. They fought our efforts to institute a grooming gangs inquiry every step of the way. That campaign was fuelled by journalists uncovering what was happening in our courts. What are the Government now intent on doing? Delete, delete, delete. They want to make it harder for journalists to report the truth. What is it that they are worried about? Could it be that they want to hide the fact that thousands of criminals will escape justice under their Sentencing Act 2026? Could it be that when they erode our rights to jury trials, they do not want the public to hear about the results? Can anyone draw any conclusion other than that they are determined to escape accountability for their damaging policies?
The Courtsdesk project has been a huge success. Introduced by the shadow Home Secretary, it has revolutionised the transparency of our courtrooms. Courtsdesk reports that more than 1,500 journalists have used the platform. That is why so many journalists are rallying in support. What of the apparent data breach that the Government are using as an excuse for this? Have they engaged with Courtsdesk? No, they have not. There has been not one single meeting, despite multiple requests to the Minister. It is not just officialdom that is to blame. The Courts Minister has been written to by Courtsdesk and several major media organisations. She has been told directly how important this system is.
This is a Minister who comes to the House and professes how vital magistrates courts are to the Government’s plans to take a sledgehammer to jury trials. She needs to tell us why she and her officials have refused even to meet Courtsdesk. What assessment have they made of the impact of this decision on open justice? Delete, delete, delete; stonewall, ignore and deflect—that is the character of this Government in their operations. We will not stand by and let them do the same in our courts.
Sarah Sackman
I am afraid that the bombast we have just heard is not just inaccurate but dangerous, because it suggests that there is anything like a restriction on open justice. Let me be absolutely clear: there has been no deletion of any court lists. [Interruption.] Excuse me. There has been no deletion of any court lists, which is the nature of the data that has been provided.
Let us be absolutely clear: we had an arrangement with Courtsdesk, which we accept provides a useful service. [Interruption.] What Courtsdesk did, which the shadow Minister does not seem to think is a problem, is to pass that information on in breach of the agreement—no doubt for commercial purposes—to an AI company. That information included defendants’ addresses and dates of birth. I do not think anyone in this House would think that such things should be provided to anybody other than accredited journalists, yet they were provided to an AI company.
We then asked Courtsdesk to delete the information that it held. As of yesterday, I understand that it still has not done so. It accepts that it has acted in breach of its agreement. It threatened the Ministry of Justice with legal action, which it has not chosen to take forward. We are saying that when a company acts in breach of an agreement, putting vulnerable people and parties at risk, it is very serious. I take data protection seriously, but there has been no obstruction to journalists being able to access through the usual channels the lists that we are talking about. That access remains open today, and it remains open to journalists to contact HMCTS.
Indeed, we want to put this system on a securer footing with the necessary guardrails. [Interruption.] I will repeat, because the shadow Minister is muttering through my entire response, that no one has deleted any court records. Everything that he refers to in relation to serious sexual historic crimes remains accessible. Case law remains accessible, and the court lists remain accessible.
Open justice is vital, but I will not have a wild west of private companies acting in breach of agreements with Government and passing sensitive data on to third-party AI companies. That will not do, and the shadow Minister knows that if he were in my position, it would not have been acceptable to him either.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
It is a pity that the shadow Minister is reducing this issue to one of his conspiracy theories, because I know that the Minister is an advocate of open justice, and the Government are doing a lot on open justice by televising the family courts, publishing transcripts and other means.
Courtsdesk gave evidence to the Select Committee in its 2022 inquiry into open justice, and it is, I think, the only centralised source of information for journalists. It is an important tool, because court reporting and local journalism have suffered greatly over the past years. We do need a service of this kind, so when can the Minister tell us what will replace it? In the meantime, will she continue to talk to Courtsdesk, notwithstanding what she has said today, to ensure that the information can be provided for journalists in a legitimate and legal way?
Sarah Sackman
My hon. Friend has asked a very good question. It is vital for people to know what goes on in our courts, and local reporting of what happens there matters to wider society and, indeed, to our democracy. We recognise that Courtsdesk provided a useful service for journalists in collating information and presenting it in an accessible way, and that is what we want to be able to maintain, while at the same time safeguarding people’s data and putting it on a proper licensing footing.
On the timeline, we aim to initiate that licensing arrangement and make it available to companies more widely so that, next month, there is even more accessibility. We are very close to that, but what I will not abide is a flagrant breach of the agreement that we had with Courtsdesk and the sharing of sensitive data in a way that is irresponsible. I want the data to be available to responsible journalists to use responsibly, and that is exactly what we are getting on with.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
I thank the Minister for setting out the data protection issues that have been identified with Courtsdesk, but can she explain why her Department ignored the 16 letters written by Courtsdesk asking for dialogue before deciding to do away with the system? As was pointed out by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), it is the only centralised tool for justice reporting. Reporters have described the MOJ’s own data as fragmented, incomplete and impractical to navigate, and according to HM Courts & Tribunals Service, its own records on court listings were accurate just 4% of the time. It is those gaps that Courtsdesk was designed to fill by providing clear and accurate information for reporters.
Doing away with this platform will naturally add to the feeling that the MOJ is avoiding difficult questions and dodging accountability by undermining journalism. Will the Minister suspend the deletion of the archive until the Information Commissioner’s Office has looked into these issues and drawn its own conclusions? If she insists on going ahead with the deletion in the coming days, will she please give an indication of a timeline within which we can expect a platform that will serve the same purpose?
Sarah Sackman
I want to make it absolutely clear that accredited journalists continue—as they have throughout—to have access to court information that they need, directly from individual magistrates courts and tribunal services, via either the court and tribunal hearings service, which is a new digital system, or the gov.uk website. I do recognise the utility of what Courtsdesk provided, but the company was clearly not acting in a responsible way. When we approached its representatives about the breach of its agreement with HMCTS, they accepted that they had breached it and then threatened the MOJ with litigation, which is not an appropriate way to behave if one is trying to co-operate and get things on to a sound and steady footing.
Let me also be absolutely clear about the timeline. All magistrates and court lists, and the accompanying case summarisation data, will be available from the court and tribunal hearings service from the end of March 2026. I want to put this on a stable footing so that journalists have ready access, because I accept that the information must be made easily available to them, in a responsible but properly licensed fashion. As I have said, that work will be made public and the licences made available from March.
We have to do this in a responsible way. We have to balance the very real needs of open justice—which I readily accept, and to which the Government are committed—with data protection, particularly when it comes to the vulnerable victims who are at the heart of this.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
There is an obligation on anyone who is aware of a data breach to report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office no later than 72 hours after becoming aware of it. Can the Minister say when the MOJ was first aware of the issues relating to Courtsdesk, and when the MOJ reported those issues to the ICO?
Sarah Sackman
The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that the report to the ICO has not yet been made. I raised the matter with our data officer, and the conclusion—the advice that I was given—was that it did not meet the threshold for an ICO referral. I have asked for that to be looked at again, but what is clear, and Courtsdesk accepted this fact, is that it breached the agreement by passing this material to an AI company. That is not a responsible thing to do with people’s private addresses and other sensitive data relating to individuals through which those individuals can be identified and which are not subject to the same reporting restrictions which, of course, journalists abide by. Let me be absolutely clear with the House: the sort of service that Courtsdesk provides is one that we want to replicate, but we want it to be on a stable footing with the necessary data protection guardrails, and that is what we are putting in place. If Courtsdesk had engaged with the Ministry of Justice and HMCTS in a responsible fashion, we would not be in the position that we are in today.
The fact is that, all along, journalists have retained the ability to obtain information. That is the critical point. This is about court lists, not court records. In respect of court lists, for all courts, journalists throughout have been able to engage with the information in the same way as they were able to do pre-2020, pre-Courtsdesk. They can get that information, and they can continue to report what is happening in our courts.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
It is certainly a cause of great concern if an AI machine now has access to people’s private home addresses. What investigations have the Government carried out to establish how much personal information that should not have been released is now out there for anyone, no matter how ill-intentioned, to dial up at will?
Sarah Sackman
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman agrees that this is a matter of concern, although it is clearly not a concern that is shared by the Front Benchers in his party. Our understanding is that some 700 individual cases, at least, were shared with the AI company. We have sought to understand what more may have been shared and who else may have been put at risk, but the mere fact that the agreement was breached in that way is incredibly serious. That is why all this needs to be put on a much more licence-secure and regulatorily secure footing.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
My observation is that surely it is for the Information Commissioner’s Office to decide whether the data breach is serious or not, and if the ICO does not have the information it cannot make that judgment. My question is this: when the contract was procured, was there a clause in the specification that prevented the release of personal and sensitive data? If so, is the company in breach of its contract, in which case the aggression should perhaps come from the Government as opposed to their waiting for the company to threaten them with legal action?
Sarah Sackman
The hon. Lady is right, in that the original agreement that was reached between Courtsdesk and the previous Government made it clear that there should not be further sharing of the data with additional parties. It is one thing to share the data with accredited journalists who are subject to their own codes and who are expected to adhere to reporting restrictions, but Courtsdesk breached that agreement by sharing the information with an AI company. That is simply irresponsible, and when it came to light, I took the decision—I did not take it lightly, but I certainly remain confident in that decision—to cease giving Courtsdesk access unless and until it, or any other party, showed that it could use that information responsibly. Open justice is very important, but such information should not be shared with an AI company in breach of the agreement that exists with Government.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I accept what the Minister is saying, but I do not understand why the dispute resolution has not worked and why there is still no opportunity for it to work. I should appreciate it if she could clarify that for the House. May I also ask what will be new and different about the next procurement? What needs to be set up? If there was a breach, will it not be simply a procurement to avoid that happening in future?
Sarah Sackman
The right hon. Gentleman will know that I am all for being pragmatic and having dispute resolution, but, as I have said, in the course of our trying to get to the bottom of what has happened, litigation has been threatened, so it is very difficult to do that. What I want to do is move forward, and potentially with Courtsdesk if it can show that it is a responsible actor, which at present it is not doing.
Two things need to happen. First, we have all the power and all the data in a single company, and I do not think that is healthy. I think that everyone in the House who believes in an open market would favour a tendering process that opens up the potential for different parties to gain licences, and in that way we can make the information accessible to different companies.
Secondly, the licence agreements need to be strengthened so that we do not see a repeat of what we have seen here—a sharing of data where it should not go—and we need to have guardrails in place. The nature of the agreement that was agreed under the previous Government was too informal, too baggy and too loose for my liking. In fact, it is partly what has allowed this situation to happen, which is why I want to put things on a better footing. We will not take ages; I have said that we will do this by March, and we are getting on with it. In the meantime, it is a wild west. We simply cannot have companies acting in breach of the agreement, sticking personal, sensitive information belonging to victims and defendants alike into an AI bot, and passing it on to an AI company that will do who knows what with it.
Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Ind)
The Minister will be aware that we have privately crowdfunded a rape gang inquiry, which is ongoing. During the course of the inquiry, we have uncovered vast evil that is happening across the country, as well as systemic state failures. When we release the report, we are intending to pursue private prosecutions against those who failed, so will—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s question ought to relate to the urgent question.
Rupert Lowe
Will the Minister give me a copper-bottomed guarantee that the transcripts of previous court cases will not be destroyed?
Sarah Sackman
Let me start by saying that this Government are committed to tackling grooming gangs, punishing offenders and protecting children. The grooming gangs scandal is one of the most heinous crimes of our time, but allow me to repeat this: it is fundamentally incorrect to say that court records are being deleted. Court records remain completely intact, and will only be deleted in line with the general data protection regulation and record retention policies. The data that we are talking about here is data that a private company, Courtsdesk, has been asked to delete because it has failed to demonstrate that it is using that data responsibly. The data includes only magistrates court lists and outcomes, not the transcripts of which the hon. Gentleman speaks—data that Courtsdesk is not entitled to hold. The sort of data that he is concerned about remains, and those who need to access it for investigative purposes or otherwise can do so through the usual channels. Let us not conflate that with the data in question here.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
For decades, victims, survivors, campaigners, whistleblowers and journalists have fought to force the British state to reveal the whole truth about the rape and grooming scandal. The data held by Courtsdesk could be invaluable in uncovering the truth. The Minister tells us that we can rely on the Government’s own data instead, but just 4.2% of magistrates court cases are listed accurately by the courts themselves, so for every 25 cases listed, 24 are wrong. How can the Minister ask victims, survivors and any of us who care about the truth to rely on that, especially in the context of the most disgusting cover-up in our nation’s history?
Sarah Sackman
I share the hon. Lady’s concern regarding the victims, whom we so often fail to centre in our discussions in this House. Let me be absolutely clear: as a Government, we have demonstrated time and again our commitment to open justice, whether that is through increasing the provision of free transcripts of sentencing remarks to all victims on request, introducing audio recording in magistrates courts, or ensuring that the judiciary allow more judgments and decisions to be published. To be absolutely clear, the data shared with Courtsdesk was listing data and, in some cases, the outcomes of those cases.
Sarah Sackman
Of course listing data is important, and of course it is important that it is accurate. By the way, it is also important that such data is not shared unlawfully with third parties that are not entitled to it. We continue to make that information available to journalists in the same way as before 2020. A journalist working in the field can access that information from HMCTS if they make a request, and it will be passed to them in the usual way. We are seeking to open that up further and to put it on a stable footing, which will remove the wild west that appears to have emerged.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
The Minister complains that it is currently the wild west out there, and hopes that we can somehow regulate it. Well, we do actually have a regulator for incidents such as these. Pursuant to the answer that she gave to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), she acknowledged that data breaches have to be reported to the ICO within 72 hours. We hear that she was advised that this breach did not hit the threshold, which I find absolutely staggering. Advisers advise, and Ministers decide. Why was the Minister’s judgment not to go away and immediately question the advice that she received from her Department?
Sarah Sackman
I regard the data breach of the agreement as serious, and I referred it to the data officer at the MOJ. That is the conclusion they have reached, and I have accepted their advice. As I said, I have asked them to conduct a further review in the light of further information that has come to light, just as we have asked Courtsdesk for further information. The information came to light because Courtsdesk admitted that it had been inputting and sharing this data with an AI company, in breach of the agreement. We have to get to the bottom of that, but it is so important that we tighten up the licensing agreements and make court lists available to more companies, so that journalists can continue to access the information in a way that is safe for defendants, safe for victims, and safe for anyone who participates in the court process.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her full answers. The fact that justice should be open and transparent is not negotiable. Anything other than that is not democracy but, by its very nature, despotic. The Minister has provided a justification. However, it is clear that although the system could undoubtedly be tightened up, completely scrapping it without a viable alternative does not provide confidence in the judiciary; it does the opposite. Will the Minister reassure the House and those outside about the decision that has been taken?
Sarah Sackman
I want to be really clear that the data held by Courtsdesk is not an archive of criminal court case files. A number of Members have mentioned the importance of criminal court case records, which are held in a variety of places, not least the National Archives. They continue to remain available. The court lists, which I accept are important, continue to be available to the public—a member of the public can look them up now. Enhanced listing, which has a bit more information, remains open to journalists. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is important to have transparency and open justice, and for reporters to have the ability to expose what goes on in our courts. That is why I want to make the data open to more people, but we will put it on a safer footing to ensure that data breaches like this do not occur again in the future.
Dr Mullan
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We obviously benefit from enormous privilege in this House, because we are able to say things without any worry about what might happen legally. The Minister said several times in her statement that Courtsdesk has admitted that it breached the data-sharing agreement. Courtsdesk has been absolutely clear with me that it has never admitted that it breached the agreement. I wonder if the Minister might want to take the chance at least to caveat what she said in the Chamber.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
The hon. Gentleman will know that that is not a point of order and not a matter for the Chair. I do not intend to continue the debate via points of order.
Local Power Plan
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
With permission, I will make a statement about the local power plan and allocation round 7 solar and onshore wind auction results, both of which have been published today.
Britain’s drive for clean energy is about helping to answer the call for a different kind of economy that works for the many, not just the wealthy and powerful in our society. In the last few weeks, our warm homes plan has delivered the biggest public investment in upgrading homes in British history to cut bills for millions of people and to tackle fuel poverty. We have secured the largest offshore wind auction in European history, with a clean industry bonus to drive investment into our industrial communities, and we have agreed a fair work charter with business and trade unions as a first step to improving workers’ rights in renewables.
Today, I can report to the House the results of the AR7 auction for onshore wind and solar. In onshore wind, we secured 1.3 GW of power at a price of £72 per megawatt-hour. In solar, we secured nearly 5 GW at a price of £65 per megawatt-hour. I can inform the House that, together, this onshore wind and solar will provide enough power for the equivalent of more than 3 million homes, further reducing our dependence on international fossil fuel markets. It represents the largest solar and onshore wind auction in UK history.
I have had representations that we should have cancelled the auction and built new gas instead. I can tell the House that the price of this onshore wind and solar is less than half the price of building and operating new gas stations. Indeed, onshore wind and solar are by far the cheapest power sources available to build and operate, so I have rejected those representations. Instead, we have record-breaking results that will cut bills for families across Britain.
As we get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel markets controlled by petrostates and dictators, we do not want this clean energy simply to be owned by big companies and multinationals. We want every community in this country to have the chance to own our energy future. We know that community ownership is a transformative tool to build the wealth and pride of local areas and give people a stake in the places in which they live. We already see this in pioneering community energy projects across Britain, and I pay tribute to them, including Lawrence Weston in Bristol, where England’s tallest onshore wind turbine, which I have visited, is 100% community-owned and generates tens of thousands of pounds a year to reinvest in the local community; the Geraint Thomas velodrome in Newport, which hosts nearly 2,000 solar panels and is one of the largest rooftop solar projects in Wales, cutting bills in Wales dramatically; and the Huntly Development Trust in Aberdeenshire, where community wind projects generate income that helps fund local charities.
We know that community energy not only spreads wealth and power, but contributes to the resilience of our energy system by generating and storing power closer to where people live, yet despite the individual success stories, Britain has never decisively seized the opportunities of community energy. Around half of wind capacity in Denmark is owned by its citizens, as is almost half of solar in Germany, yet in Britain currently less than 1% of our renewables are community owned. With our local power plan, we will change that.
Today, we announce the biggest public investment in community-owned energy in British history. During the previous Parliament, less than £60 million was spent on Government community energy schemes. Today, we set aside up to £1 billion of funding from Great British Energy to invest. This will offer grants to local authorities and community groups to support projects in their early stages, loans and project finance to support construction and operation, and funding to help communities buy a stake in larger renewable projects in their areas.
This funding will also be targeted at underserved areas of the country where it can make the biggest difference. Great British Energy estimates that this funding will support an initial 1,000 community and local energy projects, but this is just the start. Today, we send out the message to community groups, sports clubs, miners’ welfare institutes and village halls across the country that, in every community of Britain, we want to give people the chance to own their own energy, to transfer money from the pockets of energy companies to their community, and to generate income for the benefit of local people for decades to come. This is a Labour Government enabling every community of our country to own and build wealth for local people.
However, we know that making that happen is not just about providing capital funding, because communities need help to plan and develop their projects. So alongside this funding, Great British Energy will establish a one-stop shop to provide support and advice about local and community energy, with a team of expert advisers to help communities get their projects off the ground. This is Britain’s publicly owned energy company working hand in hand with our brilliant mayors, local authorities and community groups to turn the ambitions of local communities into reality.
Alongside the funding and support, we also know we must confront the reality that for years the rules of our energy system have held back the growth of community energy. Local and community schemes face hurdles that may be straightforward for large developers to overcome, but are too high for voluntary groups with limited time and resources. We are determined to break down these barriers, so we will also work with Ofgem to reform market codes and supply licences to help communities sell the power they generate, and we will ensure community energy projects benefit from our reforms to planning and the grid.
We also want to make it much easier for communities to take a stake in larger projects through shared ownership, building on examples such as the Isle of Skye co-operative in the Hebrides, which owns a share of a local onshore wind farm and has generated over £1.5 million for the local community. We think there is huge potential for many more projects like that, so we will consult on how we could use existing powers in the Infrastructure Act 2015 to mandate an offer of shared ownership. Those powers were passed more than a decade ago, but were never implemented. It would mean that, when companies built big projects, local people and communities would be offered a stake in them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) has said, we need to move from a situation where communities can only aspire to be passive beneficiaries of projects owned by large companies to their being owners themselves with benefits in perpetuity. We are moving from community benefit to community share and community stake.
Taken together, this is the most comprehensive package of support to grow local and community energy that our country has ever seen. It builds on the Pride in Place programme, the community right to buy and our world-leading commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector. We know that the local power plan will be delivered not from Whitehall, but place by place and community by community. Today, I issue an invitation to local and community groups: if they come forward with proposals, we will support those groups to help make them happen. This statement is about a stake for the British people in our energy system, generating returns for local communities and local people, with power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few, and I commend it to the House.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for prior sight of his statement.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether the Secretary of State is at the Dispatch Box as the Energy Secretary or rehearsing for a future move to perhaps No. 11. Once again, he is more distracted by personal ambition than concerned about the bleak reality families are facing across the country with crippling energy bills. Today’s announcement is being sold as a bold shift of power to local communities, but cutting through the fluff, this plan does not make electricity cheaper and it does not offer value for the taxpayer.
This plan does nothing to reduce wholesale prices, nothing to fix the grid connection backlog and nothing to tackle the structural costs. Instead, the Government are asking taxpayers to fund small-scale projects which, optimistically, will provide minor reductions in costs for a few local buildings while leaving families and businesses across this country still paying higher prices. There are no guarantees that the £1 billion committed through the Great British Energy scheme will deliver lower bills, no clear test of value for money and no convincing explanation of why subsidising small, piecemeal projects offers a better return for taxpayers than backing affordable, large-scale nuclear generation that would genuinely move the dial. Spread thinly across the country over several years and funnelled through yet another Whitehall-controlled body, this is not a serious intervention, but a press release masquerading as an energy strategy.
Alongside the local power plan, the results of allocation round 7 this morning raise serious questions that the Secretary of State has yet to answer. In the Government’s own press release, they rely on “internal analysis” to claim that additional solar and onshore wind procured through AR7 could lower bills in the early 2030s, but that analysis has not been published. It looks only at a narrow scenario, excludes wider system costs and does not give a full picture of future bill levels. If Ministers are so confident of their figures, why will they not release the full impact assessment? What exactly is the Secretary of State hiding?
AR7 also underlines the direction of travel under this Government: longer contracts, higher strike prices and greater risk locked in for bill payers. The extension of contracts for difference from 15 years to 20 years means that households will be tied into paying these costs for even longer, regardless of whether circumstances change. At the same time, the Government have relaxed planning requirements so some offshore wind projects can bid before planning consent has even been secured.
All of this points to the root problem, which is that electricity prices are already too high, and the policies pursued by this Government are only pushing them higher. Doubling down on carbon taxes and loading more expensive wind and solar on to a system that is not ready risks driving up costs for both households and industry, making British business less competitive and leaving families to pick up the bill. Families are being asked to pay more, not less. Labour promised to cut energy bills by £300; instead, bills have risen by £190 since Labour came to power. That is the reality behind its rhetoric, and that is the reality every family up and down the land understands as they open their energy bills.
At the centre of all this sits Great British Energy, an £8 billion taxpayer-funded quango that was meant to lower bills for everyone. So far, all we have is the promise of a highly paid chief executive, a new board and more bureaucracy. Why do we need another expensive state body to do what the market and existing institutions should already be delivering? That is the fundamental difference in approach. Our cheap power plan focuses on bringing down the underlying cost of electricity, saving the public sector and everyone else vastly more in the process, and doing so without costing taxpayers a penny. This Government are more focused on their own internal politics than on delivering the one thing people need: energy that is reliable, abundant and, above all, affordable for all our constituents.
Ed Miliband
Well, there were no questions, but I will reply none the less. Let me start with the AR7 auction, because this is very interesting and it will give the House a picture of what has actually changed. What has changed is the Conservative party, not the reality. We had the AR5 auction a couple of years ago, when the Conservatives were in power. In that auction, the price of solar was higher than it was in this auction. The then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) stated:
“our reliance on gas for electricity production today risks making power prices higher than they would be in a system with a greater share of generation from wind and solar…Moving to home-based, clean power mitigates risks to billpayers—now and in the future.”
What has changed? What has changed is that the Conservative party has gone full MAGA. Let us just be honest about this. It has decided to chase Reform into a ludicrous position, doubling down on fossil fuels and rejecting even solar and onshore wind, the cheapest, cleanest form of power you can possibly have. I guess the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) was just reading out the script.
On community energy, I have to congratulate the hon. Gentleman, because he has given a brilliant example of why the previous Government were so hopeless on community energy. He obviously thinks it is a terrible idea. He is very welcome to do so, but he is sending a message to every Member of Parliament and all their constituents that the Conservative party is against community energy projects and against the things that will cut bills for local community groups. To every sports club, community centre and library that will benefit from this funding, there is a very clear answer: the Conservative party says, “No, you don’t deserve it. We don’t want you to have those lower bills. We don’t want you to have that cheap clean power. We don’t want you to have the income and resources to reinvest in our local community.” If the Conservatives want that as a dividing line, bring it on, I say. This Government are on the side of local communities, on the side of cutting bills and on the side of reinvesting money into communities. The Conservative party, in its new incarnation, is against it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Select Committees look at the evidence. The evidence we have heard is that community energy is a great way of bringing down bills and giving people the confidence to take part in the energy transition. The Secretary of State talked about solar in his statement. We heard that golf courses use 10 times as much land as solar farms. Even if the Committee on Climate Change recommendations are adopted, twice as much land will still be used for golf courses. The Country Land and Business Association told us that concerns about land use are a myth: that the planning system protects the best and most versatile land for crop production, and that the roll-out of solar should be encouraged as a way of diversifying for farmers, delivering cheap electricity for both neighbouring businesses and domestic use. Will the Secretary of State say how he intends to ensure as many people as possible in rural areas understand the benefits of community energy and solar more widely? Will he ensure that those myths are finally busted?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend did a very good job of busting those myths in his question and he is absolutely right. The truth is that you cannot, at one and the same time, complain about bills being too high and then reject the cheapest cleanest form of power, but I am afraid that that is the position of the Conservative party. There is no hiding the fact. Nobody can disagree—you can disagree about other things—that solar is the cheapest form of power, but the Conservatives are against it.
My hon. Friend makes a really important point about community energy. Let us be honest, we are in the foothills of what we need to achieve as a country. Germany and Denmark are miles ahead of us. This is about a different conception of energy and who owns it: not just big multinational companies, not just the big companies that the Conservatives seem to want to just leave it all to. We want local people to be able to have a stake in the system. That is what this plan is about.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government recognising what communities across the country have been saying for years: community energy is one of the most powerful ways to cut bills, rebuild trust in the energy system, rebuild local resilience and take people with us on the journey to net zero. We campaigned hard to see community energy written into the Great British Energy Act 2025, alongside many people—although not everybody here today it seems—in this House and the other place, and alongside community groups such as the South Cambridgeshire Climate and Nature Group and other community organisations across the country.
We believe in localism, empowerment and giving communities a real stake and ownership in our clean energy future. I thank the Minister for working with us to make sure that we did get that into the 2025 Act. As we rightly move away from volatile fossil fuel costs controlled by foreign powers, we must ensure that our new clean energy system puts communities first. It must mean giving people the power to generate, own, and, crucially, sell their own clean energy locally, with profits reinvested in the places where the energy is produced.
We welcome the local power plan in principle, but the devil is in the detail. First, what happened to the Government’s pledge of £3.3 billion for community-owned energy, when today we are hearing about £1 billion of investment? We do not want to follow the Conservative Government’s retreat from ambition on local clean power. It is not the time to scale back ambition.
Secondly, on the crucial issue of local empowerment, regulation is needed. Organisations such as Power for People constantly told us that there are, as the Secretary of State said, barriers to access fair local markets. They welcome this plan, too, echoing the Minister’s promise that the Government will establish local energy supply models. The local power plan—I have looked through it very quickly—talks about the regulatory changes necessary, but when will they come through? The energy transition has to happen not to communities, but with them—
Ed Miliband
I thank the hon. Lady—I say this genuinely—for her advocacy on this issue ever since we came into government and before. She is a powerful advocate for community energy. I congratulate the group in South Cambridgeshire, too. Let me deal with the points she raised.
On investment, I think that in anyone’s view the scale of the investment we are making is very significant. As I said, it is £1 billion, compared with £60 million in the previous Parliament under the previous Government. This is a massive scaling up and a realist assessment of what can be spent over this Parliament, but obviously this is just the start of our ambitions.
The hon. Lady made a point, I think, on working with local community groups, which is very important. She will know that one of the challenges local groups face is in getting to the stage of having a project that is ready to go. Part of this issue is about working with those groups to make sure that can happen.
On Ofgem and some of the regulatory changes, absolutely we are going to work as quickly as we can to unblock some of the barriers and ensure that can happen as swiftly as possible.
Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)
Northampton is one of the towns across the UK that will benefit from the local power plan. Does the Secretary of State agree that my schools, colleges and universities, the four hospitals in my constituency, and my sports clubs, including the Cobblers—one of the greenest football clubs in the country—will benefit from the plan, and that the wealth generated by local power will be kept in our community?
Ed Miliband
I congratulate the Cobblers and all the organisations in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He is absolutely right. We think there are huge benefits across the country. GB Energy is, I think, now opening its website so that different groups can register an interest and work with it.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
National Grid is one of the large, national, private companies run by the wealthy and powerful in society that the Secretary of State derided in his statement. It is seeking to build, on the edge of an area of scientific interest and a nature reserve, a 90-foot high converter station covering the size of five football pitches. Local people, whom the Secretary of State claims to champion, do not want this. Will the Secretary of State champion the local people and consign this project to the dustbin of history where it belongs?
Ed Miliband
The right hon. Gentleman will know that there is a planning process for all projects. I would gently point out to him—not specifically on his project, because I want to make a more general point—that if we are going to get the benefits of cheap, clean power, we need to build the transmission infrastructure. The biggest threat to the countryside is the climate crisis; it is the single biggest threat to biodiversity and nature. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman feels strongly about the specific issue he talked about, as do his constituents, but I do believe it is right to build the transmission infrastructure we need in order to lower bills for people and tackle the climate crisis.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his announcement of the £1 billion in funding for community energy projects under Labour’s local power plan. Will he outline the benefits of community energy for constituencies like mine and set out how local communities can get involved and ensure that any profits are reinvested locally?
Ed Miliband
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Briefly, there are three important aspects to this: first, communities can have lower bills for their community centres and local institutions; secondly, they can generate a stream of income by selling power back to the grid; thirdly, there is something wider, and perhaps more intangible, which is the matter of giving local communities a sense of stake in the system. I think this is really important, because one of the ways that we gain consent from people is through the sense that it is not simply the big multinationals that will own our energy system, but local people themselves.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I welcome the publication of the local power plan and I honestly recognise the Government’s commitment to community energy. However, I think there is still a piece missing—namely that properties in the vicinity of a community energy generator can ultimately benefit by being directly supplied, rather than being supplied through a third party. Will the Secretary of State look again at how community energy is defined and include households benefiting from the energy generated within that community? We have been struggling with the definition of community energy on the Select Committee. I think it is important that households can benefit from the energy generated within the community.
Ed Miliband
I thank the hon. Lady for her advocacy on this issue. My hon. Friend the Minister for Energy, who is the world expert on these questions—or at least the UK expert; I will not push it too far—assures me that her important question about the statutory definition, which is, I think, on code P441, is being answered in the plan.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his announcement. Community energy is incredibly powerful in rural Britain, particularly in the village of Humshaugh, where Humshaugh Net Zero set up the community-owned solar farm. I restate my invitation to the Secretary of State to join me on a visit to Humshaugh community solar farm, and thank him once again for the statement.
Ed Miliband
I will take up my hon. Friend on his kind offer. I think we will see a powerful example there of community energy in practice, and what is so exciting about today’s announcement is that we can now reproduce that right across the country.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the Mandelson scandal illustrates the reputational risk and damage that can be done by ignoring aspects of criminal exploitation? Does he know whether there is a difference in the cost of solar panels that are imported from China compared with other possible sources? What sort of safeguards do the Government have to ensure that we are not encouraging people to put on their roofs the products of criminal activity and forced labour exploitation?
Ed Miliband
The right hon. Gentleman and I have had exchanges on this matter before. It is a serious issue, and he is absolutely within his rights to raise it. I would just say two things to him: first, following the Great British Energy Act 2025, GB Energy has pledged to be a leader in this area and has appointed an adviser to work on these issues; secondly, he will know that the industry committed to the solar stewardship initiative as part of the solar road map, which is precisely about having independent monitoring of where solar panels come from. I take this issue seriously and I take his advocacy on it seriously, too. It is a work in progress, but it is really important that we get it right.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), would do well to remember the measly £60 million that the previous Government spent on community projects, and the fact that they were opposed to GB Energy, whereas today’s plan clearly sets out the £1 billion for community projects coming through GB Energy. Community energy can deliver cheaper power, local jobs and, importantly, public support for clean energy and net zero. Will the Secretary of State set out how Great British Energy will remove barriers to community ownership, so that communities can directly share in the benefits of net zero?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend speaks with great eloquence on these issues. I am very interested in the power, introduced under the Infrastructure Act 2015, to give local community groups the right to buy a share of large-scale projects. That power has never been triggered—I think it may have been the fruit of the coalition negotiations—but we are very interested in making that power a reality. That is just one of the ways that we can break down the barriers that my hon. Friend talks about.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
The Secretary of State will be aware that small businesses across the UK are really struggling with energy costs, particularly in communities in rural areas like North Yorkshire. What can small businesses get from this plan to lower their costs as quickly as possible? What role will the plan play in that?
Ed Miliband
This plan is mainly about community groups and non-profit organisations, but the right hon. Gentleman raises a serious issue. It is something that we are talking to the National Wealth Fund and others about, because it emphasises the fact that there is low-hanging fruit here. If we can make it possible for small businesses and others to make these investments, there are ways that they can lower their bills. We might as well use the free resources that are available, such as the free resource of the sun. Obviously, the cost of solar panels has come down a long way. That is something for me to take away and work on.
Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)
I am really excited by this announcement, because I am the chair of trustees of the Samuel Montagu youth club in my constituency, which has a roof that would benefit enormously from solar panels, which could generate income and make us more sustainable at a time when local government funding is drying up. We also have 13 acres of land, and I have always thought that we had the potential for ground source heating; if we could get some money to invest in that, we could provide energy to buildings around us as well. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when we delve into this issue, the scope is boundless? There are many projects that we could look into.
Ed Miliband
The two ideas that my hon. Friend puts forward sound absolutely ideal for this fund to me, but as for the eventual outcome, I must not put my thumb on the scale too much. He is right about this. We are starting something that will grow bigger and bigger over time. This is partly about raising our eyes and thinking, “Well, if it works in Germany and Denmark, why shouldn’t it work here? Why shouldn’t local people get the benefits of this?”. It represents a big, transformative shift in our thinking about what is possible.
Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)
The SNP has been very committed to community energy projects for a long time; indeed, we have invested more than the previous Government in community energy projects—over £67 million in nearly 1,000 projects. This announcement on community and renewable energy, while belated, is welcome. When the Secretary of State talks about community energy, does he include in that community heat projects that can be combined with community energy projects? A turbine with a community heat network, for example, can drive a huge amount of benefit to the local community.
Ed Miliband
Yes is the answer to that question. Community energy includes all kinds of innovative projects. As we open these funds for bidding—both from local authorities and community groups—we will find local people coming forward with innovative, imaginative ideas for how to drive this scheme forward. I suspect that we will be overwhelmed with the imaginative innovation that we see, and that is what is so exciting about this.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
It is quite clear that communities that host energy projects should in some way benefit from them. I welcome that principle being incorporated into this plan. I particularly welcome the Government’s support for rooftop solar for Swaffham community hospital in South West Norfolk, not just from an environmental point of view, but as a way of reducing the energy cost of public services; that saving can be reinvested in the frontline. Will my right hon. Friend commit to tracking the financial benefit of these proposals, so that we know the true benefit for communities up and down the country?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend makes an important point. As a super nerd, I am very interested in that kind of impact analysis. Sometimes Governments do things but do not track their impact, so they cannot prove the difference that a scheme has made. His point is very important, as is the one about Swaffham hospital. The work that GB Energy is already doing on schools and hospitals is making a difference to public services up and down the country.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
The Secretary of State talked about British people having a stake in our energy system, and generating returns for local communities and people. He then went on to say that he was on the side of local communities. I appreciate that he was talking about auction round 7, not nationally significant infrastructure projects, but in my constituency, we have the East Park Energy solar farm proposal. At 1,900 acres, it would have a huge impact on local communities. Residents of Great Staughton and Hail Weston in my constituency are massively opposed to the development. What would he say to my constituents, who feel that he is not on the side of local communities, given that the decision on this project falls squarely to the Secretary of State?
Ed Miliband
I will not go into the details of a planning decision, but areas that host energy infrastructure should see community benefits. What I say to his constituents and others is that there should always be community benefits, but if we want to bring down bills, and if we want energy security, we must build the energy infrastructure that we need. Solar is a really important part of that, because it is the cheapest, cleanest form of power. I am sure that some of his constituents will not like the proposal, but sometimes we have to stand up and say, “We think this is the right thing to do for cheap, clean power.”
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for announcing a big investment in local energy. He mentioned the fantastic example of the Geraint Thomas national velodrome in Newport, in my neighbouring constituency, with its 2,000 solar panels. This shows the value of community energy projects, which will cut bills, tackle climate change and literally give power to those local people on bikes going around the velodrome. I am delighted that the Welsh and UK Governments have an exciting vision for community energy, and that the Welsh Government created Ynni Cymru in 2023. What can the Secretary of State tell me about the investment in further local energy plans in Wales, and in my constituency of Monmouthshire?
Ed Miliband
I congratulate the Welsh Government on their important initiatives in this area; they are great leaders in it. I was whispering to the Minister for Energy about whether he and I should be cycling in the Geraint Thomas national velodrome, but he thought that was probably a bad idea. From the look on her face, I see that Madam Deputy Speaker seems to agree. I really hope that the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) benefit from this initiative. They will be able to see, from the velodrome, the benefit that there could be for them. We look forward to working with the Welsh Government on super-charging the benefits of this plan.
Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)
Too often, my constituents, like many in the north of England, have seen such Government schemes ploughing money disproportionately into the south of England. In fact, Government figures show that total investment per job is about £13,000 in London, compared with £9,000 in the north-west. How will the Secretary of State ensure that such regional inequalities are not reinforced by decisions on where projects are funded?
Ed Miliband
As a South Yorkshire MP, I completely agree with the hon. Member on these matters. He makes a really important point, and he has put it on the record. I am sure that GB Energy will be very conscious of the need to ensure a fair balance across the country, when it comes to the allocation of these resources.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for explaining very clearly why the local power plan represents the biggest investment in community energy ever. It will help create jobs, develop skills and generate growth. Those are clearly the ambitions behind the redevelopment of New Stanton Park in my constituency. It is creating thousands of jobs and apprenticeships, and is returning industry to Ilkeston. Will the Secretary of State outline how the local power plan, alongside Mayor Claire Ward’s mayoral renewables fund, will support developments such as the New Stanton Park by lowering energy costs, attracting investment and expanding gold-standard apprenticeships?
Ed Miliband
Another really exciting part of this plan is working with local mayors, such as the excellent Claire Ward. There is a real chance here for mayoral vision to combine with the national Government’s vision, and local people’s vision of how they can transform communities and generate resources. I am very happy to endorse the sentiments of my hon. Friend, and I really look forward to working with him and Claire on this plan.
Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)
Community energy has an important role to play in Wales. It powers around 17,500 homes, many of which are in my constituency of Caerfyrddin, with Ynni Sir Gâr leading the way. I welcome the local power plan and its funding envelope of £1 billion, and hope that we can rapidly expand on that number. Will the Secretary of State tell me more about how this funding will be fairly distributed across the UK? Will he introduce a ringfence to ensure that Wales and the other devolved nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland, receive, at minimum, their population share?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Lady asks an important question. We will work with the Welsh publicly owned energy company to make sure that Wales benefits from this plan. I made that point about a fair balance of funding across the country to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison), and I think it is very important. I think we will find that this programme will be highly oversubscribed—that is my prediction—because there is such an appetite for this plan and its potential. I hear that in the House. One thing that we will definitely be doing is working with the Welsh Government.
Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the local power plan, which builds on much clean energy investment in Norfolk, including backing for the Vanguard wind project and £17 million for warm homes in Norwich. I urge the Government to keep backing the east of England as a hub for clean energy. Will the Secretary of State outline in a bit more detail how constituents will be made aware of this project, particularly those who will not hear this statement, or hear about it on the radio, so that the communities that would benefit the most are able to maximise the benefits of this funding?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Local Members of Parliament have a massive role to play in, for example, approaching their local community groups and others who have the potential to benefit from the plan. I encourage all Members to do that. One of the most important things about Members of Parliament from all parts of the House is that so many of them have a sense of the groups and areas in their constituency that can benefit from the plan. My hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and I will provide resources for MPs across the House, so that they not only know about the plan, but can draw it to the attention of people and community groups in their constituency, so that they can benefit from it.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have long campaigned for community energy, but it is not enough to have a plan to deliver local power projects in the future, when there are projects around the country ready to go now, but sadly not supported by the national grid. In Wokingham, the Barkham solar farm is ready to go, but the National Grid is not yet ready to hook it up to the grid. It has delayed doing that for far too long, and it recently came up with a reason for another long delay. What is the Minister doing to fix this failure and get the Barkham solar farm hooked up to the grid for the benefit of our local community?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We have carried out a big overhaul of the grid connections queue, which, as he knows, was sort of like the wild west. There was a chaotic “first come, first served” queuing system. The National Energy System Operator has done a big reordering of the queue, but we still have to put pressure on the transmission operators, to make sure that they deliver. I encourage him to write to my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy about the project, and we will take that up with the National Grid.
John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)
I have spoken to groups across my constituency such as Transition Crich and Derbyshire Dales Community Energy, which are working to create new community-owned energy projects in order to cut bills and drive down emissions. The £1 billion announced today will significantly help with their aims. However, these groups will grow faster if they are able to sell their energy directly to households in their communities. Could the Secretary of State therefore update us on what plans he has to implement local supply rights for community energy schemes?
Ed Miliband
We are right into the nerdery here—and it is really important nerdery. My hon. Friend makes an essential point about the ability to sell this power back into the grid. I assure him that we are working on this with Ofgem to improve the offer to local community groups, because it is an essential part of ensuring that economic value goes to groups, including those in his constituency.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
Rochdale is the birthplace of the co-operative movement, so we know what happens when local people come together to take back control when there has been a clear market failure. That is one of the many reasons I am proud to be the Labour and Co-operative party MP for Rochdale.
The Secretary of State rightly talked about the shift from community benefit, which is crumbs from the table for the big energy companies, to community ownership, and how this shift can sustainably lower bills for community groups and community buildings. Does he agree that the local power plan is all about power to the people—not just in the sense of clean energy, but communities having the power to determine their own bills and future?
Ed Miliband
Power to the people, indeed—it is a great slogan. I really do share my hon. Friend’s sentiments, both about the co-operative movement and Rochdale’s pioneering place in the movement, which is so important in our country, and about the shift in thinking about ownership that this plan represents. We want to move from the idea that this always has to be done by the big multinational companies, which are privately owned, to a different way of thinking. Yes, those bigger companies will continue to play a role, but why shouldn’t local people be able to come together and own their own energy? That whole principle was founded in Rochdale, and this plan will help the doubling of the co-operative movement that this Government are committed to.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, the publication of the local power plan and the £1 billion investment that will support community groups to provide green, sustainable energy and help their financial sustainability. We have considerable expertise in Derbyshire when it comes to using water to create power. In fact, the mills that were built on the Derwent valley over 200 years ago were among the first to harness that opportunity, and now we have a number of hydro projects on that stretch of water. Can I encourage the Secretary of State to come to Derbyshire to see some of those projects and look at where we could add more? If he wants help from local people who have expertise in this space, I am more than happy to put him in touch with them.
Ed Miliband
I thank my hon. Friend for his invitation, and I look forward to doing that. He makes the important point that we can look back at our history, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) also pointed out, and draw inspiration from some of the pioneers who had a vision that is not the same as today’s but that has similar principles. I congratulate his constituents who are working on these issues and look forward to meeting them.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the Secretary of State for making his statement—and for not doing so in Lycra.
Point of Order
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During Health and Social Care questions on 22 July 2025—over six months ago—the Minister for Secondary Care agreed to meet me to discuss accelerating patient discharges from hospital. I wrote to her on 28 July to arrange that meeting and received no reply. I followed it up with a written parliamentary question on 9 September. I remain still with no reply. Could you please advise me on what further avenues are open to me to secure a reply, given the Minister’s commitment made in the House?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the hon. Member for giving notice of his point of order. It is of course crucial that Members receive timely responses to correspondence with Ministers. As he will know, it is not a matter for the Chair, but I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have noted his concerns. If there have been delays to responses to written questions, he can raise that with the Table Office.
Bill presented
Images (Non-consensual Recording and Distribution) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Wera Hobhouse presented a Bill to create offences relating to the non-consensual recording of images of a person and the online distribution of such images for profit with the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification or of causing humiliation or distress to that person; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time Friday 27 February, and to be printed (Bill 381).
Eating Disorders (Training)
Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a requirement for persons providing certain public services to undertake training relating to eating disorders and disordered eating; to make provision about the delivery and content of such training; and for connected purposes.
As many colleagues will know, this Bill is deeply personal to me. I have spoken before about how my youngest child’s experience with an eating disorder exposed me to the scale of failings across child and adolescent mental health services, wider mental health services and our in-patient system.
The Bill will not fix every one of those problems, but I do want to place on record my sincere thanks to the Department of Health and Social Care, particularly the Minister for Care and the Minister for Health Innovation and Safety, for their genuine commitment to understanding this crisis and their determination to confront it head-on.
Turning to the Bill itself, I have chosen to focus on training for frontline public service workers, ensuring that they are equipped to recognise and safeguard those experiencing one of the most misunderstood mental health conditions. The evidence is clear: early intervention—spotting the signs quickly and accessing appropriate care—dramatically improves outcomes. It can reduce the need for in-patient or day patient treatment by around 35%, meaning fewer hospital admissions and far less disruption to everyday life.
Yet eating disorders remain profoundly misunderstood. Unlike many other illnesses, the person affected may actively resist help. These conditions often drive secrecy, denial and a determination to mask the harm being done both to the individual and to the people who love them most. As with domestic abuse, it is so often our frontline public service workers who, in those brief moments when a sufferer allows their guard to drop, are best placed to reassure them that recovery is both possible and within reach.
Eating disorders do not only cause physical and mental deterioration; we must not forget that eating disorders carry the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. The most recent confirmed data from the Office for National Statistics recorded 36 deaths for 2019, yet research from the US suggests that the true figure for the UK could be far higher, potentially closer to 1,860 deaths once under-reporting and misclassification are accounted for.
Hospital admissions tell a similar story. Admissions exceeded 30,000 for the first time in 2023-24, which is a 60% rise compared with pre-pandemic levels. I fear that without legislative action we will continue to reach these devastating milestones: more children losing their childhoods, more parents fighting desperately just to have their child heard, and more entirely preventable deaths.
The framework for the training proposed in the Bill already exists. As I have said, it mirrors the approach taken for domestic abuse inquiries, giving frontline professionals the skills to ask sensitive, safe and appropriate questions. I firmly believe that the vast majority of dedicated frontline staff want to help. This Bill simply gives them the tools and confidence to do so.
In 2023, the Royal College of Psychiatrists developed the guidance document “Medical Emergencies in Eating Disorders” to improve the safe management of crises and prevent avoidable complications and deaths. Yet we still do not see consistent implementation across the UK. Far too many people with eating disorders arrive at A&E only to be turned away with no follow-up support. That cannot be right.
Eating disorders rarely appear in isolation. The eating disorders all-party parliamentary group has heard harrowing accounts of people undergoing cancer treatment whose chemotherapy was not adjusted due to a lack of understanding about their eating disorder, leaving those already facing the fear and loneliness of chemotherapy even more vulnerable.
One profession where this training could have a profound impact is teaching. Body dissatisfaction—one of the strongest risk factors—is now being observed in girls as young as six. That is a truly shocking fact, and many teachers feel utterly helpless when they see their students beginning to slip into harmful patterns of thinking or behaviour.
NHS figures show that around 6,000 children under 10 were hospitalised for eating disorders over a five-year period, including more than 1,000 children under five. I do not believe for a minute that the hospitalisation of over 6,000 children suffering from an eating disorder was inevitable. I can only imagine the helplessness felt by parents, carers, teachers and clinicians as they watched those children struggle.
The training in this Bill is designed to change that. It would give teachers and other frontline staff practical, evidence-based tools to recognise early warning signs: noticeable changes in eating behaviours, obsessive thinking about food or exercise, rapid weight fluctuations, withdrawal from friends, or sudden anxiety linked to body image. It would guide staff on how to ask sensitive questions safely, how to communicate without reinforcing harmful thinking and how to signpost families quickly towards appropriate clinical support. Crucially, it would also help staff understand what not to do, avoiding language that might inadvertently validate disordered thoughts, resisting the instinct to offer reassurance that could make things worse and recognising when urgent escalation is required.
As I have set out, eating disorders are complex, often misunderstood conditions that present differently in every individual. Anorexia, binge eating disorder and other illnesses do not look the same from one person to the next, but we know that, in a moment of need, having someone who can recognise the signs and intervene can be the first step towards a meaningful recovery, giving someone the chance to reclaim their life.
As I said at the start of this speech, this Bill is not a silver bullet for the crisis in eating disorder services. I have been candid with Ministers about the breadth of change required across the system, and I suspect that the Department will be delighted to hear that I intend to continue campaigning, but the Bill recognises the deceptive nature of these illnesses and acknowledges the simple truth that families cannot and should not be expected to navigate such complex and deeply confusing conditions on their own, and that frontline staff must have the tools to help where they can.
For those such as Zara Taylor, who tragically passed away due to her eating disorder, we will never know whether the measures in this Bill might have made a difference, but we owe it to her and the many others who are no longer with us to do everything within our power in this place to ensure that those who are struggling can seek and access help wherever they are in their journey.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Mr Richard Quigley, Wera Hobhouse, John Whitby, Llinos Medi, Baggy Shanker, Lee Barron, Siân Berry, Anneliese Dodds, John McDonnell and Josh Newbury present the Bill.
Mr Richard Quigley accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February, and to be printed (Bill 380).
Business of the House (Today)
Pensions and Social Security
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I beg to move,
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 12 January, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 12 January, be approved.
Sir Stephen Timms
In my view, the provisions in the instruments are compatible with the European convention on human rights. The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order will increase relevant state pension rates by 4.8%, in line with the growth in average earnings in the year to May to July 2025. It will increase most other benefit rates by 3.8%, in line with the rise in the consumer prices index in the year to September 2025, so the regular formula has been used.
The order commits the Government to increased expenditure of £9 billion in 2026-27, of which £6 billion will be from state pensions and pensioner benefits, £2 billion from disability and carers benefits, and £1 billion from other working-age benefits. A further £2 billion of expenditure on working-age benefits will be incurred in 2026 as a result of uprating decisions made under separate legal powers in the Universal Credit Act 2025, which will set new rates for universal credit and income-related employment and support allowance.
Let me say a little more about each of the benefits being uprated in turn. First, on pensions, the Government’s commitment to the triple lock means that the basic and full rate of the new state pension will be uprated by the highest of the growth in earnings or prices or 2.5%. That means that the uprating will be by 4.8% for 2026-27. As a result, from April the basic state pension will increase from £176.45 per week to £184.90, and the full rate of the new state pension will increase from £230.25 at the moment to £241.30 per week.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
I suppose I ought to declare an interest, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.]
The right hon. Gentleman will understand that we welcome the adherence to the triple lock that my party introduced. He will also know that there are tens of thousands of expatriate United Kingdom citizens whose pensions have been, and remain, frozen at the point at which they left the United Kingdom, in spite of the fact that they have paid their full taxes and national insurance contributions throughout their working lives in the UK. The last Government, to our shame, failed to address this issue. Do this Government have any plans to do so?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising this point. It might be of some comfort to him to know that it was not only the last Government who failed to do anything about this, and that previous Governments also failed. Indeed, in my previous tenures of the office of Pensions Minister, this issue was raised with me. However, it was the case that when those people left the UK, the rules were then as they are today. They were quite clear when people left. Of course, it depends on which country they went to, but in the countries where uprating has not been applied, it has always been the case that uprating has not been applied there, so it should not have come as a surprise to those who left that their pensions were not uprated. We are not looking at any proposals to change the situation at the moment, but I know that the right hon. Gentleman has campaigned on this matter consistently over a long period and I pay tribute to him for that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
We very much welcome the triple lock and the extra moneys coming to our pensioners, but an issue has come to my attention recently. I had an 84-year-old pensioner in my office just last week who said, “Jim, I’ve got a demand from the HMRC for hundreds of pounds, but I’ve never been in debt in all my life.” When it comes to those pensioners who now find themselves being taxed when they were never taxed before, is it not possible to have a different system where the money could be taxed at source, rather than asking pensioners who are financially, mentally and emotionally under pressure to fill in an online form, which they just cannot do? There must be a simpler way of doing it.
Sir Stephen Timms
The question of how the tax system operates is a matter for His Majesty’s Treasury rather than for me. However, the hon. Gentleman might take some comfort from the reassurance provided by the Chancellor that those whose only income is the basic or new state pension, without any increments, will not have to pay any income tax in the course of this Parliament. Of course, those who have additional income beyond the state pension often do have a tax liability. The mechanism for how that is applied is a matter for my hon. Friends in His Majesty’s Treasury rather than for me, but I can certainly ensure that his point is passed on to them.
Other components of state pension awards, such as those previously built up under earnings-related state pension schemes, including the additional state pension, will increase by 3.8%, in line with prices. The Government are committed to supporting pensioners on the lowest incomes, so the safety net provided by the pension credit standard minimum guarantee will increase by 4.8%. That means that it will increase from £227.10 to £238 per week for single pensioners, and from £346.60 to £363.25 per week for couples. The maximum amount of pension credit savings credit will increase by 3.8%, in line with prices.
Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)
One of the first acts of this Government was to remove the winter fuel payment, before their subsequent partial U-turn. The Prime Minister himself promised assistance for WASPI women, which is manifestly not happening. Both things affect pensioners significantly. When it comes to uprating, the gap between new and old pensions is widening all the time, because although they are going up by the same percentage, they start from different baselines. What are the Government doing to equalise pension levels to prevent that situation from worsening?
Sir Stephen Timms
We are not proposing any change in those arrangements. As the hon. Gentleman will know, those arrangements were introduced by the previous Government. In fact, the coalition Government put in place the current arrangements for the new state pension, which were introduced with commitments to future uprating. We are committed to delivering the triple lock, but we are not planning to change the relativities between those two arrangements.
Most working-age benefits and other benefits for people below state pension age will also increase by 3.8%. They includes statutory payments such as statutory sick pay, statutory maternity pay, the personal allowances of income support, housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, and contributory employment and support allowance. The order will also increase by 3.8% the child amounts, the carer amounts, transitional severe disability premiums in universal credit, and pensioner and carer premiums in income-related employment and support allowance.
As I mentioned earlier, the Universal Credit Act 2025 included important changes to rebalance universal credit. For 2026-27, the standard allowance in universal credit will be uprated by September’s consumer prices index plus an additional 2.3%. That represents the first ever permanent above-inflation rise to the universal credit standard allowance, and I believe that it is the first permanent real-terms increase in the headline benefit rate since the 1970s. That is not part of the order that we are debating, but all these increases will apply across Great Britain.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
I very much appreciate the action that the Government have taken to uprate UC—for the first time in its history, as the Minister says—but does he accept that it still will not cover the cost of basic essentials such as food, heating and rent for many of our most put-upon constituents?
Sir Stephen Timms
I think perhaps the point that the hon. Gentleman is making is that it does not fulfil the aspirations of the essentials guarantee campaign, with which he and I are familiar, and that is true. However, April’s above-inflation uprating will be the first of four such upratings, so there will be a similar over-inflation uprating in each of the following three Aprils. It will not end up at the level on which the essentials guarantee campaign has focused, but let us see what happens beyond the period for which we have made these announcements. As he said, it is an historic change of direction for public policy.
Benefits for people in England and Wales who have additional costs as a result of disability or ill health will also increase by 3.8%. These include disability living allowance, attendance allowance and personal independence payment. The increase will also apply to carer’s allowance.
The draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2026 sets out the yearly amount by which the guaranteed minimum pension part of an individual’s contracted-out occupational pension, earned between 1988 and April 1997, must be increased when it is being paid. The increase is paid by occupational pension schemes, and helps to provide a measure of inflation protection for people in receipt of contracted-out occupational pensions earned between 1988 and 1997. The law requires that GMPs earned between those two dates must be increased by the percentage increase in the general level of prices measured the previous September, capped at 3%. The September 2025 inflation figure— or CPI—was 3.8%, so the increase for the financial year 2026-27 will be 3%.
The 3% cap provides pension schemes with more certainty, allowing them to forecast their future liabilities more reliably. That is important when they are considering their funding commitments. The measure strikes a balance between, on one hand, protecting members against the effects of inflation, and on the other, not increasing scheme costs beyond what schemes and sponsoring employers can reasonably afford.
The draft Social Security Benefits Uprating Order 2026 will, if Parliament approves it, commit the Government to increased expenditure of £9 billion in the next financial year. Changes will mainly come into effect from 6 April this year and apply for the tax year 2026-27. The order maintains the triple lock—which benefits pensioners in receipt of both the basic and new state pensions—raises the level of the safety net in pension credit beyond the increase in prices, increases the rates of benefit for those in the labour market, and increases the rates of carers benefits and benefits to help with additional costs arising from disability or health impairment.
The draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order requires formally contracted-out occupational pension schemes to pay an increase of 3% on GMPs in pensions earned between April 1988 and April 1997, giving a measure of protection against inflation, paid for by the scheme. I commend the orders to the House.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I wish to reassure the Minister about something that I said in last week’s debate on the two-child benefit cap. I shared something of my story, and said that we had lost child benefit as a result of the Labour Government coming into office in 1997. I was convinced I had said “family credit”, which was what I was supposed to say. When I read back over Hansard, I realised that, in my haste to get my point across, I had said the wrong thing, which explains why I caught sight of the Minister’s perplexed face from across the Dispatch Box. I have also corrected the record through Hansard.
I can confirm that the Opposition support the usual increase in the guaranteed minimum pension, and the uprating of social security benefits. However, given that this debate is largely a formality and there will be no vote on the motions, it is a good opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the pensions and benefits system more broadly—in the context of the motions before us, of course.
First, let me highlight what I call the “benefits barbell”. At one end is the working-age welfare bill, which keeps getting heavier; at the other is the eye-watering cost of public sector defined-benefit pensions. In the middle of those two heavy weights is the hard-working taxpayer, straining under the load. Welfare and pensions both matter—they are pillars of a decent society—but it is Britain’s taxpayers who do the heavy lifting. They are the ones who get up before dawn, commute in all weathers and keep the economy moving. Without their efforts or even more Government borrowing, there would be no welfare state at all, and we cannot pile more weight on to their shoulders indefinitely.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has already admitted that the long-awaited Timms review will not involve making welfare savings and is not likely to be published before 2027. It seems that this Government are shunning any attempts at reform over the coming year, and yet again, it is taxpayers who bear the cost of this delay. Right now, the UK is on the verge of becoming a welfare state with an economy attached. Over 40,000 people were signed off work every day by GPs over the last year, according to the Centre for Social Justice. Over 5 million people are claiming benefits with no work requirements, which is equivalent to over half of London’s population.
Concerningly, that number includes more than 300,000 people aged 16 to 24—young people with promising lives ahead of them whose ambitions are being stifled by a benefits system that would rather write them off. Labour is presiding over a youth unemployment crisis and seems unable to offer long-term solutions. There are already nearly 1 million young people in the UK who are not in education, employment or training. Over 700,000 university graduates are out of work and on benefits. One and a half years after taking office, this Government are still failing to tame the runaway benefits bill and rising unemployment rates. By contrast, the Conservative plan to get Britain working again will tackle youth unemployment by offering young people a first jobs bonus, which they can use to save for their first home.
Living within our means is one of those sensible, mundane things that gives the Conservative party its reputation as a safe pair of hands for the economy. Of course, making welfare savings is far less likely to grab headlines—scrapping the two-child benefit cap or rolling out more free school meals is a far easier win—but getting the deficit under control is crucial to a healthy economy. When the Conservatives took office in 2010, the Government were running a deficit of 9%. By the time covid struck, we had brought it down to under 1%. That, in turn, enabled us to provide generous support to individuals and businesses during lockdowns.
As I said in the debate on the two-child benefit cap last week, keeping the limit would have saved the taxpayer £2.4 billion in 2026-27, rising to £3.2 billion in 2030-31, yet our current Prime Minister would rather throw some red meat to his Back Benchers than exercise fiscal discipline. He has caved in to their demands, even though scrapping the two-child benefit limit was previously ruled out by the Chancellor and was conspicuously absent from Labour’s manifesto.
Conservatives believe in fairness for the working parents who make difficult choices about whether they can afford another child. Many working families do not have incomes much higher than the threshold for universal credit but are paying for others through their taxes. Why should we make those parents bear the double burden of supporting their own children and subsidising other people’s? A fair system should not simply exempt families on benefits from making tough choices.
Speaking of fairness, the issue of passported benefits desperately needs investigating. Last week, I highlighted the shocking statistic that one in four full-time UK workers would be better off on benefits than in work, but something that often gets overlooked is that people on universal credit also gain access to a raft of discounts and additional benefits such as free prescriptions, discounted broadband, healthy food cards and special savings accounts. There are over 20 of these schemes sprinkled across multiple Government Departments. Taken together, passported benefits give some families who are already on universal credit over £10,000 a year in extra support, costing the taxpayer over £10 billion, according to a new report from the think-tank Onward. These benefits need rationalising and streamlining within universal credit. Otherwise, we will continue to face three serious problems.
First, passported benefits disincentivise people from entering employment. Any sensible person would think twice about starting a job if they faced a cliff-edge denial of additional benefits worth thousands of pounds once their universal credit tapers away. Secondly, we have a two-tier system. As a result of these linked benefits, individuals just outside the universal credit threshold often face greater financial hardship than benefit claimants. Thirdly, for those who really do need these extra schemes, there is a labyrinth of bureaucracy that slows down the process of getting help. These piecemeal entitlements distort the system. From a quantitative perspective, it is harder to see which poverty interventions are actually having a positive effect. It is also incredibly difficult for everyone to see whether this Government are succeeding at reducing poverty.
I welcome the Government’s new emphasis on deep material poverty as a headline poverty metric, which is a far more holistic measure that captures how poverty impacts people’s daily lives and whether they can afford necessities. Last week, we heard endlessly that the Government’s child poverty strategy and the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap will bring half a million children out of poverty, but it is worth noting that we are talking about relative poverty. That can never be eradicated, because it refers to a household income below 60% of the median household income. The only way to reduce relative poverty is to raise the incomes of the poorest faster than the middle or compress the income distribution. An overemphasis on relative poverty has underpinned a misleading left-wing argument that exaggerates the need for income redistribution. I worry that we will end up paying people to be so-called middle-class if we continue as we are.
At the heart of Conservative philosophy is a belief in personal responsibility—taking control of our future through hard work and aspiration. If we are serious about tackling child poverty in the long term, it is vital to deal with the effects of intergenerational worklessness and not just rely on social security. Children in long-term workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived and 10% more likely to end up workless themselves. For every parent who does not go out to work, there is a child who misses seeing a positive example of work modelled to them—the early alarm clock, the daily routine, the reward for an honest day’s work and the ability to save up to buy important things. That is not to say that there are not those in dire circumstances for a vast number of reasons, but ultimately, when we are looking at people in general, that is the reality we need to deal with. Under our watch, the number of children in workless households fell consistently. Under Labour, the number has reached a nine-year high, with 1.2 million children now living in homes where no parent has worked for over a year.
Turning to the topic of personal independence payments, I would like to ask the Minister about a disabled constituent I caught up with at the weekend. She is a veteran who served in the Royal Navy for 19 years and is now an unpaid carer for her elderly father. She works full time, mainly from home, and commutes to London a few times a month. She had a Motability scooter, which enabled her to get to the office and around London when required, but after her last PIP review, which took place over the phone, she lost her higher rate of PIP and thus her scooter. She then received a puzzling letter from the Department for Work and Pensions, which wrongly claimed that full-time work indicated she had reasonable mobility, despite the fact that her entire home is adapted for her accessibility requirements.
My constituent is a highly capable woman who is skilled at advocating for herself as well as her father and, indeed, her fellow veterans, but she admitted that she felt too stressed to open the letter for a few weeks, meaning that the reconsideration window had timed out by the time she fully processed the DWP’s decision. For context, she has also been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder following a traumatic experience in the military and is currently on a long waiting list for treatment. Statistically, she is unusual; fewer than one in six PIP claimants are in employment.
It seems bizarre that the DWP assessors are happy to downgrade someone in this situation, who is in work and genuinely needs the higher rate of PIP to help her carry out that work, yet the Department seems reluctant to stem the tide of benefits claims from people with less severe mental health issues. That is why a Conservative Government will end sickness benefits for low-level mental health problems, to ensure that support is targeted at people who need it most. I welcome the Government’s commitment to increase the number of face-to-face PIP assessments to 30%, up from the very low rate of 5% in 2024, but I urge them to be even more ambitious with their target, to ensure that constituents like mine are accurately assessed and receive the help they need.
In conclusion, as I return to the image I began with, the barbell is getting heavier by the year, with welfare on one side and pensions on the other, and still the hard-working taxpayer stands in the middle doing all the heavy lifting. The Government are doing far too little to ease that pressure. Working families are paying the price for a system that grows ever more expensive, while true reform moves at a crawl. It is time for a welfare system that is fair to those who need support and fair to those who pay for it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the shadow Minister. I would like to challenge several things she said, but I will pick up on just a couple.
First, one of the hon. Lady’s opening statements was that hard-working people who get up at dawn and go out to work do not approve of this increase in support. I gently point out to the hon. Lady that most people in receipt of social security support are working, but they are in the low-paid jobs that were presided over by previous Conservative Administrations.
Secondly, the hon. Lady spoke of her concerns about young people. Yes, absolutely, nearly 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training and that concerns us all, but we must all look at the evidence and at the underlying causes of that. She might not have heard me say last week—I have said it a few times—that evidence from the UK Millenium cohort study suggests that half of that population have experienced childhood poverty and adversity in their young years, under the former Conservative Government, and that is the driver. People are five times more likely not to be in education, employment or training if they have experienced that long childhood of poverty and adversity—I do not think the shadow Minister would claim that that has not happened.
It is also a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Minister. I give the pensions and social security uprating orders my wholehearted support. The uprating is absolutely the right thing to do, and I will expand on exactly why. This year’s uprating, confirmed last November by the Secretary of State, will see inflation-linked benefits and tax credits rise by 3.8% this April, which is the level of inflation as measured by the consumer prices index in September 2025. As a result of the Universal Credit Act 2025—some people did not support that, but I did once we got rid of the bits I had concerns about—we increased the universal credit standard allowance. That is important, as it means an additional 2.3% for the standard allowance, which equates to an increase in the standard allowance for a single claimant over 25 from £400.14 to £424.90 per calendar month.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
I am sure my hon. Friend will be aware of today’s Resolution Foundation report that shows how increases in income have significantly slowed over the past 20 years, particularly for those on low incomes, as shown by the basic rate of UC, which has fallen by 9% in real terms since 2010. Does she think there is merit in proposals from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for an independent advisory process to inform universal credit rates, ensuring that the standard allowance reflects the real cost of essentials and the inflation experienced by those living on lower incomes?
Debbie Abrahams
My hon. Friend may not know this, but the Minister and I were on the Work and Pensions Committee when the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Trussell Trust presented the case for the essentials. I think there is overwhelming support for such measures, but it is a question of how we do it in a sustainable way. If I may go on and develop my argument a little, he will see that I am moving in his direction.
As we have heard, the new state pension will also increase by 4.8% in April to £241.30 per week, which is in line with the annual increase in the average wage earnings index from last May to September. Briefly, I will explain why it is important that the increase in UC should be above CPI and inflation. Although state support for working-age people and pensioners was fairly similar when annual uprating was first introduced in 1972, the uprating or increase in working-age social security support such as UC in line with inflation has not always happened. In the last 15 years, social security support for working-aged people increased by only 1% between 2013 and 2016, and it was frozen between 2016 and 2020. If anyone wants to look at the changes to inflation over the past 15 years, it makes interesting reading, particularly in 2022-23 and 2023-24, and the increase was far below inflation. As a result, since 2012 benefit levels for working-aged people and their families have lost 8.8% of their value.
The UK’s social protection levels are among the least generous in the OECD. In 2021, the New Economics Foundation estimated that the actual loss in cash terms was equivalent to £14 billion. It also estimated that if spending had been maintained, there would have been 1.5 million fewer people living in poverty. People are often surprised to hear that over the last 20 years or so, the amount of DWP spending as a percentage of GDP—that is acknowledged as the only way we can fairly compare spending—has changed very little: it was 10% in 2005 and 11% in 2025, with the slight increase being accounted for by an increase in spending on pensioners. I think we would all agree that that is the right thing to do. What is alarming is that although poverty levels have been stabilised and will start coming down this year as a result of, for example, the removal of the two-child limit for social security support and the increase in the living wage, the depth of poverty is increasing.
Graham Leadbitter
Many things can be done to tackle child poverty. One thing the Scottish Government have done, which has massive backing from the third sector, is introduce a universal child payment. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is potentially the way forward?
Debbie Abrahams
I am familiar with the child payment, but I need to understand it in the context of what else is happening in Scotland. I am aware of it, and I think it is an interesting way for Scotland to try to address the issue. We had a meeting with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and were impressed with what she was doing, but I will reserve judgment until I understand it a little more in the round.
Only last week, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published new analysis:
“In 2021-24, the average person in poverty had an income 29% below the poverty line, with the gap up from 23% in 1994-97”.
If we use equivalised figures, that means that couples without children are living on less than £12,500 a year, and couples with two children under 14 get about £17,500 a year. Social security is complex, but looking at deep poverty, as my right hon. Friend the Minister is doing, is important. If we are to avoid the appalling situation with NEETs that we have inherited, that is what we need to do.
Of the 14.2 million people living in poverty identified in JRF’s most recent poverty analysis, 6 million are in severe and persistent poverty, and more than half are disabled or live in a disabled household. Although I recognise the significant moves that this Government have made to address the inadequacy of working-age social security support to tackle the poverty and cost of living crisis that people are experiencing, I personally think we need to be a bit bolder.
As I said last week, I want to see us be clearer about our vision and values, which define what our social security system is for. It is 80 years since the National Insurance Act 1946, which was introduced in response to the Beveridge report and the outcomes and appalling circumstances after the second world war. I believe we need a new social contract that the British people can buy into and that spells out how all the elements of a comprehensive 21st century welfare state work together to deliver for them.
Our social security system, like our NHS, should be there for all of us in our time of need. It should protect us from poverty if we lose our jobs, are born with or acquire health conditions or disabilities, and when we grow old. It should also be there for us if and when we need extra support, become carers and, sadly, lose a loved one, but it cannot work in isolation; it needs to be considered in conjunction with our health and social care, education and skills, and business and employment systems in particular, but there are more.
Without a fit and healthy working-age population, a skilled workforce and a fair employment system providing quality, well-remunerated jobs, our economic productivity is known to fall, and our welfare system as a whole then comes under threat. As an example, Health Equity North’s “Health for Wealth” report shows that improving the health of the north to the same level as the rest of the country would add an extra £18.4 billion to the economy through enhanced productivity while reducing demand on the NHS.
Last year, the Work and Pensions Committee commissioned Health Equity North to report on what income could be generated through increasing returns to work for people in receipt of universal credit by just 5%. Its estimates show that that would yield an extra £20 billion over the life of this Parliament, with a return on investment of between £5.21 and £6.63 for every £1 of employment support invested. That is the way that we will reduce DWP spending and increase growth.
I look forward to seeing how the “Get Britain Working” and “Keep Britain Working” programmes, such as Connect to Work and the vanguards, are expanded. They are fantastic examples of how we can proceed. I was so impressed when I met organisations delivering Connect to Work. The Work and Pensions Committee had a session last week with Sir Charlie Mayfield and small businesses to see how they could be involved in that, and I hope that we can expand and build on this work.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). It is almost as if she has been cribbing off my speech—maybe it is because we are both on the Work and Pensions Committee.
The reality is that our welfare state is part of a society that should be at ease with itself. Let me reflect that the old age pension was first introduced by Asquith in 1908 for 70-year-olds. That demonstrates that the Liberals were there at the foundation of our welfare state. If we fast-forward a few decades, we find that Margaret Thatcher broke the link between earnings and pensions, which had a devastating effect on pensioner poverty and increased it significantly over many years.
It is really heartening that when the Liberal Democrats were back in government as part of the coalition, we were part of the Government who introduced the triple lock. We have seen pensioner poverty being driven down, but there is still too much of it. I am concerned that the current Conservative leader, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), has mused about means-testing the triple lock, which is disturbing. Would she put it back to the five shillings a week for those of good character that we had under Asquith? We will look for the white smoke to appear from the Conservative party on that.
Let me reflect on pensioner poverty. As the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth reflected, we have done a lot of work as part of the Work and Pensions Committee around this issue. It has been interesting to hear from people, particularly those who have given us evidence in recent weeks, on how workers—particularly manual workers—find it harder to continue to do the jobs that they are in as they get older, as well as how we need to ensure that there is a whole-system approach.
We need to ensure that employers are more flexible, and the Mayfield report is important in that. Rather than just shuffling people off the books, we need to ensure that employers see what reasonable adaptations they can make to keep them on the books, as our continental friends do.
We need to drive forward with work on pensioner poverty. I reflect on my own constituency, where I have had people heading towards their pension who still want to work but are unable to because they have a dodgy hip and are awaiting an operation. Sadly, improvements at Torbay hospital have been delayed by many years. Again, as the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth alluded to, this is about ensuring that we sort out our national health service across the country as a whole so that people are in a fit state to work. Another thing that causes Liberal Democrats concern is the way in which social care has been kicked down the line and is not being resolved sooner rather than later.
Let me move on to a key element of these proposals. I welcome more generally the uprating that we have heard about from the Minister today, but what about carer’s allowance? The fact is that unpaid carers in the United Kingdom undertake work equivalent to the value of the whole of our NHS, which is absolutely mind-blowing. The Sayce review investigated overpayments to carers, and people needed to earn only £1 or so over the limit in a week for them to lose thousands of pounds from their carer’s allowance and end up having a liability.
Last February, the Sayce review found that nearly 87,000 people had that liability from the overpayment of carer’s allowance. The Government have committed to writing off the debts of 26,000, which means that debts remain outstanding for 61,000. That causes grave concerns for lots of people who have that hanging over them like the sword of Damocles. I would be really grateful if the Minister could reflect on that area in his winding-up speech.
Finally, the last benefit that I will reflect on is what was originally known as DLA but is now known as PIP. At the time when this benefit was a hot potato, some Ministers described it as pocket money for people with disabilities. However, it is there to support people with basic living needs, whether it is being able to get out and about and live a normal life, which many people would take for granted, preparing food or the simple dignity of being clean, able to wash and having help with that. This benefit supports those people, so it is disturbing that last July, the Minister had to almost rip up the speech in front of him and go in to bat with a rubber chicken in his hand, effectively. We welcome the upgrade to these benefits, but does it truly reflect the increase in earnings that we have seen, and give people on the personal independence payment the ability to take people on to support them?
The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth was right to mention the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, because its report, published last week, shows that poverty has flatlined since 2005, and if we look at deprivation and deep poverty, we see that the situation is really disturbing. I hear from church leaders in Torbay that they are seeing much higher levels of destitution than they have done historically, which is shocking. It is disappointing that the Government have not driven hard to make the positive reforms to the welfare state that would tackle the deep poverty suffered by many in our communities. The Government should ensure that we reform the welfare state, with those who use it, so that they can live their best life.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
Our social security system is the bedrock of our welfare state, but for years, the safety net that it was meant to provide has been developing bigger and bigger holes, through which some of our most vulnerable citizens have fallen.
For our older generation, the state pension is the foundation on which a decent retirement can be built. The restoration of the triple lock has been key to raising the income of some of our poorest pensioners, which is why we need it to continue, but it would be wrong to say that the job has been done when we still have 1.9 million older people living in poverty. The weakness of our means-tested pension credit system is that around 750,000 older people are eligible to claim, but have yet to do so. That is why we need to look again at the advantages of a universal system of income in retirement that reaches everyone.
Even in the current uprating arrangements, there is an unfairness. Some 8.3 million older people are in receipt of the pre-2016 state pension, made up of a basic state pension and a second state pension, which for many would have been SERPS—the state earnings-related pension scheme—introduced by the late, great Barbara Castle. While the triple lock applies to the basic state pension for these people, the lower consumer prices index is used to uprate the second state pension. This year, that will give a difference of 1%, and over time, we have seen the gap between those on the old state pension and the new state pension widen. That is unfair, and we should consider uprating all pensions in the same way.
As hon. Members have said, uprating is a contentious issue when it comes to overseas pensioners. Nearly half a million UK state pensioners do not receive the annual increase because they have moved to a country that does not have a reciprocal agreement with the UK. That means that their state pension is frozen at the value it had when they left the UK. For some, that will mean that their pension is now virtually worthless. Today, we are debating the annual uprating of the state pension, but the process does not include the frozen pensions policy, because that is dealt with through secondary legislation. Despite the serious impact that this issue has on many voters living overseas, there is a lack of scrutiny and opportunity to vote, which means that this House is unable to hold the Government to account on this issue. That needs to change.
Finally, I address an issue that a number of hon. Members have raised: our social security system needs to provide for the essentials for living. This April, for the first time since universal credit was introduced, as the Minister has said, the standard allowance will increase above inflation. That will go some way towards closing the gap between income and the daily cost of living, and it is welcome. However, despite this boost, too many families will continue to face a significant shortfall, caused by the increased cost of essentials.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell estimate that a single adult needs at least £120 a week, and a couple need £205 a week, to afford the essentials. Sadly, universal credit falls short of this. We know that the vast majority of people referred to a food bank were in receipt of a means-tested social security payment, such as universal credit. At the heart of the problem is the fact that there is no evidence-based foundation for setting benefit levels. As a result, updated rates do not properly reflect people’s needs. That is why there is a call for an independent process, which draws on research, including from those with lived experience, for advising Ministers on how much universal credit needs to be, if people are to afford essentials like food, utilities and vital household items.
The protection offered by our social security system should ensure that no one in need falls through the gaps. That is the mark of a compassionate society, and something that we should be proud to advance.
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful for the opportunity to wind up this debate. I thank everyone who has taken part for their constructive and helpful contributions, and I want to make a number of points in response.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) for clarifying what happened in 1997—she read my facial expression correctly. I was perplexed when she told us that child benefit had been abolished. I have done a little bit of checking since she made that clarification, and it was in 1999 that family credit was replaced with the much better and stronger tax credit system. I do not know whether her family decided not to apply for that, but the introduction of working tax credits and the wider tax credit system made big progress, particularly in reducing child poverty across the country.
The hon. Lady was absolutely right to draw attention to the scale of the challenge that the country faces in the number of young people not in education, employment or training, as nearly 1 million were left behind by the previous Conservative Government. We are energetically on the case now to address that problem, which should have been addressed long ago. It is encouraging that the proportion of young people out of education, employment or training has fallen over the last year, but we do not want anybody to be left behind.
We are investing £820 million in the youth guarantee over the next three years to ensure that every single young person can access the support that they need to earn or to learn. Nearly 900,000 young people will receive intensive one-to-one support, and we are expanding youth hubs to every area in the country, creating around 300,000 additional opportunities to gain valuable workplace experience and training. Additionally, the youth guarantee will guarantee jobs for some 55,000 young people aged 18 to 21. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is a great deal to be done on this issue, and we are finally doing it. I look forward to reporting back to the House on progress as it develops.
The hon. Lady referred to the Conservative party’s reputation for being “a safe pair of hands for the economy.” Well, following the Liz Truss debacle, that reputation has sadly been destroyed, and it will take a long time to rebuild. People have a long memory, and remember the awful turbulence that the country was plunged into during that period, and that alleged reputation is sadly long gone.
The hon. Lady made the point that families have a choice about whether they can afford another child. Of course, one of the points that emerged from our debate on the two-child limit was that most families on universal credit with more than two children were not on universal credit when they had them. That was not an issue in their minds when they made that choice, so the Conservative response in that debate did not reflect the realities of what families are facing.
The hon. Lady made an interesting point about passported benefits, and I have seen the publicity on what the think-tank Onward has said on this matter. It is understandable that service providers use an existing means test to target their provision. That is what the last Government did on the cost of living payment during the pandemic, for example. I notice that the head of Onward is a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, so one would have thought that he would have had a chance to do something about this over his years in office, but it is an interesting topic. I think the arrangements we have for passported benefits make sense, but if there are proposals for alternative arrangements, we will be interested to look at them.
The hon. Lady was critical of the use of the relative poverty measure for assessing the number of children growing up in poverty, as was the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) last week. The relative poverty measure is the international standard measure; it is widely respected, and is used for all international comparisons on this metric. I think the reason why the Conservative party has always been so reluctant to refer to relative poverty is that its performance on that measure in government—I am talking about the Government who left office in 2024, but Governments before that as well—has been so consistently dreadful. During the debate on the two-child limit Bill, the point was rightly made that an important part of David Cameron’s work to bring the Conservative party up to date was embracing relative poverty as a valuable measure that ought to be taken into account. We now seem to have moved back to the pre-Cameron era in the Conservative party, and it may take some time for the party to recognise the scale of the change in its thinking that is needed if it is to reflect the country’s current situation.
I was interested in what the hon. Member for South West Devon said about her constituent who is on PIP. I would very much like to see the letter that she referred to, because she is absolutely right that PIP is an in-work benefit as well as an out-of-work benefit, and I would be extremely concerned if people were being told, “You’re in work, so you can’t have PIP any more.” There are disincentives of that kind in the system that need to be addressed, so I would love to have a look at that letter. As the hon. Lady knows, I am co-chairing a review of PIP that will conclude by the autumn of this year; she said that she did not think that the review would happen until 2027, but it will conclude by the autumn of this year.
The hon. Lady is right that we need to increase the proportion of face-to-face assessments for benefits. Face-to-face assessments are such a small proportion of total assessments at the moment because of the contracts that the Conservative Government entered into towards the end of their term in office, which contained no requirements for an adequate number of face-to-face assessments. Indeed, the Conservative Government sold off most of the premises where those assessments were undertaken, so of course it is taking some time to build up again the capacity to deliver those assessments, but we are doing so. We are putting right the mistakes that the previous Government made, and we are seeing a steady increase in the proportion of both work capability assessments and PIP assessments that are undertaken face-to-face.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
Accuracy and fairness are really important, so I think the face-to-face assessments are vital. There has been talk of a 30% increase, which is a little bit less than what I would like to see. Can the Minister give this House assurances that the increase will not sit at 30%, and that the Government will strive for more face-to-face assessments? Nothing beats seeing the white of a person’s eye.
Sir Stephen Timms
We would certainly like to do so. Let us get up to the level that we have set, which will be a dramatic improvement on the situation we inherited. Once we have done so, we will learn the lessons and see what more we can do.
I very much welcome the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee. I commend her and the Committee for their work. She referred to the research—published, I think, towards the end of last year—showing that children who suffer poverty and adversity in childhood are, as she said, five times more likely to be NEET as young adults. I looked at that interesting paper, and I think I am right in saying that it found that children who had grown up just below the poverty line, but without childhood adversity as well, were three times more likely to be NEET as young adults, so just poverty on its own leads to a big increase in the likelihood of being NEET. In order to tackle this big NEET problem—the shadow Minister was right to say that it needs tackling—we have to tackle child poverty, as we are doing with the scrapping of the two-child limit in universal credit.
Debbie Abrahams
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about those two figures. The fact is that more than half of the current NEET cohort—52.9%—have experienced not just child poverty, but family adversity. That is the five times more likely figure.
Sir Stephen Timms
It is an interesting paper, and I very much welcome research along those lines, as I know my hon. Friend does. She is right to make the point that spending on social security is not rocketing. It is not out of control as one sometimes reads, but is between 10% and 11% of GDP. Working-age benefits are 4% to 5% and pretty consistent. It is not changing rapidly at the moment. She makes an interesting point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan), about the current depth of poverty. That is an important part of the picture that we need to address in our work.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth that the social security system has an important job to do. We cannot just freeze it for a year and under-uprate it for another year, because that inflicts harm. We have seen that harm inflicted and the consequences of it. She is also right that we need a properly functioning health service again. We also need support for good employment. I was pleased to hear from her and the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) that the Work and Pensions Committee has been listening to Sir Charlie Mayfield and his excellent “Keep Britain Working” review, from which he is continuing to develop work.
The hon. Member for Torbay rightly referred to the practice of shuffling people off the books. Too often, people have run into a health problem in the course of their work, had to take time off and then, by accident really, lost touch with work and the workplace and become unemployed and inactive. If there had just been a bit of flexibility and a bit of continuing communication, that outcome could have been avoided. I welcome the work that Sir Charlie Mayfield is doing with more than 100 vanguard employers looking at how best to put those lessons into practice.
The hon. Member for Torbay also referred to the carer’s allowance overpayments scandal. We appointed Liz Sayce OBE to conduct an independent review of how overpayments occurred, how affected carers could be supported and how to prevent future problems with overpayments arising. The review made 40 recommendations, and the Government have accepted or partially accepted 38 of them. We have taken action to raise the earnings limit in carer’s allowance by the largest amount it has ever increased by. In future, we will uprate the earnings threshold annually in line with the increase in the national living wage, so that accidental exceeding of the earnings threshold will be less common.
The hon. Member for Torbay also drew attention to the difficulties with the current cliff edge arrangements for the carer’s allowance earnings threshold. In the 2024 Budget, the Chancellor announced that we were considering the introduction of an earnings taper to replace that cliff edge, and we may well conclude that that would do a better job.
I do not think I ever expected there to be a Labour Member of Parliament for Poole, but I am delighted that my hon. Friend was successful in being elected to that role, and long may he serve there. He was right to highlight the continuing scale of the challenge of pensioner poverty. If we look at the record of the former Labour Government, we see that there were dramatic reductions in both child poverty and pensioner poverty. In respect of child poverty, those reductions were reversed under the coalition and the Conservative Government, and towards the end of the term of the Conservative Government the number of pensioners in poverty was rising again, but it rose much less dramatically than the number of children growing up below the poverty line. Our priority has therefore been to tackle child poverty, and that is the reason for the strategy that we have published and the changes to universal credit that we debated in the House last week.
However, I recognise that there are continuing challenges for pensioners as well. The Government are increasing the basic state pension and the full rate of the new state pension, in line with earnings growth, by 4.8%, meeting our commitment to the triple lock. We are increasing the pension credit standard minimum guarantee in line with earnings, by 4.8%, to support pensioners on the lowest incomes. We are increasing benefits to meet additional disability needs and carers’ benefits, in line with prices, by 3.8%. We are increasing a number of working-age benefits, statutory payments and disability benefits in line with prices by the same amount, 3.8%. The Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order requires formerly contracted out occupational pension schemes to pay an increase of 3% on GMP—for the reasons I gave earlier—in payment earned between April 1988 and April 1997, to give a measure of protection against inflation for those pensioners which is paid for by their scheme.
I commend both orders to the House.
Question put and agreed to,
Resolved,
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 12 January, be approved.
Social Security
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 12 January, be approved. —(Sir Stephen Timms.)
Social Security
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Dan Tomlinson)
I beg to move,
That the draft Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 12 January, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 12 January, be approved.
Dan Tomlinson
The draft Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order sets the rates for both child benefit and guardian’s allowance, and will ensure that those benefits, for which Treasury Ministers are responsible and which are delivered by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, are uprated by inflation in April 2026. The draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2026 set the rates of certain national insurance contributions classes, and the level of certain thresholds, for the 2026-27 tax year. The regulations also make provision for a Treasury grant to be paid into the national insurance fund if required for the same tax year, through a transfer of wider Government funds to the NIF, and extend the veterans employer national insurance relief for two years, until April 2028.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I welcome what the Minister is saying, which is positive. This is a good step for guardians, carers and veterans. Sometimes people come to me and ask me questions. They say that they cannot get any help with the changes that have come in and how they are affected. When they are given more money, sometimes they fall into a higher tax bracket. Is help available for those who receive an increase in their guardian’s allowance, carer’s allowance or veteran’s allowance? We need to make sure that somebody can help them through the process. It is almost like walking through a muddy field: they just do not know where to go next.
Dan Tomlinson
The hon. Member is right: a range of reliefs in the national insurance system help particular groups, including young people and those who have served in our military. It is right that those reliefs are there, and I am glad that the Government took the decision to extend them by two years. The Government publish guidance on the way that the reliefs can be used. We aim to ensure that the guidance supports those who seek to employ young people and people who have served in the military, so that they are able to make employment decisions. Through the tax system, we want to support particular groups to be able to be employed. I thank the hon. Member for his question.
I turn to the detail of the Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2026. As hon. Members will know, the Government are committed to delivering a welfare system that is fair for taxpayers while providing support for those who need it. These regulations ensure that the benefits for which Treasury Ministers are responsible, and which HMRC delivers, are uprated by inflation in April 2026. Child benefit and guardian’s allowance will increase by 3.8%, in line with the consumer prices index in the year to September 2025. Tax credits awards ended on 5 April 2025, so no changes to rates will be required.
I turn to the second set of regulations before us today. As announced at the Budget, the primary threshold and the lower profits limit threshold will be maintained at their current levels until April 2031. These regulations set the level for the 2026-27 tax year. Employees’ entitlement to contributory benefits, such as the state pension, is determined by their earnings being at or above the lower earnings limit. Self-employed people’s entitlement is determined by their earnings being at or above the small profits threshold.
These regulations uprate the LEL and the SPT. This is the usual process and maintains the real level of income where someone gains entitlement to contributory benefits. The upper earnings limit for employee NICs and the upper profits limit for self-employed NICs—the points at which the main rate falls to 2%—are aligned with the higher rate threshold for income tax. The thresholds will be maintained at their current levels, and these regulations set the levels for the 2026-27 tax year. As announced at the Budget last year, employer national insurance thresholds, including the secondary threshold, will also be maintained at their current levels.
We have already had a brief discussion about the employer NICs reliefs, including for under-21s, under-25 apprentices, veterans, and new employees in freeport and investment zones. The regulations that we are debating today keep the thresholds for those reliefs at their current levels. The regulations also make provision for the NICs relief for employers of veterans to be extended for two years until April 2028, during which time the Government will continue to consider the most effective way to support veterans into employment as part of the next spending review settlement.
Without these regulations, child benefit and guardian’s allowance would fall in real terms, and HMRC would be unable to collect NICs receipts. I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting them today.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to debate these two statutory instruments with the Exchequer Secretary. As he stated, they are made each year, and the precedent is for them to be debated on the Floor of the House. I am glad to see that that practice continues, and I hope that the Government will keep this going for the remainder of the current premiership, however long that may last. I want to make it clear that we will not be voting against the measures before us when the debate concludes. However, I would like to comment on each SI and the wider political discourse around them.
First, the social security regulations set the rates of certain national insurance contribution classes and the level of certain thresholds for the 2026-27 tax year. Specifically, they uprate the lower earnings limit, the small profit threshold and the rates of class 2 and class 3 national insurance contributions. The increase will be 3.8%, which is the consumer prices index figure from September 2025. All other limits and thresholds that these regulations cover will remain frozen at their current level.
This highlights that the increase last year was 1.7% compared with 3.8% this year. Both these percentages represent the rate of inflation that our constituents are suffering, but the 1.7% is of course what we left the Government when they came to power, and 3.8% is the level of inflation they are now delivering for consumers. When we left office, inflation was at 2%. We had managed to get it down following a once-in-a-generation pandemic and Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis.
Since Labour has come in, inflation has risen almost every month and is now stuck at about 3.6%. Why is that? It is because the Government are relentlessly pursuing policies instead of making practical solutions—for example, the drive towards net zero. We of course want net zero and to get to the point where we clean up our carbon footprints, but by going too far they have managed to put up energy bills by £300 since they were elected. Is it any wonder that inflation is so high and shows little sign of coming down any time soon? I do not want to press the Minister on too many questions, but could he in due course let us know when the Government expect inflation to return to the target rate of 2%, which everybody agrees is where it should be?
The other point that I want to make about the statutory instrument is that it extends the employer national insurance contributions relief for veterans to 2028, which means businesses will continue to pay no employer NICs on salaries up to the veterans upper secondary threshold of £50,000 or £270 for the first year of their employment, which is a very good thing, as I think the Minister will agree. We introduced this relief in 2022, as we wanted to encourage as many employers as possible to help our veterans. These people have done a huge amount to protect our country, and it is important that we show our gratitude to them.
Mark Garnier
The Minister is nodding, and I am sure he agrees with us on this point. Therefore, we welcome the fact that the Government have committed to extending this relief for the next two years.
However, I point out that the Government said in the Budget document:
“The government will extend the employer NICs relief for employers hiring veterans in their first civilian role to April 2028, from which point support for veterans into employment will be covered through spending review settlements rather than through this tax relief.”
The Government have committed to consult on which way would be best to do that, which is positive, and I hope the Minister is open to considering continuing this relief as an option if a suitable alternative cannot be found. In due course, it would be great if he or the Government could let us know what is being planned and on what timeframe, so we may understand what will be happening for veterans.
The child benefit and guardian’s order will uprate the allowances in line with CPI for the 2026-27 tax year. Again, we welcome the increases as these benefits are an important part of our welfare system. Guardian’s allowance is designed to provide further support to people who care for someone else’s child—for example, if the child’s parents have died. When these people step as guardians, they are incredibly important in the upbringing of young children, and we have a duty to support them so that they can ensure that the children they care for have the best start in life.
Although these state benefits are important, the Government are abandoning their responsibilities to tackle the wider benefits bill. In this debate last year, the former Exchequer Secretary, who is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“the Government are committed to delivering a welfare system that is fair for taxpayers while providing support to those who need it.”—[Official Report, 4 February 2025; Vol. 761, c. 716.]
When it came down to it, however, this Government did not take the opportunity to make those savings. Instead, it appears that they caved in to their Back Benchers, and we are now in a position where the benefits bill continues to balloon. According to The Times, even the Prime Minister has vetoed plans to reform the welfare system, simply to avoid the embarrassment of yet another U-turn. That is not fair to taxpayers, or to those who need support the most. In due course, I hope the Minister will set out when the needed benefit reforms will be brought forward and what steps he is taking to ensure that taxpayers’ money goes to those who need it most.
The Conservatives will not stand in the way of any of the statutory instruments before us today, but we look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say—not necessarily this afternoon, I stress—on the points I have raised.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
I welcome the proposals on child benefit and guardian’s allowance. When I visit schools in Torbay, it is disturbing to hear how many children are only too alive to the cost of living crisis. They are worried about mum or dad not having enough money to put petrol in the car, and they are concerned about covering the bills. These are not big amounts of money, but we know that it all adds up and that it is helpful to the youngsters in our communities.
However, the continuation of the national insurance hikes is the most significant mis-step the Government have undertaken in this Parliament. They are effectively shooting the goose that lays the golden egg of economic growth. From my conversations with businesses across Torbay and the west of England, whether Paignton Zoo or Splashdown Waterpark, I know that limiting the threshold at which national insurance contributions are paid to £5,000 is crippling lots of seasonal businesses. The seasonality of the work means that they have to trim the opportunities for youngsters to take on summer jobs. I spoke to the owner of Splashdown only a couple of weeks ago. She talks about the people who come back in later years who are now solicitors, airline pilots or doctors, and how they learnt the trade of getting into work on time by working in the waterpark and so on.
I also want to reflect on how the national insurance hikes are hitting the hospitality industry across the west of England. Businesses have already seen massive increases in the cost of fuel. What I hear from them is their uncertainty about the Employment Rights Act 2025. I call on the Minister and the Government to ensure that, as it is rolled out, they reflect on limiting its impact. They must ensure a soft introduction, so it does not have a further devastating impact on employment. Most of all, I reflect on the impact of the national insurance hike. I ask the Minister to reflect on that, too.
Question put and agreed to.
Social Security
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 12 January, be approved.—(Dan Tomlinson.)
Standing Orders (Consideration of Estimates)
Ordered,
That Standing Order No. 54 (Consideration of Estimates) shall apply for the remainder of this Session as if, for the word ‘Three’ in line 1, there were substituted the word ‘Four’.—(Gen Kitchen.)
Business without Debate
Urgent care provision in Rugby
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I welcome the investment that has expanded and improved services at the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby, but my constituents want urgent treatment to improve further and to include more doctor-led services. I have raised this issue with Ministers and in the House. Locally, I have convened roundtables with stakeholders, including community health organisations, councillors and campaigners, to ensure their voices are heard by local health leaders. I have asked these leaders when their review of urgent emergency care will conclude; now I expect local health leaders to take note and, more importantly, to take action.
The petitioners therefore request that:
“the House of Commons urge the Government to work with NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board to ensure that urgent care provision at the Hospital of St Cross…is retained and enhanced, to include a doctor led urgent care service.
And the petitioners remain, etc.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the constituency of Rugby
Declares that the continuing investment in services at the Hospital of St Cross, a much-loved local hospital at the heart of our community is welcome; further declares that, as shown by recent demonstrations, members of the community in Rugby are concerned about ensuring the continued provision of urgent treatment from this site, and that these concerns have been raised at consultation events and meetings with health leaders; and further declares that there is not yet clarity as to how the Integrated Care Board’s review of urgent care will affect the Hospital of St Cross.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board to ensure that urgent care provision at the Hospital of St Cross, Rugby is retained and enhanced, to include a doctor led urgent care service.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P003162]
Oak Park Community Clinic
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
On behalf of Havant residents and NHS patients, I welcome this opportunity to raise urgently in Parliament the sudden and distressing removal of diagnostic services at Oak Park clinic in Havant.
Oak Park is a vital community asset that has long played an important role in local healthcare provision, providing a range of services including therapies, out-patient clinics and diagnostic checks. For residents, the clinic represents local, familiar and accessible care, particularly for sick, elderly and vulnerable people who struggle to travel. Some of the services remain, but the loss of diagnostics is a huge concern for my constituents in Havant, Langstone, Bedhampton, Emsworth, Hayling Island, Leigh Park, Purbrook, Stakes and Widley.
The withdrawal of diagnostic services at Oak Park took place suddenly, immediately before Christmas and came with no warning. In fact, there was no consultation with patients, local GPs, community groups or care providers. The local reaction to this removal of services has been both outrage and fear. This is the time of year when the NHS and its patients feel the most pressure; frankly, the timing of the withdrawal could not have been worse. My thoughts are also with the staff who provided diagnostic services at Oak Park, who, I understand, received only a month’s notice themselves that this work would be ending.
I was not notified before or even immediately after the withdrawal of services by any of the local NHS bodies or service providers. In particular, I heard nothing from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight integrated care board, which commissions and oversees the services at Oak Park. In fact, the first contact I had from the ICB was yesterday morning, once this debate had been confirmed. I now look forward to learning from the ICB how it intends to replace the services lost at Oak Park. I welcome the commitment it gave me yesterday to provide what it calls “a strong neighbourhood model” for delivering diagnostics services to my constituency. I hope it delivers on that commitment, and I would welcome the Minister’s support in holding the ICB accountable for delivering it.
The ICB has told me that the decision to end diagnostic services at Oak Park was taken by the NHS provider; that it was not an ICB decision. The general failure to communicate with people affected by the closure has caused widespread confusion, anger and fear. It is disappointing that, nearly two months on from the removal of diagnostic services at Oak Park, there is still no clear information in the public domain about the background behind the removal, no agreement about a way forward, and no news about whether temporary provision, for example through a mobile diagnostic unit, is feasible.
The importance of diagnostic provision in Havant cannot be overstated. Havant War Memorial hospital closed in September 2011 and, at the time, local people were assured that replacement facilities would maintain accessible healthcare in the community. It was Oak Park Community Clinic that provided the reassurance that healthcare would indeed remain close to home. The message from residents, patients, GPs and the whole community is clear: diagnostic services must be restored locally by the NHS and the ICB to a central location in the Havant constituency—either at Oak Park or at another suitable site. In the meantime, there must be interim provision in the constituency—for example, via a mobile unit or temporary facilities. Local people deserve nothing less, and my campaign to get the Government, the ICB and the NHS to deliver will continue.
As the Minister knows, diagnostics are the gateway to treatment. Oak Park offered X-ray, ultrasound and echocardiogram services. These are basic but vital services that inform clinicians quickly about the health of a patient, and allow them to decide what further tests or treatment are necessary. If these checks are delayed or unavailable, the consequences for patients can be appalling, slowing their access to treatment or even cutting it off altogether. The cumulative effect is to increase referrals into already pressured acute settings, such as the Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth, and to undermine the cohesion of local NHS services.
The alternative to the facilities at Oak Park is to divert my constituents to St Mary’s community health campus in Portsmouth. This is hugely inconvenient for them, because travel into Portsmouth from communities in the Havant constituency is difficult at the best of times. St Mary’s is located on Portsea Island in the city, and there are only three roads on and off the island. The road most likely to be used by people travelling from my constituency—the Eastern Road—has been closed in one direction for several weeks for sewer repair works. It will remain closed until next month at the earliest. Traffic disruption has been appalling for anybody travelling to Portsmouth on any route, and my constituents tell me that they have been affected when travelling to and from St Mary’s
Setting aside the temporary issues caused by the closure of the Eastern Road, St Mary’s is, in any event, poorly served by public transport from any of the communities in the constituency: there is no direct bus link between my constituency and the campus; St Mary’s is more than a mile and a half from the nearest railway station; and there is no bus service from the railway station to the campus.
Residents from Hayling Island in my constituency who have to go to St Mary’s instead of Oak Park face an especially arduous journey, consisting of a minimum of three bus journeys, taking at least an hour and a half in each direction. During peak periods, given the terrible traffic conditions in Portsmouth, this is likely to take much longer and risks appointments being missed.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you will not be surprised to hear that I have been contacted by GP surgeries in my constituency expressing in the strongest terms their dismay at the Oak Park situation. The Elms Practice on Hayling Island has highlighted the length and difficulty of the journey to St Mary’s, as well as the additional cost of the longer journey, which many patients simply cannot absorb. The practice highlights the risk of missed appointments and diagnoses, particularly for patients with chronic conditions. The additional stress of the longer journey for patients with already limited mobility or who are living with disabilities is intolerable.
I have heard similar concerns from the Homewell Curlew GP practice in Havant, close to the Oak Park site, whose patients now face much longer journeys. The problem was also raised with me last week in person by the manager of a care home in Havant. She told me that their patients are having to spend £50 or more on a round trip in a taxi to Portsmouth. This is an unacceptable state of affairs.
This is not just an issue for my constituents; the additional burden of more patients arriving at St Mary’s will affect people living in neighbouring constituencies who would normally use St Mary’s for diagnostic checks. The loss of capacity at Oak Park is having a considerable regional impact, and it appears the sudden withdrawal of services is not an isolated example.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) cannot speak in this debate as she also serves as Deputy Speaker, but we have discussed the loss of phlebotomy services from Romsey hospital because of a decision by the ICB. I understand that my right hon. Friend’s constituents now have to travel to Southampton or even Lymington for appointments. My right hon. Friend has characteristically spoken up for her constituents very effectively, and I know that she will continue to do so.
On wider NHS engagement, I have a good relationship with all my local NHS bodies, and I want to continue that constructive approach to improve patient outcomes. The loss of these services at Oak Park came shortly after I had a positive meeting with the new chair of Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust, which manages Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth—the general hospital that serves my constituency and people across much of south-east Hampshire. We had a good discussion about the importance of local provision of basic services. While the trust does not manage the Oak Park facility, when things go wrong with diagnosis, it is on Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth that the burden mostly falls.
I successfully lobbied the previous Conservative Government to secure funding for the new emergency department at Queen Alexandra hospital, which serves my constituency. However, it is already clear that even with a new emergency department, the hospital is facing capacity challenges. Anything that gets patients into the right care pathway the first time, at the earliest opportunity, helps to ease that pressure, and diagnostic services play a key part in that. The public see the NHS as a monolithic structure, and when things go wrong in one part, as has happened with Oak Park, constituents can find it confusing and disempowering. The NHS and the ICB must put that right.
Following this debate, I hope that as well as securing the return of diagnostic facilities, we can have a broader conversation about wider health provision for my constituents. An urgent treatment centre in the constituency would further ease the pressure on both QA hospital and St Mary’s hospital.
I have always been clear that empowering patients helps them to lead healthier, longer lives, whether that is through digital transformation or being able to access basic timely care locally and in a convenient way. For that reason, I successfully campaigned for the Emsworth Victoria Cottage hospital’s building to be retained by the NHS, so that it could become the new home for the Emsworth medical practice, which is now a superb resource for all its patients. We all lead busy lives, and proximity to high-quality local healthcare services is vital. I know that the GP practices on Hayling Island need better facilities, and I have been working with them, the ICB and other NHS bodies to bring that about. But first we have to fix the Oak Park issue and bring those diagnostic services back.
In closing, I have three requests for the Minister. First, will he commit the NHS to restoring diagnostic services to a permanent setting as quickly as possible in the Havant constituency, whether at Oak Park or another site? Secondly, while the permanent restoration process continues, will he support the provision of temporary diagnostic services in the Havant constituency, for example through a mobile unit or at a temporary site? Thirdly, will he meet me to discuss how the ICB and NHS bodies can move quickly to restore these diagnostic services in Havant and learn lessons from the Oak Park situation?
I want to thank the hard-working NHS staff who provide such fantastic support for my constituents all year round. I call on the Minister to ensure that my constituents have their access to local diagnostic services in the Havant constituency restored as quickly as possible.
The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
I note that the policy lead for this area is the Minister for Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth). She is unable to be here today and sends her apologies, but I will report back to her and am sure that she will be more than happy to accept the request for a meeting to have further discussions.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Havant (Alan Mak) on securing this debate on the provision of diagnostic services in Havant, specifically at Oak Park community clinic. This matter is very important to his constituents, and it resonates more broadly in communities right across our country.
Diagnostic services are a critical part of our NHS. They are crucial for helping patients to get peace of mind about their symptoms or clarity on the next stage of their care. Reducing the waiting times for diagnostic tests is critical to achieving both our elective waiting time and cancer waiting time ambitions. Prior to this debate, the Department has received correspondence from GPs working in the hon. Member’s constituency on this very issue. I therefore completely understand his concerns and those of his constituents, and I hope that I can provide a helpful update on the situation and set out the steps being taken to resolve this issue.
Until recently, a range of diagnostic services were provided at Oak Park community clinic. Services were delivered in partnership between the NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight integrated care board and an independent healthcare provider, Practice Plus Group. As the hon. Member has said, Practice Plus Group took the decision, with limited notice, to move equipment for non-obstetric ultrasound, X-ray and echocardiography away from Oak Park community clinic to St Mary’s community hospital in Portsmouth. With regard to the request to meet to discuss the circumstances of the suspension of these services at Oak Park clinic, I will ensure that a request is passed on to my colleague, the Minister for Secondary Care.
I can inform the hon. Member that the closure took place because Practice Plus Group took the view that the lease no longer represented value for money. I can fully appreciate the disruption that this is causing in the Havant area for patients who now face longer travel times and inconvenience to receive care. I am aware that the ICB has communicated with all the referring organisations affected and is working to mitigate disruption, including reviewing alternative provision to ensure continuity of diagnostic services for patients in the Havant area. In the meantime, patients can be referred to Practice Plus Group services at the St Mary’s community health campus in Portsmouth for those diagnostic tests. The Queen Alexandra hospital in Cosham is also providing diagnostic services and is of course accessible to many patients across Havant. For some, it is likely that this will be more convenient and should be offered as a location for diagnostic tests.
The hon. Member will be aware that the Oak Park community diagnostic centre is also located at the Oak Park community clinic. The non-obstetric ultrasound service at the Oak Park community clinic was, until recently, provided as part of the community diagnostic centre. X-ray and echocardiography, while provided at the same site, are separate from the CDC operations. When the community diagnostic centre was first approved, Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust commissioned Practice Plus Group to deliver non-obstetric ultrasound activity for the centre. This arrangement would utilise Practice Plus Group’s equipment and rooms, with sonographers employed by the trust delivering the tests.
I can today confirm to the hon. Member and to the House that Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust is preparing to recommence non-obstetric ultrasound at the Oak Park CDC this month. With financial support from NHS England’s national diagnostic programme, the trust has been able to purchase an additional scanner for this site. In the meantime, the Oak Park CDC continues to provide symptomatic mammography, ophthalmology assessment and peripheral neurophysiology assessments at the Oak Park community clinic site. The hon. Member asked about the possibility of temporary pop-up facilities to restore all services at Oak Park. I am informed that the ICB is working closely with Practice Plus Group to resolve this issue, and is looking for a solution to restore X-ray and echocardiography at the Oak Park community clinic for patients.
Community provision of diagnostic services, such as those at the Oak Park clinic, are a central plank of our plan to make the NHS fit for the future. We are committed to bringing more diagnostic services into community settings and to making healthcare more accessible to patients who might face barriers to hospital access, including those with mobility issues, caring responsibilities or limited transport options. We have committed, as part of our elective reform plan, to build up to five more CDCs as part of our £600 million capital investment for diagnostics in 2025-26.
We are also working to ensure that more CDCs are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to deliver more same-day tests and consultations, and an expanded range of tests. Since the Government came into office in July 2024, CDCs have delivered more than 10.9 million tests and scans. CDCs are a vital step in supporting our shift from hospital to community. They provide access to vital tests, scans and checks, closer to home, for patients with busy working lives. We are setting clear diagnostic performance expectations for NHS providers. Our medium-term planning guidance sets out the ambition for improvement in performance against the diagnostic six-week wait constitutional standard, so that, by March 2029, no more than 1% of patients wait more than six weeks from referral for a diagnostic test. We have set the interim milestone that, by March 2027, no more than 20% of patients wait over six weeks.
We recognise that significant improvements will be required in the performance of NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB. Performance is currently at 29.5%, as of November 2025, so there is clearly a long way to go. In 2025-26, NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB was allocated £49.3 million of capital funding from the constitutional standards recovery fund announced by the Chancellor at the spending review, with the aim of supporting NHS performance across secondary and emergency care, including by supporting new capacity and productivity improvements in diagnostic services. It is part of over £6 billion of additional capital investment over five years across new diagnostic, elective and urgent care capacity, to deliver the improvements to the NHS that patients need and deserve, so that the NHS is there for them when they need it.
I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate.
Question put and agreed to.