House of Commons
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
We are committed to supporting coastal communities, and that is why, between April 2024 and March 2026, over £600 million has been invested in protection from sea flooding, tidal flooding and coastal erosion.
Josh Babarinde
Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne is the only marina of its kind in Europe; thousands of residents, rather than the Government, have to cover the cost of sea defences through an annual charge. The charge this year increased by 16%—way more than inflation—and there is poor transparency as to why. Will the Minister meet me and representatives of the amazing Sovereign Harbour Residents Association, who are in the Gallery, to hear more about the issues with the harbour charge, and to help us secure a fairer arrangement?
Emma Hardy
The annual sea defence charge is a legal obligation that was placed on property owners in Sovereign Harbour in 1988, so it was introduced under Thatcher and was unchanged under the coalition. It contributes to the maintenance of the harbour and the sea defences on the south coast between Pevensey Bay and Eastbourne. We spent nearly £5 million this year, and plan to invest over £100 million over the next decade. Of that £5 million, £400,000 comes from the rent charge in 2026-27. We have also secured record funding of £1.4 billion for over 600 flood schemes across all regions in England.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Reynolds)
As outlined in our manifesto, this Government are committed to bringing an end to the use of snare traps. We set out this commitment in our animal welfare strategy, and are actively looking to bring a ban on snares into force as quickly as possible.
Brian Mathew
I and many others in my constituency of Melksham and Devizes, and no doubt across England, welcome the new animal welfare strategy for England, particularly the banning of snares, which are indiscriminate and cruel. What progress is being made on protecting hares during the breeding season, and on delivering on the pledge to consult on ending trail hunting where it is used as a cover for illegally killing foxes?
Emma Reynolds
I thank the hon. Member for his interest, and share his view that the use of snare traps is cruel and indiscriminate. We are looking at and consulting on whether we can introduce a closed season for hares.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
I take this opportunity to congratulate the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on the excellent progress made on reducing air pollution in London, which was recently identified as one of 19 leading cities in reducing air pollution. Communities across England will benefit from cleaner air, thanks to our actions to tackle fine particulate pollution, which harms public health and is linked to asthma, lung conditions and heart disease. We will deliver that by modernising industrial permitting, exploring tighter standards for new wood-burning appliances to protect public health, and increasing communication of air-quality information.
Siân Berry
I published the Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill, also known as Ella’s law, this month alongside the Ella Roberta Foundation, Mums for Lungs, Clean Air in London, Asthma and Lung UK and Global Action Plan. Together, we affirmed that the right to breathe clean air is a fundamental human right. Does the Minister agree that the Government should include this vital, life-saving legislation in the upcoming King’s Speech, to give clean air the statutory momentum it requires?
Emma Hardy
I thank the hon. Lady, and pay tribute to Rosamund for the campaigning that she has been doing on this for years. Of course, I support the objectives of improving air quality and cleaning up air pollution, and agree with the hon. Lady on how important that is to public health. That is why we are already taking action to deliver meaningful improvements to air quality, through commitments and actions set out in the environmental improvement plan.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Minister will know that in Warwick and Leamington, we have suffered extreme chemical pollution in the atmosphere from Berry Polymers. More recently, we have had an application from Bellway Homes that proposes dumping the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool of building waste for every day that the development is being built, which will be several years. The common theme here is, of course, the Environment Agency, so will she agree to meet me and the Environment Agency urgently to resolve this pressing issue?
Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this. I know how important it is for him and his community to see that we clean up our rivers, lakes and seas, and he has been campaigning on this for a long time. Of course, I would be delighted to meet him.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
The Government recognise the importance of wholesale markets for the customers and communities they serve. We have limited recent evidence, however, of the impact that public ownership of markets has on food security.
Dame Meg Hillier
A number of us in London are concerned about the City of London’s proposal to put through a private Bill to relinquish its responsibility for providing the fish and meat markets, Billingsgate and Smithfield. A lot of our constituents rely on Billingsgate for selling and buying fresh fish, and it is important for our restaurant sector. Do the Government have any view on the City of London’s position, and how can we protect these food markets, so that there is no diminishment of the opportunity to get fresh food in London?
Dame Angela Eagle
We recognise Billingsgate’s importance as a UK distribution hub for fish, and we will continue to monitor the proposed transition closely. We are engaging with the City of London Corporation on the proposed changes.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her response to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who always brings forward interesting matters for this House to consider. I always underline the importance of farming, fishing and food in Northern Ireland, and would not want a change to the public ownership of markets in Northern Ireland to impact us in any way. May I, very respectfully and genuinely, ask the Minister whether she has had an opportunity to discuss these matters with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland, to ensure that nothing similar to what the hon. Lady says may happen in London, happens to us?
Dame Angela Eagle
Mr Speaker, all I can do is express my admiration of the hon. Gentleman’s ingenuity in ensuring that his question is in order.
Mr Speaker
It was so bad. Even I did not mention Chorley market, wonderful though it is.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Only 55% of Britain’s food is produced in Britain, so food security should be a much bigger priority for this Government. Donald Trump’s war in the middle east, Putin’s war on Ukraine and all the other global shocks have not woken up the Government to this, yet England is now the only country in the UK, and the only country in Europe, that does not financially support farmers in producing food. Is that not recklessly foolish, and will the Minister not amend the farm payment scheme to change that?
Dame Angela Eagle
Local markets are extremely important, particularly for maintaining food supply locally, and I am very interested in seeing what we can do to assist. Most markets are owned and operated by local authorities. I think the Covent Garden Market Authority is the only wholesale market that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs still looks after. I recognise the hon. Member’s comments on food security, but this country is 67% self-sufficient in food at the moment, or 77% if one takes out the produce we cannot grow, such as mangoes and bananas. Nobody is complacent about that, and we are looking at this very closely. The new farming and food partnership board will be looking at it, and the first sector we will look at is horticulture.
Callum Anderson (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Reynolds)
I set out further details of the 2026 sustainable farming incentive offer at the National Farmers Union conference last month. We are streamlining action and reducing complexity, so that more farmers can access funding. The offer will be simpler and fairer, with priority access in June for small farms, and farms not already in receipt of environmental land management scheme agreements.
Callum Anderson
I was pleased to welcome my right hon. Friend to Adstockfields, a great small family farm in the Buckingham and Bletchley constituency, for a rural summit. As she knows, the SFI came up frequently. Can she set out for the House the steps that she has taken to ensure that farmers with SFI 2023 and countryside stewardship mid-tier agreements that are expiring this year can move on to SFI 2026 agreements, without losing any support?
Emma Reynolds
It was a pleasure to meet my hon. Friend and farmers from Buckinghamshire at the farm in his constituency for our rural summit, at which we discussed SFI and other issues. At the end of last year, the Government decided to extend expiring mid-tier agreements. I understand that farmers are concerned about any gap in their support, and we are looking to see what we can do to fix that problem.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I am pleased to hear that answer, because farmers across Skipton and Ripon are really concerned about the fact that, having recently signed mid-tier agreements, they will not be eligible for the new SFI window. If the Secretary of State could push further on that and try to find a way through, farmers in North Yorkshire would be extremely grateful.
Emma Reynolds
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his very thoughtful question. I have heard that from farmers in different parts of the country, and I know it is an issue in his constituency. We are looking to see what we can do, because there are many whose agreements are expiring towards the end of the year, and the second window will open in September. The intent to act is there, but we must ensure that we have the systems in place to enable that to happen.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
So here we are: after stopping and starting, and chopping and changing, the Government are finally working on the roll-out of the new SFI scheme, which will be launched this summer, but it comes with lower payment rates for key environmental delivery measures, and a £100,000 cap. We learn that thousands of upland farmers will be excluded altogether, and that those on historic agreements will still be locked in and unable to apply. Farmers are already struggling as a result of rising costs, the family farm tax and choices that this Labour Government are making. How will the Secretary of State focus on ensuring the effective delivery of the scheme? What does she say to the many farmers I have spoken to, who say that the new SFI creates more cost, more risk and less reward for our farmers?
Emma Reynolds
I respectfully disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis. We are simplifying the SFI precisely because we want more farmers to benefit from it. At the moment, 25% of SFI funding goes to just 4% of farms, and we do not think that is right. We are simplifying the scheme, so that it is easier and less costly to administer. We have new leadership at the Rural Payments Agency, as he will know, and the cap he talked about affects only a tiny minority of those who already have an agreement. [Interruption.] He can keep shouting at me from a sedentary position, but I cannot talk and listen, believe it or not. There is a record number of farmers in our schemes, unlike under the previous Government, who failed to get the money out the door.
Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Reynolds)
We are negotiating an SPS deal with our closest trading partner, the EU, to reduce barriers, and cut friction, costs and delays at the border for businesses. Last week, I launched a call for information to understand how best we can support businesses to make the best of this opportunity.
Charlie Dewhirst
Various farming organisations have expressed their concern about the potential negative impact of dynamic alignment with the EU. CropLife’s report suggested that immediate alignment could cost British farming £800 million in year one, and could see wheat production reduced by more than 15%. What is the Secretary of State doing to work with Cabinet Office colleagues to ensure that they understand the potential negative impacts of an SPS deal, so that we do not sell out our farmers, as they sold out the fishing industry?
Emma Reynolds
This is about making it easier for farmers and other food processors in the food chain to export to our biggest export market. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman—I know he is an assiduous member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee—that we are in touch with the National Farmers Union and others about the negotiations. They are ongoing. I cannot provide a running commentary on them, but as was set out in the common understanding between the UK and the EU, there will be a number of exceptions, and we want to see a smooth transition to the new system.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
The negotiations are critical to UK fisheries. What plans does the Secretary of State have to keep this House and the fishing sector updated? Perhaps she or one of her colleagues would attend the all-party parliamentary group on fisheries, to ensure that we are up to date on all developments.
Emma Reynolds
We are keeping in touch with all sectors that are affected by the agrifood deal, but I recognise my hon. Friend’s work, particularly with the fishing industry. The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs would be very happy to attend a meeting of her APPG, and to talk to it.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Obviously, there are real opportunities to be had from the completion of an SPS agreement, but those who import fresh produce, in particular citrus fruit, are concerned that imports from countries outside the European Union will become more difficult and more expensive as a consequence. May I encourage the Secretary of State to engage more vigorously and in greater detail with the Fresh Produce Consortium, which brought these concerns to my desk recently?
Emma Reynolds
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs is more than happy to meet the consortium. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there is a big prize here, because we do more trade with our nearest trading market and, as he knows, there have been significant delays at the border, and administrative costs. That means that the export of fresh produce is very difficult; in some sectors, such as shellfish, it becomes almost impossible. We have to keep our eyes on the prize. I understand the point that he makes about produce from non-EU countries. We are engaging on that, and as I say, the Minister is happy to meet the group that he mentioned.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I very much appreciate the determination of this Government to get an SPS agreement with the EU. That will bring down costs both for our Welsh farmers exporting meat, and for our consumers. Llanelli has a long tradition of cockle gathering, but exports of unprocessed shellfish were stopped by the Tories’ ill-thought-through Brexit deal. Will the Secretary of State please update us on any progress on the export of shellfish?
Emma Reynolds
A successful SPS deal will bring huge benefits to the shellfish industry, which was, as my hon. Friend said, very badly affected by the botched Brexit deal that we inherited from the last Government.
Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)
Stakeholders have expressed alarm about the fact that the Government’s guidance for businesses on the UK-EU SPS agreement, published last week, has legislation in scope on the use of hormones, including bovine somatotrophin, in livestock. The use of growth-promoting hormones for livestock and of bovine somatotrophin are rightly banned in the UK and EU because of serious animal welfare issues and public health concerns, and bovine somatotrophin is linked to a 25% increase in mastitis in cows. For the sake of animal welfare, will the Minister give a clear assurance that the UK will maintain our bans on hormone-treated beef, ractopamine-treated pork and bovine somatotrophin-treated dairy, and that none of those standards will be weakened or traded away in the EU SPS negotiations, or in trade deals with other countries? Will she also confirm whether the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Act 2024, which ended the export of live animals for slaughter or fattening, will be retained in the reset?
Mr Speaker
Order. Dr Hudson, I have the greatest respect for you; you have more knowledge of this than anyone in this Chamber. However, we cannot have five questions. I have to get others in. Secretary of State, pick whichever question you want.
Emma Reynolds
I do not know which one to answer! I reassure the shadow Minister that the Government are absolutely committed to maintaining high animal welfare standards, and we made it clear to the United States when we were doing the deal with them that we will not tolerate hormone-treated beef and certain other products.
David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
On Tuesday, I was delighted to announce the biggest ever flood programme; we are investing £1.4 billion across 2026-27 in over 600 flood schemes across all regions of England. The Government are investing at least £10.5 billion to 2036 in building new flood schemes and strengthening existing defences, and that record funding will protect 900,000 properties over the next decade.
David Smith
I warmly welcome the funding just announced, including for areas in my constituency—Budle bay, Belford and areas along the Coquet river. The national assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk assessment says that one in four homes are projected to be at risk of flooding by 2050. Will the Minister give us further assurances about what the Government will do on an ongoing basis to address those concerns?
Emma Hardy
I know how much my hon. Friend cares about this issue. As well as announcing the biggest ever major flood investment, we are also changing the flood and coastal erosion funding policy. As part of those changes, at least 20% of future investment will be set aside to help the most deprived communities. The reforms will make it quicker and easier to deliver flood defences, and ensure that deprived communities continue to receive vital investment. We are also investing at least £300 million in natural flood management over the next 10 years.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Salisbury has benefited enormously from investment in the river park scheme, which has alleviated flood risk to the centre of the city. My attention now turns to the villages, the role that farmers and agricultural land can play in effective flood defence, and the consequential impact on food supply. How does the Minister view the role of farmers in a collaborative approach to flood defences?
Emma Hardy
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Quite often, we find that flooding farmland is used to protect villages and rural communities. I have been thinking about the best way to take this issue forward, after meeting a farmer when I went to Somerset, and seeing the extensive flooding right across his land. We have put £91 million into internal drainage boards, which is the most money that has ever gone into trying to support farmers in draining agricultural land. I am actively considering this issue, and am having conversations about it at the moment.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
The Government are taking strong action to improve access to good, nutritious food. We have extended eligibility for free school meals to half a million more children, and free, universal breakfast clubs are being introduced across the country. We are also reforming crisis support through the introduction of the crisis and resilience fund.
Ian Byrne
The Right to Food UK Commission, launched last November, is gathering vital evidence from policy experts and those with lived experience of food poverty from across the UK—next week we will be Aberdare and Cardiff. I would like to put on the record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister for the positive meeting we had last week on the commission. Will the Secretary of State commit to meeting me later this year, upon publication of the commission’s legislative road map, so that we can work together to ensure that the right to food is finally committed to law and tackle the scourge of hunger in our communities?
Dame Angela Eagle
I certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss my hon. Friend’s work in this area. We agree on the importance of the problems that the commission is looking to resolve and look forward to seeing its final report. The Government are working across Departments to improve access to healthy and affordable food. We have already introduced the junk food ad ban and mandatory targets for healthier food sales from our food industry, and we are committed to breaking the link between obesity and poverty.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Is this a wind-up, Mr Speaker? They will be asking for collective farms in this socialist paradise next. Has the Minister made any assessment of the impact that a right to food would have on the public purse once our activist judges got hold of it?
Dame Angela Eagle
I have to say that a study of history demonstrates that collectivising the food system does not usually work.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
Rising input costs, including for fertiliser, have contributed to pressure on many farm businesses in recent years. We continually assess how global cost volatility affects farm productivity and the resilience of the sector.
Christine Jardine
Edinburgh West may not seem like the most rural constituency, but we have several critical agricultural businesses in the seat, including the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston and a number of businesses that are diversifying into agritourism. There is funding available, but it is often unclear how to get it or how to align it for, say, the conversion of buildings. Can the Minister commit to making it clearer how agricultural businesses that want to diversify can access the funding?
Dame Angela Eagle
I would love to—if the hon. Lady’s constituency was in England. Agriculture is a devolved matter, and she must therefore ask the Scottish Government.
Will Stone (Swindon North) (Lab)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
The Government’s good food cycle strategy sees alternative proteins as a major opportunity, and not just for the economy but for health, sustainability and food resilience. We are backing the sector and working with the Food Standards Agency on novel food programmes to accelerate precision fermentation technology.
Will Stone
I thank the Minister for her response. The cultivated meat sector could bring in billions of pounds to the UK economy and help to increase food chain security. Companies such as Hoxton Farms are leading the way in this—they are genuinely world-leading. Will she support growth in this industry and meet me and Hoxton Farms to see how we can do it better?
Dame Angela Eagle
I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and congratulate the company he mentions, which is leading the way in this area. We have a major national hub for plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-based research and development, which is at the forefront of progress in this exciting new area.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
I have said this previously, but it is always worth reiterating. On Tuesday I announced the biggest ever flood programme, with £1.4 billion investment in 2026-27, over £1million of which will go to projects in Esher and Walton.
Monica Harding
The Thames runs the length of my constituency, making flooding a significant issue. The Thames Ditton flood group has brilliantly secured funding for temporary flood barriers but cannot deploy them because, despite its efforts, it is unable to obtain public liability insurance. It has contacted Flood Re, the British Insurance Brokers’ Association and the local flood authority, but there is no viable public liability insurance. The group has explored and exhausted all leads provided by the Environment Agency. What does the Minister suggest to the Thames Ditton flood group to enable it to get insurance so that it can use the flood barrier?
Emma Hardy
I pay tribute to all the flood groups up and down the country and those volunteers who do so much to add to our flood resilience. If the hon. Lady would like to write to me specifically about that matter, I will have a think about which agency is the best one to help. We want to enable more people to help with our flood resilience and response, not make it too difficult.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
Although the Minister knows that good progress has been made by my flooding taskforce on Sandon Road in Stafford—we have cleared the brook and the installation of a non-return valve is planned—a long-term fix will likely require Government investment. Can she please say a little more about the new schemes, and how new flood groups such as mine can access some of the funding?
Emma Hardy
I was delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency to speak to some of the people who have been impacted by flooding, and to see the area for myself. She has been a formidable champion on this issue, and of course we will continue to have those conversations to ensure that we do everything we can to protect as many people as possible from the devastation of flooding.
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Reynolds)
Yesterday, I launched the land use framework, a blueprint for how we can make the most of our land. We will shortly be publishing our waste crime action plan to give the Environment Agency police-style powers to crack down on these criminal networks. Earlier this week, we announced more than 600 flood defence projects. Earlier this month, I led the first agrifood trade mission to Washington to promote the new 13,000 tonne beef quota. I also took part in the second UK-Ireland summit, alongside the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet. Next week, I will chair the first food and farming partnership board. Today, we are opening the King Charles III England coastal path, which I am sure Members across the House will agree is a wonderful achievement.
Sally Jameson
What assessment has the Secretary of State made of agricultural co-operatives and how they might contribute to Government objectives on sustainable farming and food security?
Emma Reynolds
This Labour Government are committed to doubling the size of the co-operative and mutual sector, as we laid out in our manifesto. We already have some very successful agricultural co-operatives such as Arla and Openfield, which benefit the farmers in those co-operatives and their local communities.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Consumers and farmers believe that a Union Jack flag or a Made in Britain label should mean that the food was made or grown in the United Kingdom. We Conservatives, led by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), consulted on this flag loophole before the election—and we will close it when we are back in government. May I offer the Secretary of State some help? We have already helped her with her fly-tipping policies this week, and I am pleased to see that she has adopted some of our policies to tackle the problem. Will she now adopt another Conservative plan and close the flag loophole?
Emma Reynolds
The right hon. Lady had 14 years to do what she is talking about.
Victoria Atkins
And the Secretary of State has had this matter sitting on her desk for 18 months. Instead of dealing with it, we have had 18 months of damaging the rural economy, damaging rural businesses and hurting rural families under this Government. Indeed, only yesterday we saw yet another example: as fuel prices surge, Labour MPs voted to make the fuel in our cars even more expensive than it already is. We on the Conservative Benches know that rural families depend on their cars to live, so we ask why this Labour Government are targeting rural families with ever-higher taxes on their cars, their incomes and their businesses, making life harder for us all?
Emma Reynolds
Let me gently point out to the right hon. Lady that on Monday the Prime Minister announced a £53 million package to help rural communities that are reliant on heating oil. On waste crime, I will take no lectures from the right hon. Lady, because the Conservatives had 14 years in government to address waste crime. In 2018 they had a review on what to do about waste crime, and they did precisely nothing.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
Emma Reynolds
We have promoted and protected farmers in trade deals, unlike the previous Government, who sold them down the river with the US and Australian trade deals.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
The hon. Member is absolutely right, but in the last five years under the previous Government, incidents rose by 20%. We are encouraging councils to seize and crush the vehicles of fly-tippers, and we will be consulting on a conditional caution so that people who do fly-tip will pick up and pay up.
Paul Davies (Colne Valley) (Lab)
Emma Reynolds
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. Like the viewers of “Dirty Business” and my hon. Friend, I share the public’s anger about the decades of failure and neglect in our water system. The programme was very distressing and upsetting. I have extended an invitation to Heather Preen’s mum, Julie, to meet with me. I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Government are determined to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas. We have already banned unfair bonuses for water bosses. We are scrapping Ofwat, and we are ending self-monitoring of water companies.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
It is incredibly distressing to hear of people falling ill when using our bathing waters. One reform that we are looking at—being led by Chris Whitty—is about public health and water. We want to ensure that when we are making reforms to the water industry, we do so through the lens of thinking about it as a public health issue as well as a pollution issue. We must take action so that we do not continue to see people falling ill after using our beautiful bathing waters.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
We are committed to growing the agritech and engineering biology sectors, which are key to the industrial strategy. We are allocating £200 million to the farming innovation programme precisely for this purpose. I look forward to trying to visit my hon. Friend as soon as I am out that way.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
Emma Hardy
The short answer is yes. The Minister for Housing and I sit on the water delivery taskforce, which considers whether we have the water we need where we need it. We have done some heatmapping to find areas of stress, and have committed to building nine new reservoirs—none has been built over the past 30 years. We also sit on the Ox-Cam group, looking at areas where there is acute stress, to ensure that we have the water security required to deliver growth, support our environment and build the homes that we need.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
There are widespread concerns that we are way off our national biodiversity targets. Does the Minister agree that there must be no further backward steps on environmental protections, and that we must set clear red lines for nature?
Mary Creagh
I agree that the environmental improvement plan that we inherited was not fit for purpose. We will oversee the largest ever investment in nature. We have banned bee-killing pesticides, licensed the first wild beaver release in England for 400 years, and announced the first new national forest for 30 years.
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)
Dame Angela Eagle
We are well aware that events in the middle east are putting pressure on input prices. The hon. Lady mentions red diesel and fertiliser for the farming sector. I have talked to the chief executive officer of the Competition and Markets Authority. We are taking a close look at what is happening to ensure that there is no market abuse, and will keep a close eye on the situation as it develops. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has already announced extra support for heating oil in rural communities. We keep a watching brief on this important matter.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
Although they appreciate the need to put right the failings of the past, my constituents continue to raise concerns about Thames Water’s price increase last year. Will the Minister assure them that Thames Water is being held to account and will provide information to customers about how local infrastructure will be improved?
Emma Hardy
I share my hon. Friend’s anger about the poor service that many people receive from Thames Water. I can absolutely assure him that Thames Water is being held to account—a record £122 million fine was issued by Ofwat only a few months ago.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
After a serious pollution incident, the Environment Agency produces a help report, which is shared with the Secretary of State’s officials, so she would have been notified of the category 1 pollution incident—the most serious rating—that occurred in September 2024 at Stanground, near Whittlesey in my constituency. No prosecution has been made, however. Why not?
Emma Hardy
I will be happy to look into the matter and get back to the right hon. Gentleman in writing.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
The organisation Surfers Against Sewage has just published its investigation of illegal dry spills by water companies in 2025. There were over 204,000 hours of illegal sewage spills in England last year. The situation in Scotland is no better: Scottish Water faces little accountability, with just 30% of overflows monitored and 70% unreported. Will the Government take tougher action to ensure that water companies are held properly to account?
Emma Hardy
In England we are absolutely holding those companies to account by banning bonuses, abolishing Ofwat, and introducing over 10,000 inspections for water companies. Sadly, our power does not extend to Scotland. I can only hope that the SNP continues to follow our lead.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
The fishing and coastal growth fund saw an utterly meagre £28 million devolved to Scotland and £304 million allocated to England, even though Scotland represents 60% of fishing capacity in the UK. Despite the Government’s inability to understand basic arithmetic, is the Minister considering mitigations to ensure that Scotland’s fishing industry and coastal communities can thrive?
Dame Angela Eagle
In the comprehensive spending review, the Scottish Government received the largest real-terms increase in their funding since devolution. If they wish to support Scotland’s thriving fishing industry further, they have every right to do so.
Victoria Atkins
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State announced yet another supposedly significant policy this week—the land use framework—outside Parliament, and has not offered an oral statement so that Ministers may be scrutinised. This is the fifth time she has done this. The other four occasions were the Baroness Batters review, the animal welfare strategy, the family farm tax fiasco and the SFI scheme, which has attracted many questions today because colleagues need to know more details for their constituents. What can be done to encourage the Secretary of State to make a proper announcement in the House so that Members of Parliament can—
Mr Speaker
Order. You have put the point on the record. While I have got the Secretary of State here, I will ask her if she wishes to respond.
Emma Reynolds
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I am happy to respond. We issued a written ministerial statement yesterday. I have done oral statements on big issues such as the water White Paper. I note that when my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), made an oral statement on water in September, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) did not care to attend.
Mr Speaker
A WMS was out there, and I say to the Government that priority should always be given to the House. I am sure that will be noted. Far too many statements are made outside the House, but there was a WMS on this occasion. I will leave it at that because we have other things to get through.
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
The Solicitor General (Ellie Reeves)
I would like to pay tribute to Nick Ephgrave for his dedication, professionalism and tenacity during his tenure as director of the Serious Fraud Office. Over the past five years, the SFO has secured more than half a billion pounds through deferred prosecution agreements, sentencing outcomes and proceeds of crime orders, including recently securing guilty pleas from three former directors, who defrauded over 3,000 UK investors in a £70 million green investment fraud.
Sarah Coombes
Scams are devastating for the victims in my constituency, but serious fraud is insidious and is undermining the UK economy. Given the Serious Fraud Office recently found that just 10% of fraud referrals are coming from whistleblowers, what more are the Government doing to empower whistleblowers to come forward and to protect them when they do?
The Solicitor General
I recognise the vital role that whistleblowers play in uncovering serious economic crime, and the need to ensure that they are properly protected and supported when they come forward. Through the recently launched UK anti-corruption strategy, the Government have committed to exploring opportunities to reform the UK whistleblowing framework, including through potential financial incentives. I will continue to work across Government to see how we can drive this work forward.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Ellie Reeves)
The Government’s reforms will focus on delivering faster and fairer justice for victims. That includes removing the presumption of parental involvement to prioritise what is in the best interests of children after tireless campaigning by Claire Throssell, whose two sons, Jack and Paul, were killed by their father after their parents’ separation. Reforms also include strengthening the use of special measures and preventing the misuse of evidence to unfairly undermine victims in court.
Sir Desmond Swayne
On 3 February, the Lord Chancellor undertook to model his proposals for jury trials and to publish the results. Has the modelling been done and when will the results be published?
The Solicitor General
The reforms that the right hon. Gentleman refers to come after Sir Brian Leveson set out a report with 135 recommendations, making it clear that investment in the justice system alone would not solve the backlog left by the previous Conservative Government and that reform is also needed. Estimates show that it will reduce cases by 20%, although, given the modelling from Canada, those are likely conservative estimates.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
The contentious element of the Courts and Tribunals Bill relates to the proposed changes to jury trials. It has united the legal profession, the Opposition Benches and a significant number of Government MPs. To avoid the embarrassment of Government MPs coming out and defending the policy only to face a U-turn, can the Solicitor General give a categorical assurance to those on her own Benches that there will be no U-turn or watering down of this folly of a policy?
The Solicitor General
I am sure the hon. Gentleman listened to what the Deputy Prime Minister had to say at Justice questions two days ago. The reality is that the last Conservative Government left the justice system on its knees, with a backlog of 80,000 cases, which, without both investment and reform, will simply go up. That is why we are funding unlimited sitting days, increasing spending on criminal defence lawyers and investing in the crumbling courts that the last Government left behind. But Sir Brian was clear that investment alone would not tackle the backlog sufficiently, and that is why radical reform is also needed.
Martin Vickers
Notwithstanding what the Solicitor General just said, she must recognise that there is growing resentment and lack of confidence not just among the general public but within the legal profession. How does she expect to maintain confidence in the judicial process against such widespread opposition?
The Solicitor General
Let me say something about confidence. Victims are waiting three years, in some cases, for their rape case to get to court because of the backlogs we inherited from the last Conservative Government—that is not confidence in the justice system. That is why these reforms are necessary. We are clearing up the mess that the previous Government left us.
Sir Edward Leigh
It is obviously outrageous that rape victims have to wait three years—we all accept that, and we have heard moving testimony on that. The problem is that the Institute for Government has found that abolishing jury trials may only get these rape trials on a week earlier. The Labour manifesto promised specialist rape courts. Why does the Solicitor General not take action by setting up specialist rape courts and paying lawyers properly to undertake the work, so we can deal with this backlog now?
The Solicitor General
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that listing is a matter for the judiciary, but one proposal is a national listing framework to ensure that cases are listed as soon as possible. We are committed to supporting victims of rape and serious sexual violence. That is why we launched our landmark strategy in December to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. It is why we are investing over half a billion pounds in victim support services, including for victims of rape and serious sexual violence.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
At her annual press conference this week, the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr, said:
“I have grave security concerns if there are going to be judge-alone trials.”
Does the Solicitor General share those concerns, and what are the Government doing about it?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend, as always, makes an extremely important point. I would be happy to discuss the comments of the Lady Chief Justice, with whom I meet regularly, with colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to get answers on that important issue.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
Our plan for court reform implements time savings across the system, not just in the courtroom but in a number of other aspects of the justice system that contribute to delays with the administration of jury trials, such as the summoning of jurors, the compiling of jury bundles, juror expenses and behind-the-scenes preparation. Does the Solicitor General agree that those crucial changes will address the bigger picture of delays across the system and allow the Crown Prosecution Service to focus on delivering swift justice for victims?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is completely right, and she has considerable experience as a former Crown prosecutor. She will know that that is why we are investing £2.78 billion in the coming year, which includes over £280 million for vital repairs, digital upgrades and unlimited sitting days in the Crown court—record funding for our courts. Only the combination of reform, investment and modernisation will ultimately deliver faster and fairer justice.
Carolyn Harris (Neath and Swansea East) (Lab)
It should be a fundamental right to be safe at home. The Courts and Tribunals Bill delivers that for children in this country by removing the presumption of parental contact. Will the Solicitor General join me in paying tribute to the tireless campaigning of Claire Throssell, who has fought every day in Jack and Paul’s memory to put children’s safety in law, so no one else will have to suffer as they did?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. I am sure that the whole House will want to pay tribute to Claire Throssell for her tireless campaigning and to the memory of her two children, Jack and Paul. Every child deserves to be safe and every family deserves a justice system that they can trust. We need to make sure that what happened to Claire and her children never happens again. That is why this Government are introducing the measure to repeal the presumption of parental involvement. Courts will no longer start from an assumption that parental involvement is always in a child’s best interests, and instead adopt an open-minded inquiry into what is in a child’s best interests. This Government are putting children’s welfare and safety first.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s reforms to the criminal justice system, but I would like to ask what measures will be taken to increase cultural, class and age-group diversity in magistrate recruitment, so as to increase confidence in our reforms?
The Solicitor General
As always, my hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. I understand that measures are being taken to recruit more magistrates from more diverse backgrounds. Magistrates are the cornerstone of local justice and it is right that they represent the communities in which they are taking decisions.
Helen Grant (Maidstone and Malling) (Con)
On Second Reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, the Minister for Courts and Legal Services, told the House that “politics is about choices”, so let us be clear about the choices that this Government have made. They chose to bring forward a Bill with no consultation, no manifesto mandate, no Green Paper, no White Paper and no robust modelling. They chose to go further than Sir Brian Leveson had recommended. They chose to remove the right to trial by jury for offences carrying up to three years in prison—sentences that will cost defendants their jobs, their homes and their families. And they chose to do all this in five days of Committee scrutiny. What does the Minister think about the choices that her Government have made? What will she tell the victims of miscarriages of justice and the thousands of legal professionals who oppose the measures?
The Solicitor General
May I first pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s tireless campaigning on behalf of her constituents, Paula and Tony Hudgell? I am pleased that the Government have now announced a child cruelty register.
In relation to the points made by the hon. Lady, Sir Brian Leveson—an incredibly well regarded and experienced lawyer—took months on his two reports, which set out a huge number of recommendations. The hon. Lady talks about choices. Well, we inherited a court system on its knees, with rape victims waiting three years—more, in some cases—for their cases to get to court. It was a dereliction of duty by the previous Government not to tackle that court backlog, but we are getting on with the job. That is the choice that this Government have made.
Helen Grant
I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for what she said about the Hudgell case and the child cruelty register. It has been an amazing campaign, led by Paula Hudgell and her little boy, and I am pleased that we were able to get cross-party support to change the law and hopefully look after children and save lives. It is unfortunate that the right hon. and learned Lady just will not answer the very straightforward questions that I am asking.
Jo Hamilton OBE was a victim of the Post Office Horizon scandal. She made it clear that, under Government proposals, none of the wrongly convicted 900 sub-postmasters would have had the right to a jury trial. Just this weekend, there was a further revelation, this time involving the Prime Minister. In a report, he had previously concluded that scrapping jury trials led to unreliable convictions in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. Will the Solicitor General explain how removing this vital safeguard makes the justice system more fair, not less?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Lady will be well aware that we are not removing jury trials; they will remain a cornerstone of this justice system. The reality is that the vast majority of cases heard in this country—90%—are not heard by a jury, so it is wrong to say that we are getting rid of jury trials. Some cases involving sentences that are expected to be three years or less will be triable either way, which will be heard by a judge. Judges act without fear or favour, and they swear a judicial oath, but jury trials will still continue in this country.
Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Solicitor General
The Law Officers’ power to refer unduly lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal is a powerful way to ensure that justice is achieved in some of the most serious crimes. It gives a voice to victims, their families and the public in the sentencing of cases. Since my appointment as the Solicitor General in September last year, I have received requests to review the sentences imposed on 815 offenders. In the last six months, 30 offenders have had their sentences increased under the scheme.
Lorraine Beavers
I am grateful to the Solicitor General for her meeting with me on Monday about the failures of the unduly lenient sentence scheme. It is not enough simply to ensure that families are informed of their rights; they should have longer than the current 28 days to use those rights. For families who have been put through traumatic trials, that is just not long enough. Will the Solicitor General update the House on what plans she has to ensure that families and victims have every chance to see justice done?
The Solicitor General
I thank my hon. Friend for attending the unduly lenient sentence scheme victims roundtable on Monday evening. I know what a strong advocate she is for her constituent Katie Brett, whose sister Sasha was brutally murdered. Victims and families should always be informed about the scheme, but I know that that does not always happen, and I know how grief is compounded if an application is then rejected out of time. That is not good enough, and that is why I am working with the Ministry of Justice to find solutions.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
May I thank the Solicitor General for our meeting in January to discuss improving the ULS scheme? As I have said before, it cannot be right that grieving families have just 28 days to appeal the sentences of their abusers, while the abusers themselves can extend the deadline. There are common-sense approaches that we can take right now, including extending the 28-day deadline, creating a statutory duty for victims and expanding its scope. Those approaches are backed by the Victims’ Commissioner. Does the Solicitor General agree with her?
The Solicitor General
I welcomed the opportunity to meet with the hon. Gentleman recently to discuss these issues in more detail. May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Tracey Hanson, who has been a tireless campaigner for victims of serious crime, particularly in relation to unduly lenient sentences, following the tragic loss of her son Josh? Organisations such as the Josh Hanson Trust do vital work in this area. As I said in answer to the previous question, I am working with Ministry of Justice colleagues to see if we can find solutions to some of the issues raised today.
Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
The Solicitor General
Today, I can announce an additional £5 million of funding for the CPS, which will be invested to benefit victims of domestic abuse. In three pilot areas, victims will be offered meetings with prosecutors ahead of Crown court trials, ensuring that their voices are heard and better supporting them to remain engaged in the criminal justice process. This offer is already available to victims of rape and serious sexual assault across the country. From speaking with prosecutors and victims, I know the difference that those meetings can make, and I am pleased to see them extended to victims of domestic abuse.
Sarah Russell
I very much welcome that news. Prosecution rates in cases involving violence against women and girls are shamefully low. I strongly welcome the Government’s ambition to tackle violence against women and girls, including our manifesto commitments to fast-track rape cases and introduce specialist courts. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the Government’s progress on those promises?
The Solicitor General
I know that my hon. Friend is a strong advocate for tackling violence against women and girls, and I am proud of our cross-Government strategy to do just that, which we set out in December. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss these issues in more detail.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
The Solicitor General will know that 29 women have been murdered since 2020 in Northern Ireland—we have seen a significant increase in femicide. Will she give me an assurance that she will continue to engage with Northern Ireland’s Attorney General and Justice Minister to ensure that prosecution rates are also increased in Northern Ireland?
The Solicitor General
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point, and am happy to engage further on these really important matters.
Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
First, can I ask the Solicitor General to please follow up on her kind offer to chase the Justice Minister responsible for legal aid, the hon. and learned Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman), about meeting me to discuss support for domestic abuse victims?
The 2024 domestic abuse joint justice plan aims to improve early co-ordination between police and the CPS. I am aware that a review was conducted as part of the plan, highlighting concerns about the quality and timeliness of police referrals and CPS decision making. However, based on recent cases I have heard about from my North Cornwall constituents and from other Members, I am rather concerned that the plan’s focus on high-risk victims does not ensure accurate identification of those genuinely at high risk. Professionals could misinterpret or overlook risk factors, meaning that some of those high-risk cases might be wrongly assessed and their severity underestimated. Does the Solicitor General agree that while the plan has improved investigations and prosecutions, a needs-based approach is absolutely essential, especially to show victims that coming forward is worthwhile and the justice system will not fail them?
The Solicitor General
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question—I know he is a strong champion on these issues. He talked about timeliness; the domestic abuse charging authority pilot, which I visited recently in Wales, is showing huge improvements in getting domestic abuse cases to court, which in turn helps with victim attrition. Turning to his point about Cornwall, I am pleased to inform him that from July 2024 to March 2026, the CPS charged over 2,800 offenders with domestic abuse, and over 2,300 were convicted. That includes over 900 convictions in Devon and Cornwall. I will continue to work with the CPS to ensure we are prosecuting VAWG offenders, including in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I am also happy to take away his request that I chase up the meeting with the Justice Minister.
Business of the House
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Alan Campbell)
The business for the week commencing 23 March will include:
Monday 23 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill.
Tuesday 24 March—Opposition day (20th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.
Wednesday 25 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Victims and Courts Bills.
Thursday 26 March—Debate on a motion on transport accessibility for disabled people, followed by general debate on support for Gurkha veterans. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
The House of Commons will rise for the Easter recess at the conclusion of business on Thursday 26 March and return on Monday 13 April.
Jesse Norman
Let me begin by paying tribute to President Zelensky. Thanks to you, Mr Speaker, he gave an extraordinary speech here this week. Like Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles”, it was a speech of poetry and hope, but also of steel. He showed that Ukraine, far from being bowed by Russia, is now sharing its expertise in counter-drone defence with nations across the Gulf and elsewhere.
I give thanks for the swift action that the Government have taken to support households that are now facing sharp and unexpected increases in the cost of heating oil, including many in Herefordshire. As Herefordshire goes, so goes the UK. The events in the middle east have exposed a hard truth: this country is dangerously exposed on energy, and the Government’s policies are compounding that vulnerability. Around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the strait of Hormuz. When that is threatened, prices spike, and when prices spike, everything else is hit—heating, electricity, industry and jobs. Every industrialised economy relies on secure and affordable energy, yet this country imports around 60% of the gas we use. We pay far more for it than our competitor nations do—around three times US prices—so when shocks come, the benefits of higher gas prices go to other countries, but our citizens bear the higher costs and added insecurity.
That structural vulnerability has built up over decades under Governments of all the major parties, but this Government are negligently or deliberately making it much worse. They have blocked new North sea licences, and sent a clear signal that domestic oil and gas production is to be run down, regardless of demand. The consequences of these decisions are already visible. The CF Fertilisers plant near Chester has closed thanks to high energy costs, so this country now imports ammonia instead. The Grangemouth refinery is ceasing its refining operations and becoming an import terminal. In Aberdeen, Scunthorpe and Teesside, investment is falling and companies are failing. Thousands of jobs have been lost, and tens of thousands more put at risk. Little wonder that a host of businesses and unions, including Unite, the GMB and even RenewableUK, have expressed their concern.
These are not isolated events; they are the predictable effects of policy decisions taken by Ministers without any serious consideration of the economic and strategic consequences in the current context. The Energy Secretary often says that the problem is global gas prices, and that increasing domestic production makes no difference. Of course that is nonsense, because domestic production actually boosts jobs, public revenues and national resilience while lowering emissions. But that line is also dangerously misleading. Gas prices are regional, not global, because gas, unlike oil, is relatively expensive to ship and store. The Energy Secretary is confusing a global market with global pricing. It is a basic error.
Alas, the Chancellor is no less confused. On Tuesday, she said:
“You see countries like Canada and Norway increasing their production, and every country’s got to play their part”.
But, in her view, that does not include the UK. Her policy is precisely the opposite: not to increase but to reduce oil and gas production. You could not make it up. Shortly we will hear the Business Secretary make a statement on how the Government want to increase domestic steel production, even while they are stopping the domestic oil and gas on which that steel production relies. It is an absolute nonsense.
If we cut domestic production in the face of steady demand, imports will fill the gap, but an increasingly import-dependent system is forced to rely ever more on pipelines, LNG cargoes and interconnectors. These are vulnerable fixed assets that are open to damage and disruption from abroad, and there is a further consequence. Modern conflict is determined by industrial capacity in steel, chemicals, fuels and supply chains, yet the Government are allowing these national sovereign capabilities to erode.
So this is a policy that increases carbon emissions, deprives Britain of tax revenues, worsens the balance of payments, hurts consumers and businesses, and weakens both our energy resources and our national security—that is quite an achievement. It is hard to imagine a more confused or dangerous approach. I do not want a debate on this topic as we can all see what is happening: at some point there must be a U-turn, because Iran is making a fool of the Energy Secretary. No, I desperately want the Leader of the House to get the Prime Minister to see the madness of this approach and get the policy changed as soon as he possibly can.
Sir Alan Campbell
First, may I say that my thoughts are with the friends and families of the young people who have died and others who are currently unwell as a result of the meningitis outbreak in Kent?
I also place on record our tribute to Phil Woolas, who was a greatly respected and admired colleague and played a considerable role in modernising the Labour party. I am sure the whole House will join me in sending our condolences to his friends and family.
Let me join the shadow Leader of the House in praise of President Zelensky and what he said earlier this week. A new defence pact has been agreed this week between the UK and Ukraine. By deepening our defence partnership, we are strengthening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself from Putin’s ongoing attacks while ensuring that the UK and our allies are better prepared to meet the threats of the future.
As the shadow Leader of the House said, we were honoured to listen to President Zelensky on Tuesday. I must thank you, Mr Speaker, for the role you played in organising the event, as well as in making clear the House’s unwavering support for the Ukrainian people.
I will mention another couple of things, if I may, before I get to the comments made by the shadow Leader of the House. On Monday, the Modernisation Committee launched an inquiry into Backbench Business Committee and Petitions Committee debates as part of an ongoing inquiry on how time is used in this place. Both Committees play a vital role in bringing key issues of local, national and international importance to the House. Members will have received an online form seeking their views. I encourage all Members to engage with the inquiry.
This morning, the response of the House administration to the Modernisation Committee’s report on accessibility in the House of Commons was published. I thank all who contributed to the inquiry and the House authorities for the progress they are making on addressing the important matters raised in the report. As I committed, the House will have the opportunity to consider the report in due course.
Let me turn to the comments of the shadow Leader of the House. First, I thank him for the support he has given for what we have already done on the price of fuel oil. Let me reassure his Herefordshire constituents, and indeed the House, that the Government keep these matters in the forefront of our mind and under close scrutiny, and if necessary we will take further action.
I agree with the shadow Leader of the House on one point: that we should be concerned about potential spikes in fuel prices during crises. I have to say, he made an admirable case for energy independence and the policy of the Government.
The shadow Leader of the House talked about the North sea as a matter of concern. It is a matter of concern for the whole country, and particularly for constituencies in the region that I represent. I have to point out that the North sea is a mature oil and gas area, so some of the things he said have happened there are not surprising. It is mature and, in that sense, declining, but gas and energy from the North sea will be part of the energy transition in the UK for some decades to come. The big lesson that we learn from this crisis is that we have to get off the rollercoaster of oil and gas, which means getting off fossil fuels and on to home-grown clean power. He talked about the Government’s inaction, but we are bringing forward the next auction for renewables, extending solar and accelerating the warm homes plan roll-out.
The shadow Leader of the House talked about the loss of jobs in the area. I have to point out that a 70% fall in jobs in the North sea came about during the time of the Government of which he was a supporter. In terms of turning it around, it would take a decade between starting to explore and extracting oil. Not a single barrel of extra oil extracted from the North sea today will reduce prices for consumers. If he will not take my word for it, let him take the words of the Conservative Energy Minister in 2022, who said that
“more UK production wouldn’t reduce the global price of gas.”
As the shadow Leader of the House said, you could not make it up.
On the question of steel, there will be a statement later today about our steel strategy going forward. The idea that we do not value these national assets is, I am afraid, simply untrue. We have acted already on Scunthorpe, and we will be acting not just on steel, but on other matters of national importance, because they are in our national interest.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
Last Saturday, Nicola’s women’s support group celebrated its first anniversary, marking a year of welcoming women in West Lothian to connect, share experiences and offer a listening ear. Nicola’s was founded in memory of a beautiful young woman, Nicola, who took her own life after repeated delays to desperately needed surgery for endometriosis. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking the Nicola’s team, including her family and all the volunteers, for the invaluable work they do to support local women?
Sir Alan Campbell
I will. It is unacceptable that Nicola had to wait so long for the surgery that she needed, and I am sorry to hear of her family and friends’ tragic loss. We have committed to renewing the women’s health strategy to tackle inequalities and improve access to healthcare for women across England, and support groups such as Nicola’s provide an essential lifeline for women living with health issues. I encourage my hon. Friend and other Members to attend next week’s Westminster Hall debate on access to endometriosis services.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I am sure that you, Mr Speaker, will be as concerned as I am about the recent outbreak of meningitis in Kent, and I am sure the thoughts of the whole House are with the families who have lost loved ones already. The UK Health Security Agency has a huge job on its hands to get good public health information out there and to work with the NHS on a targeted vaccination programme. It is a reminder of how much faith and trust we put in health professionals in these moments of crisis. They are all dedicated to keeping us safe.
This situation is also a reminder of the dangers of bad information. It is a sad truth that in this country, the take-up rates of child vaccination have declined over the past decade. Some of that has been attributed to misinformation that is allowed to spread freely online, but there are also well-organised and well-funded anti-vaccination groups, which I am sure we have all come across. Unfortunately, that has been egged on at times by populist politicians. President Trump in America has appointed a vaccine sceptic into a senior role in the White House and the Reform party platformed an anti-vax spokesperson at its conference recently.
All of us who have dared to confront this subject will have got stick online. I have even had protesters stop me on the high street while walking my dog to give me stick about the subject. I think that has made us a little bit scared as a political class to take this subject on, and it is about time that we used moments like this to take on the conspiracy theorists. Will the Leader of the House organise for a statement to be made about how we will tackle the rise in misinformation and conspiracy theories and, ultimately, get the rate of childhood vaccination up again?
Sir Alan Campbell
First, as I said in my earlier remarks, our thoughts are with the friends and families of the young people who tragically died, but also with others who are currently unwell. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the importance of the UKHSA. It is monitoring the situation and has launched a targeted vaccination programme, starting with students who are most at risk. They will be contacted directly. I encourage everyone affected to take preventive antibiotics or the vaccine if they are offered them.
The Health Secretary is considering what steps can be taken to improve wider vaccination uptake, not just in respect of this matter, but across the population. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in his comments about misinformation or disinformation. I urge everyone to share the public health information that is being disseminated online so that we can spread facts, rather than misinformation. It is an important matter, and I will draw his comments to the attention of the Health Secretary.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
Denby Pottery has been the heart of Amber Valley since 1809. It provides over 500 jobs and brings in 250,000 visitors a year, but it has sadly had to apply for administration support. While the Prime Minister has already committed to a review of the supercharger scheme, which helps with energy costs, I hope that it will be sped up in the light of the current situation and include the ceramics industry. Today, the #SaveDenby campaign has launched, which asks people to buy Denby pottery, visit the brilliant pottery village in Derbyshire or just simply share the campaign far and wide. With Easter around the corner, might I invite the Leader of the House to consider picking up some Denby pottery, and will he join me in encouraging other Members to do the same and help me save Denby Pottery?
Sir Alan Campbell
I will certainly give that consideration, and I join my hon. Friend in encouraging Members to pick up some Denby pottery. This is a crisis situation for the company, and I know that it will be a difficult period ahead—we should consider doing anything that we can do to help. The Government recognise that energy prices are a significant pressure on UK industry, including ceramics. That is why, as she mentions, we are increasing the discount on energy costs through the British industry supercharger. However, I do know that this will be a worrying time for the employees at Denby Pottery, and I will ensure that Ministers are aware of her concerns as a matter of urgency.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the Chamber business for next week. Could he give us early notice of whether we will get time after Easter, so that the Committee can allocate time accordingly? In addition, next Thursday there will be a statement from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on its report on coastal erosion.
In Westminster Hall, next Tuesday there will be a debate on sudden unexplained death in childhood, and on Thursday 26 March there will be a debate on outcomes for patients with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and craniocervical instability, followed by a debate on the potential merits of mandatory body armour for prison officers. On Tuesday 14 April, when we come back, there will be a debate on hidden credit liabilities and the role of the Financial Conduct Authority. On Thursday 16 April, there will be a debate on the housing needs of young people, followed by a debate on the NHS federated data platform. I hope that the Leader of the House will bring forward the necessary changes to Standing Orders that he promised before we prorogue for the state opening of Parliament.
In my position as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for British Hindus, I have been in contact with Peterborough city council about the plight of the Bharat Hindu Samaj temple. This is the only Hindu temple in Peterborough. There are 11 mosques in the area, and I wish them Eid Mubarak as we approach the end of Ramadan. The council decided to sell the temple after the trustees of the temple agreed to match any other bid that came forward. They eventually offered £1.4 million. The councillors, however, chose another bid of £1.2 million. This was kept secret. Now the trustees have taken the case to court and, indeed, have got to a position whereby the judge has stayed the sale of the site. Could we have a statement from the Secretary of State next week on what action he will take to ensure that we preserve the opportunity for Hindus in Peterborough and across the country to celebrate their religion in proper fashion in peace and harmony?
Sir Alan Campbell
On early notice of Backbench time, I will certainly bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman says, and I thank him for the work of his Committee. He will appreciate, however, that as we approach—and it is no secret—the end of this Session, over the next few weeks things such as Lords amendments will tend to dominate. It is quite tricky to take out all such uncertainty, but I will do everything I can. On the change to Standing Orders, I will certainly look at what he requests and see if we can do that.
On the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raises about the Hindu community in Peterborough, we understand those concerns, not least because of the excellent work on these matters of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes). The temple has been the primary place of worship for members of his community for many years. This is ultimately a matter for the local authority, but we hope that it will engage productively with the community on this matter. On the wider matter of temples and places of worship, I will raise the hon. Gentleman’s concerns with the relevant Secretary of State.
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
As the Member of Parliament representing the constituency where the temple is based, may I put it on record that I am deeply disappointed not to have had a conversation with the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has used parliamentary privilege to state some untruths about something that is subject to legal action?
Mr Speaker
Order. Members cannot use the word “untruths”. There may have been a misunderstanding, but we certainly must not have “untruths”.
Andrew Pakes
I am sorry, Mr Speaker, and I apologise to the House. The hon. Member for Harrow East has stated things that are not factual in relation to this.
One of the great blessings I have as a Member of Parliament is joining communities to celebrate festivals such Diwali, Hanukkah and Vaisakhi. In the coming hours, I will be joining many members of my community to celebrate Eid. Does the Leader of the House recognise the divisive, exclusionary, hateful language that some people have used to describe a community iftar in recent days? That has shown that it is not about British values; seeking to divide and to drive hatred is the antithesis of that. Will he join me in wishing well all those who will be taking part in Eid in the Park in Peterborough in the coming hours, showing off the best of my city? Will he also provide parliamentary time for a debate on the language that we use about social cohesion and bringing our faiths together rather than dividing them?
Sir Alan Campbell
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his clarification on this matter, and I am more than happy to speak to him afterwards about it.
On the statements that my hon. Friend condemns, the Prime Minister was absolutely clear yesterday that those statements from the Opposition spokesperson were utterly appalling and will only spread poison and division. Freedom of religion and the right of peaceful expression are fundamental British values, not the opposite. These rights should be respected for everyone, and that applies equally to peaceful prayer, protesting or assembly wherever it happens to be. I join my hon. Friend in wishing well everyone celebrating Eid, wherever they are celebrating it, but with a warning to all parties in this place that if they get into the gutter on these matters, the public will not forgive them.
Mr Speaker
I remind Members that, if they are going to mention another Member’s constituency, they should please give them notice. It is a courtesy that should happen.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
One great privilege of being a Member of Parliament is the ability to raise constituents’ concerns directly with Ministers. Unfortunately, far too frequently, the responses to be sent to our constituents come from officials rather than Ministers. I am sure the Leader of the House agrees that our constituents are entitled to hear from the Ministers themselves. Will he remind his ministerial colleagues of their duty to ensure that our constituents hear directly from them, not their officials?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising this question, because Members who write to Ministers do so with the reasonable expectation that they will receive a timely and substantive response from a Minister, and that is absolutely right. If she has a specific example to draw to my attention, I will raise that with the appropriate Department, and I will raise the wider issue with other Departments, too.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
We have a profound duty to those who elect us regarding the scrutiny of legislation. This week, the other place has been debating the Crime and Policing Bill, which is wide in scope and raises several concerns of the utmost importance to our constituents. Will the Leader of the House clarify how long Members will have to properly debate and vote on Lords amendments on a new category of extreme criminal protest groups, as well as Government new clauses on so-called cumulative disruption and face coverings, which have profound equalities implications? Will he assure us that timetabling pressures before the end of this parliamentary Session will not prevent proper scrutiny and consideration of this serious and substantive Bill?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. As she notes, amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill have been considered by the House of Lords. The Government will consider them as we move forward. I will announce future business in the House in the usual way, but I am absolutely conscious of the importance of providing sufficient time for parliamentary scrutiny, wherever it falls in the parliamentary year.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I note what the Leader of the House said about the forthcoming consultation exercise. I urge right hon. and hon. Members to take part.
The shadow Leader of the House has touched on the activities in recent months of Russian spy ships and submarines off the coast of my constituency, taking a peer at our undersea cables and connections, and the strategic resource of the North sea in oil and offshore wind energy. May I respectfully ask the Leader of the House to help facilitate a meeting between me, and perhaps other concerned Members from other parties, and appropriate Ministers to discuss this issue and what our means of defence are?
Sir Alan Campbell
The North sea is a critical asset and the Government understand the vital role it will play in the future. It is Britain’s greatest asset in building our energy future. It gives Scotland and the rest of Britain the chance to lead in offshore wind, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen, alongside oil and gas production. It is such an important matter that I will help to facilitate the meeting that the hon. Gentleman asks for.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
The events in the middle east have shown how exposed we remain to polluting and volatile oil and gas markets. Moving on to clean, domestically secure power is the long-term solution, but in the short term we should not allow gas producers to profiteer while they still far too often set the market price. Analysis by Greenpeace and Stonehaven suggests that we could save millions for households and businesses across the UK by moving gas-powered stations into a regulated asset base. May we have a statement from the Energy Secretary on how we can drive through such important market reforms, so that consumers and businesses across the UK can get much-needed money off their energy bills?
Sir Alan Campbell
Throughout this conflict, our first priority has been to help households with the cost of living. That underlines our need to focus on clean, homegrown energy. As the role of gas diminishes, we will continue to explore how market and system arrangements can evolve to minimise its impact on consumer bills. We will learn the lessons from the current situation we find ourselves in. I encourage my hon. Friend to raise his specific concerns at Energy Security and Net Zero questions next week.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
On Tuesday evening, a car with five teenagers left the road near Wisbech in my constituency and entered the river. Tragically, only three of the teenagers exited the car. I am sure the whole House will join me in sending our condolences to the families affected by this tragedy and the emergency services who are performing the distressing recovery.
In “Fit for the Future: 10 Year Plan”, the Government set out three big shifts for the NHS. The first is in care services moving from hospital into the community, yet the exact opposite is happening in Fenland, both at the North Cambridgeshire hospital site and the Doddington site, where services are being reduced and moved to hospital settings. May we have a debate on whether this is the latest Government U-turn that they have not yet announced, or are health bosses free to ignore the strategy and do the exact opposite locally?
Sir Alan Campbell
First, I join the right hon. Gentleman and the House in sending our deepest condolences to the friends and family of the young people involved. Each and every one of them is a tragedy.
On the wider issue about the NHS in the right hon. Gentleman’s area, there is no question of a U-turn. He knows very well, from his former roles in government, the importance of delivering services locally but having a Government setting the strategy and providing the resources. I do not know the detail, other than what he has said, but if he wishes to provide me with that, I will certainly raise it with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. In trusts across the country, there are many who, despite this Government putting more money into the NHS, are struggling with the legacy of his Government.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney) (Lab)
The Government have delivered for mineworkers and their families on improving their pension schemes. Although members of both the mineworkers’ pension scheme and the British Coal staff superannuation scheme tell me that they are pleased after the release of reserved funds, there are many former miners in their 80s and 90s who could benefit further from future support. Can we please have a statement from the Minister for Industry on the next steps for both those schemes?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the fact that the Government have delivered justice for members of the former British Coal pension scheme. I thank him for the role he played in the campaign to persuade the Government to do that. He may wish to raise his question directly with Ministers at Energy Security and Net Zero oral questions next week to see what more could be done. Should he seek a meeting with Ministers on that, I will help him to arrange one.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
At a time of heightened global tension, we must be aware of how important it is that we look after our current and ex-service personnel. I have a constituent who served in the Army and later in the Ministry of Defence for 50 years. He survived stage 4 cancer and his illness is now forcing him to retire. Capita, which administers the civil service pension scheme, has taken over two years to get a statement to him about his pension, ultimately delaying the moment when he can retire. That is just one of five different civil service pension cases that my office has had to deal with in the last three months, none of which has received responses from Capita. May we have a statement from the relevant Minister about how we will improve the situation for my constituents and for many across the country?
Sir Alan Campbell
I am sorry to hear of the hon. Lady’s constituents. Veterans and servicemen and women are held very highly in our thoughts and regard. The delay that she describes is unacceptable; it is not the service that people deserve and resolving the matter is of the utmost urgency. There is a recovery plan under way and an interest-free loan is being made available by Departments to provide immediate financial support. The Cabinet Office is also using every opportunity to hold Capita to account and ensure that it delivers. It is about individual cases, so if the hon. Lady wishes to raise that individual case with me, I will see whether we can resolve that. However, there is the wider issue about how we can resolve this for everyone—I imagine there is a case in just about every constituency—so that everybody gets the justice that they deserve.
Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)
The Queensway Gateway Road works were a shambles from start to finish. They were meant to last weeks, but dragged on for almost a year, causing gridlock and losing local businesses millions. We have just found out that Conservative-run East Sussex county council overspent by £5 million on those shambolic works. Does the Leader of the House agree that that is £5 million less to repair our potholes and our roads? Does he also agree that East Sussex county council and the contractors, who include Balfour Beatty, owe it to local taxpayers to explain what the hell went so wrong and how they will ensure that it does not happen again?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for her constituency and on this very issue. The roadworks have been very disruptive for her constituents and there are serious questions, as she said, about how this has been managed by East Sussex county council. I will ensure that Ministers hear her concerns, and she may wish to raise them directly with Ministers at Transport questions next week. Just as importantly, by raising them then and here, I hope that her constituents get to hold the council to account.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
My constituent John Mildmay-White, whose ancestor was a Member of this House over 100 years ago, has completed a 600 km run from Mothecombe in Devon to Westminster Bridge in aid of Wild About The Erme River, raising at least £25,000 for that cause. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating him and all the campaigners who supported him?
Sir Alan Campbell
I will absolutely join the hon. Lady in praising Mr John Mildmay-White on his achievement and considerable initiative. It just goes to show what remarkable people we have in our constituencies.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
Under the SNP Scottish Government, police numbers in Fife have fallen by an average of one a month. Results from my new antisocial behaviour survey show that four in 10 Cowdenbeath residents are afraid to go out after dark, and more than half witness antisocial behaviour every single week. This is unacceptable. Does the Leader of the House agree that Cowdenbeath has been badly let down by the SNP, and that we need change, and will he grant Government time for a debate on antisocial behaviour?
Sir Alan Campbell
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in her analysis of the situation. This Government are committed to making our streets safer by delivering 13,000 more neighbourhood policing roles and introducing new respect orders to deter and drive down antisocial behaviour. As for what happens north of the border, I would remind the House that we have delivered Scotland’s largest settlement since devolution. I hope that the SNP has heard my hon. Friend’s contribution and will take action. I encourage her to apply for a Westminster Hall debate on these matters, so that she can set out the failure of the SNP Government in this regard in even more detail.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
In January, the UK Government announced that the listed places of worship grant scheme, which has allowed congregations to reclaim VAT on repairs to listed places of worship, would close at the end of March. While a replacement scheme was announced for England, I understand that the Scottish Government were not informed in advance of this change, leaving both the Scottish Government and places of worship in the lurch following this sudden, unexpected decision. [Hon. Members: “They were given the money!”] Can we have a statement from the UK Government, explaining this total disregard, and confirming that funding will be made available through the Barnett formula for a similar scheme in Scotland?
Sir Alan Campbell
The hon. Gentleman may know of my appreciation of the importance of places of worship in communities, wherever they happen to be in our country. I do not know the details of the matter that he was talking about, but I was listening to what my hon. Friends were saying from the Benches behind me; I will look into this matter after these questions, but my understanding is that the SNP Government were given the money for this, as part of the biggest settlement ever for Scotland.
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Capita’s handling of the civil service pension scheme has been absolutely abysmal. I have constituents in the Prison Service and across the whole civil service who have had their life devastated because of the financial consequences. Will the Leader of the House escalate this matter to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister? A cross-departmental approach is now required to ensure that Capita cannot continue to degrade our public services and the people who work in them.
Sir Alan Campbell
I certainly will do as my hon. Friend asks. The Government are taking action on these matters, but I will also undertake to escalate this in the way that she suggests.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Tomorrow I will be enjoying Kelso’s musical theatre performance of “Beauty and the Beast” at Tait Hall; on Saturday, I will be at Lauder Amateur Dramatic Society’s performance for its 76th year at Lauder public hall. From the Leader of the House’s marvellous performances here in the House of Commons, I know that he is a great fan of amateur dramatics; will he join me in wishing the performers and production teams well?
Sir Alan Campbell
It is always good to hear from the ironman on the other side of the House, not least about musical theatre. He is right that I am a fan of musical theatre, so I will certainly join him in wishing all the participants in the Kelso musical theatre and Lauder Amateur Dramatic Society shows the best of luck. On a serious point, amateur dramatics groups across the country play a valuable role in bringing communities together and nurturing talent, and we thank each and every one of them.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
This week in Parliament, I hosted Mummy’s Star, a charity that supports mums with cancer in and around pregnancy. The charity was set up by my constituent Pete Wallroth in honour of his wife, Mair, who tragically died just after their son was born. Mummy’s Star is campaigning for a change in the law to allow women who are diagnosed with cancer to defer or pause their maternity leave while they receive cancer treatment, so that they can spend their maternity leave doing what it should be for: developing the bond with their child. Will the Leader of the House grant Government time for a debate on the impact of cancer during pregnancy?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend raises an important topic. Let us put on record our thanks to Pete Wallroth, although, of course, we would all prefer him not to be in that situation. Everyone should get a personalised needs assessment and personal cancer plan that takes into account their wider need, including the impact of pregnancy, where that is relevant. In addition, the parental leave and pay review will explore how the system can better support working families. I strongly encourage my hon. Friend to apply for a debate in Westminster Hall on this very important issue.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
My constituent, an indomitable lady in her eighties, was seriously assaulted at home last year, and her assailant was jailed. He was given a sentence, and the court granted an exclusion order covering the whole area around her home, where he committed the offence. Over a month ago, he was released early, but without a GPS tag, as I understand it. He has been seen twice in the area from which he was excluded by court order. The police have no “proof” that he has been in breach of his licence conditions, and probation says that it has no grounds for recalling the offender. Services are asking my constituent, who, unusually, is terrified, to gather and provide the evidence that he was in breach, so that they can investigate properly. Can we have some sort of statement from the Justice Ministry to make sure that we get this tagging contract sorted out, once and for all? Also, can we stop services using phrases such as, “We are sorry for the disappointment about the scenario”? That means absolutely nothing to my constituent; she is more than sorry about what is happening.
Sir Alan Campbell
I am sure that the hon. Lady’s constituent is more than sorry, because this appears to be an unacceptable case. If the hon. Lady gives me the details, I will raise the matter with the Justice Secretary, to see whether there is a need for a statement on tagging and the wider issues.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
This week, another life was taken in a road traffic collision in Royton, leaving another family devastated. Our borough saw eight people killed in 2024, the highest number in a decade. Of those, six were pedestrians. There were more pedestrians killed in a single year than in the previous three years combined, and they included children who were simply walking along the pavement. For our town, this is a public health emergency. Although I welcome hotspot policing operations, the truth is that we need more patrols on the streets every day. Can we have a debate in Government time on traffic policing and reducing road deaths by dangerous driving?
Sir Alan Campbell
As my hon. Friend knows, we have announced the first road safety strategy in more than a decade, which includes a plan to reduce deaths and serious injuries on Britain’s roads by about two thirds by 2035. We have launched consultations on measures to tackle the causes of road collisions. I encourage my hon. Friend to look to gain a Westminster Hall debate, in which he can talk about not just safety on the road, but police presence.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
I know that some in this Chamber are sceptical about the role of the other place. However, after dinner last night, at about 11 o’clock, I took some visitors into the House of Lords Gallery, and was completely astonished to find a very lively debate taking place in a full Chamber. Will the Leader of the House join me in recognising the great diligence of our colleagues in scrutinising legislation? However, does he agree that the House of Lords must not obstruct the will of the elected Chamber?
Sir Alan Campbell
As my hon. Friend deftly points out, there is a fairly narrow tightrope to walk here. We need to ensure that the House of Lords gets its opportunity to scrutinise legislation, whatever it happens to be, in the way that it is constitutionally set up to; but there is a concern, shared by many Members of this House, about the effect that this scrutiny can have, especially when this place feels strongly about an issue. I think he is referring to the assisted dying Bill, which this House passed. As I have said before at business questions, I expect the upper House to take into consideration the fact that we, the elected House, supported it, and other measures.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Does the Leader of the House seriously think it is reasonable for the Government to announce a new framework that will have a profound effect on Mid Buckinghamshire—and indeed every constituency represented in this House, not least as regards food security—by written ministerial statement, rather than through an oral statement in the Chamber, which would allow scrutiny by Members from all parties? Will he reflect on that, particularly as Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Question Time continues to be just 40 minutes long, rather than a full hour? Will he ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make a full oral statement in the House about the framework?
Sir Alan Campbell
I will consider that request. The hon. Gentleman makes a point that others have made about DEFRA questions; given the circumstances in which we find ourselves, they ask whether we should look at how much time Departments get for questions. That can change over time. We should make sure that the length of departmental questions reflect the circumstances. There is also a balance to be struck when it comes to oral statements in the Chamber. There are important matters that this House has to debate, and how many oral statements are necessary is a bit of a moot question. There are ways that he can find out the answers that he wants, other than waiting for an oral statement from the Government; for example, he could ask for a Westminster Hall debate.
Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)
Many constituents have raised concerns about the restrictions on Palestinian worshippers accessing the al-Aqsa mosque—one of Islam’s holiest sites. They fear that the measures, which have been presented as security-related, may be limiting freedom of worship and increasing control over access. These concerns sit alongside the wider humanitarian situation in Gaza; reports indicate that hundreds have been killed and many more displaced since the ceasefire, though figures remain difficult to verify. Will the Leader of the House provide time for a ministerial update on the steps that the Government are taking to protect civilians, uphold access to places of worship and support progress towards a two-state solution?
Sir Alan Campbell
The UK strongly condemns the Israeli Security Cabinet’s decision to expand Israeli control over the west bank. We have called on Israel to reverse this decision immediately, and strongly condemn the increase in settler violence against Palestinian civilians. The Government will continue to support the implementation of the Gaza peace plan and the two-state solution. I will bear in mind my hon. Friend’s request for a Minister to come to the House to give an update, but over the past few months, the Government have not been shy in bringing forward statements on this very important matter.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
My constituents live along what would have been a route for construction traffic for High Speed 2, when it was proposed that it would continue up to Crewe. Because my constituents’ daughter has a life-limiting condition, the Select Committee requested that HS2 Ltd buy my constituents’ house, so that their daughter would not be adversely affected by dust and other pollution from the construction traffic. Since then, it is difficult to say that HS2 Ltd has behaved honourably in any way at all. Recently, it has reduced the amount that it is willing to pay my constituents, on the estate agent’s valuation, although that is expressly forbidden under the agreement that my constituents had with HS2 Ltd. I know that I am not the only MP whose constituents have been poorly treated by HS2 Ltd. Will the Leader of the House organise a meeting with me, the other MPs affected, and the relevant Minister, so that we can discuss how to properly hold HS2 Ltd to account on its commitments?
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
I do not know whether the Leader of the House’s preferred order is a single, a double, or even a treble, but I hope that he agrees with me that our pie and mash shops are an important part of this country’s heritage. Unfortunately, Cockney’s on Portobello Road has been threatened with a doubling of its rent, which would put the shop out of business. Over 3,500 of my constituents have signed my letter to the owner, asking for a reasonable negotiation. Will he join me in paying tribute to our pie and mash shops, and outline what support might be available from the Government to protect these important community institutions and enable them to survive on our high streets?
Sir Alan Campbell
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend: businesses like Cockney’s are a valuable part of England’s local and cultural heritage, and we must do all we can to support our traditional high street businesses. Although it might look as if mine is a double order, I confess that, in reality, it is not. The Government are committed to supporting high streets and permanently low tax rates for 750,000 retail and hospitality properties. These are matters of concern in other constituencies, too, and I encourage him to apply for a debate so that we can continue to enjoy pie and mash.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Reform)
I have absolutely no doubt that the Leader of the House will have joined all of us in celebrating St Patrick’s day on Tuesday 17 March. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for hosting a St Patrick’s day celebration in Speaker’s House. However, why are the Ulster banner and the cross of St Patrick not flown from the Houses of Parliament? It is right that flags are flown for Wales, Scotland and England on patron saint days, but no flag is flown for Northern Ireland, so can we rectify that for next year? Will the Leader of the House ensure that we have a St Patrick’s day debate in the Chamber, as we usually do? It is right that we discuss British-Irish relations, particularly the negative effect of the Windsor framework, which has divided our United Kingdom and is a democratic outrage.
Sir Alan Campbell
I will raise the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about which flags are flown and when—he is a doughty campaigner on that matter. I join him in wishing everyone a happy St Patrick’s day, and hope that they partied and enjoyed it. I have to say, his loneliness on the Reform Benches suggests that whenever his new colleagues party, they are somewhere else and he is never invited. But he is always welcome with us.
Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)
Capita’s management of the civil service pension scheme—the latest in a string of failures—is a total disaster. My constituents are dealing with errors and delays, and are struggling to make ends meet, yet we are rewarding Capita by handing it another multimillion-pound contract. Can we have a debate about preventing repeated awards to failing contractors, and upholding Labour’s manifesto commitment to the biggest insourcing programme in a generation?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that matter, which, as she will know, has been raised by other Members. The procurement process for that contract was undertaken prior to the recent issues with Capita and the civil service pension scheme. Our priority remains to ensure the continuity of service and value for money for the public. However, I acknowledge the Members’ concerns and will ensure that Ministers have heard my hon. Friend’s question.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Co-operative Society relies on a supply of glass eels to meet its regulatory commitment to be a sustainable eel fishery, but the supply from GB rivers is now being blocked because of EU wildlife trade regulations. That issue has been raised with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem MPs. My concern is the sustainability of eel stocks in Lough Neagh, and our eel fishermen. Will the Leader of the House advise me on how best to get a common-sense, positive resolution to this issue from DEFRA?
Sir Alan Campbell
The hon. Gentleman raises a matter of great importance to his constituency and that part of Northern Ireland. We had DEFRA questions this morning, but I will ensure that the relevant Minister is aware of the matter, and get the hon. Gentleman an update. Once he has that update, we will decide whether a statement or a debate is the best way forward.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I am sure that the whole House will agree that we could not do our jobs without the hard work and dedication of our staff. Will the Leader of the House join me in commending Mark Grayling, who has been with me for five years, who worked for other MPs before, and who has dedicated his working life to public service and good causes. He retires at the end of the month. The only blemish that we can find on Mark’s career is that—with respect to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand)—he is a Norwich City fan. My team and I will miss Mark greatly.
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to congratulate Mark Grayling on his retirement. As we all know, the dedication of those who work behind the scenes is vital in supporting Members in their duties, and Mr Grayling’s long service exemplifies that commitment. I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in praising Mark’s excellent work and in wishing him a long and happy retirement.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
I welcome the fact that Cavendish Street in Keighley is to be upgraded thanks to the investment secured through the previous Conservative Government’s towns fund, but among the brilliant local businesses the street is still home to several dodgy shops. They were stripped of their alcohol licences for illegal activity just last week, but they remain open and no convictions have followed. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time so that we can propose that when shops are found to be carrying out illegal activity, they can be shut down and replaced with proper, law-abiding, independent businesses?
Sir Alan Campbell
These matters are often better decided locally because they depend on local circumstances, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to go into greater detail and hear from the relevant Minister, in case the existing rules are not being applied properly, I encourage him to apply for a Westminster Hall debate.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)
Eight months after the Prime Minister promised a call for evidence on Gabe’s law following the tragic death of 15-year-old Gabriel Santer, we are still waiting. Meanwhile, preventable deaths continue in multi-storey car parks. Companies such as Q-Park, despite multiple incidents and now a state-wide suicide prevention strategy, are still being awarded NHS contracts. Does the Leader of the House agree that that is unacceptable, and will he commit to setting up a meeting with Gabe’s father, who leads the Gabe’s law campaign, and the relevant Ministers to discuss the prospect of the Government reviewing those contracts to ensure that all operators that apply for Government contracts meet consistent nationwide suicide prevention standards across all their sites?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this very concerning matter. We want to prevent future tragedies and our thoughts remain with Gabe’s family and friends. I will ensure that my hon. Friend’s concerns are drawn to the attention of the relevant Minister, and the Minister will decide about a meeting with my hon. Friend and Gabe’s family so that the matter can be taken forward.
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
For workers at Lindsey oil refinery in my constituency, the clock is ticking towards the end of this month, when they will receive their final redundancy notice. We had a useful meeting with the Energy Minister on site a couple of weeks ago, but I am sure that the workers would appreciate an update statement, in open session, where they can hear directly from the Minister about what progress has been made since that meeting.
Sir Alan Campbell
This is an important and concerning matter, and the hon. Gentleman has been a key campaigner in supporting not only his constituents but those in the wider region. I will draw the matter to the attention of the relevant Minister, but we have Energy Security and Net Zero questions next week. He may wish to hear from the Minister directly. If he wants to follow up with a meeting with Ministers and others, I will help him to arrange that.
Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)
In Cardiff West, four banks have now closed—HSBC, Halifax, Barclays and, as of June, Lloyds bank in Canton. With those cumulative closures, a large part of my constituency will be left with extremely limited access to face-to-face banking services. I have met Lloyds and I have written to Link to highlight my concerns about the lack of appropriate infrastructure to access cash and other banking activities, but I have been very disappointed in their responses. Will the Leader of the House allocate Government time for a debate on the legislation that supports the important work of Link, and whether its mandate should be widened to consider not only access to cash but all other relevant banking activities?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that matter, which has been raised consistently by all parties across the House. The Government understand the importance of face-to-face banking services, which is why we are committed to the roll-out of at least 350 banking hubs, more than 210 of which are already open. I will ensure that the relevant Minister has heard what my hon. Friend has said. I encourage him to apply for an Adjournment or Westminster Hall debate, because I am sure that others will wish to join him and raise matters concerning their own constituencies.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
I recently learned about the work of my constituent Claire Brown from Prestbury, who supports families with seriously ill children. She founded the charity Team Charlie, which raises funds to ensure that families with sick children can take holidays, after having raised £200,000 to fund brain cancer treatment for a boy called Charlie, who sadly passed away just over five years ago. Team Charlie enables families enduring immense emotional strain to take a break from hospital appointments and build precious memories. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Claire and those who contribute to Team Charlie?
Sir Alan Campbell
I absolutely will not only congratulate Claire on the work she is doing but thank her for it, because it is so important, and I congratulate Team Charlie on everything they do. As I have said on previous occasions, such work is the golden thread that runs through our communities—it is the best of our communities, and I thank Claire for that.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
Southend recently held its second City Day to celebrate and recognise us officially becoming a city following the tragic murder of Sir David Amess. This year the celebration stretched right across the city, including to Leigh-on-Sea in my constituency—a town filled with heritage and culture, and which I am backing to become UK town of culture 2028. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Councillors Matt Dent and Daniel Cowan, and the whole team at the city council, on their excellent work in delivering another brilliant City Day?
Sir Alan Campbell
I need to be careful because I am travelling back to my constituency later today—or that is the plan—but I do join my hon. Friend in congratulating everyone who contributed to making City Day in Southend such a huge success. During these anniversaries, we are reminded of the important work that Sir David Amess did, and we remember him with respect and fondness. I wish all communities well in seeking to be the UK town of culture, including Leigh-on-Sea but also, I should say, North Shields in my own constituency.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Following on from that, St Neots is the fastest growing town in Cambridgeshire, and our community-led festival has attracted 35,000 people in recent years, demonstrating the extraordinary cultural energy of the town. With the UK town of culture expression of interest deadline falling on 31 March, will the Leader of the House find time when we return from recess for a debate on the competition, so that Members can champion fully their towns before the spring shortlist is announced, and the Government can hear exactly why St Neots should win?
Sir Alan Campbell
The hon. Gentleman is doing his job, which is to stand up for his constituency. I will certainly look at his suggestion. There is a process under way, and I wish all the best to everyone seeking to get involved.
Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)
A local pharmacy has contacted me regarding the need for a fast resolution to this year’s settlement negotiations. The pharmacy’s leadership tells me that their wage, pension and national insurance costs will increase substantially in April, and as a result they are planning to reduce opening hours and make staff redundant. The sector is set to play a crucial role in the shift from hospital to community, but it remains under enormous pressure. Will the Leader of the House ask the Minister for Care to update the House on when pharmacies can expect to see the new settlement and whether it will be ahead of the new financial year?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for raising that issue; she is a very strong voice for her constituency. The Government are committed to improving access to community pharmacies, and this week we published the neighbourhood health framework, but I will ensure that the relevant Minister is made aware of my hon. Friend’s specific concerns, particularly on the request for an update by the end of this financial year.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
The development of the nuclear site at Wylfa in Wales is set to bring thousands of jobs and revitalise the local community. A similar site near my constituency would play an enormous role in the shift away from oil and gas towards energy independence and bringing costs down. Will the Leader of the House ask the Minister for Energy to meet me to discuss Great British Energy Nuclear’s assessment of Scotland’s nuclear opportunity?
Sir Alan Campbell
I will do so, not least because, as the hon. Lady points out, wherever such developments are happening across the country, people are able to benefit from them. I know that my constituents were able to benefit from such a project, so I will seek to do as she asks.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
Citadel Homes has issued demands for rent increases of over £200 a month, in tandem with no-fault eviction notices, to tenants in the Denton Holme area of my Carlisle constituency. Those affected have done nothing wrong. Will the Leader of the House ensure that in the final weeks before the abolition of no-fault evictions, Ministers do all that they can to ensure that landlords like Citadel Homes are held to account?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important matter. We are committed to improving the system for 11 million private renters. I am pleased that we are abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions, but as other hon. Members have said previously, there are concerns about what less scrupulous landlords may do in that period. I will raise the matter with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, because I know that he is very much aware of MPs’ concerns.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
The conversation continues in the nuclear industry about whether Wylfa should have been reserved for gigawatt-scale nuclear, leaving Oldbury for small modular reactors. The US ambassador has spoken publicly in The Daily Telegraph about his discussions with the Government regarding Wylfa’s capacity for gigawatt-scale nuclear. I have tabled written questions on these representations, yet the Government will not acknowledge that those specific conversations even took place. What avenues can the Leader of the House recommend so that we can compel the Government to provide a proper answer?
Sir Alan Campbell
The hon. Lady is right to raise concerns because it is right that MPs get the information that they need on behalf of their constituents. I will take this up with the relevant Minister and seek to get the answers that she wants.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
I understand the bus manufacturing expert panel held its final meeting this week, following Monday’s release of the 10-year zero emission bus order pipeline. The next five years are pivotal for the ZEB market to deliver the buses that we need. Especially crucial is further support for our British manufacturing sector, as 2025 saw foreign manufacturers obtain a majority market share of new registered zero emission buses for the first time. Will the Leader of the House encourage Transport Ministers to make a statement to Parliament on these important developments?
Sir Alan Campbell
We are committed to building a strong pipeline of future zero emission bus orders. The publication of the 10-year pipeline is a key milestone in this work and will boost British manufacturing. As a starter, I encourage my hon. Friend to raise his concerns at upcoming Transport questions on 26 March, but I will also raise with Ministers the prospect of updating the House in a statement, should that be necessary.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Christian community in Pakistan continued to face grave injustices and targeted violence throughout February 2026. Families were displaced, livelihoods destroyed, and many continue to live in fear for their safety and freedom. These ongoing persecutions underscore the urgent need for both national and international attention to safeguard fundamental human rights and ensure justice for victims. Will the Leader of the House ask the Foreign Secretary to set out what representations the Government have made to the Government of Pakistan regarding these ongoing injustices? What steps have been taken to raise concerns about freedom of religion or belief in Pakistan?
Sir Alan Campbell
As ever, the hon. Gentleman raises a serious issue in the responsible way that we have become accustomed to. He knows the UK is committed to defending freedom of religion and belief for all. The persecution of Christians in Pakistan is unacceptable. Protecting freedom of religion or belief is central to the UK Government’s human rights engagement in Pakistan, and we are committed to working with communities and supporting programmes that promote greater tolerance and religious freedoms. I will draw his remarks this morning to the attention of the Foreign Secretary and make sure that he gets an update.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
West Dunbartonshire is one of eight local authorities in Scotland fortunate enough to receive the UK Labour Government’s Pride in Place immediate impact funding, with £1.5 million to be spent this year, making a huge difference to local facilities, community groups and organisations right across West Dunbartonshire. One such recipient is Holm Park community ground, which received £240,000 of funding to make improvements. As a result, Clydebank football club received bronze award status yesterday. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Clydebank football club and wish the Bankies all the best for the rest of the season?
Sir Alan Campbell
I certainly will. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this matter. It is great news for everyone in Clydebank, and I understand the team are having a great season. It also demonstrates the importance of Pride in Place. This is not just about providing money to invest in communities; it is about communities making the key decisions for themselves. I hope that bronze status will help the club with its future plans and moving up divisions in the Scottish football league.
Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)
The issue of civil service pensions has been raised here repeatedly for months, yet Capita and MyCSP are still failing—now on commitments they made to put things right. My constituents continue to receive only holding responses, some since December, despite serious financial hardship and mental health concerns. Retirements remain on hold, lump-sum payments are not paid and self-set deadlines are missed. Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent statement on how the Government can hold Capita to account for its repeated failure and how we can ensure that civil servants are able to have dignity in their retirement?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this matter. As she acknowledges, it has been raised by many Members in the past few weeks and months as well as today. It is clear that these delays are unacceptable; this is not the service that people deserve. The Government acknowledge that resolving this issue is a matter of the utmost urgency. The Cabinet Office will continue to use all the available levers to hold Capita to account and ensure that it delivers on contractual service levels. Should she seek a debate on these matters, we already know that there are enough people in this room who have raised them to have a debate. She could then hear from a Minister about the progress being made.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
The constituents, businesses and residents of Wymondham are sick to the back teeth of not having a mobile phone signal for nearly a month now. The companies have fobbed us off with excuses and have given no information about this happening. Will the Leader of the House help me to secure a meeting with the relevant Minister so that I can raise my serious concerns about mobile phone companies not looking after their customers?
Sir Alan Campbell
As my hon. Friend will know, we are working with telecom companies to reduce poor mobile signal, particularly in rural areas. We have announced the shared rural network deal, which aims to deliver 4G coverage to 95% of all UK landmass by the end of 2025. I am very sorry to hear of what is happening in his constituency. Should he seek a meeting with the relevant Minister to vent his frustrations, I will help him to arrange that.
Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) (Lab)
My constituents in Thornton-Cleveleys have been shocked to learn that their homes are at high risk of contamination due to the presence of the forever chemical PFOA. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the need to ensure that polluters pay for the clean-ups needed in cases like this?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend raises a very concerning matter. We are working hard to minimise the harmful effects of forever chemicals. I will ensure that the relevant Minister hears her specific concerns and writes to her. Should she seek a meeting, I am happy to arrange that.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I am sure the Leader of the House will remember with regret that he was unable to join me and Gareth Gates in switching on the Christmas lights in Redditch last year. It will not surprise him that Redditch has launched its own town of culture bid, especially given that it is the home of Royal Enfield and Bordesley Abbey and the birthplace of John Bonham from Led Zeppelin and Grammy-award winner Harry Styles. I know the Leader of the House has to stay neutral in this process, but if he cannot join me for a gluten-free toastie at the Boathouse café on Arrow Valley lake, will he join me in wishing Redditch all the best in its bid?
Sir Alan Campbell
I have many regrets in my life, and that is definitely one of them! I thank my hon. Friend for raising this matter. I will certainly consider a visit at some point in the future, if not when Gareth Gates is there. As I have said, I wish well all communities seeking to be a town of culture, including North Shields in my own constituency—I am remaining neutral in these matters.
Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)
People in South East Cornwall regularly contact me with serious concerns about poor property management practices, such as high service charges and limited accountability from managing agents, including FirstPort. I am also hearing from residents who face new admin fees from housing providers, including £66 for every household just to issue an invoice for grass cutting. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to provide an update on progress towards improving accountability of managing agents and protecting my residents from unfair charges?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend raises a concerning and serious matter. Our draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill will end the feudal leasehold system. The measures it contains are not the final steps we intend to take regarding the regulation of managing agents, and we will set out further details in due course. However, I will make sure that the relevant Minister hears my hon. Friend’s concerns and gives her the update she seeks.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
I recently met my constituent Sam, who suffered life-changing injuries and lost a close friend when they were both hit by a silent falling tree in Sale. The tree that fell on Sam had a visual tree assessment months earlier and was not scheduled for major safety work. Sam wants Government action to mandate more thorough assessments of dangerous trees that go beyond purely visual assessments. Can the Leader of the House help me in seeking to take this campaign forward?
Sir Alan Campbell
This sounds like a heartbreaking and frustrating situation for my hon. Friend’s constituents, and we wish Sam well. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is updating the local authority tree and woodland strategy toolkit for 2026. The updated toolkit will include more detailed advice on health and safety and on liability, which will help councils to strengthen their approach. I will make sure that the relevant Minister hears my hon. Friend’s contribution today and provides him with an update on our plans.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
In Stoke-on-Trent, we have had to declare a heritage emergency, which really pains me. Across our towns, we have the most beautiful historic buildings, but they are sitting empty because the restoration costs are so high. That is not down to a lack of local will; it is the result of a funding gap that no one stakeholder can close alone. Will the Leader of the House please make time for a debate to look into how Government Departments, funders and partners can work together to unlock investment and breathe life back into our remarkable buildings before it is too late?
Sir Alan Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this matter to the House, because it is vital that we protect our heritage buildings. Earlier this year, we doubled our support for the heritage at risk fund to £15 million, but I know that many people across our communities are still frustrated. It is also a matter of interest across the House, so I urge my hon. Friend to seek a Westminster Hall debate—not only to allow others to share their concerns about their own constituencies, but to hear directly from Ministers.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
Last night, there was an emotional farewell for Councillor Ashley Dearnley, who attended his final full council meeting after an incredible 44 years of continuous service. As a Conservative, Ashley could be described as an endangered species within our borough, but his decency, courtesy and integrity and his hard work for Wardle, Shore and West Littleborough have won him widespread respect ever since he was first elected in 1982. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking Ashley for his services to democracy and wish him well in his retirement?
Sir Alan Campbell
I certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating Ashley on his remarkable service—44 years of continuous service to his community is an incredible achievement. I thank him, and indeed other councillors who reach such a milestone, whichever party they represent. I understand that Ashley quoted our dear friend Jo Cox in his farewell speech last night, saying that we have
“more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
That is a lesson that we should all take on board. I thank Ashley for his service and wish him a very happy and peaceful retirement.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
Last week, like many others, I watched in horror as the Union Corner building in Glasgow succumbed to a devastating fire, having stood as an iconic landmark of Glasgow for over 175 years. Thanks are due to firefighters such as crew commander John Banach, from Johnstone in my constituency, who worked tirelessly to contain the blaze, safeguarding lives and preventing further catastrophic damage to Glasgow Central station and the many historic buildings around it. Will the Leader of the House join me in paying tribute to John and the crews at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for their remarkable and valiant efforts to contain this terrible incident?
Sir Alan Campbell
I pay tribute to John and, indeed, his colleagues. I am sorry to hear of the devastating fire, but as my hon. Friend said, firefighters acted heroically to save Glasgow Central station and many of the historic buildings that surround it, and they contained the fire. I join her in paying tribute to John and all the crews at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for their work. I also place on the record my congratulations and thanks to my hon. Friend, whose work on behalf of Ukraine’s children was this week recognised, quite rightly, by the Ukrainian Government.
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)
I share my residents’ anger that a Thames Water site has reportedly released over 900 hours of sewage into the River Stort, one of our precious local chalk streams, since the start of the year. I have written to Thames Water and the Environment Agency to raise my community’s concerns about the lack of urgency in tackling sewage discharge. Will the Leader of the House join me in calling on Thames Water to take urgent action to protect our precious local chalk streams, and will he help to facilitate a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss this case in more detail?
Sir Alan Campbell
The Government are absolutely committed to cleaning up our waterways and protecting chalk streams. We have passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 and introduced the water White Paper, and the new water reform Bill will create the laws that we need to fundamentally change the system. I absolutely join my hon. Friend in calling on the Environment Agency and Thames Water to ensure that action is taken. I hope that they have heard his comments today. Should he seek a meeting with the relevant Minister to talk about these matters further, I will help him to facilitate it.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Residents in my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency rely on the postal service to stay connected with loved ones, especially given the paucity of digital connectivity across Cornwall. However, residents have been complaining to me that they have not received post for over a month, only to receive a backlog of post containing mail relating to medical appointments and financial information. Will the Leader of the House help me to secure a meeting with the relevant Minister, so that we can better deliver outcomes for my constituents beyond the stock Royal Mail template responses?
Sir Alan Campbell
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that the public rightly expect a well-run postal service. There was a Westminster Hall debate on Royal Mail’s performance yesterday, which shows how important these matters are to Members across the House. I know that Royal Mail listens closely to these sessions, and I hope that it has heard my hon. Friend’s concerns. I will certainly help him to secure a meeting with the relevant Minister.
Bob Blackman
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just want to make sure that the record is corrected. Before I mentioned Peterborough temple, I sent an email out of courtesy to the office of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) this morning to inform him that I was intending to raise it. I was also extremely cautious to talk only about things that are in the public domain, because there is an ongoing court case and I did not want to refer to any further details.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which is now on the record.
Jesse Norman
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would be grateful if you could clarify that the House’s position is, and has always been, that we expect Members to show courtesy by informing other Members if they intend to mention them, not their constituency, and that in the normal course of business, Members of this House may always refer to places without any intention of discourtesy towards the Members of Parliament who represents them.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. In exchanges during business questions and other proceedings in the Chamber, to which I think he refers, the context in which a question is asked is important. Where a question relates directly to a matter in another Member’s constituency, I encourage Members to show courtesy and let the Member know.
International Development
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Yvette Cooper)
Alongside the written ministerial statement published this morning, I want to update the House on the Government’s revised approach to international development and official development assistance allocations. National security is the first duty of Government, and this country faces the most serious security situation for a generation. For too long under previous Governments our defence investment was cut back, so last year this Government took the necessary decision to deliver the biggest increase in defence spending since the cold war—the importance of that a decision has been demonstrated again in recent weeks as UK jets fly defensive operations in the middle east while our carrier strike group has been preparing to head to the High North.
In order to fund the additional defence spending, we had to take the hugely difficult decision to reduce our development budget over the next few years, moving to the equivalent of 0.3% of gross national income by 2027. That was set out by the Treasury in the spending review last year. Allies such as Germany, France and Sweden have made similar choices. This, for us, is not an ideological step; it is a difficult choice in the face of international threats. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have confirmed that it is our intention to return to 0.7% when the fiscal circumstances allow.
Our country has a strong, long history of leading on international development across the world. Let me be clear that our commitment to international development remains a central part of our foreign policy and a reflection of both our values and our national interest. It is a fundamental part of our moral purpose to stand up against global disease and hunger and to support those trapped in crises caused by conflict or climate change.
We know that preventing conflict, instability and crisis, displacement and migration, as well as supporting security, economic development, growth and trade, and building global partnerships are all the right things to do. They are also directly in the UK national interest, because as we have seen all too clearly in recent years, instability and crises across the world have a direct impact on us here at home. We have looked hard at what we prioritise and how we work, using the challenge of a reduced budget to find solutions that increase impact, focusing on what secures best value for money for taxpayers while reflecting UK values and the UK national interest, and what will seize new opportunities to bring real change to people’s lives.
First, we will prioritise support for countries and communities facing the worst humanitarian need—those affected by wars and crises. We are committing £1.4 billion a year to tackle human suffering in some of the worst humanitarian crises. Seventy per cent of all geographic support will be allocated to the most fragile and conflict-affected states. That includes fully protecting funds for Ukraine, where people were left in freezing conditions this winter; for Palestine, where civilians continue to suffer immensely in Gaza; and for Sudan, where we see the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. In the light of the current crisis in the middle east, this week I have taken the decision to add Lebanon to the countries whose funding will be fully protected next year.
That does mean that direct bilateral aid funding for other countries will be reduced. We have taken the decision to withdraw from traditional bilateral funding for G20 countries. Countries such as Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan will remain humanitarian priorities. They will see direct grant reductions, although we will continue to support multilateral programmes that operate in those countries. Countries such as Pakistan and Mozambique will remain development priorities, but their direct grant funding will be significantly reduced. Instead, we will run partnerships for investment that include growth funding through British International Investment and investment to tackle climate change, or lever in direct UK expertise to help them improve capabilities and raise funds directly themselves.
Secondly, we will focus on areas that maximise impact, transform lives and build stability—creating jobs and economic opportunities is the path out of poverty—as well as saving lives and improving health through backing proven global partnerships with which the UK has strong engagement and expertise. For example, we have our partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, where we will be investing over £1.2 billion, which will save the lives of millions of children around the world. We are investing £800 million in the Global Fund, which is expected to save up to 1.3 million lives and avert up to 22 million new cases of HIV, TB and malaria. We are investing in climate action that protects people and prevents future crises. Over the next three years, the UK will aim to spend around £6 billion of ODA as international climate finance, covering mitigation, adaptation and a focus on nature. Using different instruments and levers, we will aim to deliver an additional £6.7 billion of UK-backed climate and nature investments and to mobilise billions more in private finance. That includes measures to help countries to recover when disasters hit. For example, risk insurance in Jamaica enabled rapid payouts following Hurricane Melissa.
Thirdly, we will support women and girls, and we will invest in line with our values, even where other countries have changed their development approach. I have taken the decision to make support for women and girls not just a priority for development, but a central theme across the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. That means work to prevent violence, to champion women’s political and economic participation and to keep children learning even during conflict. We will continue support for things such as help for the survivors of horrific rape and sexual abuse and the kind of dedicated funding I announced recently in Sudan for women who have endured the most appalling and traumatic experiences. At least 90% of our bilateral ODA programmes will have a focus on women and girls by 2030. In an age of disinformation, we will also increase our funding to the BBC World Service by £11 million extra a year.
Fourthly, we will support and help reform international institutions to unlock greater finance for development and the innovation that can go far beyond UK aid and traditional grants. That means backing the most efficient and effective bits of the multilateral system to multiply our investment, because multilateral development banks are the largest source of development and climate finance and can lend to partner countries on the most affordable terms. That includes the World Bank’s International Development Association, where each pound that we invest unlocks £4 of additional finance, and to which we have increased our contribution by 40%. We are also working to double the amount of money that multilateral development banks can provide, listening to partners and backing Africa’s institutions to raise far more money at scale.
Our £650 million contribution to the African Development Fund will allow it to leverage up to £1.6 billion in grants and concessional loans, including issuing bonds on the London stock exchange for the first time. We will use our shareholder role and our seat at the table to press for innovation and reform, increasing the voice and representation of low-income and vulnerable countries and pursuing debt relief too, because the global financial system needs to deliver a fairer deal for developing countries and their citizens. The UN must continue to play its indispensable role, but also be more efficient, effective and coherent, so we will refocus on core priorities in line with the UN80 reform initiative.
Fifthly, we are transforming how we work, responding to the clear need for partnership, not paternalism. My noble Friend Baroness Chapman, the International Development Minister, has set out a series of shifts in how we work. We will be an investor, not just a donor. Our partners want to attract finance, not be dependent on aid. Through British International Investment, our finance institution, we are driving growth and innovation and unlocking private capital. That is why I signed a joint agreement in Ethiopia earlier this year for energy transmission projects worth £300 million, enabled by a British International Investment company that delivers UK investment across Africa. That is the kind of partnership that also helps Ethiopians find work at home, rather than considering dangerous international migration overseas.
We are also making reforms to strengthen systems rather than providing services, so that countries can thrive better without aid. For example, our partners want to educate their children themselves, rather than having us try to do it for them, so we are helping to support teacher training and curriculum design. We are moving from providing grants to providing expertise, drawing on the best of British know-how and mobilising UK strengths from inside and outside Government, whether that is from world-class universities, specialists in the tech sector, the City of London, the Met Office or His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. For example, tax expertise helped Ghana generate an additional £100 million in revenue to invest in education, health and priorities. Finally, we are backing local solutions rather than remote international approaches, because organisations locally know their populations best and are closer to those in need.
Allocating a reduced budget inevitably leads to hard choices and unavoidable trade-offs, so we are focusing aid on the people and places that need it most, and we will still be a major player. We expect to be the fifth-biggest funder in the world. We will still use international leadership, such as our 2027 G20 presidency, to shape the global agenda for development. We will continue to use other policies and levers so that lower income countries benefit from trade and growth. We will tackle flows of illicit finance and dirty money, which harm developing countries most and fuel crime on everyone’s streets.
This modernised approach to international development and our allocation of ODA reflect our values and our interests, because our driving force has been and continues to be working for a world free from extreme poverty on a liveable planet. We are clear that prosperity and stability in lower-income countries matters for outcomes here at home, whether that is the cost of living, the security of our borders, the resilience of our economy and upholding our UK values across the world. We are also clear that the UK’s sustained commitment to international development is about delivering both at home and abroad. I commend this statement to the House.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of her statement, but I have listened carefully, and what we have heard today will do little to reassure this House, the development sector or the British taxpayer. After more than a year of uncertainty and delay, 12 days before the start of the new financial year, we still know little about how Labour will reform development. A reduction in funding has to be accompanied by genuine reform, and I remind her that it was the Conservative party that pushed the Government to reallocate funding from development to defence. It was Labour that conceded.
We hear warm words about a fundamental change in approach and about moving from donor to investor, but the Foreign Secretary has not told us what that means in practice. What programmes have been cancelled this year as a result of these reductions? Which partnerships have been scaled back? Which commitments made by this country will no longer be honoured? We on the Opposition Benches are clear that development spending must be rooted firmly in Britain’s national interest, economic security, national security and health security. That is the anchor; that is the test.
The Foreign Secretary talks about moving from donor to investor, yet almost a decade ago, the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), set out the UK’s first economic development strategy. These subjects featured in the 2023 international development White Paper. What exactly will be new in the Government’s approach? How will the investor model operate? What metrics will be used to measure return, not just financially, but in terms of stability, resilience and alignment with UK interests? What will the Foreign Secretary do to make the private sector much more of an engine in development?
The Foreign Secretary has announced that bilateral aid to G20 countries will end, with the exception of Turkey. What specific programmes will the UK fund in Turkey? How much will be allocated and what assessment has been made of the direct benefit to the UK?
I want to press the Foreign Secretary on oversight and accountability. Spending is being reduced and reprioritised, and there have been briefings about the future of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. That body was established to ensure that every pound delivers value for money. Will it continue in its current form, with full independence and authority? If not, what will replace it? Weakening scrutiny at the very moment of greatest change risks undermining public confidence entirely. She says it remains the Government’s intention to return to 0.7% of GNI on development. What are the fiscal circumstances that would allow that and what is her expected timescale?
Turning to priorities, the Foreign Secretary has spoken about climate finance, but at a time when the country faces serious fiscal constraints—driven by this Government’s own economic choices—can she explain why this remains a central pillar? Should our first priorities not be economic resilience and national security, including global health security? On the latter, the Conservatives have a proud record of supporting Gavi and the Global Fund. What will she do to ensure that the UK remains a strong contributor in an era when the ODA envelope is smaller?
The multilateral development system needs a complete overhaul. Given Labour’s plans to reduce bilateral aid funding, does the Foreign Secretary have a serious plan to drive reform of the multilateral development banks? Will she push for much more robust accountability, transparency and conditionality? How will she ensure better outcomes and a stronger focus on delivery? Crucially, is she working in concert with our key allies, including the US, to drive that reform? The World Bank under its current president is undergoing a significant reform programme, which could be much more widely rolled out across the MDB ecosystem. Is she discussing how Britain could support that?
Will the right hon. Lady update the House on support for British international investment? This is a genuine success story, mobilising private capital, supporting growth and advancing British interests. Does she have any plans to strengthen it and to ensure that it continues to generate strong returns? What of Britain’s soft-power institutions that support our influence around the world? What is her vision for the future of the British Council in this new landscape? Is it being supported or quietly squeezed?
The Foreign Secretary omitted to mention the Commonwealth at all in her statement. How will she work with the Commonwealth Secretariat and our partners to ensure Britain’s partnership offers are much more attractive, so that our friends do not turn to China, which seeks only exploitation and closed trade? More broadly, is she exploring the potential for minilateral partnerships with close security partners?
There are pressing geopolitical questions, not least how the Government is supporting countries vulnerable to Russian interference, including Moldova. What role will organisations like the Westminster Foundation for Democracy play going forward? Last week, I had the privilege of visiting Ukraine. This week, we welcomed President Zelensky to this House. It is important that we reaffirm our commitment to the humanitarian response to Putin’s illegal invasion.
This House is entitled to answers, the sector is entitled to certainty and the British people are entitled to know how their money is being spent and why. For decades, UK development policy has delivered transformative results around the world. It works at its best not when we are a charity, but when we are ruthlessly focused on driving genuine outcomes with genuine objectives, have rigorous criteria for selecting projects and take a clear view on how to play to our strengths.
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Lady obviously has a set of questions, but it would have been better if she had also taken some responsibility for the situation we are in, because it was the Conservatives who hollowed out the investment in defence with a £12 billion cut after 2010, who failed to respond to the end of the post-cold war dividend, and who left our overall public finances in, frankly, a perilous state by the time we reached the 2024 election. That situation left us with difficult decisions and choices to make. We are having to reverse some of the cuts they made in defence and to keep increasing defence spending, and we are having to make difficult decisions to fund that.
The right hon. Lady asked a series of questions on particular areas, but I gently point out that she said nothing to explain what her approach would be under the Conservative party’s policy to reduce development spending to 0.1% of GNI—a two-thirds reduction in the funding we are setting out. There was no explanation of whether that funding would be cut from Sudan, vaccines or global health support.
I say to the House that we are honouring our commitments, such as those to the World Bank’s International Development Association programme. The ICAI will continue, and we are increasing funding for the British Council, but that will come from outside ODA funding. That will come from additional funding, because we recognise the hugely important role that the British Council plays across the world.
The new approach we are taking to support investment and to shift from donor to investor was encapsulated in the “new Approach to Africa”, published by my noble Friend Baroness Chapman before Christmas. That set out the equal partnership and respect that underpin the new framework for our approach to Africa, which has been strongly welcomed by African countries.
On Turkey, we are continuing to provide support for refugees, just as we are providing support that helps refugees in places like Chad, because we know that providing that support in region also prevents people from making dangerous journeys and the kind of migration that is exploited by criminal smuggler gangs. There are areas where we are reducing direct aid, and that obviously leads to difficult decisions, but we are working to increase investment in those areas through things like the World Bank and other programmes. That is the right thing to do to ensure that we can both support the defence investment we need and continue to champion international development.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Chair of the International Development Committee.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope that my voice will last—the Foreign Secretary might get off lightly.
This was meant to be a statement about the 40% cuts that the Government are bringing forward. Instead, the Foreign Secretary spoke at length about the policy and direction shifts that she is making, which I think are the right ones to make, but we have not discussed the policy announcements around the cuts. I have had an embargoed copy of the equality impact assessment, for which I am grateful. When that is in the public domain, we will have the information that would allow us to have an informed debate.
I fear that the Government’s decisions have been based on a false dichotomy. Defence has been pitched against international development, but ask any military person and they will say that the best line of prevention and first defence is our development money, because it keeps people safe and secure in their homes, keeps them prosperous and holds Governments to account. In the world we find ourselves in, I am fearful that taking away that first line of defence will have massive consequences.
I will give a couple of stats to illustrate where we are. There are 61 ongoing conflicts. Less than 12% of the global population lives under a liberal democracy—the lowest in 50 years—with 5.8 billion people living under autocratic rule. Over the next 15 years, 1.2 billion people will reach working age with only a projected 400 million jobs.
Development spend keeps people fed, safe and prosperous. Our aid cuts will reduce that. Girls in South Sudan will no longer have education, polio will surge, civil society is being abandoned and the poorest will not be fed. Rather than providing solutions, we will see the consequences of the UK stepping away from the international stage for our reputation and influence, and, as the former Home Secretary well knows, we will see people come to our shores to seek sanctuary and opportunity.
Can we also spare a thought for the staff in the FCDO who face 25% cuts right now, and specifically the country directors who are having to go to people they have spent years building relationships with to say that we are no longer standing by them financially?
I do not really have a question because I have not been given the information, but I say to the Foreign Secretary that these cuts do not aid our defence—they make the whole world more vulnerable. Can I please ask that as we go forward, she listens to the ICAI report about transparency, where we are prioritising money and its impact, rather than just chasing the bottom line?
Yvette Cooper
I thank my hon. Friend for the points she has made and for being such a strong champion for international development and its wider purposes. I also thank her for the extensive work and scrutiny that her Committee does in this area.
My hon. Friend mentioned the interaction between development work and security across the world, and I agree with her that those issues are strongly linked. We have decided to prioritise some fragile and conflict-affected countries exactly because those development and security issues are so strongly interlinked. Our purpose is to better link the direct aid we provide with conflict and atrocity prevention.
We are linking those policy approaches in, for example, Sudan. We are fully protecting the funding for Sudan because of the scale of the humanitarian crisis, but we are linking that to much stronger policy interventions, including for the women and girls facing such crises, and the work to support a ceasefire. The honest truth is that, if we could achieve a ceasefire in Sudan, that would have more impact than any humanitarian aid funding we can provide because, frankly, the humanitarian funding too often cannot get in because of the conflict. We need to join up strongly those policies with aid support.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the equalities impact assessment, which is being published today. Our intention had been to publish it by this point, but I understand it is being uploaded at the moment. I will be giving evidence to her Committee, but I can tell her that we looked at earlier assessments and adapted our decision making on the basis of that analysis to ensure that we are, for example, doing more to support women and girls and taking account of equalities issues.
I agree with my hon. Friend that these issues are interlinked, which is why they must continue to be linked as part of our foreign policy. We have to both defend our security and support international development, because those things are fundamentally linked: this is about both our values and our national interest.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
May I start by asking the Foreign Secretary why this extremely important statement on Britain’s commitments overseas is being announced on a Thursday, when most MPs are not here? Is it perhaps because the Government are ashamed of these cuts and want them to slip out unnoticed?
Something has gone badly wrong when a Labour Government cut the foreign aid Budget more deeply than Donald Trump or the last Conservative Government. This shameful moment is not only a moral catastrophe, but strategically illiterate. The cuts to the bilateral aid budget will be a direct and severe hit to Britain’s long-term interests, to our influence and our ability to shape events in regions critical to our national interest, and to growth in new markets, leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.
The Foreign Secretary makes great play of defence, but when the world is on fire we need more work on prevention of conflict, not less. By cutting aid and development, she weakens our security and will therefore need more defence spend down the line. If she does not believe me, she may like to believe the defence chiefs who have said so, including Lord Richard Dannatt. We Liberal Democrats oppose these appalling cuts and have set out credible alternatives to fund higher defence spend, including defence bonds and a higher digital services tax.
Does the Foreign Secretary not see the contradiction between her desire for a world free from extreme poverty on a liveable planet and these savage cuts? Where is the bravery and leadership that previous Labour Governments and the coalition Government showed to the poorest in the world? Where has the Government’s full commitment to address climate change gone? Where are the Labour party’s values, where did it mislay its moral compass and where is its strategic logic? When and how will she return to the 0.7% of GNI target enshrined in law by the coalition Government?
Yvette Cooper
Again, I gently remind the Front-Bench spokesperson that the Liberal Democrats were part of the coalition that cut the UK’s defence budget by £12 billion. She wants a more independent defence policy, but she has no serious plans to pay for it and she has never confronted the difficult choices that responsible Governments must take. On the Thursday issue, it is a working day in Parliament and she ought to take it seriously.
As a result of all these changes, we expect to be the fifth largest funder of international development, which is a sign of how seriously we take it. Many of the reforms that we are leading are driving greater impact of decisions and policies for other areas and countries to follow. Through more partnerships, with a greater focus on investment, we are increasing capabilities in and strengthening countries across the world. We are increasing our work on conflict prevention at a time when conflict and atrocities have escalated across the world. We are making a substantial, multibillion-pound investment in climate and nature, along with international investment. Prioritising reforms such as those to the World Bank will allow it to substantially increase its investment in some of the lowest-income countries in the world by multiple billions of pounds, which will help improve development, jobs and opportunities. We are also working in partnerships with countries.
There are difficult choices to be made, but a responsible Government cannot shy away from those difficult choices, and that is why we are supporting and championing international development alongside increasing investment in defence.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
As a former shadow International Development Minister, I know that one issue our nation has not grappled with is that 90% of the usurious levels of debt repayments for the poorest nations across our planet are governed by English law through the City of London. We could raise millions out of poverty without spending a penny, by introducing a debt justice law as called for by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development and other agencies. Has the Foreign Secretary given that any consideration?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend will know that the UK—certainly under previous Labour Governments—has a strong history of looking at debt relief, which was championed by Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Prime Minister. I recognise the strong work that my hon. Friend has done in this area and in championing these arguments. We are pursuing further reforms to debt relief, which is an important issue because countries should not be held back economically by unacceptable debt repayments that make them more fragile and end up in a vicious cycle. We are looking at further reforms in that area.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary’s decision that the UK will once again co-chair the global Media Freedom Coalition, but will she match that with financial support for independent media organisations and journalists in the growing number of countries where media freedom is under attack and US support has largely been withdrawn?
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Gentleman makes a really important point, and we do champion media freedom worldwide. That is why we have become a co-chair of that organisation, and the partnerships in different countries can look at these issues. It is also why we are increasing the funding for the BBC World Service. In Iran, for example, the BBC Persian service has been crucial to providing information for communities across the country. It has also proved vital in other areas as an independent voice that can counter misinformation and maintain the open debate and freedoms he mentions.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary is aware of the impact of humanitarian aid and how it saves lives in the midst of the most horrific situations that humans experience on this earth. She will also be aware of the vital role that UN agencies, including the World Food Programme, play in co-ordinating humanitarian actors in the midst of these crises. Will she set out the impact of these changes on humanitarian aid and on UN agencies? May I also say that her recognition of and focus on women and girls really matters, and many of us strongly support that?
Yvette Cooper
I welcome the work my hon. Friend has done over many years, and continues to do, on development and support for those in conflict and crisis who face the greatest poverty and suffering. She is right to highlight the importance of the UN and, more broadly, multilateral aid institutions. There are institutions that need to be reformed to be made more focused and efficient, but we also need to continue to support those multilateral institutions, because that is what allows us to multiply the effect of any investment we put in. That international architecture can go far further than any one country alone, which is why we have been working to protect funding for some international and UN agencies. There are reductions in many different areas, but we have still sought to keep that focus on international institutions, where other countries have chosen not to and have pulled out.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I support prioritising hard power over soft power to protect our national security. In her statement, the Secretary of State drew a direct link between additional defence spending and reducing the development budget, but that was the exact opposite of the position put forward by the Prime Minister when he was in opposition. In Hansard, on 13 July 2021, when the previous Government were reducing aid from 0.7%, he made the exact opposite case, saying that reducing overseas aid made us less secure and that we needed to continue with 0.7% to keep us safe. Does she accept that this is yet another example of the Government saying one thing in opposition and doing the exact opposite in office, ignoring the concerns raised by the Chair of the International Development Committee and others about the trade-offs that are quite normal to make in government?
Yvette Cooper
Again, I would gently point out to the right hon. Gentleman that this Government have had to deal with a defence investment programme that was hollowed out by his party in government. We have had to deal with that, as well as the difficult fiscal circumstances they left us with. It is right to increase defence investment. We have had to take difficult decisions to do so, but those decisions were set out by the Prime Minister over a year ago and then confirmed in the spending review. We are reforming how we do development so that we can maximise and increase the impact of every pound we spend. We are choosing not to do what the right hon. Gentleman’s party is proposing, which is to reduce international development to 0.1%. That would damage important programmes that we need for the future.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney) (Lab)
I welcome this development reset. I support the Government’s decision to invest in our country’s security now and our ambition to support development more in future. On Yemen, given the conflict and the overall fragility in the region, how do the Government ensure that UK aid spent there does not fall into the wrong hands?
Yvette Cooper
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for raising Yemen. This is a complex situation. We know there is immense humanitarian need, but there are also malign actors and huge risks around security, as well as that humanitarian crisis. That is why we have been working to ensure there are sufficient safeguards, but also working closely with international organisations and agencies in Yemen. It is important that we ensure that the investment we put in gets to those who need it most.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
Yesterday, I and my colleagues on the International Development Committee met staff from Action Against Hunger, who had just returned from Lebanon, to hear about the horrors they have seen on the ground there. I am grateful for the added support that has been talked about, but when we and the people of our country see, in real time on our phones and our TV sets, a world on fire in Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Palestine, and across the Gulf and elsewhere, it is surely madness to cut our aid budget—our soft power of hope and help—at this time of conflict and climate change. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that we would gain respect by doing the right thing and restoring the 0.7% now, which would be worth its weight in gold not just for the people of those troubled places but for ourselves in the months, years and decades ahead?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member rightly mentions Lebanon, where as we speak there is a huge humanitarian crisis. That is why in the past two weeks we announced an additional £15 million this year, particularly for Lebanon but also for some of the nearby areas, to provide urgent additional humanitarian and crisis support this year. It is why we have added Lebanon to the list of countries—alongside Sudan and Palestine, which he also raised—where we are protecting the funding next year as well, because this is so important. He talked about the scale of conflict. It is also why it is right that we target the aid we spend—the grant funding—on those areas that are in the greatest crisis and conflict, but also for other countries where they have Governments that we can work with. For example, we can help them to raise more taxes of their own, as we are doing in Ghana, or work with British International Investment, where we can put investment in growing their economy, which also helps them to raise revenue. We take different approaches for different countries in different circumstances. The aim is still the same: to provide support for people and their lives and the long-term economic development they need, but it does have to be done in different ways in different countries.
Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)
Over 220 million children worldwide are not in education. The UN sustainable development goal 4 is unlikely to be met by 2030. What investment is the UK making to support global efforts to help those children?
Yvette Cooper
I welcome my hon. Friend raising the issue of education. There is a particular issue with girls not being in education. It is also an issue in conflict areas, such as Sudan or Ukraine, where children’s education has been held back. That is why we are continuing the funding for Education Cannot Wait, because it provides the crucial funding in conflict zones and crises, particularly for refugee families in need of support. In other areas, we think the crucial need is to work with those Governments. In some countries we need to work in partnership with the Government concerned, because there are schools, there is provision and there are services, but for different local policy reasons too many people, particularly girls, are excluded. We want to work both internationally and bilaterally to support education.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Many of our constituents will want to react to this announcement today by increasing the amount of money they give. Will the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office continue to offer an aid match option? Given that 0.7% is still technically on the statute book, will the Foreign Secretary bring forward a named vote in this Parliament to make the changes she is announcing today?
Yvette Cooper
I welcome the hon. Lady’s point about aid match and how we can ensure that we help to use UK Government funding to lever in additional donations and support from huge numbers of people across the country, including through philanthropy. There is a strong commitment to that support. We will continue to have aid match agreements and arrangements in different areas, just as we did on Palestine over the Christmas period. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have confirmed our intention to return to 0.7% when the fiscal circumstances allow.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
I recognise how difficult today’s statement is—it is not a position that any Labour Government would ever want to be in. I welcome the commitment from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister to return to 0.7% as quickly as possible. I particularly welcome the protection and focus on women and girls, and on LGBT activity where other countries are withdrawing. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for aid match, will she continue to work with me to look at areas of expansion and ensure that generous people across the country have an opportunity to support and double UK efforts, particularly in fragile and conflict states, and on women and girls, and LGBT issues, where we are continuing the funding?
Yvette Cooper
I welcome my hon. Friend’s considerable work on the aid match programmes and on how we mobilise that support from communities across the country. She is right to highlight that there are particular issues, including in some of the most serious conflicts and humanitarian crises. That includes areas affected by the climate crisis. After Hurricane Melissa, for example, there was huge backing from communities across the country wanting to support aid for Jamaica. I am keen to work with my hon. Friend and others who want to support aid match programmes, including those for women and girls.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
The UK was once regarded as a world leader in international development, yet today UK aid cuts are the steepest, deepest and most brutal of any G7 country—astonishingly, they are going further and faster in withdrawing support from the world’s most vulnerable people than even Donald Trump’s US Administration. It is utterly shameful. We are not hearing today how deep and where specifically those cuts are, but we know that they will deny children education and prevent access to lifesaving medicine, while also hitting those who live in extreme poverty hardest. In short, they are death-sentence cuts. With no separate Department now, or even an elected international development Minister for us to scrutinise and ask these detailed questions, how can the Secretary of State expect anyone to seriously believe that this Government remain committed to international development in an era of acute global instability?
Yvette Cooper
I have set out very strongly the priority that we are giving to the countries affected the worst by conflict. In fact, the most extreme poverty is now in those countries affected by conflict. For example, there is substantial risk of famine in some areas of Sudan as a result of the ongoing conflict and crisis there. We have to combine providing and maintaining the investment to support Sudan with working to deliver humanitarian corridors to enable UN organisations to get into the country and pursue a desperately needed humanitarian truce. Those things are all linked.
There are important but difficult decisions that have to be made. I know that some people want to walk away from development altogether—and some people want to walk away from defence altogether. This Government are clear that we need to champion international development and increase support for defence together.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement and particularly welcome the increase in funding for the BBC World Service, which is so crucial in delivering accurate and trusted journalism in this age of misinformation and disinformation. I also welcome the prioritisation of countries affected by war and crisis, particularly Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine. Will she confirm that the support for Ukraine will cover the tracing, rescue, return and rehabilitation of the 19,951 Ukrainian children who have been forcibly deported by Russia?
Yvette Cooper
I can confirm that we are increasing the investment for the BBC World Service by £11 million. That comes on top of the increase that we have already made this year to support the World Service because we recognise the vital role it plays. I can confirm that in Ukraine we will continue to back efforts to support the lost and kidnapped children, and their families, who have been through horrendous experiences, and some of whom I have met when visiting Kyiv. I also pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend, because I know that she has been championing this issue relentlessly, year after year, and has been recognised not just by this Government but by the Government of Ukraine. I thank her.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I welcome the continued commitment to combating terrible diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, but the Foreign Secretary has not mentioned polio. After many years of investment, we have almost got to the point of eradicating the disease. If that programme ceases, the risk is that polio will come back in a big way. In areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan the disease still seems to be rampant, and they are involved in a conflict, as she will know. Will she confirm that funding for the programme will continue, so that we can eradicate polio once and for all?
Yvette Cooper
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for global health and the impact of the commitment. However, we are not continuing the direct funding around polio. That is a difficult decision. What we are doing is insisting that polio is covered as part of the Gavi funding. We are funding more than £1.2 billion in investment in Gavi and the vaccines programme, and their work is now expanding into polio. Given the multiplicity of different programmes in some of those areas, we think the important thing is not to have overlapping programmes but to focus, particularly through Gavi and the Global Fund, on vaccines and on eradicating those diseases.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
Beyond aid, our party has a proud history in this area, from debt relief to immunisation finance and leveraging capital investment in programmes such as the World Bank’s International Development Association fund. Will the Secretary of State give us an idea of how much of a priority that will be for the UK’s G20 presidency? Given that Ukraine now represents one of our biggest humanitarian budgets, what message does she have for my former constituent, Roman Abramovich, who has missed the 90-day deadline to pay the more than £2.5 billion he owes from the sale of Chelsea football club, which could be used for humanitarian needs right now in Ukraine and could alleviate some of those budgetary pressures?
Yvette Cooper
I welcome my hon. Friend’s focus on debt relief and the World Bank’s IDA programme, which we are increasing by 40% because it is such an important programme. I can confirm that those issues will be an important part of our G20 approach and plans for next year. I also strongly welcome what he said about Roman Abramovich and the need to get that money from the sale of Chelsea. It should be going to support families and for humanitarian support across Ukraine. That is where that money should be, not held up by someone’s refusal to follow the obligations that he committed to.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
The Secretary of State referred to the link between overseas aid and our security. Preventing conflicts, promoting stability and reducing migration is a classic example of when prevention is not only better, but cheaper, than a cure. Does she accept that cutting aid undermines our national security? What assessment has she made of the longer-term consequences for this country of these short-sighted cuts?
Yvette Cooper
We have to both increase our defence spending and champion international development in order to maintain our security here at home. That means focusing in particular on the areas where conflict is greatest. I worry that continued instability in Sudan, for example, allows extremist groups to flourish, which creates regional instability and increases migration. That is why we are continuing to support refugees in the region and in places like Turkey. Again, that is to prevent migration and instability. We are focusing our development funding and our policy measures on a lot of that prevention work. It is also important that we see this as investment and policy measures going hand in hand, and that we do not look at them in isolation.
Richard Baker (Glenrothes and Mid Fife) (Lab)
Later today I am meeting Inclusion International, which supports people with learning disabilities throughout the world. The focus on women and girls that my right hon. Friend referred to is welcome and important, but there is great concern among disability organisations over the impact of widespread cuts to international aid for millions of people—millions of disabled people—affected by conflict. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that she and her colleagues in Government will work with international aid organisations so that initiatives providing lifeline support to disabled people, often facing poverty, can continue?
Yvette Cooper
We will continue to work with international organisations on this; in fact, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore), is due to have meetings on disability issues later today. We looked at this issue to ensure that there would not be a disproportionate impact, particularly with regard to equality impact assessments. We recognise that there is a difficult impact from reductions in aid budgets. That is why this has been such a difficult decision to make.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
Pitching defence against development is utterly short-sighted—it is a totally misjudged binary. These aid cuts make us all less secure. The Foreign Secretary has talked about this as a difficult choice; in fact, it is the wrong choice. Let us be clear: under this Labour Government, we are seeing deeper aid cuts in the UK than in any other G7 country, which will take us down to the lowest level of overseas aid—0.24% of gross national income—since 1970, which will have hugely damaging effects globally. I have three specific questions for the Foreign Secretary. First, when will she publish the country allocations so that we can see exactly where the axe is falling? Secondly, how will she ensure that poverty alleviation remains the focus of overseas development assistance in this context? Thirdly, how does she square this with the comments of her own Prime Minister, who has previously acknowledged that cutting aid makes the world less secure?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. Please answer just one question, Foreign Secretary.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Lady’s party wants to walk away from NATO, which would actually make our defence more expensive and more difficult, rather than ensuring that we can support both defence and international aid. This Government will still be the fifth largest investor in international development as a result of these changes. It is challenging, but it is also about being able to support both our values and the national interest.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Holy Scripture tells us that we should never walk by on the other side, and I am reassured by the Secretary of State’s statement that she agrees, even if she used other words. She is right to talk about value for money for taxpayers and the values that we hold close as Brits. I particularly welcome the commitment to Gavi. With that in mind, and as we work to make “Global Britain” mean something, will she update the House on the work of the Soft Power Council in recent months? I also urge her to use the Commonwealth to advance the values that she set out in her statement today. Will she meet me to discuss my thoughts on how we can do just that?
Yvette Cooper
The soft power strategy is being worked on with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as we speak. Both the BBC World Service and the British Council—both areas where we are increasing investment, not simply through overseas development but through other budgets—are important parts of soft power.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I am proud to have been part of the 2010-15 Government, when Michael Moore and others took us to 0.7% spending for aid. I think my Labour-voting constituents will be utterly stunned to hear the contents of the Foreign Secretary’s statement today. I do not understand the disconnect between this Government and the Blair and Brown Governments, whose aim it was to make poverty history. Could the Foreign Secretary say when she believes her Government will return to 0.7%, as she mentioned earlier?
Yvette Cooper
I would point out to the hon. Lady that the 2010-15 coalition Government cut our defence budget by £12 billion, which is what has placed us in the difficult situation we are in now—at a time when we face huge security threats. We will be the fifth largest funder of international development, exactly because we are continuing to champion it. Having been part of the previous Labour Government—which made priorities of debt relief and tackling global poverty, hunger and hardship—is exactly why I am so clear that we need to continue to champion international development, especially in relation to women’s and girls’ issues, and we will continue to do so.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats have alternative plans for funding defence, because the plans being laid out today put Britain and the world at risk. The World Bank says that climate change could drive 200 million people from their homes and the World Health Organisation has said that climate change is the biggest threat to human health. The Government’s own national security assessment on global ecosystems, which they tried to suppress, could not be clearer:
“Ecosystem collapse is highly likely to drive national security risk.”
Why are the Government choosing to ignore the evidence and their own security experts by slashing international climate and nature funding, which protects people at home and abroad?
Yvette Cooper
The investment that I set out in the statement includes £6 billion of climate finance for climate change and nature, and a further £6 billion in UK-backed investment, including more support to bring in private sector investment and extremely innovative approaches to climate finance. We will be able to tackle these issues globally only if we work in partnership and have a strong voice on the international stage. This is about policy and funding operating together.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Secretary of State has been given a challenging statement today about issues that we all consider. I very much welcome the prioritisation of women and girls in conflict zones; that is essential. Does the Secretary of State agree that we also need to ensure funding to stop the radicalisation of young men? Training young men to work and find a fulfilling role is worth the investment to halt the breeding grounds of anger and despair, and to bring hope. Does the Secretary of State agree that we all have a responsibility in this regard? What will she do to help those young men by stopping them being radicalised and turning to violence and, instead, giving them hope?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I have discussed with Foreign Ministers across the world the importance of combining opportunities for young people with strong security measures to prevent radicalisation and extremism. That is about security in different regions, but it is also about our security at home.
UK Steel Strategy
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Peter Kyle)
With permission, I will make a statement on the Government’s steel strategy. I begin by declaring my membership of Community and GMB trade unions.
Resilient economic growth is the main driver of social justice, and steel is essential to both. Steel underpins the key growth-driving sectors in our modern industrial strategy. It has strengthened and sustained communities in England, Scotland and Wales. The future of steel in Britain is about ensuring the future strength and security of our national economy.
We honour steel’s proud industrial past, but we do not live in it. We are ambitious and excited for Britain’s future steel sector. Steel is essential for advanced manufacturing, clean energy, construction, defence and digital technologies. Steel is vital for sustaining thousands of lives and livelihoods, with good jobs, apprenticeships and opportunities. Steel is central to communities in Port Talbot, Motherwell, Scunthorpe, Sheffield and Teesside.
This House will be acutely aware that Britain’s steel sector has experienced decades of decline, from the failures of Thatcherism that closed Consett and Ravenscraig and shrank Corby to the damage done by the Tories to Redcar and Port Talbot. Steel manufacturing in Britain serves as the starkest possible monument to the failure of Thatcherite monetarism and its record of industrial vandalism. By contrast, Labour has an activist industrial strategy that determinedly targets key industries, technologies and strategically important sectors for economic development, national security and resilience.
In the last five decades, steel industry employment in Britain has declined by 90%, from more than 300,000 jobs in 1970 to less than 30,000 today. We are closing that decades-long chapter of deliberate de-industrialisation and committing anew to strengthening and sustaining Britain as a steelmaking nation. High operating costs and global overcapacity have made it much harder for British steel companies to compete. Manufacturers have looked to cheap, imported steel to keep costs down. As a result, investment have tapered off, capabilities have reduced and communities have been let down. Crude steel production has declined by more than 50% in the last decade.
Faced with these challenges, previous Governments failed to present a long-term vision for steel in Britain. They were reactive, not proactive. They intervened to support specific companies at specific times, but failed to improve the general conditions for the industry as a whole. They lacked the necessary boldness, creativity and urgency. This Government will not make that same mistake. Far from believing that steel decline is inevitable, we embrace a future for British steel manufacturing as a staple of sustainable, resilient economic growth and our national security. While the industry still faces challenges today, we will do everything we can to help it adapt, grow and succeed into the future, and our actions on steel will be driven by what is best for our national interest.
Our steel strategy sets out a series of actions to reverse the failures of the past: to build a strong and resilient steel sector, backed up with £2.5 billion of Government investment. That is on top of the £500 million that we have pledged for the steelworks at Port Talbot. Our ambition is for domestic production to meet up to half of Britain’s domestic demand. To support that effort, we will introduce a new trade measure to replace the existing safeguard. From 1 July, overall quotas for imported steel will be reduced by 60% compared with the safeguard. All steel coming into the UK above those levels will be subject to a 50% tariff. This measure will apply to imported steel products that can be made in the UK.
This is not a decision that I have taken lightly. I have done so to shield Britain’s steel industry from the damaging effects of global overcapacity, to ensure that Britain’s steel industry contributes fully to our critical national infrastructure and our defence, and to shore up the UK’s resilience to global shocks. Without this action, the UK’s steelmaking capability faces real jeopardy, leaving us reliant on overseas suppliers. I will not let that happen. Steel is essential for our energy security, our transport infrastructure and our industrial strategy, and in this volatile geopolitical climate in which we find ourselves, that kind of dependence is weakness. Britain’s national interest requires the strength of British-made steel. The tariff will be implemented once import quotas have been fully met. I believe that is essential for the resilience of sectors reliant on steel imports, including the car industry, construction and defence. We will review the measure in 12 months to make sure that it is working effectively.
Our approach reflects months of engagement between my Department, the Steel Council, businesses and trade unions. I thank the trade unions that have helped us, officials in my Department who have poured their heart and soul into this strategy, and my ministerial team for their contributions and leadership. We continue to engage constructively with the EU to protect vital UK-EU steel trade given our highly interconnected supply chains. Beyond the trade measure, we are backing electric arc furnaces to shift to greener, decarbonised steel production. As we see at Sheffield Forgemasters, electric arc furnaces have the technical capability that we need to produce steel to the very highest of standards for nuclear, for aerospace and for defence. This is important, as traditional blast furnaces will eventually reach the end of their operational lives. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I want to hear what the Secretary of State has to say. I am also certain that constituents want to hear him. This is a very important statement.
Peter Kyle
It is okay, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is just that everyone is shocked to see the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) in his place.
Electric arc furnaces are important as traditional blast furnaces will eventually reach the end of their operational lives and a managed transition is vital to maintaining supply. That is why we took control of British Steel last year, and we are currently working with the owner on the long-term future of the site.
The UK has the opportunity to lead in clean, green steel, and we are going to seize it with both hands. That is why we are also changing the clean industry bonus, making it easier for British steel to be included in British wind farms.
Britain can recycle more steel. Making better use of scrap steel is fundamental to the sector’s future growth. Millions of tonnes are ready to be recycled. We are building the technology to do it right here in Britain. We are creating a more competitive business environment for steel, too. We are tackling the high cost of energy. Our supercharger is delivering millions of pounds in savings for steelmaking firms. These businesses will benefit even further next month thanks to the changes that we are making to the network charging compensation scheme, which will increase the rate of relief from 60% to 90%. We are taking further action to support foundational industries by addressing high electricity costs, with a view to boosting supply-chain resilience. Our British industrial competitiveness scheme could reduce bills for other businesses in the sector by providing a discount of up to £40 per megawatt hour, starting from April 2027.
Private sector investment is essential for the steel sector. It is vital for driving up capacity and capability. That is why, within 10 weeks of taking office, we negotiated a substantially better deal to support the transition to green steelmaking at Port Talbot. We are welcoming investment from new entrants to the UK market. The National Wealth Fund is there to support them.
We will continue to work hand in hand with devolved Governments and steelmaking hubs in Wales and Scotland to bring in that additional investment. This is the vision that our steel strategy sets out: Government, with boldness, certainty, and urgency; industry, with energy, enterprise and expertise; and communities, stronger, safer, and more secure. All will be working together to make our steel sector attractive to new investors, innovators, employees and apprentices. It will be financially stable, internationally competitive and proudly British. Together, the strategy and the new trade measures will help to build a stronger, more resilient steel industry. They will take the immediate action that our steel industry needs and provide a plan to help the steel sector prosper for the long term.
Building a brighter future for Britain’s steel has already begun. Today, UK Export Finance has signed a landmark financing deal with Nigeria, which is refurbishing two major ports. As part of that agreement, British Steel Limited will supply 120,000 tonnes of steel billets for this work. That is a £70 million contract, the largest British Steel order that UKEF has ever backed, strengthening and sustaining Britain’s future as a steelmaking nation.
We need steel made in Britain in all its forms. We need it for the 1.5 million new homes that we are committed to build, for the third runway that we have approved at Heathrow that will require 400,000 tonnes of steel, and for our new data centres and gigafactories, such as the Agratas gigafactory in Somerset. A total of 23,000 tonnes of steel has already gone into its construction, all sourced from the UK.
Britain needs a steel industry for our national security, economic security and national interest. We need to ensure that Britain remains an internationally competitive steelmaking nation not just because our past was built on steel, but because our future depends on it. I commend this statement to the House.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The Conservatives very much believe in a sovereign steel industry, but what we see today is a multibillion-pound shot in the dark, and it heralds the end of primary steel production in the UK. Just to set the record straight, there would no longer be any steel production in Wales without action from the last Government. This steel strategy has no plan to make the industry stand on its own two feet, and it risks a permanent state-funded drain on taxpayers.
British Steel was losing £700,000 a day when the Government took emergency action last year, and now the taxpayer is losing an estimated £1.3 million a day and there is a subsidy of £110,000 per job to keep the Scunthorpe blast furnace operational. This steel strategy does not include any exit strategy, risking a permanent drain on taxpayers, and now the Government are negotiating handing taxpayers’ money to a Chinese business that they said was worth nothing, while hitting British users of steel with a 50% tariff hike. Given that the previous Secretary of State said that British Steel had zero value, will the current Secretary of State confirm whether compensation will be paid to Jingye?
How are these new tariffs going to affect the cost of living for our constituents? How much will the tariffs raise? They represent a massive tax hike on our world-leading automotive, defence and aerospace sectors, which will make building homes, bridges and railways more expensive. Have the Government carried out any impact assessment on the tariffs, and will jobs not be lost in those other sectors?
The Government say in the strategy that electric arc furnaces are the future, but without competitive energy, green steel will simply become no steel. If electric arc furnaces are the future, when will the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe be decommissioned, and how many jobs will be lost in that process? Where will the £2.5 billion go? Is it all going into the Scunthorpe blast furnaces? How is this £2.5 billion spending spree fiscally responsible? What is the Secretary of State cutting to pay for it?
The so-called National Wealth Fund is rapidly become the national slush fund. The shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), has announced our cheap power plan, which will slash energy bills for businesses and households. The Conservatives will axe the carbon tax, scrap extortionate subsidies for wind and solar, repeal the Climate Change Act 2008, and end the ban on new oil and gas licences to maximise domestic extraction and reduce dependence on foreign energy imports. Could the Secretary of State please copy this approach?
This is a Government who are subsidising decline and reaching for protectionist tariffs. After the botched nationalisation of Scunthorpe and the surrender of the Chagos islands, we can see from this steel strategy that when Labour negotiates, the British taxpayer loses.
Peter Kyle
I am glad to see the hon. Lady at the Dispatch Box. It is always an honour to have exchanges with her, as it has been for quite some time.
The hon. Lady mentions Wales, but she seems to have no idea about the breadth and depth of the steel industry across Wales. She seems to think that there is only one steel maker, manufacturer and operator in Wales. There is not. She seems to be forgetting all about 7 Steel in Cardiff. That explains why the Conservatives in government failed to have a strategy and vision for steel and to support the sector because they did not even know who was making steel and where. This Government understand all our steel assets, and we are creating a strategy to make sure that all of them add up to more than the sum of their parts and that we have a domestic industry that is sustainable, secure and growing into the future.
The hon. Lady seems to want to exit from British Steel without any more investment whatsoever. That would be the worst of all worlds. She wants to strand an entire community. We will stand by that community and make sure that the steel industry and sector thrives into the future.
On tariffs, let me just explain to the party that used to be about free and fair trade that free trade depends on fair trade. Fair trade depends on not having overcapacity. We cannot have overcapacity and fair trade. Therefore, we must correct the market and offer protection where overcapacity is in danger of decimating one of our key industries for defence, security and future prosperity.
The worst thing that could be done for the British steel industry is to do nothing. All we have heard from the Conservatives is, “Don’t do any of the things that Labour is doing,” with no alternatives offered whatsoever. They are the “do nothing” party, and that is the worst of all worlds.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. As he says, steel is national security and economic security. Can I just say, it is terrific at long last to hear a Government showing some mettle? [Hon. Members: “Oh.”]
The array of measures in the strategy is impressive, from tariffs to procurement and scrap, but there are some concerns among our precious automotive sector. Could my right hon. Friend outline some detail about how this will relate to EU measures and how it will support UK manufacturers facing “made in Europe” tariffs?
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend is right to explain that this strategy is a holistic strategy. It looks at the industry as a whole and considers how all the assets can be brought together and given a sustainable footing. I will invest, modernise and protect where necessary.
On the questions about the EU, I have, of course, been in discussion with my EU counterparts. I met four EU commissioners in the last month and the vice-president. Next week we will have further discussions when we are in Cameroon for the ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organisation. These are important times for both the European Union and the UK. Our reset is important, and that reset work will continue. It is in both our interests to make sure that we invest in, protect and modernise our respective steel industries, and we should be doing so with as much co-operation as possible.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
In 2024, Labour MPs across south Wales stood on a pledge to “save our steel”. They promised £2.5 billion for the steel industry, and they said that they had a plan. They began by saying that they would publish the steel strategy in spring 2025. Then it was autumn 2025, and now finally it arrives in spring 2026. We still do not know how much of that money will be spent in Wales. Will the Secretary of State confirm that to the House today?
In the meantime, British steel production has continued falling, and thousands of jobs have been lost across south Wales since the blast furnaces were turned off. I am not really sure that Labour understands the damage that its party’s failures are having across south Wales. Wales feels abandoned. Steel is in our blood. It is the backbone of our economy. But we are still losing jobs. Skilled workers such as welders are leaving, and tarmac companies are struggling to make asphalt. Consumer spending is falling. People in south Wales are fed up with broken promises. South Wales was promised that the electric arc furnace would be up and running by 2027, but we are now told that it will be 2028. Can the Secretary of State update the House on that deadline?
We need to see so much more urgency. Wales is desperate for the good jobs that the steel industry can provide. There is still—just about, if the Government move quickly—the opportunity to build a home-grown supply chain for the floating offshore wind sector. The Government have told me that they are not expecting to have that sector going until the mid-2030s. That is far too slow. That lackadaisical approach means that the energy that should be created through offshore wind will not be added to the grid until the mid-2030s. The Government must hurry up and deliver on their promises to south Wales.
Peter Kyle
The hon. Gentleman mentioned waiting for the steel strategy. The truth is that the steel sector has been waiting 80 years for a steel strategy, and this is the first time that one has been delivered. I think that showing a little bit of gratitude for what has been delivered today, on behalf of the sectors and businesses that he talked about, would be most welcome. I also point out that the 80 years over which there was no strategy included 2010 to 2015, when his party was in government.
Yesterday I was at Tata in Wales. The management, the ownership, the workers and the unions universally welcome this strategy and the £500 million that has already been put in to help transform the industry. That is the example of how we will move forward—with boldness, creativity and urgency.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
This is indeed a welcome and bold steel strategy, and it stands in direct contrast with what happened under the Conservative party, which never had one. I thank all the Ministers involved, the industry and the unions. I declare an interest as a member of Community and GMB. As I am sure Minister will agree, this is a good start, but we should always aspire to be as ambitious as possible for our UK steel industry, our security and our infrastructure, as well as for the dedicated young workforce at Llanwern steelworks and 7 Steel UK. Will the Secretary of State work with industry to incentivise investments in projects that we do not currently make, so that we can reduce even further our reliance on imported steel?
Peter Kyle
I thank my hon. Friend for her thoughtful contribution, which is based on experience. Llanwern has a fierce advocate in my hon. Friend. I hope that she recognises that her campaigning over many years is reflected in the strategy. I can reassure her that this strategy is not the end; it is just the beginning. The investment, transformation and modernisation programme is only just starting.
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
Hundreds of my constituents work at the Scunthorpe steelworks, and hundreds more are reliant on the supply chain. They want certainty about their future. Will the Secretary of State give a clear indication of how long he anticipates the existing blast furnaces will be in operation? If the Government’s intention is to build arc furnaces, will they be established in Scunthorpe?
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful intervention. He has campaigned on this issue for a long time. I can reassure him that conversations with the owner are ongoing, and that the £2.5 billion that the Government have committed is for the transformation of the sector for a sustainable future. There will be more domestic demand, we will benefit from efficiencies and economies of scale, and we can start to rebuild and re-industrialise the steel sector. That benefits his community and other steel communities up and down the country.
Pamela Nash (Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke) (Lab)
I declare an interest as a very proud member of Community. I warmly welcome the announcement of this much-needed steel strategy, which promises to deliver across Britain. Dalzell plate mill is physically and emotionally at the heart of Motherwell, and it is the only steelworks operating in Scotland. Can the Secretary of State confirm for my constituents that our plate mill will remain central to the British steel strategy, and will be supported to thrive again?
Peter Kyle
I thank my hon. Friend for her campaigning and advocacy. I hope that she recognises it in the strategy that we have announced. Dalzell is central to our defence industry up and down the country, and to the community of Motherwell. I can assure her that it is front and centre of my thinking, as we look to the future in those key sectors.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I suspect that the problems of Scunthorpe, where many of my constituents work, are less to do with the anti-protectionist policies of Mrs Thatcher—given that she left office 36 years ago—and more to do with the fact that Scunthorpe is paying the highest energy costs of any steelworks in Europe. That is very important. Will the Secretary of State answer the question of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), and of all our constituents who work at Scunthorpe? Blast furnaces only have six or seven years of life, but we need them to make virgin steel, particularly in the defence industries. Is this the end of our ability to make virgin steel? Given that it takes two or three years to create an arc furnace, will the Secretary of State commit to one at Scunthorpe?
Peter Kyle
The right hon. Gentleman mentions Thatcher. I lost my father not so long ago, and have been going through his belongings. I found a letter that my father wrote to Mrs Thatcher when she was the Leader of Opposition in the ’70s. The reply, which came from a private secretary on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition, was signed by one Edward Leigh. I understand his insight into that particular moment in our country’s history, and I am grateful to have this exchange with him over the Dispatch Box. I wish my father was here to see it.
On Scunthorpe and other steel communities, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has the time to read the strategy. When he has done so, I will make time to sit with him and work through it. He will see that it contains the intent to create sustainable steel production. Our belief and intention is that we will have the domestic capability to produce all grades of steel needed by our economy, in an economically and financially sustainable way. Those are the things that workers in the steel sector, in Scunthorpe and right around the country, need the most.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I welcome the strategy. Sheffield’s history is inextricably linked to steel, and we want our future to be linked to steel as well. My right hon. Friend mentioned the excellent work that Forgemasters is doing to provide steel for our nuclear reactors, our nuclear submarines and, hopefully, our civil nuclear program, through small modular reactors. The strategy mentions the procurement of British steel. Will the Secretary of State set out how the Government will ensure that public bodies do procure British steel rather than just saying that they will?
My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) has fought so hard for the future of Liberty in the past few months. What would the Secretary of State say to her about Stocksbridge steelworks? Will this deal ensure that the steelworks has a viable future and that jobs are retained for the whole of Sheffield?
Peter Kyle
I thank my hon. Friend for his tireless campaigning on these issues over many years. Forgemasters is, of course, important to our defence sector. His constituency also has the capacity to make stainless steel. He gives great voice to those two assets in his community. I hope that he sees much of his campaigning reflected in the strategy, which will give a sustainable long-term future to the industries that he represents and speaks for in the House.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
The Secretary of State has made great efforts to make the point that investing in steel production is crucial to the strength of the economy and to our national security, which is true. It is also true that Brexit has been disastrous for our steel industries, as he is aware. It is stark that the UK Government are willing to invest in those critical industries in England and Wales, but have continually failed to do so in Scotland. Despite their election promises to save Grangemouth, it was allowed to close; Mossmorran slammed shut its doors; and Labour’s damaging energy policies have cost 1,000 jobs per month. Will he apologise to the people in the east and north-east of Scotland who feel utterly betrayed and abandoned by the UK Labour Government?
Peter Kyle
As I have mentioned, we have been supporting the Dalzell plant. I also refer the hon. Gentleman to the fact that we have a National Wealth Fund for the entire United Kingdom. Many billions of pounds will now be unleashed to renew our country, including Scotland, which would be bereft of that funding should it be taken out of the United Kingdom and denied access to it.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s steel strategy. The welcome ambition for the steel sector will be shared by industrial communities across the country, especially in Motherwell. Industrial communities such as those in Falkirk and the Forth valley must see similar ambition. Today is the one-year anniversary of the publication of Project Willow, so will the Secretary of State commit from the Dispatch Box to redoubling his Department’s engagement with prospective investors in Grangemouth, trade unions, the Grangemouth future industry board and local Members, so that the jobs and industry that the project promised our community materialise at pace over the coming years?
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend speaks to many different sectors and industries, all of which we have stepped in to support since coming into office. We are investing in their modernisation and putting them on a sustainable footing for the future. He asks me to redouble my efforts—I have redoubled my efforts every day in this job. He will see from how my Department and I acted when Jaguar Land Rover had its hour of need and when Grangemouth needed support and investment, and from today’s steel strategy, which I announced on a visit to Port Talbot just yesterday, that this is a Government who seek to modernise and to protect where necessary, but always to invest in the future.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
What assessment, if any, has the Department made of the impact that moving from blast furnaces to arc furnaces will have on our virgin steel capabilities? The Minister for Trade, who did the morning round, seemed to accept that it would mean our virgin steel capabilities being undermined.
Peter Kyle
I can reassure the hon. Lady that all grades of steel that are needed by the British economy will be available post transition.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It really is in the national interest to secure the future of the steel industry in this country. It is extraordinary to hear the opposition to the plan from the Opposition Benches, but perhaps not surprising, given that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), was the adviser to the previous Government when they sold the British steelworks at Scunthorpe to Jingye, with all the disastrous consequences. On the subject of energy for Scunthorpe, can the Secretary of State say what is being done to bring forward the date for the electricity connection to the site, which I know has been a significant challenge over many years?
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend will know full well that when it comes to energy, we have announced the supercharger programme. Compensation is now being increased from 60% to 90%, offering relief and injecting competitiveness into the sector at the same time as offering protection. If we had done one without the other, we would, of course, just be pouring money down the drain. I can assure him that we are working with the National Grid and colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to make sure that we get the energy supply needed for the conversion to electric arc furnaces as quickly as possible.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Now that the Government have some experience of running a business with British Steel, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the £37 million cost of the Employment Rights Act 2025 and the national insurance jobs tax increases on the viability of our steel industry?
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving himself the opportunity to score an own goal. When we came into office, we inherited a broken economy that was not delivering for working people. Our international relationships were on their knees, public services were stretched to breaking point and our economy simply was not generating income because of the circumstances that we inherited. We have acted to update workers’ rights for the moment we are living in, while getting a grip on the public finances that the previous Government left in utter chaos. Those are the fundamentals that we need moving forward to deal with all the global challenges that will come our way. If we had not got the finances on a stable footing, we would be in a much worse state now that we are facing the challenges that have come our way in recent times.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to supporting our Welsh steel industry and to using much more steel made in the UK, but Llanelli’s Trostre works needs high-quality steel to make the steel packaging products it produces. That steel used to come from Port Talbot’s blast furnaces. Can the Minister tell us more about what he is doing to secure supplies of appropriate scrap metal for the electric arc furnace, and to stimulate research to ensure that the electric arc furnace can produce steel of the quality that Trostre needs?
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend has been speaking about this issue for a long time. In the run-up to the transition period for electric arc furnaces, I assure her that we have a scrap working group, which is working to identify the sources of scrap metal that will be required. Just yesterday in Port Talbot, I was talking with the management, the workers and the unions, and I saw the infrastructure being built to get scrap from across the United Kingdom to where it needs to be on an enormous scale.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Well, at least this Government have a steel strategy, unlike the previous Administration. Credit where credit is due: they are right to impose tariffs and quotas. But that is as far as it goes, because otherwise it is visionless and hamstrung by net stupid zero. We have the absurd situation in which the public sector is buying tens of thousands of tonnes of steel from China, rather than from Scunthorpe and British Steel. This is a complete betrayal of thousands of workers in Scunthorpe. There is no vision. Will the Secretary of State confirm when the blast furnaces will be closed at Scunthorpe—Reform would renew and replace them—and will he guarantee that when the electric arc furnace in Port Talbot is built, it will definitely open for business?
Peter Kyle
I have not yet had the opportunity to welcome the self-appointed shadow shadow—or, as I say, shadowy—Secretary of State to his position. Despite the investment and the protections we are putting in, and despite the modernisations, which he recognises are all good, his point seems to be that it is not quite visionary enough. However, he is not able to point to a vision for a more comprehensive future for the steel industry. He also seems to think that electric arc furnaces are woke. Let me say that there is nothing woke about an electric arc furnace, which, when rolled out in the transition, will make us a market leader globally, which is what the industry itself—the British domestic suppliers and those who are demanding that steel is required into the future—is calling for. I can assure him that we are on the side of the industry and its vision. We are matching its ambition and its potential for the future. He wants to cast us back into the past.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney) (Lab)
May I say how proud I am that my birth certificate says, “Father’s occupation: labourer in the steelworks”? This strategy is a shot in the arm for steelmakers across the UK; it is in stark contrast to the failures of the last Tory Governments. But can the Secretary of State say more about the infrastructure projects and plans to refine the public procurement notice for steel? What will that mean in practice for jobs in our communities?
Peter Kyle
In the many years I have observed my hon. Friend contributing to these debates, he has always been thoughtful and powerfully on the side of the steel sector. I can reassure him that the Government are investing in infrastructure on an unprecedented peacetime scale. The new runways and the 1.5 million homes that will be built as a result of this Government, and the building out between Oxford and Cambridge, to name a few, will all require enormous amounts of steel. This Government’s policy is to increase the supply of domestic steel from 30% to 50% of the requirement. We will use all the powers we have in policy and incentives to ensure that British steel producers benefit from all these opportunities.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)
I welcome today’s statement on the introduction of a strategy for such a critical industry, and particularly commend the Government for the emphasis they place on the importance of steel sites across Wales. With that in mind, can the Secretary of State offer greater detail on the types of investment he envisages in the strategy to go into sites in Wales, and the rough timescale over which we can expect to receive it?
Peter Kyle
The hon. Member will notice from the steel strategy, which sits alongside the industrial strategy, that place-based investment is incredibly important to this Government. Yesterday, I was in Port Talbot with the First Minister for Wales. When two Governments are aligned in trying to get investment into parts of the country—when two Labour Governments work hand in hand—they deliver for the people of Wales and for people across the United Kingdom.
Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I refer proudly to my membership of GMB and Unite. I welcome this brilliant announcement and especially the backing of Welsh steel, because Welsh steelmaking is expected to account for half of all future UK steelmaking. As the Secretary of State mentioned, I was proud to recently visit with my Front-Bench colleagues 7 Steel in Cardiff, where we already have an electric arc furnace. Does the Secretary of State agree that the steel strategy from this Labour Government marks a welcome departure after the years of failure to have a strategy by Conservative Governments—and, let us not forget, the coalition Government—who repeatedly left this vital industry on the brink of collapse?
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend’s analysis is absolutely correct, and he has been a tireless advocate ever since he joined this place. It is correct to say that we have invested and are investing in steel in Wales, but we are also investing in modernising the economy and infrastructure of Wales. The creation of two AI growth zones sits alongside the work we are doing on steel and other areas of infrastructure in Wales. Again, it demonstrates two Labour Governments working together for the benefit of the people of Wales. It works, and he is part of that, for which I am grateful.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. What a contrast there is between the Government of just over a decade ago, who ripped the heart out of my region, and this Government, who finally have a strategy after many decades. I welcome it, but what is more, so does the industry—I spoke to those in the industry this week, and they strongly welcome the measures, particularly on procurement and trade. This is a Government on the side of British steelworkers.
One of the biggest issues affecting the industry is, of course, energy. I hear what the Secretary of State says about the supercharger, but even with that, there will still be an energy price gap with many of our competitors. What more can we do to ensure that we reduce these gaps for our industry and protect jobs years into the future?
Peter Kyle
The workers at Skinningrove have a true advocate in this place in my hon. Friend. I can reassure him that the work we have done on the supercharger will make a tangible difference to the workers and the sustainability of that plant. I can also reassure him that this is a Government who act when we have to. We are in constant touch with the steel industry. We are on its side. We are working with it to create a sustainable industry into the future.
National Security Strategy, Political Finance and Foreign Influence
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. Matt Western will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to ask questions on the subject of the statement. Those should be questions, not speeches. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee Chair and not the relevant Minister, but Front Benchers may take part in questioning.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I am pleased to present the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy’s third report of this Parliament, on political finance and foreign influence, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this.
Let me outline why this issue matters. First, the UK’s political finance system was designed for a more innocent age when state threats were lower and the “good chaps” theory of politics resonated more strongly, both at home and abroad. The scale of loopholes facilitating the flow of foreign money into UK politics is now recognised, and Transparency International UK estimates that it runs to tens of millions of pounds. Furthermore, US intelligence has estimated that Russia spent over $300 million to influence politicians in 24 countries between 2014 and 2022. Here, we have seen a British politician jailed for taking Russian bribes, alongside MI5 interference alerts about Christine Lee, who made around half a million pounds in political donations. This is all deeply concerning. The Government deserve credit for addressing the basic failures through the new Representation of the People Bill, alongside other work, but our Committee established that they need to go further.
We have not yet seen a collapse in the integrity of our democratic processes, but we worry that a moment of reckoning may be coming. Indications suggest that foreign state threats are growing, and the possibility of an acute crisis can no longer be ruled out. Efforts to influence UK political positions on critical issues will likely increase between now and the next general election. Democracies around the world are under threat, and as democratic norms erode, so will corporate behaviour. That will only be made easier by new technologies that enable firms to evade due diligence checks.
There is also deepening uncertainty about the trajectory of the current United States Administration, who have ambitions to shape the political direction of their allies. Wealthy individuals are a concern too: Elon Musk, for example, has reportedly considered a £75 million donation to a UK political party. As our political landscape becomes more fragmented, the likelihood of tight and unpredictable electoral races is growing. Adversaries could try to create the impression of having influenced a few races, even if they do not actually change outcomes, simply to make the losers doubt the legitimacy of the process.
Our political finance system is not designed to withstand a major effort by foreign actors to circumvent the rules, and what happens if political actors in the UK decide that they are not going to respect the rules and constitutional precedents? Presently, I have little confidence that the system would hold. Safeguards and deterrence are completely inadequate. Responsibilities and capabilities are fragmented. Too much problematic activity is apparently allowed or impossible to prove. Thresholds for criminal investigations are too high. Prison sentences are too low. The police are under-resourced, the Electoral Commission lacks the basic powers to do its job, and the general enforcement toolkit is slow, timid and retrospective.
That all feeds the public perception that our politics is open to external influence—a belief that is corrosive. Already, Electoral Commission data shows that public trust is worryingly low. All of this matters right now because the Government have brought forward the Representation of the People Bill. There is much to like, and I commend the Government for their willingness to grapple with a politically sensitive topic. The Committee also welcomes the forthcoming Rycroft review on foreign interference.
Our Committee concluded on six recommendations for change. First is the need for a new enforcement lead. Presently, responsibilities for foreign financial influence risks are split across MI5, Counter Terrorism Policing, the National Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police Service, local police forces and the Electoral Commission. That hardly inspires confidence that risks are being investigated proactively, with the right expertise in the right place at the right time. The Government should use the police service reforms to create a new centralised political finance enforcement unit, staffed with expert secondees.
Second is the need to fix basic loopholes. For example, the Bill proposes a cap on donations linked to UK-generated cash but then allows companies to donate their entire limit hundreds of times over to individual candidates and campaigners. We heard anecdotally that the rationale was to limit reporting burdens for business, which is a little bizarre. It is not hard to record making a donation—it is a matter of public record. That needs fixing.
Third is the need for tougher declarations and penalties. For example, the Government have committed to commencing section 54A of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which requires donors to declare money they have received in connection with a donation. But why does that only apply above £11,180, and why is it such a bizarre figure? Why are the penalties so low, and why is the threshold for a police investigation still so high? We therefore suggest introducing the measures through the Representation of the People Bill instead, which would allow the Government to lower the declaration limit to £500, widen the scope and increase maximum penalties to three years in prison.
Fourthly, the Electoral Commission needs new powers to do its job. It must be able to require information from financial institutions about the source of a suspicious donation. Currently, the commission faces a Catch-22 situation: it cannot get that information without a major formal investigation, and it will not have grounds to launch an investigation without that kind of information. The Government need to fix that conundrum, so that the Electoral Commission has access to data.
Fifthly, we must address crypto donations. We heard arguments for and against, but found no democratic imperative to allow crypto donations right now. The risks are way too high and the benefits too low, and the resource burden of trying to implement safeguards is disproportionate. We therefore call for a ban—a moratorium—until proper rules are in place, and the Electoral Commission should develop adequate safeguards ahead of the next general election.
Sixthly, we need to be mindful of resourcing. The Government should ensure that the new national policing unit is properly staffed, and that the Electoral Commission has specialists and the appropriate tools for complex investigations—because they are complex.
Finally, we must ensure that any changes are proportionate. Our report is very targeted and seeks to strike the right balance. It is important to note that we did not look at other contentious areas—for example, second jobs, think-tanks, media outlets and online campaign outfits, which also deserve scrutiny. I have tabled amendments aligned to these recommendations. I trust that this report is helpful to the Bill Committee and to the wider House.
Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent statement. I fully welcome the report and its recommendations, which I will read very carefully. I share his concerns about cryptocurrencies. The first recommendation is about the need for a single centralised unit. Does he agree that the Government might consider the new National Police Service, announced as part of the policing reforms, a suitable vehicle to deal with the issues of electoral crime?
Matt Western
The Committee very much hopes that a new service will be able to accommodate that recommendation. We hope that there can be a centralised service, using whichever is the most appropriate vehicle; whether that be within the National Crime Agency or separately within the police service is for others to decide. The most crucial thing is that we do not have a disparate mix of agencies working in the same arena. The critical thing that we uncovered was how the Electoral Commission—which much of the investigation was about and where so much of the concern originates—often cannot access data and information from other agencies for GDPR reasons, and therefore it is frustrated in its work and many opportunities to prosecute or bring cases are not enabled.
Community Mental Health Services
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which time no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of her statement, Members will be able to ask her questions on the statement—and they must be questions, not speeches. Front Benchers may take part in the questions.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
On behalf of the Health and Social Care Committee, it is a pleasure to present to the House our report on the subject of community mental health services. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement.
Mental health services are failing too many people. As MPs, we hear heartbreaking stories from our constituents every day: individuals who struggle to navigate a complex, poorly resourced system; clinicians frustrated that they cannot provide the level of care they would like to; or, worst of all, families who have tragically lost loved ones, knowing that they could have been saved if care had been more responsive. This area is also personal to me, as my partner, Rosy, lives with bipolar, and I have seen at first hand the good, the bad and the downright absent of the mental healthcare system.
The inquiry looked under the bonnet of community care, especially for those with severe mental illness. We received a wealth of evidence but the most compelling came from those who we call “experts by experience”, such as Chris Frederick, who said:
“Despite some of the referrals, recommendations and lots of content on social media—‘You should try these different techniques’—you really are on your own. There is nobody there to support you.”
Powerful stories like this drove our 22 recommendations to improve community mental health provision, but today I only have time to highlight just a few.
First, we need proper, integrated mental health care in the community. There is an NHS England pilot programme for six 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres, and we saw at first hand in Barnsley Street how patients were able to walk in and receive the treatment and care that they needed. There were no complicated referrals and no “pathway says no”; they were able to take the brave step of asking for help and getting it. And it is not just about help with clinical needs, because in the same building there are people who help with housing, benefits and more. One staff member said,
“this place helps people feel like a skilled person, not just an ill person”.
That makes perfect sense, because a person is not just their diagnosis and we get better results by taking a more deliberate, holistic approach.
The outcomes of the pilots are emerging, but clinicians told me that they are seeing fewer patients in the local A&E in crisis and fewer needing expensive in-patient care. The approach works for patients but also for staff and families. In an unusually bleak landscape, it felt like an oasis in the desert. The Committee is therefore disappointed that the Government rejected our recommendation to extend the pilots by another 12 months beyond April 2026. However, they do agree that the learning should be rolled out nationwide, so I welcome the £473 million of funding to be made available to integrated care boards to invest in models like the pilots. I am, however, hearing from existing centres that they are deeply concerned about the future, with funding ending and their ICBs already reprioritising. What a waste.
The Committee is also clear on the link between physical and mental health. Someone living with severe mental illness is far more likely to have physical illnesses too, and there is extensive evidence of co-morbidities and preventable deaths. The NHS should reinstate the annual physical health check target for people with severe mental illness. The Government, in their response to our report, recognise the importance and positive impact of the check, but have not committed to reinstating it. They argue that it will appear in the promised modern service framework. I do not really care how they reinstate it and I reserve judgment.
Indeed, much of the Government response signposts to the yet unpublished MSF, which is undoubtedly going to play a major role in bringing consistency across the country—a problem we heard about time and again. The Government want to drive
“rapid and significant improvements in quality of care”,
but a year on from their announcement, we have heard nothing more about it, so we recommended setting a deadline for the publication of the MSF in 2026, which the Government have accepted. The mental health sector is in crisis and it deserves these new standards urgently.
To achieve the best outcomes, we must include voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations, but they need certainty to plan. That is why we have recommended a move to multi-year contracts. We are glad that the Government have accepted this recommendation, but we must be clear on the details of the “practical support and accountability” they say will also be provided. The charity Turning Point says:
“There is a sense of looking down on VCFSE people as the gofers who run about—‘We do all the important work, and they just look after people when we aren’t there.’”
That culture needs to shift. The Committee also recommended that such organisations are embedded in the design of services from the off, and we are further concerned by the lack of data sharing and interoperability, which is stifling innovation. Far too often, these organisations have the answers we need, and we need to value them more.
But with that, we also need stronger accountability. The Committee is baffled by the fact that there are no mental health waiting list standards—which, in common parlance, is a target. In plain speak, mental health patients deserve to be seen and treated in a timely manner, just as any other patient might in the NHS. For example, if someone’s doctor refers them to a consultant to treat a bunion, they know that the NHS says that they should have to wait a maximum of 18 weeks. However, if someone is referred to a consultant for bipolar, the NHS has nothing to say about how long they can expect to wait—and indeed, as a result, many people wait for years.
The Committee has found that the lack of national standards is contributing to inconsistent access. This is a long-standing issue. Waiting time standards have been consulted on and we understand that they have been drafted. In fact, the Government recognise their importance in their response to the report, but they have no plan to implement them—the House can understand why we are a bit baffled. We have seen how effective a target can be in driving national change, especially in an area of crisis in the NHS. Gareth Harry of NHS England said,
“in general when the mental health sector has been set a target historically, it has done very well against it.”
The Committee will not rest until there is a waiting time standard for mental health, in just the same way that there is for elective procedures.
On the subject of parity of esteem, let us turn to the mental health investment standard, which was championed by Liberal Democrat Minister Norman Lamb and introduced in 2016. It required the share of ICB spend on mental health to be at least as large, proportionately speaking, as overall increases in local budgets. In practice, that meant that over nine consecutive years, the proportion of the NHS budget spent on mental health increased, but this year the Government changed the planning guidance to water down the MHIS and require spending not in accordance with the overall proportion, but only in line with inflation.
The Secretary of State recently admitted that instead of the overall share of the NHS spend going up, it will drop for the third year running. We believe that is wrong. The Government have underestimated how damaging a signal this deprioritisation has sent to the sector. Although we agree that there is a conversation to be had about inputs and outputs—like all parts of the NHS, this area needs to roll up its sleeves and make change—the Darzi review was clear that mental health accounts for 20% of the disease burden but only about 8% of the spend, and that disparity is getting worse, not better, under this Government.
Rapid change and transformation must happen, but to do it quickly and effectively some double-running will likely be necessary. We therefore recommend writing the original mental health investment standard definition into legislation so that no Government can again change it by the back door. That, alongside implementing those long-wanted waiting time standards, would be a significant step towards making reality a stated aim of the NHS constitution itself: that there should be parity of esteem between mental and physical health.
We believe that this Government have the right intentions, but we remain concerned that at the moment, they are all talk and not enough action. Much will depend on the efficacy of the modern service framework, which we look forward to seeing and scrutinising when it is finally here. We all know that delivering meaningful transformation requires a fundamental reimagining of mental healthcare as trauma-informed, person-centred and rooted in a social model. This will take bravery, leadership and unwavering political will, and we ask all Members of this House to join us in pushing for it.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for her chairship of the Health and Social Care Committee during this inquiry. As someone who has bipolar disorder, it was a really difficult experience to sit through at times, as I watched witness after witness after witness speak to what is very much my own experience. I have called myself lucky in this House previously—lucky to have a support network around me, and to have the wherewithal and the ability to build up what I need as a support package, because, sadly, I have never really received it from the NHS. By sitting through the Committee, I realised that I am not in fact lucky; I am quite unlucky, in that the burden that my illness places on those who care about and love me is quite extraordinary.
Does the hon. Member agree that in order to really put action behind our words on parity of esteem, the Government must take action on the recommendations of the Committee, particularly around neighbourhood mental health centres? Something like that in my area would be transformational for me and my family. It would mean that I would no longer have to rely on my loved ones to provide care for me. It would mean that I would no longer have to build a package of support. It would mean that I would be more effective at this job, a more effective mother and a more effective wife, and I would know that I had the support available whenever I needed it and however often I needed it.
I have a plea to the Government—I know the Minister is in the room—and a question for the Chair. Will she join me in pleading with the Government to personally take action on that one specific recommendation and roll out neighbourhood mental health centres nationwide?
Layla Moran
I pay tribute to the hon. Lady, my fellow Health and Social Care Committee member, for how movingly she shared her personal story. That was pivotal in the shaping of this report. She has just demonstrated to this House the power of having experts by experience lie at the heart of design and these recommendations—indeed, that was our very first recommendation in this report.
I could not agree more with the hon. Member’s point about the 24/7 neighbourhood centres. I am a carer—I hate that word, by the way; I am talking about my partner—and as someone who is often picking up the pieces, I know very well how transformational the centres might be in my own area. While some funding is available to ICBs, I am concerned that without the detail behind this issue, we risk it not being transformed quickly enough. I think that double-running is important—we have already seen that from the example of Barnsley Street. The six pilots that are up and running are already looking at possibly shutting down. As I said, what a waste! I urge the Minister to do more and faster, because this could change the game.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
So many mental health problems could be cared for much better in the community. As the chair of the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group, I know that some years ago we had an inquiry called “There’s No Place Like Home”. That was supported by Beat, which put out a report about the critical gap in provision, as there are no daycare centres for eating disorder services. Does my hon. Friend’s report also cover eating disorders? Will she make the plea to the Government, which we have made again and again, that we need much more critical daycare centre support and provision in the community?
Layla Moran
My hon. Friend has been a doughty campaigner on eating disorders for many, many years. We did not look specifically at eating disorders, but I know that some of the centres have that embedded. We know very well that if we are going to take a holistic approach to someone with severe mental illness, it is not just about the physical side or the housing; many of them suffer from other disorders or substance abuse. The key thing here is actually a simple principle: if we treat someone like a person, rather than a number that needs to go through a pathway like a pinball, we get better results. It is faster and cheaper, and we would have a workforce who feel that they are doing good, rather than feeling demoralised. It is win-win-win.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
On a similar note, does the Committee Chair agree that the long delays in assessing people for neurodivergence is contributing to greater mental ill health? While people are waiting, they are not being properly supported and do not feel that they have the necessary understanding of themselves to be able to move forward. Was that touched on in her work? If not, would she consider that for future investigation?
Layla Moran
We did a one-off report on that issue, in fact. It was not in this report, but we have looked at it. One of the key things here is good, local working with the wider community, which echoes some of what we have seen in this report. I know that many Members will have an interest in child and adolescent mental health services in this area. A forthcoming joint inquiry by the Health and Social Care Committee and the Education Committee will look at CAMHS, and no doubt some of the questions around neurodiversity will come into that as well. My hon. Friend is entirely right to point out this issue; it is a huge problem. I have one constituent who was told that they would have to wait 16 to 18 years for an assessment—I think that says it all.
Backbench Business
Climate Change
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Madam Deput y Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Luke Murphy, who will speak for up to 15 minutes.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the UK’s progress towards achieving the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this important debate. I am also grateful to the members of the all-party parliamentary group on climate change—of which I am the chair—whose commitment reflects the strength of feeling on this issue in this House and across our constituencies. I also thank the APPG’s secretariat for their dedication to ensuring we have the evidence and expertise to drive forward meaningful discussion on climate progress.
Some still ask why progress on tackling climate change matters at a time when living standards, economic growth and public services are much higher up the list of the public’s priorities. The truth is that action on climate change is inextricably linked to those priorities. Just in the past few weeks, it has been demonstrated that our energy security and living standards are indivisible from our climate ambitions. Many of our constituents are already feeling, or worrying about, the severe instability that the Iran war has caused for prices at the pump, heating oil and future energy bills, as well as its wider indirect impacts on the cost of things like the food they put on the table.
That is because this is not an energy crisis; it is an oil and gas crisis, one that comes only a few years after the last oil and gas shock, which was caused by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. That crisis caused household energy bills to soar by 80% and inflation in the economy to increase to 11%, and resulted in a taxpayer bail-out of nearly £60 billion. These crises are not new—history is repeating itself. Since 1970, half of our country’s recessions have been caused by oil and gas price shocks. The truth is that the UK is paying the price for a broken global energy system, upon which every household is dependent. Indeed, research has shown that the cost of cutting UK emissions to net zero is less than the cost of a single fossil fuel price shock.
We see the consequences in our communities every day, with rugby and football clubs across the country unable to open daily as their energy bills rise, local pubs struggling to keep the lights on and established industries and start-ups alike struggling to cope with energy costs, yet there are those inside and outside of this House who argue for yet more dependence on this broken system. They call for us to slow down our action on climate change—to slow the sprint to clean energy or, worse, to hit reverse gear. They believe that more oil and gas will solve our problems, ignoring the fact that our reserves are heavily depleted and extracting what remains is far more expensive than it is in other North sea nations. They ignore the fact that even if we increased oil production today, it would take five to seven years before any new oil supplies became available, far too late to help families facing costs right now. Even then, UK-produced oil would still be sold into global oil markets, where international supply and demand set the price.
Similarly, increasing gas production would not offer short-term relief. Any additional UK-extracted gas would also take years to come online and would represent only a tiny fraction of the global gas market, leaving gas prices effectively unchanged. Of course, oil and gas will be used in the UK for many years and decades to come, but the idea that expanding oil and gas exploration would cut bills or materially improve our energy security is a fantasy. The impact would be marginal.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, and I agree with many of his points. Tackling the climate emergency is vital, but that does not mean that green energy companies should be allowed to do whatever they want. Does he share my concerns about the conduct of Bute Energy, a green energy company that has spent—at the very least—thousands of pounds on courting his colleagues in Cardiff?
Luke Murphy
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I do not know the circumstances of that particular issue, but I agree that renewable energy companies, like all companies, should act in the public interest.
Those who actively oppose the transition to clean energy, such as Reform, prefer instead to expose every family, business and community in Britain to the boot of the fossil fuel dictator stamping on their neck forever. More broadly, tackling climate change matters because its impacts are no longer a distant threat—they are part of everyday life. Across the country, extreme weather means more patients on hot hospital wards, children struggling to learn in stifling classrooms, and families worrying about how to protect and insure their homes from flooding.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I completely agree with the hon. Member that this is exactly the wrong moment to turn our backs on the promises that this House made to the children of this country. He may remember that it was the Fridays for Future movement that had children literally coming out on to the streets, out of school on Fridays, to make the case to their elected parliamentarians that they wanted us to commit to net zero. We would be reneging on our commitment to those children’s futures as well as affecting their presents.
Luke Murphy
I fully agree with the hon. Member. I will say more about the impact on future generations later, but as she says, the burden will weigh heaviest on them if we do not take action today.
In my constituency of Basingstoke, we have already seen the reality of our changing climate, with more than 500 heat-related deaths in the south-east in 2022 alone. In 2023, extreme weather caused a landslip that severed our town’s rail connectivity for days, and in 2024, the south-east NHS saw a 13% increase in emergency hospital admissions for a respiratory condition linked to rising temperatures. Climate change is already affecting our health, our infrastructure and our economy, placing immense pressure on the public services we rely on. That is before we even consider the other serious economic risks posed by climate change.
The Climate Change Committee estimates that unchecked climate change could impact UK economic output by up to 7% of GDP by 2050. Businesses and investors already recognise that climate risk is economic risk, and small businesses are already feeling the impact. Shops on Pontypridd high street in Wales are finding it impossible to get insurance; flooding in Yorkshire and Cumbria is disrupting national supply chains; and whisky distilleries in Scotland face water scarcity. Failure to manage these challenges today will only increase costs and disruption later.
Climate change is also a critical matter of national security. For decades, and notably in the Pentagon’s 2014 quadrennial defence review, security experts have identified climate change as a major threat multiplier—it drives instability, heightens resource pressures and accelerates displacement. The Ministry of Defence’s 2021 “Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach” document warns that climate change increases the risk of conflict through competition for scarce resources and undermines military effectiveness.
Then there is the impact on nature and our wider environment. There are those who try to separate the issues of climate and nature—the Reform party, for example, claims to care about nature while planning to tear up legislation, policies and investments to tackle climate change—but this is a false choice. Climate change is inseparable from the health of our wider environment; the stability of our forests, rivers, soils and seas is inextricably linked to our climate. As temperatures rise, we see damage to biodiversity and agriculture. The Government’s own nature security assessment warns that on our current trajectory, every critical ecosystem across all regions is heading towards collapse. Nature also plays a crucial role in safeguarding us. Our forests and wetlands absorb carbon; chalk streams, like the beautiful ones we have in Hampshire, support drainage; and urban trees help cool our temperatures. Protecting the climate and restoring nature must go hand in hand, as the resilience of one depends on the health of the other.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
As always, my hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the breadth of issues that underline why it is so important that we act on climate change. It is often seen as a future issue, but my farmers are feeling the effects of volatile weather right now, just as some of my households felt the effects of rare flooding just last year. Does my hon. Friend agree that the land use framework published yesterday will be a really important document for ensuring we get adaptation and mitigation strategies right when it comes to protecting nature, as well as delivering the carbon reduction goals that are vital to ensuring we get our climate change action back on track?
Luke Murphy
I completely agree. If my hon. Friend will forgive the pun, the land use framework is a landmark document. It reflects the Government’s acknowledgement that the public understand many of the threats that we face and want to see climate action. Polling shows that 70% of the British public say that tackling climate change is important to them, with more than two thirds supporting ambitious action. For years, there was a broad cross-party political consensus on such measures. That consensus stretches back all the way to Margaret Thatcher, who said:
“The problem of global climate change is one that affects us all”.
That consensus delivered. We implemented the world’s first Climate Change Act in 2008 under Gordon Brown, and built on it under Theresa May. In 2015, we announced that we would phase out coal by 2025, which was brought forward to 2024. With the closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, the target was met. Domestically, we have more than halved our emissions since 1990 while growing our economy by nearly 80%. Clean energy drives economic growth, with the clean economy growing three times as fast as the rest of the economy.
Our leadership has secured action around the world. The Climate Change Act 2008 inspired nations such as Denmark, Mexico, Sweden, France, New Zealand, Ireland and Germany to adopt similar measures, and has contributed to reductions in emissions around the world. Successive Governments have shaped the global agenda, but that leadership is now at risk. The current leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), would scrap the vital Climate Change Act, as would Reform, sacrificing the health of our environment, economy and society at home, and Britain’s global climate leadership and action abroad. Such action is reckless.
We have the capacity to drive meaningful progress at home and abroad, and we must continue to exercise our leadership. I was really proud to hear the Prime Minister say at COP30 that the UK is doubling down on the fight against climate change, and I am pleased that that commitment has been met by decisive action over the past 20 months
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
Year 6 pupils from Reigate Park primary academy in Mackworth have written to me in some beautiful handwriting to say how concerned they are about climate change. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is absolutely essential that this Labour Government are committed to tackling the climate and nature crisis, and to accelerating to net zero? Does he agree that going further and faster on clean energy is the only way to secure energy security and cheaper bills?
Luke Murphy
Like my hon. Friend, I am so pleased when I get letters from children at schools in Basingstoke. I am able to tell them about the Government’s ambitious plans and their commitment to an issue that so many children are concerned about.
The Government have taken action. Great British Energy is rolling out solar in schools and hospitals, meaning that they are no longer paying for high energy bills, but are instead investing in education and in treatment for NHS patients. We have secured record-breaking offshore wind capacity, meaning more energy than ever and lower bills. Our warm homes plan is delivering £15 billion of investment to upgrade 5 million homes, meaning that every home is built for the future, with lower bills. We have invested £14.2 billion in Sizewell C, providing low-carbon electricity for 6 million homes and 10,000 good jobs. We have launched the clean energy jobs plan to support workers transitioning out of fossil fuels, ensuring that the move to a clean economy benefits us all. We have expanded apprenticeships and technical training, so that young people can build careers in Britain’s modern economy. And we have introduced the environmental improvement plan to restore nature and meet our legally binding targets, so that future generations can continue to enjoy our beautiful countryside and nature.
Current events demonstrate that, through their ambitious commitment to clean energy and tackling climate change, the Government are on the right track. If anything, we must go further and faster. In an unstable world, where energy prices are rocketing, the most effective step we can take is to get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster.
Sitting in this House is a privilege that comes with responsibility. Every one of our constituents is affected by climate change, as future generations will be. We often talk about the economic inheritance that we leave behind—public finances, growth and opportunity—and we should talk about those things, but what about everything else that our children and grandchildren will inherit? The choices we make today will determine the environment that we leave for generations to come. It is our duty to ensure that those who come after us are not left to shoulder a far greater burden than the one that we face today. I want to leave my nephews, and my friends’ and neighbours’ children, a world that is safe, healthy and sustainable. We must reject those who want to turn the clock back, or to use climate as a wedge issue. The stakes are too high to leave this to those who will come after us. The responsibility is ours, and the time for bold action is now.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I am going to impose an immediate six-minute time limit, because there is a second debate to follow.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
At a time when misinformation about climate change is louder than ever, these discussions are not just important but essential if we are serious about protecting our environment and our future. I thank my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy), for securing the debate, for putting this issue in context, and for showing that climate change is also about health and national security.
I will focus on something that we too often overlook: the direct link between climate change and global health. In veterinary science, we use the term “one health” to reflect the idea that human, animal and environmental health are completely interlinked and inseparable. Climate change does not just warm the planet; it accelerates the spread of disease across all animals, humans and plants. Climate shocks, floods, droughts and extreme heat do not happen in isolation; they disrupt sanitation, displace populations and overwhelm what are often very fragile health systems. That is exactly the type of environment in which infectious diseases thrive, and we are already seeing this. As the climate shifts, we see vectors such as midges and mosquitoes moving into different parts of the world and carrying diseases into new regions. Diseases that were once considered tropical are now being seen in other parts of the world as a direct result. In the UK, we now have a disease of livestock called bluetongue, which is spread by midges that were not previously found in northern Europe.
We know that the poorest countries are hardest hit by climate change, despite contributing to it the least. We have seen that very recently in the Caribbean, which has had record-breaking storm seasons. However, this is not just a distant humanitarian issue; it is about our safety here in the UK. Disease does not respect national borders, and a threat anywhere is a threat here as well. When health systems abroad are overwhelmed, outbreaks spread faster, surveillance systems weaken, and the risk of global transmission rises. That is how local crises become global crises.
Layered on top of all that is one of the greatest threats that we face in global public health: antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance is a slow pandemic that is already under way. It gets relatively little media attention, but it is having a huge and direct effect on day-to-day medicine in the UK. It means that antibiotics stop working, routine operations such as hip replacements become high-risk procedures, and minor infections become life threatening. We are talking about returning to a world where a simple cut could kill. It is predicted that 39 million people will have died by 2050 as a direct result of antimicrobial resistance. We can add to that picture climate change, which is driving infection, increasing antibiotic use and accelerating resistance, creating a perfect storm.
With falling vaccine uptake, climate change denial and growing global instability, it is often the scientists who are doing the hard work to keep us safe, yet too often their warnings are ignored. That has real-life consequences. When we cut overseas development assistance and scale back support for global health systems—for example, through the Fleming Fund—we are not actually saving money; we are directly increasing the risk to ourselves. Such funding helps to build up resilient health systems, supports disease surveillance, and reduces the spread of infection before it reaches our shores and our NHS.
Prevention is not soft policy; it is hard economics. If we wait for a crisis, we have already failed. By the time a new pandemic or an antimicrobial-resistant superbug arrives in the UK, the cost will be measured not only in budgets, but in lives. This House faces a simple question: do we act early on climate, on global health and on prevention, or do we wait and pay the economic price later? A world without effective antibiotics is not an abstract future; it is becoming a very real possibility. It is one that we should not be willing to accept.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) on securing the debate. As far as I am concerned, we should debate this all day, every day, because the message needs to be heard loud and clear out there. Those who want to delay climate action are denying our children and grandchildren a future. They should be honest about their intentions and reasons for saying what they do. I will speak about three broad areas: science and the very real threat now and in the future; the myths and misinformation peddled by opponents of action; and the benefits of taking climate action, which my hon. Friend set out very well indeed.
I turn to the science on climate breakdown. We see the impact now, with heatwave days in the UK over the last few years, 88% of which would not have happened without the impact of climate change. There are 2,000 excess deaths a year in the UK alone as a result of excess heat, and 90% of our healthcare facilities are vulnerable to overheating. We face flooding and its consequences for food insecurity and the difficulty of growing crops—and that is just in this country, let alone around the world. Equally, we see heat and drought affecting our food production, and that threat to food production means rising prices and shortages.
There are impacts on biodiversity and on national security, with consequences such as conflict over scarce resources and migration because people are not able to live in certain places. The latest science suggests that unless we take action right now, parts of southern Europe—let alone the rest of the world—will be uninhabitable in as little as 15 to 20 years’ time, and by the end of the century billions of people will not be able to live where they are. That means they will not have anywhere to live. If we think we have a migration crisis now, we have seen nothing yet.
Let us deal with the myths. First, there is the idea that because we are responsible for only 1% of global emissions, we should not take action. Well, 30% of emissions come from countries that are responsible for less than 1% of emissions. If none of them take action, where is the motivation for China, India and other large countries—the United States is a bit of a lost cause at the moment—which have a far greater impact?
Alistair Strathern
My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. Doubters of the net zero agenda often suggest that, because it is an international problem, we should go slower. Does he find it utterly bizarre that some suggest we can get other countries to go faster by going slower and engaging less ourselves? Actually, we need to be leading the way in the best traditions of Britain.
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend is right. Actually, our global leadership through COP, which my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke mentioned, and the fact we have set our nationally determined contribution—unlike some countries—is hugely important. We were ahead of the game with the Climate Change Act 2008 and the 2050 net zero target set by Theresa May. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke also mentioned Margaret Thatcher —when I came here, I never dreamed that I would be quoting her, but I have become more inclined to do so on this issue, if on no other. That fracturing of the consensus in the House is deeply worrying.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
Last year in Staffordshire, we had a Reform county council elected, which undeclared the climate emergency—I did not know that that could be done. What I find most frustrating about that is not only that climate change poses a risk, but that there is an opportunity for jobs in Staffordshire. In Stafford, the largest employer specialises in wind turbine technology and high-voltage direct current valves—the Secretary of State came to visit recently. Does my hon. Friend agree that there are opportunities for this country and not just risks?
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend is right. I hope that her constituents and the businesses in her constituency can take full advantage in spite of the damage that the appalling party she mentioned is trying to do not just to the climate to our economic prospects.
Let us look at the cost of a failure to take action. Last July, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that failure to act on climate has an economic cost. The Climate Change Committee put a figure on it: 7% of GDP will be lost by 2050 unless we take climate action. If we do not want to believe the Climate Change Committee or the OBR, let us try the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries—a pretty reputable bunch that anybody on the right of politics ought to listen to. Its prediction is that the global economy will be cut by 50% between 2070 and 2090 unless we take action internationally right now. That means leadership by this country of the sort we have been discussing.
The public are being led to believe by the siren voices on the right in politics—let us be clear, they come from both main right-wing parties—that costs will go up. Well, I have news for them: the costs of investing in our networks and in our infrastructure to generate electricity will be there whether we do that with renewables and low-carbon generation or with fossil fuels. The cost is there whatever we do, but it is better to do that through low-carbon sources for all the reasons that my hon. Friend gave earlier.
Let us deal with the claims about the North sea. Yesterday, the leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), made a comparison with Norway. In Norway, the Government did not sell off the production company—it is state owned, and they have control over it. Norway also did not have the same rush to extract oil and gas from the North sea that we had in this country. By the way, Norway was clever, because it set the boundaries between the UK and Norway sectors for the extraction of oil and gas. As a result, it has far more reserves than we do, and it has control, unlike us. As has been said, whatever we do, and however much we change the production capacity, we cannot set the price—not that we could do it soon anyway, so it would not affect the current concerning situation with the conflict in Iran.
We have to be honest about what is going on here, and we have to give confidence to people that ours is the right approach. It is true that we can improve our energy security, reduce prices and take the action we need to on climate as they are inextricably linked; we have to make that case. We also have to give confidence on the jobs mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham), to support the supply chain and to make the case for the co-benefits to be had in health from taking action, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers).
On the economy, the clean economy is growing three times as fast as the rest of the economy. The Government have taken action, including with the clean energy jobs plan and apprenticeships. Apprentices like those I saw at Cavendish Nuclear in Warrington just a few weeks ago are starting to make the difference in good, well paid, high-skilled jobs. With allocation round 7, this country is demonstrating again that we are the place to invest in the low-carbon economy. In the actions of Great British Energy through Sizewell C and the small modular reactors programme we see examples of the Government leading the way again.
We have to continue taking that lead, we have to continue busting those myths, and we have to keep reminding people that this is not a choice that our children and grandchildren want to have to face. Let us take that action now, let us keep making the case, and let us ensure that we prevail in the debate on the climate over those who would undermine, who would damage and who would destroy.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
I thank the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy), my fellow member of the all-party parliamentary group on climate change, for securing this debate. The climate and nature emergencies are the most pressing issue of our time. They go to the heart of every area of Government, and we ignore or sideline them at our peril. A suppressed national security assessment report, partly released in January in response to a freedom of information request, warns:
“Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse”,
threatening UK national security and prosperity. Let us give that a moment to sink in. The first job of any Government is to keep their citizens safe, yet there is a yawning gulf between climate reality as recognised in that national security report and the actions that the Government are undertaking.
As we have heard, ambitious action now makes economic sense, too. Failing to tackle the climate and nature crises will cost far more in the long term than investing properly now. The Climate Change Committee, the Government’s own specialist advisers, recently crunched the numbers and worked out that for every pound spent on reaching net zero, the benefits outweigh the costs up to fourfold. That is a good return on investment. Crucially, the Climate Change Committee recognises that the benefits of climate action will be felt in all areas of our lives. Warm homes and better public transport will have huge benefits for our health and wellbeing, and will save the NHS money, too. The health service spends £895 million a year just as a result of cold and damp homes. While the Government are grasping the big picture in some areas, such as growing clean energy, for example, all too often that is not being done in a joined-up way. It does not feel like they are aiming for the massive social and environmental wins that acting boldly and thinking genuinely long-term could secure.
Last year, the Chancellor scrapped the energy company obligation scheme in the autumn Budget. It required energy companies to pay into programmes that cut fuel poverty. The impact of that cut falls not only on the 8.9 million households classed as fuel poor, but on jobs. The Installation Assurance Authority Federation, a leading representative body in the retrofit sector, found that a staggering 12,100 skilled professionals have been made redundant since the end of the ECO scheme was announced in the Chancellor’s Budget. A further 79,000-plus may be made redundant within the next 12 months. Such fragmented policy making, where a gap is left between an old scheme and a new scheme, puts jobs at risk and undermines ambitions on warm homes.
I acknowledge the commitment of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, and of the Minister, to this agenda. I also acknowledge the degree to which they appear sometimes to be thwarted by the Treasury and others that seem singularly incapable of grasping that building a strong, resilient economy will be an impossibility inside an environment going haywire. They also seem to be thwarted by those who seem unwilling to understand that delaying action and an overreliance on techno fixes, such as carbon capture and storage, are paving the way for a cliff edge of social chaos and economic freefall when we should be planning for an orderly, fair, controlled transition.
Continuing to subsidise the fossil fuel industry is downright dangerous when the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is still the main driver of global warming. Burning the fossil fuels at the proposed Rosebank oil field would release more than the combined annual emissions of all 28 low-income countries globally. That is all without any evidence that that oil would bring down costs at home, because prices are set on the global market. Rather than propping up the oil and gas giants, I have been calling on the Chancellor to end the £2.7 billion of tax breaks given every year to fossil fuel companies. Instead she should fund a jobs guarantee to support workers currently employed in oil and gas to move into new green jobs.
Climate adaptation must become much more prominent, too. The Government’s climate watchdog has warned us that preparedness for extreme weather in this country is disjointed and piecemeal, and that has consequences for all our constituents, for public services and for the economy. That brings me full circle back to my opening point: the climate emergency has ramifications for every single Department and every aspect of all our constituents’ lives. That is why there was such a large appetite for the climate emergency declaration that I pioneered as a councillor in Bristol in 2018. After adopting my climate emergency declaration, Bristol ramped up its ambitions, and the idea has since spread across the UK and internationally. It shows the public’s appetite to go further and faster to protect our planet for future generations. While recognising the good work done so far, we still need vastly more ambition across government. No stone can be left unturned if we want to operate within safe climate limits.
Carla Denyer
I am just coming to an end.
We must leave no stone unturned, whether it is housing standards, taxation, jobs, transport, energy, defence or food. That is my main message today, and I hope the Government are open to hearing it. It is important that we look at climate change across every single Department, because that is how we will build a safer, more positive, more equal and happier country together.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) for securing the debate. Climate change is the defining challenge of our time and, as others have mentioned, some are pushing a false dichotomy between tackling climate change and other important things, such as saving jobs, growing the economy and cutting bills. I firmly believe that we can meet climate change targets, deliver growth, create good jobs and ease the cost of living, and that the west of England—my region—has the potential to lead the way.
In my constituency, the Severn estuary growth zone alone could deliver 15,000 jobs, including 3,000 supporting new nuclear at Oldbury. We are in the unusual position of having another former nuclear power station just up the road at Berkeley. The late and—at least by me —lamented Western Gateway partnership put together the Severn Edge proposal, which talked about having a low-carbon energy campus, which would do more than just nuclear and would link the two sites. Training would be delivered at Berkeley, and there could be a small modular reactor there directly connected to an off-taker, such as a data centre, and then Oldbury would deliver power to the grid. It is that sort of strategic vision that we need and which I am concerned that we are not getting from this Government at the moment. Having recently attended the south-west nuclear showcase at the University of Bristol, I know that the universities in our region are also supporting this through their research.
It is not just about nuclear; the Severn estuary commission last year published its report pointing the way to how we can deliver tidal power from the Severn. There is amazing hydrogen expertise in our region. At the science park just outside my constituency and possibly expanding into it, there is the Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems, which looks at alternatives to the traditional fossil fuels that we use to power automotive and aerospace. There is also the National Composites Centre, which, among many other things, looks at how to deliver materials that can contain hydrogen successfully. People might not think of the west of England as a former coalmining area, because it is not as recently a coalmining area as others, but it is, and there is the potential for geothermal with heat from mine workings.
There are many opportunities in a small area, but they are not being realised because we are not getting the investment and recognition we need. I do not think our area gets the recognition that other areas, perhaps in the north or in Wales, get.
There are many smaller firms delivering things, such as Fellten, a small firm that refits classic cars with electric motors, and I could mention many other examples. Our area also has a lot of demand for retrofitting. Twenty per cent of homes in my constituency are off gas, so if we trained the workforce, we could have local people delivering cleaner, cheaper energy solutions for people to heat their homes—all the more important in the wake of the oil and liquefied petroleum gas price crisis that we have seen this week.
There is a chance to employ locally and deliver great things, but it will not happen without the skilled workforce to do it. There is a willingness for further education colleges to work together—I know because I have been talking to them—but they need seed funding to support that, which is something I raised with the Skills Minister last January. There is also an identified need for a construction skills college in my area. We need to inspire the next generation. Why do we not encourage firms to sponsor trips to the science park and to local firms? When we are expanding the park, it would be fantastic if there was a space there to support that. This generation, which faces the highest unemployment in 10 years, needs to be empowered to take control of the climate change revolution, and we need to supply them with good skills and well paid jobs locally.
Another barrier to all this happening is the fact that in a rural area like ours, transport is a huge problem. There is no further education provision in my constituency, and even from a town like Thornbury, there is not a direct bus to the nearest further education college, let alone from any of the smaller villages.
I visited the university technical college at Berkeley, which could form part of that low-carbon energy campus that I talked about. Trying to access the college is also hugely difficult from my constituency. This change cannot be delivered without the skills provision and without enabling people to access the college and the jobs afterwards.
We need to get in the infrastructure, and if we are not to rely entirely on our increasingly decrepit strategic road network, we also need to be looking at rail. If we are to have any increase in line capacity and station capacity, we need Westerleigh junction to be upgraded. That is something else I have raised with the Government, but again we are not seeing the investment. Alternatively, in the short term at least, we could look at electrifying more lines, which would also increase capacity because electric trains can accelerate and decelerate faster, so there are opportunities—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Lady will know that she was on a time limit. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The UK has a lot to be proud of in our record on climate change, such as halving our greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, being the first EU nation to phase out coal, and massively scaling up renewable energy. It is no coincidence that many of these accomplishments came against a background of cross-party consensus on the need to reach net zero.
The parties used to compete to have the most ambitious environmental programme, but since the last election the Conservatives have abandoned our ambitious climate commitments. Instead, they have kowtowed to the politics of fear, and seized on net zero in a culture war of trying to out-Reform Reform—and where are the Reform Members? Even while still in government, the Conservatives squandered some of the huge economic, social and environmental opportunities of net zero, and now they are falling even further behind the curve. Their recent decision to call for the Climate Change Act to be scrapped would critically endanger future generations, who deserve a safer planet, energy security and a stronger economy. The Climate Change Committee frequently warned that the last Government were not moving fast enough. Let us not forget that they were defeated twice in the High Court due to their inadequate climate plans.
We Liberal Democrats recognise the urgent need to go further and faster on climate change. This generation should be the first to leave the country and the world in a better condition than we found them in. We also recognise the huge opportunities that new renewable energy brings to support skilled jobs and economic growth. Previous failure to invest sufficiently in renewable energy and insulate our homes has led directly to the energy crisis, pushing up energy bills for everyone and squeezing family finances. The situation in Iran has laid bare the state of UK energy security as prices have shot up because we are so reliant on oil and gas. Home-grown, renewable energy does not have to pass through the strait of Hormuz, and its price is not set on the rollercoaster of international markets.
Conservative and Reform Members have their heads in the sand in adopting anti-renewable, anti-environmental policies that would leave us vulnerable to more energy crises in the future. The Climate Change Committee has found that the cost of net zero by 2050 is less than the impact of one fuel crisis. Conservative and Reform Members would have us believe that we cannot afford net zero. In reality, the truth is that we cannot afford not to get to net zero.
We cannot escape the fact that our electricity prices are among the highest in Europe, but that is not inevitable; it is the result of a pricing imbalance. Right now, the cost of electricity is set by the price of gas 97% of the time, even though half of our electricity comes from renewables, which are much cheaper. That disconnect is driving up bills unnecessarily, and we must break that link. We Liberal Democrats propose the practical solution of moving older renewable projects off expensive renewable obligation certificates and on to cheaper contracts for difference. The UK Energy Research Centre estimates that that change alone would save a typical household about £200 a year.
At the same time, the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee’s inquiry into the cost of energy has uncovered serious concerns about transparency. We have heard evidence that profits can be obscured within network charges on energy bills. Energy companies must be transparent, so consumers can clearly see what they are paying for and where profits are being made. Our constituents deserve energy bills to be fair, affordable and easy to understand.
In Bath, the majority of my constituents are firmly behind climate action, and so is my Liberal Democrat council. I was delighted to hold a pop-up surgery at Bath climate hub last week. The hub supports people to reduce their carbon footprint through diet, energy use or transportation changes. It also facilitates the meaningful conversation that we must keep having on climate issues. From action to rewild nature-depleted land to community owned energy initiatives, local areas in Bath are making changes that together make a big difference.
In Bath, like the rest of the country, retrofitting our homes through a national insulation programme is crucial to lowering carbon emissions and reducing bills. The Government’s warm homes plan unfortunately falls short of the scale, ambition and long-term certainty we need. An emergency home upgrade programme should have been implemented in the first 100 days of this Government. We Liberal Democrats would upgrade our homes, making them cheaper to heat with a 10-year emergency home upgrade programme, starting with free insulation for those on low incomes and ensuring that all new homes are zero-carbon. We would also provide further incentives for installing heat pumps that cover the real cost. That would reduce emissions and bills, combating both climate change and fuel poverty.
Climate change is, after all, a global issue. We must bring others with us. The UK and European partners must lead the global effort to tackle climate change together, even more so given that the US has abandoned the multilateral approach to international climate policy. One choice the Government could take immediately to help global efforts towards net zero would be to reverse the cut to the aid budget and set out a road map for restoring official development assistance to 0.7% of gross national income. UK aid provides vital support for the most vulnerable people in the world and is a key tool in meeting our climate commitments.
We Liberal Democrats have also pushed for a long time for stronger marine environmental targets, both internationally and domestically. We welcome the Government’s decision to ratify the global oceans treaty through legislation. However, much more needs to be done to work with our coastal and fishing communities to ensure a sustainable future for fishing and our marine environment.
Public support for climate action remains strong across the UK, but we cannot take it for granted. We must continue to bring the public with us throughout the energy transition. A part of that is ensuring that misinformation and disinformation is effectively challenged. That means tackling myths about renewable energy head-on, and making sure that households right across the country actually feel the benefits through lower bills, warmer homes and secure jobs in their communities.
The Conservatives and Reform are all too often happy to talk down Britain’s renewable industries. They would have us scraping the bottom of the North sea oil barrel. In doing so, they overlook the remarkable innovation happening right here in the UK: home-grown green technology companies driving growth, creating skilled jobs and shaping a more sustainable future. Even if more oil was extracted from the North sea, it would be sold on the international market at international prices. That would not lower energy bills. The Conservatives know that, so it is particularly callous to ask for something that would leave our constituents less safe and secure economically.
Our constituents want to tackle climate change. They want lower fuel bills. They want their wildlife and landscapes to be protected. They want a strong economy that supports British jobs. That is what the energy transition must give them. We Liberal Democrats will keep making the case for the urgent transition away from fossil fuels.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) on securing the debate and thank him for doing so. I recognise his concerns and those of others on climate change and its impacts, but I do—this will not be a surprise to anyone in this House—have a difference of opinion, especially when it comes to the actions we have taken and should now take, in particular with regard to our oil and gas sector, which I will come to later. But I will begin by looking backwards.
Under the Conservatives, the UK made more progress to cut emissions than any other G7 country—by 2022, cutting emissions in half compared with 1990 levels. Indeed, emissions were cut to such an extent that the UK surpassed the targets that countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan and the US set for themselves for 2030. Under the previous Conservative Government, the proportion of the UK electricity generated by renewables increased fourfold, from 9.5% in 2011 to over 47% in 2023.
Luke Murphy
I, too, celebrate the achievements under the previous Government. Why, then, given that those achievements came about under the framework of the Climate Change Act, which was then recognised internationally and led to progress elsewhere, are you now going to throw that framework in the bin?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. It has been over 18 months and Members are still using “you” as if it were confetti. Please, can we all be a bit better?
Luke Murphy
Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. Why is the hon. Member and her party proposing to throw out the framework that underpinned all the achievements that she is listing?
Harriet Cross
I will not skip forward a few pages of my speech now, but we will touch on that matter in the coming few minutes.
As I said, the things that we have done are notable. Between 2010 and 2019, the UK Government oversaw the planting of 15 million trees, and during our time in office, the UK was home to the first, second, third, fourth and fifth largest wind farms in the world. We—the UK—have done a lot, and yet the climate is still changing. That is not because there has not been enough ambition or enough action from the UK, and it is not because of a need to just go faster. It is because, first—and I know there will be wails about this—the UK contributes less than 1% of global emissions; and secondly, other countries have not been following our lead.
Wera Hobhouse
Is the shadow Minister saying that because we cannot make a big enough impact globally, we should scrap our impact altogether?
Harriet Cross
No, that is not what I am saying. I am saying that we have made huge progress and yet others have not been following our lead, so why would we make our industry less competitive? Why would we ensure that investment goes down in our country just to virtue signal and for no one to follow?
We will look at what is happening today. To be very clear—I think this needs saying—disagreeing with the Energy Secretary’s approach to energy policy, and questioning the speed and cost of moving towards renewable energy, does not make one a climate change denier. That is tedious; it is a lazy argument made by those who want to close down the debate—those who believe that decarbonisation must always be the No. 1 priority, at the cost of all else. That is the inherent problem with the current debate on climate change and carbon emissions. It has become a pursuit of what is perceived to be the perfect response—the purist approach to the climate—over what is pragmatic and what is practical. It does not prioritise the public, prices, industry or energy security.
Bill Esterson
The hon. Lady is four minutes into her speech and she has talked about the reduction in emissions, which is largely the result of the dash for gas, which predated the last Conservative Government—actually, it happened under the previous Conservative Government. So far, she has talked about her opposition to what this Government are doing. She has not yet told us anything about what she thinks the next steps in taking climate action should be. Is she going to do that?
Harriet Cross
The hon. Gentleman is obviously keen to hear from me, which is great, but as he says, I am four minutes in and have taken three interventions; I think I still have a couple of minutes to form my argument.
I will first consider electricity. Our electricity is some of the cleanest in the world, but it is also some of the most expensive, and that is the issue. Making electricity the cheapest option will make it the preferred option. Making electricity cheap will encourage the adoption of electric vehicles and the electrification of home heating, and it will make the UK more attractive for businesses and for growth markets like AI. Cheap electricity will improve the cost of living for households across the country. That is why the Conservatives have a cheap power plan, which would cut electricity bills by 20% for everyone—for households and for businesses. And how? By cutting the carbon tax, which is a tax that makes up a third of the price of our electricity.
But of course, as Members know, electricity only makes up about 20% of our energy mix. Oil and gas—at over 70% of that mix—remain central to our energy needs, and will for a long time. The Climate Change Committee’s projections include oil and gas in its 2050 net zero scenario. So why are the Government banning new licences for the North sea? Why are they taxing companies to such an extent that they pack up and leave? Climate change is a global concern, and therefore global carbon emissions must be considered. Why is the Secretary of State determined to run down our oil and gas production just to increase imports, which are four times more carbon-intensive than what is produced in the North sea? LNG imports have to be extracted, liquefied, shipped and re-gasified, rather than just being piped from the North sea directly into our gas grid.
Permitting Rosebank, Jackdaw and, down the line, Cambo will mean that the UK’s emissions from oil and gas, which we will be using in any case, will be lower—lower than if those reserves are left in the ground and instead we use more carbon-intensive imports. Based on science, emissions and the fact that oil and gas will still be needed in the UK for decades, no one can reasonably argue that replacing domestic North sea oil and gas production with imports is the right course of action. It is not—not for jobs, investment, growth, energy security or emissions.
Wera Hobhouse
Does the hon. Lady not recognise that all that might make it cheaper for the oil and gas industry, but it will not make it cheaper for our constituents? Their bills will be the same wherever the gas is extracted; it is the oil and gas industry that might profit from it being extracted elsewhere.
Harriet Cross
I do not know whether there has been a misunderstanding of the title of the debate—it is on climate change, not the costs of bills. For climate change, we are looking at emissions; if we are focusing on emissions, we are focusing on where the carbon is produced. There is less carbon intensity in our domestic oil and gas than in imported oil and gas. I know that is not the message that the hon. Lady or others want to hear, but those are the facts.
Being wedded to domestic emissions targets while ignoring emissions produced elsewhere is causing the deindustrialisation we are seeing across the UK. Businesses in ceramics, refining, petrochemicals, oil and gas and many more industries are packing up and leaving the UK, not because their products are needed less, but because they are unable to sustain themselves here under the weight of industrial energy prices and carbon taxes.
Harriet Cross
I will not. I have taken a lot of interventions, and there is not a huge amount of time—I want to wrap up.
The targets of the Climate Change Act are forcing the UK to make decisions through the lens of emissions, not what is best for industry, electricity costs, growth, prosperity or jobs. That is why it is right that the Conservatives have committed to repealing it. The carbon tax imposed on our industry through the emissions trading scheme has also made it significantly harder for energy-intensive industries to do business in the UK. It increases costs for consumers and makes our industries less competitive.
The illogical way in which we consider domestic emissions while ignoring global emissions further undermines UK industries. Carbon leakage—exporting production, and therefore emissions, abroad—has become a convenient way for the Government to reach their emissions targets at the cost of vital UK industries. We are offshoring our industries and losing jobs, skills, taxes and investment just to import products at huge cost on huge, diesel-chugging container ships from across the world from countries that still use coal power. It is a complete contradiction of what the Government say their emissions ambitions are.
The UK has already done a lot—more than many other countries—to reduce emissions, but that cannot and must not be at any cost. From our electricity prices to the North sea, traditional industries to AI, the Secretary of State’s idealistic approach to energy policy, which focuses primarily on domestic carbon emissions, is impoverishing Britain for no benefit to global emissions.
I once again thank the hon. Member for Basingstoke for securing today’s debate. To conclude, I ask the Minister the following three questions: does she recognise the incoherence in the Government’s determination to shut down North sea production just to increase reliance on more carbon-intensive imports? When will the Government make a decision on Jackdaw and Rosebank? Will the Government adopt our plan to cut the carbon tax and adopt our cheap power plan, immediately stripping 20% off household and business electricity costs?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Katie White)
That got a little bit feisty at the end, didn’t it? I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) for securing today’s debate. He is a fantastic advocate for climate and nature, both in his constituency and as chair of the APPG on climate change. I know that he has been pushing for this debate for a long time, so I am grateful for the opportunity to set out the Government’s position in detail today.
I also thank the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) for their contributions. I have enjoyed our collaborative work and feel sure that they welcome our clean jobs plan. I endeavour to work with them on a happier outcome.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) for his typically eloquent overview. He pointed out something that is often missing, as indeed it was in the Opposition’s plan, which is that we have to invest in our energy infrastructure. We have a choice in where we make those investment choices.
I thank, too, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for her contribution. We have worked very closely together on oceans, and I am glad that she recognises the crucial progress that this Government have made. I also hope that she recognises that our warm homes plan is the biggest upgrade in British history. We always welcome people with new ideas, but I think recognition of how far we have come is also good.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) outlined the risks as well as the opportunities available in this area. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) that, since taking on this role, I have been to Derby North more times than anywhere else. I also thank the students from Reigate Park primary—I look forward to reading to them. The hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) must be celebrating our nuclear plans, but I very much recognise her focus on innovation.
Claire Young
I would just like to apologise to the Minister for my over-enthusiasm earlier in extolling the virtues of my area. I would also like to ask her to visit my constituency to see the opportunities for herself and to discuss with me the barriers that we face.
Katie White
I thank the hon. Lady very much for her kind invitation. I will consider it and get back to her.
Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), who raised some important issues around health. He also championed the role of science. I too have always thought that science is crucial, but since entering this role, I have found British scientists to be fabulous. They are at the heart of telling us what the problems are and at the heart of innovation, so I pay tribute to them.
I want to assure the House that this Government remain totally committed to limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and that doing so is at the heart of our agenda. As my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke knows, we have been talking about these issues for more than two decades, which means that we can sometimes become desensitised to the urgency of the challenge. But we in this House have a responsibility to be honest about the gravity of what is at stake. The truth is that the world is getting hotter at an alarming rate—the past decade has seen the 10 warmest years ever. The Amazon has seen the worst droughts on record, partly as a result of deforestation, and in the Arctic and Antarctic global warming is driving geopolitical competition over the resources lying beneath the ice.
I recently spoke to Ministers from the Caribbean who told me about the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Melissa. Here in Britain, we are in no way immune, with recent storms such as Goretti flooding homes and cutting off power. Heavy rainfall has cost farmers hundreds of millions of pounds, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern). Extreme heatwaves have disrupted almost every aspect of our lives.
The Office for Budget Responsibility is also clear that rising temperatures pose a huge threat to our economy and could wipe billions off our GDP in the years to come if we do not act. That is why, as our national security strategy sets out, tackling climate change and nature loss is vital for both global stability and our national resilience. As the Prime Minister said, there can be no national security without climate security. Let me be clear, though, where we face severe challenges, we are absolutely capable of meeting them. We are the generations with the power and the opportunity to act and build a cleaner, more secure and more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren. That is why we are stepping up on the global stage once again and showing real leadership with our mission to achieve clean power by 2030 and accelerate to net zero across the economy.
Bill Esterson
I know that we are talking about the climate, but the events in Iran are a salutary reminder of the need to take action because of the reliance on global fossil-fuel prices. A new report from Reuters suggests that 17% of Qatar’s next five years of LNG supply has been destroyed by the overnight attacks. Does that not remind us how critical it is, for the energy security reasons that my hon. Friend set out, as well as for the climate reasons, that we get off the roller coaster of fossil fuels as fast as possible?
Katie White
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that. He is exactly right. When it comes to our energy policy, the way that we work at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is by balancing the trio of emissions and environmental concerns, energy security, and price. It is within that trio that we operate all our policies.
The transition to clean energy is a historic opportunity to improve people’s lives in this country. It is the route not only to lower emissions and climate security—vital though they are—but to lower bills, warmer homes and cleaner air. It is the best way to revive industrial regions and create good jobs and new opportunities for young people.
As the unfolding conflict in the middle east reminds us, home-grown, clean energy is also the way to ensure our energy independence and protect British people from the impacts of events beyond our borders. As we saw four years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, as long as our energy costs are set by international oil and gas markets, we will always be exposed to price shocks. That is why accelerating the shift to clean, domestic power is a national security imperative, not a “nice to have”.
The Climate Change Committee has been clear on that too. Its recent advice on carbon budget 7 confirmed that delivering the clean energy transition is the most cost-effective path ahead for the UK economy. In fact, its research shows that household bills would rise by nearly 60% from a future fossil-fuel spike if we fail to deliver on our clean power mission. Pursuing this path is therefore not an agenda or activism—and I can assure the shadow Minister that I am not a purist. It is common sense, and it is our patriotic and economic duty.
We have made huge progress in the less than two years that we have been in power. Since July 2024, over £90 billion of investment has been announced for home-grown, clean energy. We have lifted the onshore wind ban in England and approved record amounts of renewable energy. We have launched Great British Energy—our first publicly owned energy company for 70 years—and we have kick-started our new golden age of nuclear with the greatest investment in new nuclear power for half a century, including plans for our first small modular reactors at Wylfa on Anglesey. We also held Europe’s biggest ever offshore wind auction, alongside the largest ever procurement of solar projects in the UK, collectively securing enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 16 million homes. At the heart of this mission is a determination to support communities and create the good clean energy jobs of the future.
Last week I visited the Bridgend Ravens rugby club in Wales, which has just partnered with Electricity Cymru to install solar panels and LED lighting. This has slashed the club’s bills and allowed them to host the country’s first carbon-neutral rugby game. At a nuclear skills academy in Derby, I was lucky enough to meet—and was massively impressed by—Gracie, a 17-year-old apprentice who is the fourth generation in her family, and the first female, to train up to work in the clean energy revolution. She recognised that she is in the right place at the right time: helping to tackle the climate crisis, drive growth and ensure our energy security.
I know that there are those who doubt the impact that Britain can have on global emissions, but they underestimate this country’s potential and forget that we have already made a huge difference. We were the first country to pass a climate change Act and set up our own independent body on climate change—a move since been replicated by over 70 countries.
I would like to take a moment to applaud the Conservatives for their leadership at COP26. It is evident that the choices that we make in Britain influence the course of global action and, in doing so, help to protect future generations here and abroad from the impacts of the climate crisis. Our clean energy mission at home gives us the perfect platform to continue leading by example on the world stage. People want us to show leadership. They see what is happening in the world and they expect us to play our part.
I am pleased to confirm that the UK has delivered on our commitment to spend at least £11.6 billion on international climate finance over five years by the end of this financial year. We are working to ensure that that money makes a genuine difference for those on the frontline of the climate crisis, supporting stability and security across the world. Since 2011, we have helped 137 million people adapt to the effects of climate change, whether it is creating a renewable-powered clean water supply in Mexico or building infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather in the Caribbean. We have also provided 89 million people with improved access to clean energy, including solar-powered cold storage to help prevent food waste in Kenya—[Interruption.] I will speed up a little, as I hear the Whip’s cough. We have made more commitments, including a £6 billion commitment to international climate finance. On top of that, we will generate an additional £6.7 billion of UK-backed climate and nature-positive investments.
To those who still doubt the effectiveness of global climate action, I say this: before the Paris agreement in 2015, the world was on track for 4°C of global warming by 2010, but thanks to the commitments made since, we have brought that down to 2.3° to 2.5°. That is still a terrifying figure, but the difference for millions of people around the world is literally life or death. It is also a source of optimism, because it shows that the ambition is there.
I remind the House that keeping 1.5° in reach is only half the story. The crisis in Iran and the Gulf is yet another wake-up call to the fact that the UK’s energy system does not work. Our critics like to talk about the cost of transition, but the previous Government spent £44 billion on supporting households and businesses after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We are totally committed to clean energy, to working with partners around the world to keep the Paris goal within reach, and to building a secure, more prosperous Britain for today and for future generations.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Luke Murphy to sum up very, very quickly.
Luke Murphy
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and all colleagues who contributed. There was broad agreement that it is important to make progress on tackling climate change, not least because it means progress on economic growth, on living standards, on delivering national security, and on leaving a better inheritance for future generations—and who would not want that?
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the UK’s progress towards achieving the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Online Harms
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Ian Sollom, who will speak for up to 15 minutes.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that current legislation is falling short in preventing online harms; and calls on the Government to review whether it is necessary to introduce new legislation that is centred around harm reduction in this Parliament.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. Not long after my election in 2024, I visited the Internet Watch Foundation in Cambridgeshire. That organisation is on the frontline of the fight against child sexual abuse material, and is one of only a handful of non-law enforcement bodies worldwide with the legal power to proactively seek out and remove online images and videos of such abuse. During my visit, the IWF told me that, in the preceding five years alone, it had taken down more than 1 million webpages that showed at least one child sexual abuse image—often, they showed hundreds or thousands. The IWF’s annual report last year revealed that 2025 was the worst year on record for child sexual abuse material. Its analysts confirmed 312,000 reports—a 7% rise on the year before. Most starkly, in 2024 they discovered 13 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse, but in 2025 the figure was 3,440—a rise of over 26,000%, for those who are interested in numbers. Nearly two thirds of those videos were category A material, which is the most extreme classification.
A little while after my visit, I began to work with the Molly Rose Foundation on the proposal in this motion. At the time, the Online Safety Act 2023 had been in law for nearly two years, and the protection of children codes of practice that came from it, which promised to improve user safety dramatically, had just been published and implemented. The text of those codes was heavily criticised by civil society, and even by the Children’s Commissioner, who said they would simply not be strong enough to protect children from the
“multitude of harms they are exposed to online every day.”
It seemed timely for a motion to be brought before the House so that we could scrutinise the Online Safety Act and its resultant codes, as they now are being used in practice, and highlight to the Government the need to take action in this Parliament to protect young people. After the codes were implemented in mid-2025, the Mental Health Foundation published research stating that 68% of young people had experienced harmful content online. It described the harm as one of
“the biggest looming threats to young people’s mental health”.
In October 2025, the Molly Rose Foundation found that over a third of children reported that they had been exposed to at least one type of high-risk content in the past week. In a classroom of 30 children, that is 11 who are, every day, being shown content that promotes suicide and self-harm or that romanticises depression and eating disorders. That is the exact “primary priority content” that the UK’s flagship piece of online safety legislation explicitly promised it would protect them from. Just this week, the BBC aired “Inside the Rage Machine”, which used whistleblower testimony and evidence to lay bare how social media giants such as Meta and TikTok are consistently and deliberately pushing harmful content to users, after finding that their outrage fuelled engagement.
All of that is to say that if the motion for this debate seemed appropriate at the beginning of this Parliament, when I first visited the IWF, it is now urgent. Every week, I hear from parents, young people and organisations who are fighting a losing battle against the proliferation of online harms because, despite its noble aims, the current legislation is falling short of what Parliament envisaged it would do.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
Last week, I ran a supermarket surgery in my constituency. I had a flipboard that asked whether people felt that social media should be banned for under-16s. It is rare to get this level of agreement, but 78% of my constituents of all ages—older people, young people and even children—said yes. What was consistent was the fear they felt about this space and the belief that it is doing damage to young people as they grow up. I am not 100% sure on my position yet, but does the hon. Member agree that the Government are right to consult to work out the best option to protect young people from social media?
Ian Sollom
The text of the motion asks for a review, and that is certainly what I want to see.
I have not come here today to stir up panic or to imply that the wellbeing of our children, or indeed our adults, is doomed. There is hope and we should not have to accept harm as a reality of life on the internet. As the Molly Rose Foundation chief executive officer, Andy Burrows, noted this week after campaigning pushed both TikTok and Meta to row back on plans for end-to-end encryption in direct messaging,
“tech firms are not immune to pressure”.
However, pressure on its own is not enough. The Government must urgently look at strengthening the Online Safety Act to ensure that pressure has robust legislative backing behind it, and that Ofcom actually has the power to enforce the regulations that will protect us all from harm.
Online harm comes in three forms. First, there is harmful content: the outright illegal and the extreme, posted and peddled by bad actors across social media platforms. Then we have harmful interactions with bad actors, including grooming, cyber-bullying and extortion. I am sure that Members across the House will share many stories of the impact of both types of harm today; it is a tragedy just how many there are. I want to focus on the third form of online harm, which is the harm that arises from not just the type of content encountered online, but the intensity with which it is repeatedly pushed on to young people by the platforms themselves.
This week, I was pleased to participate in the Royal Society pairing scheme. I was paired with Doctor Lizzy Winstone, a researcher from the University of Bristol whose work focuses on how young people use social media and its impact on their mental health. Her most recent research investigates the algorithmic recommendation of content as one of the primary mechanisms that shapes young people’s digital mental health. She and others have found that a large part of online harm is structural, arising from not just individual bad actors, but business models designed at their very core to maximise attention and to profit from provocation.
Social media is built to be addictive. Hooking users in and keeping them engaged is at the very heart of almost every platform’s business model. Algorithmic models cause harm through both overtly harmful content and content that is harmless on the face of it. There are attention deficit harms caused by passive screen watching and health harms associated with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Higher social media use has been directly linked to shorter sleep duration and difficulties with sleep onset. Gambling harm is often overlooked, but a recent Guardian investigation found that Meta AI was pointing vulnerable social media users to illegal online casinos and even suggesting ways to bypass UK gambling safeguards. Regulation is clearly not keeping pace with the evolving digital landscape.
Often, it is the directly harmful, even illegal, content that is caught up in these algorithms. The shock, disgust and strong emotion inevitably caused by this content creates engagement: we watch for longer, we engage more, and the algorithm takes this as permission to show us even more of it to keep us hooked. Endless scrolling functionalities allow already vulnerable users to fall into a world where there is no escape from this cycle. Members will be aware that we Liberal Democrats have long called for platforms to implement built-in caps on social media doomscrolling.
In 2017, it was concluded for the first time ever that content on social media had contributed to the death of a young person when teenager Molly Russell tragically took her own life. Before she died, she had viewed thousands of suicide and self-harm videos and images on Pinterest and Instagram, some of which were pushed to her without her asking to see them. The word used by the coroner was that Molly was able—even encouraged by platforms—to “binge” this content.
The normalisation of these recommendation mechanisms has created an awful, self-perpetuating cycle. One case study from the University of Bristol described a 17-year-old girl who was forcing herself to repeatedly watch graphic content of a gory accident on TikTok to try to desensitise herself to violence. She knew that she would be regularly exposed to this kind of content online and wanted to train herself to be able to watch it and not feel sick. We can only assume that due to her increased attention, she was shown even more of this horrific content.
Recommendation systems in and of themselves are no bad thing. They create a personalised space to explore interests and sometimes do filter out content that a user has no interest in. The problem is that a user’s engagement with content does not always indicate their actual interest in it. Another young person from the University of Bristol study—a trans man—described feeling compelled to intervene in homophobic and transphobic comments sections, to try to support his community and challenge prejudice. He was understood by the platform to have engaged, and subsequently he was bombarded with more and more of the same hateful content. The tension between knowing that his algorithm would register his intervention as interest and wanting to actively challenge hateful views was a constant source of stress online.
Problems also arise from a lack of transparency. Not only are social media platforms under no obligation to publish their algorithms, but with AI increasingly being used to build and continually iterate these algorithms, the platforms themselves are often unaware of the exact mechanisms that shape experience. Harm is occurring as a result of an unaccountable black box. Young people are not entirely passive in this system—they know it is happening—but platform tools provide very limited control over what the algorithm continues to recommend.
Looking at Ofcom’s summary of the protection of children codes of practice, we can see how a weak interpretation of the Online Safety Act is allowing such harm to be perpetuated. Volume 4, section 17 says that platforms must
“Ensure content recommender systems are designed and operated so that content indicated potentially to be PPC”—
primary priority content, which is suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and mental health content—
“is excluded from the recommender feeds of children”.
Research shows that children were most likely to report having seen harmful content through feeds with recommender systems—very few actively seek it out—so the intention behind this measure seems good. But then we see that it applies only to “child-accessible” parts of a service that are
“medium or high risk for one or more specific kinds of PPC”.
In Ofcom’s December review, not a single social media platform rated itself high risk for suicide or self-harm content. There is a clear gap between the intention of the legislation and how it is being implemented. That is because the Online Safety Act and its codes are ultimately built around compliance and not harm reduction. Rules-based legislation means that platforms can happily meet their legal duties if measures in the codes are followed, and they are under no obligation to effectively and proactively address the harms identified in their risk assessments. Putting only a moral duty on platforms to protect young people from harm is not going to work—we have seen for years that it does not work.
How can we expect the very same platforms that have been shown to deliberately and knowingly peddle harmful content to young people to essentially police themselves? Why would they bother when it is so much more profitable to tick already loosely defined boxes? A full review of the current legislation must investigate the barriers that Ofcom says are preventing it from delivering on the intentions of Parliament. That includes the safe harbour principle, which allows platforms to claim compliance and skirt enforcement action on harms about which they are already aware, and the complete lack of any obligation in the Act that platforms take active steps to reduce the risk of harm to users. In practice, that means that a platform can follow Ofcom’s codes to the letter, even while its own risk assessment shows that it is aware of serious ongoing harm, and face no enforcement consequences.
Amendments could be passed within months to introduce the robust, risk-based minimum age limits that we Liberal Democrats have been calling for. Minimum joining ages should be determined by a platform-specific assessment of age appropriateness in risk. That will incentivise the market to adopt lower-risk functionalities if platforms wish to open themselves to a wider pool of users.
We could argue that a review of sorts has already taken place: every coroner’s report, every tragic story told in the Chamber and every investigation by charities and organisations make up that review. The evidence is plainly there, but the harm is being allowed to continue. We are here as Members of Parliament to scrutinise, and we have done that. There have been 12 debates with the words “online safety” in the title this Parliament and there have been hundreds of references to “online harm”, yet there has been little indication that the Government are addressing the core issues raised in this debate.
I hope that Members will use this debate to raise the full range of harms we hear about in our work. I ask the Minister to respond specifically to these questions: will the Government examine whether the safe harbour principle is serving Parliament’s original intentions or has become a mechanism that platforms use to avoid accountability for harms about which they are already aware? Will the Government commit to ensuring that any new legislation this Parliament brings forward is built around harm reduction and not compliance?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I will now introduce a time limit of six minutes.
Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.
Facing harm online is one of the biggest struggles that our young people face daily, from toxic influencers trying to push a certain way of life or ideology to those who encourage eating disorders. However, social harms extend a long way beyond that, from aggressive algorithms designed so that young people get addicted and trapped online, to forums encouraging self-harm and suicide. Many hon. Members will be aware that I have been raising this issue in this place over a number of years.
Earlier this month, I chaired a roundtable with the Mental Health Foundation to look at the evidence about the banning of social media for under-16s. As it happened, it took place on the same day that the consultation was launched, and I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for attending our meeting. We heard from mental health experts, affected parents, the Minister and young people themselves. While views on “how” we should protect young people are diverse, the consensus on the “now” was absolute.
There is disagreement about whether an absolute social media ban for the under-16s is the right answer. Should we have a more nuanced approach where we look at a wider range of issues such as the architecture of social media platforms? Following the consultation, the Government must design any proposed policy alongside young people. We will not find an effective solution without including the young people who operate in this world and who are most affected, and we must look to social media companies to start getting their act together and protecting people.
The links between young people using social media and increasing levels of loneliness and poor mental health are well documented. We have a youth mental health crisis, with nearly one in five children aged eight to 16 having a probable mental health disorder. That is a staggering number. As we have heard, the Molly Rose Foundation found that 95% of recommended posts on certain teenage accounts contained content related to suicide or self-harm. As Members know, Molly Rose tragically took her own life at the age of just 14, after social media algorithms continuously served her with self-harm and depression material, which created a rabbit hole for her to go down. She saw more than 2,000 harmful posts in the last six months of her life.
The rise of forums where groups encourage extreme forms of violence, self-harm, suicide, animal cruelty and political extremism, is extremely worrying. They look to target impressionable young people, pipelining sadistic and hateful ideas and content straight to them. UK law enforcement identified several cases in which perpetrators coerced girls as young as 11 into seriously harming or sexually abusing themselves, siblings or pets.
These forums encourage or blackmail users into committing serious acts of self-harm or suicide. One specific pro-suicide forum has been linked to more than 135 deaths in the UK alone. That is 135 empty chairs at dinner tables. These are extreme forms of online harms, and I am glad that the National Crime Agency and international partners are taking them seriously, but do they have the powers and resources to protect young and impressionable people from serious online harm?
This debate on online harms is not new. We have been talking about how to protect people from the online world over many years in this House, and there is a real danger that we are permanently running to catch up with online operators. Experts described the Online Safety Act as a ceiling for safety, not a floor. In many cases, social media companies are doing little more than their statutory duty. In December last year, not a single platform determined itself to be “high risk” for suicide or self-harm content. We cannot let companies mark their own homework.
Platforms are systematically downplaying harms, and are incentivised to allow the problem to go on if advertisers still deem the platform safe. Ofcom needs to have the power to mark these companies honestly, and if they are failing, it needs to be able to act. Does the Minister believe that Ofcom has the powers that it needs to act and for that to be followed through on?
Let me talk quickly about a meeting that the Molly Rose Foundation and affected parents recently had with Ofcom to highlight significant concerns, which included strengthening the Online Safety Act and extending it to cover children’s wellbeing. I am told that the meeting was very unsatisfactory. Will the Minister agree to meet with me and those parents to discuss the situation further? This is important to them; they have lost their children, and they want to do more to protect others.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.
There is no shortage of online harms demanding our attention. I have spoken before about children buying illegal drugs that are openly advertised on social media, the flood of harmful eating disorder content reaching young people, and Ofcom not holding social media companies to account, although it has increased powers to do so under the Online Safety Act. Today, though, I want to focus on another deeply disturbing trend. Men are secretly filming women on nights out and profiting by posting the videos online. These accounts mask themselves as “nightlife content” or “walking tours”, but the videos tell a completely different story; they fixate on women in dresses and skirts, often filmed from behind and from low or intrusive angles. These women have not consented—in most cases, they do not know that they are being filmed—and the scale is staggering. The BBC found that videos such as these have been viewed more than 3 billion times in just three years.
Once they have been uploaded, the abuse begins, with comment after comment dripping with misogyny:
“Look at how these ladies are dressed, no wonder they get attacked”
followed by a laughing emoji,
“They belong to the streets”,
and “Easy meat”. Hundreds of misogynistic comments like these flood the replies beneath nearly every video. This vile practice has victims, and the impact is real. Women who have been filmed in this way say that they no longer feel safe to go out; they feel watched, exposed, vulnerable, distressed and harassed. They no longer enjoy a night out or being in public. We must be clear that secretly filming women in this way is deeply degrading and predatory and must be stopped.
Right now, the law is failing. In 2024, a man was arrested on suspicion of stalking and harassment for this kind of behaviour, but no further action was taken due to limitations in the current legislation. As of now, there is no provision in law to prosecute for covert filming of this nature. This abuse sits in a legal grey area between several different crimes, including voyeurism and harassment, giving this type of video the space to grow. Existing voyeurism offences are framed around private acts or taking intimate images. Harassment laws were not designed to address the recording and mass distribution of this kind of content, so perpetrators slip through the cracks and the problem grows.
My Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would have created a specific criminal offence of secretly filming someone without their consent for sexual gratification, or to humiliate or distress them. The Government’s view was that this amendment was too broad. Yes, we must protect the freedom to film in public and legitimate journalism, but we cannot allow that to become an excuse for inaction, because right now women are being targeted, filmed and broadcast to millions without protection. Something must change.
We should look at harassment laws, including how the Public Order Act 1986 can be strengthened to tackle sex-based harassment, both offline and online, because harassment does not stop on the streets—it continues online, often indefinitely. It should be an offence to record and distribute footage of someone without their consent when they are targeted because of their sex and that material is used to objectify and humiliate them and subject them to misogynistic abuse. Women should not have to wonder every time they go out whether they will wake up the next morning to find themselves plastered across the internet in the most distressing and degrading way. It is not beyond the Government’s power to fix this issue, and I urge them to listen and to close this gap in the law, to protect women from this vile misogynistic harassment.
Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Bedfordshire for securing this important debate.
Online harms are systemic, they are scaled, and they are producing real-world consequences, as we have seen. Social media is now the environment in which young people grow up—it is almost universal when children enter secondary school. According to a consultation by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, 81% of 10 to 12-year-olds are on social media, and 86% have accounts. The Youth Select Committee also did a study on youth violence and social media back in 2024, and found that 97% of 13 to 17-year-olds were online and that 70% of them see real-world violence online. That is a huge number of statistics, but they demonstrate the fact that social media is now in every young person’s bedroom, in their hand and in their pocket.
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore from the University of Cambridge told me that adolescent brains are highly sensitive to the social environment, and the social media companies are probably aware of this. Adolescents’ brains have heightened neuroplasticity, and this will continue until their mid or late 20s. During adolescence, young people are trying to find identity and belonging, and I fear that the tech companies are exploiting this.
Where can we see evidence of harm? The National Education Union did a study called “Big Tech’s Little Victims”, in which researchers created fictional accounts and spent half an hour each day on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. They found that harmful content appeared within three minutes, and often immediately. Young people in my constituency say, “I do not want to see this harmful content anymore,” yet they are still shown it, so what is going on?
The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Bedfordshire mentioned the “Inside the Rage Machine” documentary, which I have seen a number of times. I am absolutely horrified at what the whistleblowers have revealed.
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Lady is making a very powerful speech about how young people, whose brains are still being formed, are being bombarded with online content. May I just let her know that my hon. Friend is actually the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom)? When she mentions him again, she might correct that.
Dr Sullivan
My apologies to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom).
I was speaking about “Inside the Rage Machine”. What people have witnessed is remarkable. The documentary makers found that serious exploitation cases were not being prioritised by TikTok, and that algorithms were repeatedly pushing harmful content.
It is not as simple as saying that we must ban children from social media; we need a suite of measures. The core issue is that young people, who are forming their identities, are vulnerable. Addictive algorithms are designed to maximise time and engagement, and they prioritise provocation instead of the truth. Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary on the manosphere is an incredibly powerful and timely contribution to the debate, and he shows us that the online world is like a gold rush in the wild west. The approach of “hook, identity, monetise” drives profits, with streaming platforms like YouTube rewarding people who spout abominable things. There is a business model behind this, and I think we are all very much aware that we need to do something about it.
Harmful content spreads across platforms, so we need to be very clear about any ban on social media. Last week, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee looked at the ban in Australia. We learned that because Australia defined which social media companies were to be included, other companies took their place. We can learn from that and it can feed into the Government’s consultation. We have to make the legislation stronger. Bans have limits, because they can be bypassed, as we see in Australia. They also shift the responsibility to the user. Why can we not shift the responsibility to the companies? We should not be banning children from social media; we should be banning the companies from exploiting our children.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
I support a number of the things that the hon. Lady is saying about the dangers of online harms, especially for children, but I am unclear about her position on a social media ban for those under 16. Although I accept her overall point, which is that social media companies have a responsibility, we could send them a really clear signal, and protect children, by bringing in an immediate ban on under-16s using social media. Does she support that or not?
Dr Sullivan
I welcome that intervention. Initially, action needs to be taken, but I am not sure whether a ban would be clearcut enough, because there are so many ways to get around it. How do we verify if a person is 16? The emphasis is being put on the young person—the user—who is trying to access that service. As long as the tech company can say, “We have done facial recognition—we have done all that is reasonably possible”, the liability is on the young person. It should be the other way around, with the responsibility being on the tech company. The hon. Member may well agree that the tech companies need to be doing more, and that is where the Government consultation on strengthening the regulations needs to come in.
These online harms are not isolated occurrences; they are being designed into platforms, they are being amplified at scale and they are shaping the real world. We must be serious about protecting our young people. We must address the systems and the incentives that are driving this harm, and hold the tech companies to account. The question is, should we be banning children from social media or should we be banning social media from exploiting our children?
Mrs Elsie Blundell (Heywood and Middleton North) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) for securing this crucial debate. Since my election, constituents in Heywood and Middleton North have repeatedly raised issues about online harms, especially as they see those who control the platforms seeking to shirk accountability at every turn. That is why we cannot discount the significance of the Online Safety Act. That critical piece of legislation—the first of its kind in putting a range of new duties on social media companies and search engines to mitigate the harms that those online can pose to our constituents—was a welcome step taken by the previous Government and implemented by this Labour Government.
Perhaps to a greater extent than in any other area of policy, we must recognise that the frontiers of online media are constantly expanding, technology is evolving, and our daily life is increasingly determined by what takes place on phones, laptops and tablets. Though the Act was immensely welcome—it goes some way towards dealing with this complex set of challenges—we cannot wait another 20 years before we come to substantively revisit this topic.
To underscore why constant adaptation to these threats is necessary, I would like to touch on three themes. First, there is the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. The integrity of our democracy and the tone of our discourse through to our continued belief in facts, evidence and science are all on the line in the war being waged unrelentingly in these digital spaces, where online actors are determined to amplify falsehoods to erode a sense of public trust that has taken generations to foster. The meteoric rise of AI has made the challenge all the more pressing.
People’s behaviour is being tracked on apps, and algorithms responding to them are driving misleading and sensationalist content into the most impressionable, vulnerable and isolated minds—so many of them are young people who are growing up unable to tell fact from fiction. We know that adults are also susceptible to such trends.
This week—of all weeks, when we have seen a deeply concerning outbreak of meningitis in Canterbury and east Kent—we see misinformation and blatantly anti-science positioning rear its ugly head once again, as we saw in the covid-19 pandemic and have seen countless times since. It is a really obvious thing to say, but the onus is on us to speak with one voice as MPs on such a critical topic as public health and to confront those harmful narratives at their source.
A great deal more thinking needs to be done in digital spaces when it comes to misinformation, whether medical or otherwise. That requires strengthened regulation and real intent between the Government, Ofcom and the platforms. I am pleased that the Online Safety Act has provisions to capture myths and disinformation where they are illegal or harmful to children, but we have much further to go in curtailing the weaponisation of online platforms to spread lies, conspiracies and harmful falsehoods to millions across the country.
Secondly, I would like to speak about the protection of children. I have raised the issue of technology-assisted child sexual abuse on several occasions in this place. It needs to be tackled from both sides—the judicial and the digital—so I wholly welcome the Online Safety Act and the Government’s wider work in this area. From stopping companies like X, or AI tools like Grok, generating vile, sexualised images of children and non-consensual, intimate deepfakes to the commitment to ban nudification apps and to introduce a legal duty requiring tech platforms to remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of being posted, it is clear that the Government stand firmly against those who would do our children harm.
That being said, TACSA also has further dimensions that warrant serious consideration. It can take many forms, such as the distribution of child sexual abuse material, sexual harassment, exposure to sexually explicit materials and grooming, to name a few. Despite the prevalence and seriousness of these crimes, there is an over-reliance on non-custodial sentences across our judicial landscape, with magistrates courts dominating outcomes, and gaps in the unduly lenient sentencing scheme. Online or technology-assisted child sexual abuse has profound and lasting impacts on children for their whole lives, comparable to that of physical abuse. Digital regulation and our justice system must reflect the insidiousness and seriousness of such crimes, and I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that when he concludes the debate.
Finally, I will briefly touch on how discourse in digital spaces is increasingly affecting our communities. Following the Manchester synagogue attack last year, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified a troubling rise in antisemitism online, where violence against the Jewish community was celebrated and further encouraged. We only need open X, Facebook or other platforms to see a disgraceful barrage of abuse levelled at our Muslim community too, with platforms giving previously fringe far-right voices the means to amplify their dangerous and divisive rhetoric to millions. The harm that these actors can inflict on the capacity of our communities to come together is being played out each and every day. All too often they can hide behind anonymous accounts, and real people—my constituents and people across the country—are having to face the consequences. I am proud to represent a diverse constituency, but I fear the power that those online have to direct actions and attitudes in real life. I hope that the Minister will touch on that pertinent topic.
I welcome this Government’s efforts to curtail online harms. Indeed, I welcome the work of any Government in doing so. Things, however, are moving at a staggering rate. We therefore cannot view the Online Safety Act 2023 simply as a job well done; rather, we should see it as another rung on a growing ladder. To keep our constituents—especially children—and our communities safe, we need to ensure that our thinking is consistent with the expanding nature of these digital spaces. Ultimately, that means recognising that, for all their utility in connecting us with one another, these platforms also have a near unlimited capacity to do people harm. I truly fear the consequences of failing to recognise that.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
It is an understatement to say that the internet and social media have changed everything. The early optimism of internet pioneers was that we would all benefit from a world in which all information was at our fingertips. In many respects, they were not wrong, and rapid technological advancement has massively improved our lives, whether that is significant developments in healthcare and easier communication with friends and family or online banking, which is a real benefit to many people here in the UK. We have also seen the benefit across the world—in humanitarian crises, for example, where cash transfers are increasingly used as part of the humanitarian response. It is much safer and easier to make those happen from a laptop or someone’s mobile phone, rather than having to helicopter huge sums of cash through war zones or refugee camps, which is what happens without that ability.
The fact that the online world has amplified everything means just that: almost everything, no matter how sinister or extreme, is available to us and, most distressingly of all, to our children. Not only is it available to us, but algorithms designed to push extreme content mean that violent, misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic and other hateful content is winning the battle for our attention and causing real harm. It is no longer just in ideological echo chambers. Algorithms and the introduction of suggested content that is pushed at the user mean that such content has permeated youth culture and taken over many of the spaces where young people communicate with each other and the language that they use. It is now just as easy—if not easier—-to tune in to extremist content online as it is to watch cartoons, go to the park or go to a house party, and that has real-life impacts in our constituencies.
In Cowdenbeath in my constituency, antisocial behaviour is a real issue. Tomorrow, I will hold a second meeting on antisocial behaviour, following an antisocial behaviour summit I held in December. We have found that social media is having a real impact by encouraging more extreme behaviour between young people, because it is filmed and shared online. Local headteachers also report the impact of apps like Snapchat as a real factor in bullying between schoolchildren.
We know that this is a global problem. Radical and violent groups profit from the recruitment to their online causes of young men in particular, pushing violence and very real threats to our democracy, including ISIS in the middle east, the Proud Boys in the United States and Yoon Suk Yeol, whose misogynistic platform was a factor in his election as President of South Korea and the attempted insurrection in 2024 for which he is now serving a life sentence. The truth is that the big tech companies are so obsessed with outdoing each other to profit from the attention of our children or other vulnerable people that they have ignored their responsibility to keep them and our communities safe, and to prevent people from being exposed unwittingly to the most horrific material.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am about to mention another hon. Member, who is not present, and I just want to confirm that I have notified him in advance. Too many people have been prepared to sacrifice the safety and cohesion of our communities for the right price. This week, an investigation showed that the leader of Reform has been paid to take extreme political positions on the Cameo app. According to The Guardian, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) took money to call for the release of P. Diddy and of a Honduran drug trafficker, to support a rioter, to repeat extremist slogans and to endorse a neo-Nazi event. Members of the public will be able to draw their own conclusions from that kind of behaviour.
Too often, action to prevent harmful content is too slow. In March last year, when new powers in the Online Safety Act came into force, I wrote to Ofcom requesting that action be taken, using that Act, against a website that actively encourages its users to die by suicide—I will not name the site for obvious reasons. Ofcom launched an investigation of the site, but it had still taken only a provisional decision against that site last month. I promise hon. Members that spending five minutes on the site would tell them immediately that it has no place in our country and no place online at all. It is shocking that action has not been taken. Tragically, since the illegal harms code came into force last year, the death of two more people have been linked to that site. Does the Minister agree that Ofcom is far too slow in responding to sites like this, and will he please take that up with Ofcom?
There are so many reasons why I am glad that our Government are taking steps to consult on a social media ban for under-16s. To be clear, I support such a ban.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
We are enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech; she has a number of pages left, and we want to hear all of it. She rightly talks about the potential ban for under-16s. I was at Newcastle academy last week, and a number of young people said that they would feel much safer if such a ban were imposed, so I would like to add my support to hers.
Melanie Ward
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I would add that I was recently at a primary school in my constituency, and I asked the young people how many of them were on social media—a class of 10 and 11-year-olds—and almost all of them were. However, when I talked to them about how social media work, I found that everybody had different rules for what they are allowed to do and when they are allowed to go on social media. It was clear that their parents are trying really hard to regulate their children’s access to social media.
Among the reasons why I want us to act by banning social media for under-16s are not only the impact on young people, which I have tried to lay out, but the job parents are struggling to do because social media companies cannot behave properly. I saw a survey showing that one third of parents had cried because of the stress of trying to manage their children’s access to social media and online content. To me, this is about backing parents as well as about keeping our young people safe online and in the real world.
We banned the sale of alcohol to under-18s in 1923, and when we banned the sale of tobacco to those under 16 in 1908. I very much hope that future generations will look on our Parliament as the Parliament that finally took action to prevent the public health risk and the real-life harm that is addictive social media and extremist content in the hands of children, as well as in the hands of so many vulnerable young people. We must act now. The safety and wellbeing of our children is at risk.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Before we move on to the next speaker, I remind Members to use extreme caution when avowing the motives of other Members. I think the hon. Lady probably just about stayed on the correct side of the line.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward). I have been very impressed and moved by the quality of the speeches from across the House. I really do appreciate the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) securing today’s important debate.
I want to touch on two specific aspects of this issue: to try to explain the awful impacts of some these cases, based on a case I have been involved in of a constituent who sadly was killed through online bullying; and to address some of the issues—my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy made very good points about the enormous difficulties that parents face—and ask the Minister to hopefully give us some indication of the Government’s direction of travel.
First, I will explain the case in Reading, which some Members may know about but others may not. My constituent Olly Stephens had just turned 13 years old when he was stabbed and brutally murdered by two other boys in a local park just yards from his house on the outskirts of the town. It happened through online bullying. The attack was heavily linked to the sharing of images of knives online, which led to his death. None of us can imagine the impact on his parents, Stuart and Amanda Stephens, and what they have been through. They are now incredibly powerful and determined campaigners against online harms. They have worked with Ian Russell and many other families. They have been able to explain some of the horror of what happens in these dreadful incidents. It is worth explaining a little bit about their views on regulating social media.
I want to highlight the point at which the attack on Olly happened: it was before the Online Safety Act became law. However, some of the same issues still appear to be taking place. The two boys who carried out the attack were 13 and 14 years old at the time—it happened in 2021—had both seen videos and other images of knives on 11 different social media platforms. They had seen them repeatedly and none of the companies responsible for those platforms had taken any of that content down. These young people had been bombarded with these images and were sharing them. They were sharing pictures of knives and teenagers playing with knives in bedrooms. That may have influenced their behaviour. It is the most awful thing.
Stuart and Amanda have tried very hard to raise awareness of the different aspects of this issue: the huge dangers of knife crime, the dangers of online bullying, the dangers of social media, and the effect of social media on young people. I know them very well as constituents. They have talked to me very powerfully about the way in which their son was addicted to his phone—they tried to take it off him and he threatened to run away. They believe he was being groomed through all sorts of other things that were happening online. It is absolutely shocking to see it from their perspective.
Their experience is different to some of the other cases we have heard about today. We have heard some very powerful stories told by other colleagues about issues in their own constituencies, or other ones they have come across, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan) in her work in relation to suicide. I have also come across that issue, which is absolutely appalling. I had the privilege—although it was a very difficult thing to do—of attending an event run by the Molly Rose Foundation. People were shown videos of some of the content she had been exposed to, which was quite shocking, and the deluge of the content and its repetitive nature through the algorithms targeting vulnerable young people—as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham rightly said—and the way that young people are particularly vulnerable to these terrible images. However, we need to think very carefully—and this is the other point I ask the Minister to address—about the difficulty of trying to then respond to that.
I have a lot of interest, and I totally understand that in Stuart and Amanda’s case they would like to see a complete ban on social media for under-16s. There is a powerful case for that. I am not completely convinced, however, because I know that the Russell family take a different view and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham said, there are practical issues around the risk of companies being able to circumvent some of those.
I hope that when the Minister responds, he can give an early indication of some of the issues that are being discussed in the consultation. That is important work being led by the Government and it is extremely difficult. It is great that Australia and other countries have already taken some action. Hopefully we can learn from their experience, build on what they have done and take things even further in our country to do even more to protect vulnerable young people and, indeed, vulnerable adults—the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) spoke about some of the appalling things involving adults as well.
A specific aspect that is particularly challenging for many of us, as parents, is that this area is evolving so rapidly and it is very difficult for many to keep up. In fact, the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy about the need for parents to be reassured that they were doing the right thing and about the difficulty of finding the right way forward was very powerful. We need to think about how we can help parents, schools and other places where young people are.
Gregory Stafford
Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I am very convinced of the need for a social media ban. That is why I welcome the Leader of the Opposition’s stance on that. On his point about communities, schools and parents, if we do not go for a full ban, there are some technologies that could be used. I think of Jason in my constituency, who runs a company called Orbiri. He is looking to set up communities, where a school—maybe a class or a whole school—can set the parameters for usage time and the sites and apps that are used, so parents do not feel that they are alone but are part of a wider community, all working together to limit and control the social media usage of their children. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that something like that would help?
Matt Rodda
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The other thing to consider is that there would be a risk to older teenagers—those over 16—if the ban for under-16s were imposed. We may need to look at a number of complementary, but different, measures, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham also mentioned. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and the Minister might want to reflect on the work done by the company in his constituency.
To conclude, it has been a privilege to speak today. This is an extremely difficult subject. It is wonderful that the House has been able to discuss it in some detail this afternoon, and I look forward to the Minister responding in a little bit more detail. I realise that the consultation is under way. When he looks into this further, can he take submissions from MPs, where we have been carrying out our own, local work? I have done that, with a local consultation that is a mini version of the Government’s one. A very high proportion of people who responded wanted to see firm action. There is a range of views on what that might be, but there is certainly a serious intent to change things.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
The latest Louis Theroux documentary for Netflix, “Inside the Manosphere”, was deeply shocking to many of us who watched it. But it was not remotely shocking for the millions of teenagers to whom his subjects are well known. It was not shocking to my three twenty-something sons; it was not shocking to the boys in the playground; it was not shocking to Gen Z or Gen Alpha; and it was not shocking for children in primary schools, let alone in secondary schools.
That is why this online harms debate should involve everyone, particularly the young people in whose name and on whose behalf we often make laws in this place. Their synapses are dulled to this stuff and their feeds are full of it, which in turn means that the premium for even more shock is higher. Outrage and extremism are hardwired into this business model.
“Inside the Manosphere” exposed that many of these social media influencers are themselves deeply damaged boys, often with a resentment about fathers who were either absent or violent, or both. They project themselves as pro-men, but in doing so they feel the need to project themselves as anti-women. And they are not just anti-women—that is a mild term—but they are virulently, disgustingly misogynistic. They feed off the pornography that, sadly, is seen by all too many of our young boys these days.
What also shocked me, however, as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) pointed out, was just how casual the antisemitism propagated by many of those in the manosphere was.
We saw a chap called Myron Gaines say,
“LOUIS IS A DIRTY J-E-W.”
Louis Theroux is not Jewish, by the way—not that that matters. At one point, another manosphere influencer, Harrison Sullivan, imitates Louis Theroux and leers that he is
“just sat there with his Jew fingers.”
Another of the manosphere influencers blames Jews for feminism, homosexuality and even
“vibrations that are going to negatively bring you down”.
In the conspiracy theory-ridden rabbit hole of the internet, all this is normalised. I thank the Antisemitism Policy Trust for its work in exposing just how much this vile racism has exploded online, and Elon Musk and X share responsibility for much of that. We must take much tougher action against tech giants who are literally profiting from this hatred. Antisemitism is often described as the oldest hatred, but misogyny is just as ancient a hatred. That is why I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who stood up to Grok and Musk when they flouted British laws and put British women and children at risk with those nudification apps.
I am equally proud that my party has been calling out Reform—none of whose Members is present today—for its pledge to repeal the Online Safety Act. I would like to know which protections for children Reform MPs would remove and what, if anything, they would put in their place.
I would also like to know why George Galloway’s Workers party took £5,000 in political donations at the last general election—an election in which I partook in Rochdale—from Andrew Tate’s brother, Tristan.
Wera Hobhouse
Can I quickly take the hon. Gentleman back to when he said he was proud of the action his Labour Government have taken? For a long time while they were in opposition, his colleagues advocated making misogyny a hate crime. I assume it was in their manifesto, but I am not quite clear about that. He mentions misogyny as one of the vile things that happen all the time in the manosphere. Why does he not press his Government more to make it a hate crime?
Paul Waugh
The Minister for Safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), has repeatedly emphasised the need to crack down on and outlaw misogyny, as have many of my colleagues. There is definitely more work to do on that, but it is a key part of our violence against women and girls strategy.
It was a pleasure to meet the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign last week—including Zack George, aka Steel from “Gladiators”, whom many Members will also have met—to hear why we need further action to protect our kids from the harm that social media can cause. As the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) has already mentioned, harm arises not only from content, but from design features such as algorithmic amplification and endless scroll—features that go beyond a simple age-based ban.
We need to help parents who are desperate for support in combating the daily nightmare of wresting back control from their children’s phones and computers. Suicide ideation, self-harm, pornography, animal cruelty, child sex abuse, anti-Muslim hatred and anti-Jewish hatred are all things that we want to protect our youngsters from seeing online, but we feel powerless in the face of the outrage economy. It is time to stop that sense of powerlessness.
Like the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, I want to praise the BBC’s recent documentary “Inside the Rage Machine”, which reported whistleblowers claiming that Meta made decisions to allow more harmful content on people’s feeds simply because internal research into its algorithms showed that outrage fuelled engagement and monetisation. A TikTok employee gave the BBC rare access to the company’s internal user complaints dashboards, as well as other evidence of staff being instructed to prioritise several cases involving politicians rather than a series of reports of harmful posts featuring children.
I would like to promote the great work that Rochdale borough safeguarding children partnership does to allow parents to access the right tools to protect their children. Other councils across the country are doing similarly great work—solutions are at hand. The Government’s new media literacy action plan should help us all to build resilience against hatred, and the Education Secretary’s recent guidance to schools to be phone free was very welcome indeed.
The Government’s consultation on social media is another huge step forward in creating a healthy relationship between children and the internet. We need to test all the options presented in the consultation so that decisions can be truly evidence based and delivery can be rolled out as effectively as possible. We need to balance the upsides of life online for young people—the friendship groups, the specialised help, and the need to protect free speech—against the very clear downsides.
Finally, we also need to address the offline issues that are often turbo-charged online. For example, why is it that these guys in the manosphere are so popular in the first place? There is the provocation, the riskiness, the sophisticated editing, the addictive nature of their output, the justification that it is “just jokes”, and the get-rich-quick con merchantry of it all. We need to ask how we can provide alternative role models for our boys and young men. How can we help their mental health? How can we repair their trauma? How can we tackle the lack of fulfilling jobs, careers and housing that is so often at the root of scapegoating—whether that is the scapegoating of women, Jews, Muslims, migrants, or their own lack of opportunities?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) for securing this debate. His introduction was eloquent and his knowledge of the subject very evident.
I will be honest with the House: when I first saw the title of this debate, I was not quite sure what to focus on or where to start. Everyone here has raised different issues. Do we start with addictive algorithms, underage children being able to access pornographic content, non-consensual image editing, financial scams or medical misinformation? My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) pointed to the harassment of people being filmed without their consent on the street. This is an absolute wild west and we have not even mentioned electoral interference by foreign powers.
Part of this wild west is AI chatbots, which I have spoken about on several occasions in this House. It surprised me to learn that a third of adults have relied on an AI chatbot for mental health advice or support, or for advice on a life choice. It is also concerning that one in four teenagers has done the same thing. That is not helped by the fact that over a million people are on NHS waiting lists waiting for mental health treatment. Those people are looking for other options. Although these chatbots could be useful if designed in the right way, the concern is that they are unregulated. The medical advice that they are giving is unsafe and can be dangerous. We know that some people with eating disorders are getting advice on low calorie diets and how to access weight-loss drugs, which are completely inappropriate for them. My hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire spoke about children using chatbots to get around the safeguards of online gambling companies. That is hugely dangerous.
Then we come back to the general social media that people have been talking about. When I speak to people in Winchester, I hear that parents want action on social media, teachers want action on social media, and even many young people, especially teenagers, say that they think social media is dangerous and damaging. Many of them actually want us to take action on it as well.
The Liberal Democrats have been working hard for the past few months to develop a position on this. My hon. Friends the Members for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) and for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) have spent months engaging with experts, charities and other organisations to come up with robust, evidence-based positions that would help us to tackle this issue. What we propose for the platforms with addictive algorithms that allow children to make contact with strangers, or for strangers to make contact with them to show inappropriate content, is to have an age rating like we see with films and video games. If we ban specific platforms, other ones pop up and we end up in a sort of regulatory whack-a-mole where we cannot keep on top of it all. If we take a principles-based approach that is based on the harm that can be caused, it can be applied to current and future platforms.
To be clear, those proposals, if applied today, would effectively result in a social media ban, because current social media platforms would not be suitable for children under 16 years old. However, there is nothing to stop technology companies creating online spaces that do not have dangerous, addictive algorithms, that do not have inappropriate contact, and that do not allow strangers to contact children. They could create useful spaces where children can connect and help each other with their homework.
One reason that we do not support the Conservatives’ headline-grabbing proposal of a complete ban on social media is that it would remove the ability for children to use Wikipedia to do homework. It would also mean that children under 16 would not be allowed to use WhatsApp, so they would be kicked out of the family WhatsApp group, and we know how many families rely on the WhatsApp group to run their lives.
We need intelligent, proactive regulation that is fit for purpose. It is not just a matter of announcing policies that chase headlines and taking quick political positions to get a hit in the media. This is such an entrenched problem, and we need cross-party support to tackle it in a meaningful way.
I think we all agree that scrolling is the new smoking. Like smoking, we already know the dangers. With smoking, we knew for decades. We knew that it was harmful and addictive, and specifically harmful for children. We know what happens: the risks are downplayed by lobbyists and the big companies, and the debate ends up shaped by misinformation and industry lobbying—and it is happening again. These new technologies, which sit at the heart of people’s emotional lives, are still subject to remarkably little scrutiny.
One day we may look back on the unregulated social media landscape and AI chatbots in the same way that we now look back at smoking. We will say that we knew the risks and we knew that action had to be taken, but we waited too long and people suffered, even died—and it was preventable. These are not abstract concerns. Poorly regulated social media and AI are some of the most pressing emerging public health threats.
I really would urge the Minister to agree to meet me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues to discuss the proposals we have come up with. They are backed by organisations such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. They are powerful yet nuanced enough to have a genuine impact in this area, and they could be implemented immediately.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on securing this debate. As with so many debates over recent months, it has shown that online harms are a matter of paramount importance to Members on both sides of the House and in the other place. As was to be expected, every Member who spoke focused on online harms. I think only one Member, the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward), spoke about some of the positives of the internet age.
I would usually say that it has been a pleasure to listen to and take part in the debate, but it really has not been in this case, because it has been a pretty grim debate. We have had a tour de force discussion of all the horrors that young people and adults are exposed to on the internet, and we have heard about the importance for our society and country of tackling them.
I am very proud of the steps that His Majesty’s official Opposition took in government to make the online environment a safer place, from bringing the Online Safety Act into force to the commendable and tenacious work of my noble Friends in the other place, especially Baroness Owen and Baroness Bertin, who are the staunchest of advocates for protections from digital forms of abuse for women and girls. Members will know that Baroness Owen secured important amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to criminalise the solicitation of sexually explicit deepfake images. Baroness Bertin’s report and campaigning has resulted in amendments being tabled to the Crime and Policing Bill concerning nudification apps. That is by no means the extent of their important work.
The aim of the Conservatives’ Online Safety Act was to build an environment where adults could access legal content freely and where children enjoy greater protections. I welcome in particular the entry into force last year of Ofcom’s protection of children codes. I also welcome the enforcement action that Ofcom has already taken under the Act to tackle file-sharing sites disseminating child sexual abuse material and pornography sites that have failed to put in place highly effective age-assurance measures to prevent children from accessing content. However, we know that concerns regarding children’s social media use go well beyond content that is explicitly harmful and subject to restrictions under the Online Safety Act.
As a result of addictive algorithms that drive excessive use and unhealthy patterns of behaviour, parents across the country are rightly concerned about their children’s social and emotional development. That is why we called for a social media ban for children under the age of 16. This month, the Government regrettably voted down amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which were secured in the other place by my noble Friend Lord Nash, to bring such a ban into effect. In response to pressure from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and other Members across the House, the Government have now launched their own consultation on measures to restrict access to social media for under 16s, alongside several other online safety matters. If the Government had accepted our amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, such a review would be well under way by now, and we would be closer to a solution on this generationally important issue, but we are where we are. Consultation is no substitute for action, and I sincerely hope that the Government will deliver on the timescales set out for responding and bringing in measures after their consultation concludes in May.
As with any rapidly evolving technology, social media and other online tools develop new apps and sites that pose novel threats and demand a response from Government and regulators. We have seen most recently in AI chatbots, some of which may fall outside the scope of the regulatory framework in promoting self-harm content to young people. A particular harm that I have raised with Ministers and Ofcom, of which there has been a disturbing increase, is the use of AI chatbots to obtain medical or other advice that should be sought from regulated professionals. The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) mentioned that in his speech. Last year, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency established a national commission, which ran a call for evidence on the suitability of the UK’s framework for regulating AI in healthcare. The call for evidence closed last month, and I look forward to seeing the commission’s conclusions and the Government’s proposals for dealing with the risks that will no doubt be highlighted.
A fundamentally important aspect of online harm that has attracted comparably less media attention and debating time in Parliament is the threat to democracy of online disinformation campaigns perpetrated by hostile state actors and their affiliates. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee reported last year that online foreign interference and disinformation campaigns are putting UK citizens at risk. We also had credible reports last year of Iranian state-backed digital interference in the Scottish independence referendum. The risk posed by that type of activity is intensifying, as artificial intelligence tools provide the capability to generate deepfake content purporting to represent politicians or campaigns, amplified by foreign, hostile, state-controlled bot accounts.
As people—particularly young people—increasingly obtain their news online, it is more important than ever that we consider the potential of digital watermarking tools that can be used to demonstrate the provenance and authenticity of content published on the internet. This danger is likely to increase as a result of geopolitical tensions. In their report on artificial intelligence and copyright, which was published yesterday, the Government recognised the risks posed by digital replicas and deepfakes in spreading convincing disinformation online, and committed to exploring options to address the growing problem. The Government also discussed the need to label AI-generated content to make disinformation easier for users to spot.
Will the Minister provide timescales for that further work, and an update on the Government’s broader strategy on countering AI-generated democratic interference material? What role does Minister think digital watermarking tools will play in countering the proliferation and impact of deepfake videos and content?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Kanishka Narayan)
I thank the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) for bringing this important debate to the House. A number of hon. Members have mentioned bereaved families, and I want to pay tribute to all those families. Ian Russell—with whom I have had a series of meetings, including this morning—Stuart and Amanda Stephens, Ellen Roome and so many others have gone through the most horrific of tragedies, and despite that, they have consistently fought for appropriate action for other families. I carry them in my heart and mind when I think about the prospect of online safety regulation doing justice to future generations of children in this country.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire and to the other Members who made contributions on this important topic. In the interest of time, I propose to prioritise responses to them individually before talking about the wider context. First and foremost, I thank the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire for doing a stocktake of progress on the child safety and illegal content duties so far. He will be aware that Ofcom is due to report on content harmful to children and progress on that question this year. I understand that will be due by October, and I look forward to its findings to assess where we can go further still.
The only other thing I will flag to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire is that the national consultation we have launched on children’s wellbeing includes the question of functionality limitations. The functionalities that he talked about—algorithmic recommendations and the structural aspects that make parts of social media particularly harmful to children—will be in scope. I would very much welcome his submissions on that as well.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) for her consistent advocacy on this question, and for the roundtable she held with the Mental Health Foundation and the Molly Rose Foundation, which I was glad to attend. I thank her for not just shining a light and keeping a consistent focus across the House on the scale of the problem, but flagging the diversity of views on how we should tackle it most effectively. I have been in schools pretty much every week since the launch of the consultation. I was with young people just this morning, and I will be in a school next week. She is right to raise the diversity and depth of views held on how we act, not whether we act.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett raised concerns about the suicide forum, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) also mentioned. I share those concerns, and I have engaged with Ofcom to ensure that it is acting quickly and robustly. I had a meeting with one of the bereaved families just this morning. I will continue to ensure that Ofcom does everything it can with the powers it has, and that we continue to look at any further powers required to ensure we act robustly to prevent any such incidents happening again. I would, of course, be delighted to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett to continue that conversation.
I have had the privilege of engaging with the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on the illegal sale of drugs; I know that she has been, quite rightly, actively advocating on that question. She will be aware that it has been deemed a priority offence. Ofcom is closely monitoring compliance. I know there is more to do; she has made that point very firmly to me. I will also inform her that the National Crime Agency is looking to identify offenders operating online, both nationally and internationally. She made a very important point on covert filming, and we will take what she raised into consideration. Systems that are designed to remove such content will now have to do so within 48 hours of non-consensual intimate images being put up online. I will continue to look at the implementation of that measure once it comes into force.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan) raised very important points about the impact of social media usage on brain development, which is one motivating factor for our consultation. We are looking at not just acute harms, but the chronic impact over time of engagement on social media. I am grateful to her for raising the point that there is a suite of options that might be appropriate. I very much share her intent that, at the heart of it, the action we take will make platforms, not young people, responsible for the harms being conducted online.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) for advocating on the questions of misinformation and community cohesion, both in her community and nationally. On her point about misinformation and the erosion of public trust, which was also made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), there is a very clear foreign interference offence in the Online Safety Act. I will continue to look at the implementation of that. Alongside that, I serve on the defending democracy taskforce with the Security Minister. This is a priority question that we have been looking at. I will continue to ensure that we do more to press the enforcement of existing law and to look at where we can go further still.
Both my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) raised important points about community cohesion, and how we must use online experiences not to divide but to unite our communities. In that context, we have taken a series of initiatives on media literacy to support the ability to sift fact from fiction across our communities. The foreign interference provisions in the Online Safety Act are also a key vector of enforcement against the causes described.
On antisocial behaviour, I would be interested, in the light of the consultation, to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy about where the headteachers and young people she has engaged with think we ought to go. I agree with her on the divisive impacts, and we will continue to look not just at illegal content but at how we empower users in relation to divisive content that, individually, might be legal but, collectively, ends up being deeply harmful to community cohesion, as well as to democratic integrity.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) reaffirmed the point that he has made to me in person about this issue. I pay tribute again to Stuart and Amanda Stephens, who have gone through the most horrific tragedy in their family. I am deeply grateful for their grit and resilience through it, and for my hon. Friend’s advocacy alongside them. He asked me for a sense of direction on where the consultation is going. I will not pre-empt its substantive content, but we have had almost 25,000 responses—I hope and expect that this will be the most engaged-with consultation in the history of British national consultations—including thousands of young people. We have designed a dedicated version of the consultation for young people as well as one for parents and carers. I am keen to hear my hon. Friend’s views from his engagement, as well as those of other Members.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale raised a very important point about the documentary “Inside The Manosphere”, the growing cause of misogyny in this country and this Government’s priority of tackling violence against women and girls. He will be aware that in December, we published our landmark cross-Government violence against women and girls strategy. That was the underpinning force for our making cyber-flashing and intimate image abuse priority offences in this country, banning the creation of nudification apps and banning people from creating and sharing that content, and it is why we are going further still in ensuring that such content is taken down robustly and quickly, within 48 hours. On the point that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North raised about the growing prevalence of antisemitism and division online, I look forward to an imminent meeting with the Antisemitism Policy Trust to figure out how we can go further not just in law but in terms of awareness of it across our communities.
I turn to the contribution from the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers). I have met the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench team to talk about their suggestions on functionalities and age ratings. I would of course be happy to continue the conversation, and I encourage them to contribute to the consultation.
Finally, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, raised a very important point about chatbots. I hope it is very clear that chatbots ought never to replace professional support. We will continue to look at that, and I will update the House when we have decided on specific steps. We announced just yesterday that we are looking at the issues of labelling and personality rights, and I hope to update the House on them soon.
Ian Sollom
I thank all Members who have contributed to the debate. The hon. Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) told us about the 135 deaths linked to one pro-suicide forum—135 people who are not with us. It is really stark and powerful to share that sort of statistic. My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) shared stories of the new frontiers in misogyny and abuse online.
The hon. Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan) highlighted the science, as I would expect from the chair of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology—though she is maybe not quite so hot on geography. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) made some really powerful points on online discourse and how hate, Islamophobia and antisemitism proliferate.
I wish the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) luck with tackling antisocial behaviour. She highlighted the link between what is happening in the online space and real-world antisocial behaviour and how they reinforce each other; it is toxic. I thank the hon. Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) for sharing Olly Stephens’s story again. I pay tribute to Stuart and Amanda for the campaigning they do.
The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) talked about the manosphere and highlighted the connection to the real world, but in a more positive light, asking what we can do in the real world to make a difference to the online space; I really appreciate that. The hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) also made some important interventions.
I appreciate the Minister’s effort to respond directly to all Members. We need timely action after the consultation, because these issues are not going away, as we have heard today, so let’s keep talking about this.
Pre-1997 Pensions: Discretionary Increases
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
Across the country, an estimated 1 million pensioners are losing out on pension increases that they ought to be entitled to, simply because the hard shift that they put in to pay into their pensions happened to occur before an arbitrary date in a calendar. That is not good enough. I have secured this debate to shed light on the injustice of the lack of statutory increases for pre-1997 defined-benefit pension schemes, and to ask the Minister what the Government are going to do about it.
Prior to 6 April 1997, defined-benefit pension schemes in the UK were not legally required to increase in line with inflation. That oversight left pensioners, who had worked hard for their whole lives to pay into a pension guaranteeing security in retirement, at risk of seeing their hard work outstripped by the rising cost of living, reducing their financial position in retirement.
The Pensions Act 1995 sought to address the problem, introducing statutory limited price indexation, meaning that those pensions were mandated in law to rise as inflation eroded their real value. However, the change applied only to pension contributions made after April 1997. Almost 30 years on, pre-1997 defined-benefit pensions are subject to the same injustice identified and partially resolved by the Government all that time ago. It is up to the trustees of these pre-1997 funds to decide the level of pension increases granted.
I have secured this debate, during which I am aware that a number of right hon. and hon. Members will seek to intervene, to challenge the Government to finish the job, started almost three decades ago, of ensuring that every recipient of a defined-benefit pension scheme has the dignity and security in retirement that they have worked so hard for.
The Pre-97 Pension Justice campaign group of over 400 pensioners, who I pay tribute to for their persistent campaigning on this issue, has informed me of at least 13 companies where this spell of zero increases—effectively real-terms cuts to pensions every year—stretches to a decade or more. Top of the list, sadly, is Nissan, which has not increased these kinds of pensions for a quarter of a century. In those 25 years, the price of goods has almost doubled: the contents of a shopping basket worth £100 in 2001 would now cost £194.
Prior to this 25-year period, the trustees of the Nissan pension had set a precedent that when the pension scheme delivered a surplus, a discretionary increase would be passed on to members. Between 1992 and 2001, when the scheme was in surplus, increases of between 2% and 3% were granted. This pattern was disturbed after 2001, when the scheme went into deficit, but when the scheme returned to a surplus in 2022, the trustees broke with precedent and refused to grant an increase. The same has happened again every year since, which leads the pensioners to fear that there is a new policy by the trustees that no discretionary increases will ever again be handed to the retired Nissan workers holding these pensions.
Several hon. Members rose—
Luke Akehurst
I will give way to the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) first.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent presentation. Rather curiously, up until 2023, ExxonMobil pensioners got automatically indexed uplifts to their pensions, but for some reason from that date onwards, the company changed its policy and now they are not getting the discretionary uplift. The trustees there say that they have no power and that it is up to the company to decide whether this discretionary uplift occurs. Is one way forward perhaps to ask the Minister to give an undertaking that the trustees should have the power to award such discretionary uplifts linked to indexation?
Luke Akehurst
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to that particular anomaly.
Luke Akehurst
I see that my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour wishes to intervene.
Luke Akehurst
I have had written communications and met with constituents who used to work alongside my hon. Friend’s constituents at Nissan. Sadly, in the case of Nissan and countless others, trustees have proven themselves not to be accountable enough for the decisions that affect those holding pensions. Evidence submitted to the Pensions Ombudsman shows multiple cases in which trustees have not even considered key factors when deciding discretionary increases.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on clearly laying out the injustice. Does he have concerns, as I do, that the make-up of the trustee boards means that the company is in control? That is either because the trustees are current employees and their promotion will depend on the company or because they have been appointed specifically by the company. Therefore, even where trustees vote unanimously for a rise, as in the case of 3M, it can be blocked by the company. That has happened for successive years with these companies.
Luke Akehurst
I absolutely share that concern. My understanding from the constituent I met is that Nissan’s trustees include a majority of company appointees who outvote the trustees representing the members of the scheme. Key factors have been ignored, from ignoring inflation to overlooking member contributions. For that reason, I believe that statutory intervention is urgently required.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I congratulate him on securing today’s debate. Has he noticed in his work on this issue that in some cases, some international companies are paying inflationary increases in other jurisdictions where they operate, but not in the UK? There have been a number of instances of that in my area, where pensioners from Berkshire in schemes run by international companies have seen exactly that. For example, Irish pensioners or US pensioners get an increase, but not British pensioners.
Luke Akehurst
I thank my hon. Friend for that very useful contribution. I was not aware of that, and I am shocked. It is a further injustice if pensioners in the UK are treated differently from pensioners who worked for the same company in other territories. While the Pensions Ombudsman can establish whether procedure has been followed, only politicians can decide whether outcomes are fair. Will the Minister set out what scope he sees for his role in ensuring fairness over defined benefit pension schemes?
There is another injustice in the way that the Nissan scheme treats its pension holders. Members across the House will be aware that most people take up the option to take a quarter of their pension as a tax-free lump sum. That money is vital to kick-starting retirement, allowing people to pay off their mortgages and other major debts or make major purchases when they first become pensioners. However, the split between pre-1997 and post-1997 pensions means that this scheme, which should be hugely beneficial for those retiring, can be and is being used against them.
The Nissan pension scheme has been paying out its lump sums from those parts of people’s pension funds where the payments would have increased with inflation and leaving in their pension pot the pre-1997 part where the benefits will not track inflation. The impact of that means that, once a lump sum has been taken, the parts of the pension that are left will receive lower or no annual increases. That is clearly unjust.
Worst of all, this change was not even directly communicated with pension holders. My constituents knew about what is frankly an accounting trick only as they noticed their pension increasing by less than anticipated over the years. Because of that, I hope the Minister is able to set out what the Government’s position is on which part of these kinds of pensions should be paid out as a lump sum. Will he work to protect pensioners from quirks of sum calculation being used to deny them the increases that they need to keep up with the change in the cost of living?
I want to recognise that Nissan is otherwise an excellent employer and a hugely important contributor to our regional economy in the north-east and, indeed, to the British manufacturing industry as a whole. I am sure that my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist), who also has many constituents working there, agrees. Not only has Nissan employed people, it has provided jobs deep into the supply chain. Given its status in the region as a very much admired employer, it is a real shame that it seems to be forgetting that its success, bringing employment and regeneration to the north-east over the past 40 years, comes from its loyal workforce. These cost-saving exercises on the pension scheme are no way to treat employees who have worked so hard and deserve a decent retirement.
Crucially, discretion over what increases pension holders receive currently lies with the trustees. However, the most common long-term target for a pension scheme is buying out with an insurer, an outcome that takes decisions of that nature out of the hands of trustees. When a scheme is bought out, trustee discretion disappears entirely, meaning that without legislative reform, thousands of pensioners will lose even the faint hope that the trustees might give them an increase. Given that the Government have made clear their desire to put more power into the hands of trustees of pension schemes, I would appreciate if the Minister could set out whether the Government have made any assessment of that risk, and whether they intend to take any action to benefit those pension holders affected by insurer buy-out.
To illustrate the financial impact of this injustice, I will tell the House about a constituent of mine. Steve, who I have met, started working for Nissan in 1985, meaning that a considerable amount of his pension contributions were made before the 1997 cut-off. He retired in January 2016. Since his retirement, consumer price index inflation has totalled 40.3%, while Steve’s pension has increased by only 8.3%, the minimum legally required for his post-1997 contributions. In real terms, Steve’s pension has decreased by a staggering 32.5% in just nine years. Meanwhile, the state pension has increased by 48% since 2016, when Steve retired. We are right to be proud of the increases to the state pension we have delivered, including £575 this year for the new state pension. If we believe in the importance of protecting state pensioners—a belief we have backed up with real money out of the door—why should we not apply the same standard to defined benefit pension schemes?
Steve is just one example of someone being short-changed by this anomaly. My hon. Friends the Members for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery), for Blaydon and Consett, for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon), for South Shields (Emma Lewell), for Easington (Grahame Morris) and for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne), along with others, have all been advocating for constituents involved in the dispute with the Nissan pension scheme. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), who has been fighting for the hard-working people at Nissan as the constituency MP for the site. I congratulate her on her very recent and well-deserved promotion to ministerial office, which unfortunately precludes her from participating in the debate.
Nissan is not an isolated case; it is indicative of a much wider problem, where the state is failing to stand up for fairness and the value of a pension is drastically determined by which side of an arbitrary cut-off date contributions were made. Parliament has already been presented with a clear solution to this matter. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) on tabling new clause 22 to the Pension Schemes Bill, which would have legislated to address this issue. Disappointingly, the Government indicated opposition to that amendment, and it was not put to a vote. Will the Minister elaborate on why the Government were unwilling to support my hon. Friend’s amendment?
I am aware that Ministers have previously cautioned against retrospective changes to pensions that would go the full way to correcting this injustice. While I do not agree that we should accept an injustice just because it has already happened, I hope the Minister will consider whether a statutory increase to pre-1997 defined benefit pensions could be enacted from this point forward, even if it cannot be retrospectively applied. Earlier this month, I co-ordinated a joint letter with colleagues whose constituents are missing out on money to which we feel they are entitled. That letter calls on Ministers to address the problem I am raising today by supporting my hon. Friend’s new clause 22, or by committing to bring forward similar measures before the Pension Schemes Bill achieves Royal Assent.
The Pension Schemes Bill now sits with the other place, where my predecessor, the now Lord Beamish, will make the case for those adversely affected by this oversight in the law. I urge the Government to accept any forthcoming amendments on this matter, and to commit to working with those of us advocating for a fair resolution for our constituents. I understand that the Bill is completing its final stages, meaning that time for action is running out. Increasing pre-1997 pensions would not only benefit the more than 1 million pensioners in question; it would also mean greater tax receipts for the state, thereby boosting public services and allowing more investment in communities like the one I represent.
The Government have already taken limited but welcome steps to address the injustice for holders of pre-1997 pensions. They have announced legislative changes to allow the pension protection fund and the financial assistance scheme to start paying inflation-linked increases, capped at 2.5%, on pre-1997 pensions—something that had previously been prohibited under the law. Ministers have confirmed that this change will benefit around a quarter of a million PPF members by improving their payments by an average of £400 a year, with the earliest increases expected from January 2027 once the legislation is in place.
The Government have also stated that the reforms in the Pension Schemes Bill, particularly those relating to surplus release, are intended to give trustees more flexibility to address this issue in future. Have the principles that have guided the Government in making those welcome adjustments been applied to the remaining pre-1997 pension holders who have been left behind? I hope that Members will agree that there is no justification for why the constituents I have mentioned today should not receive a pension that keeps up with the rising cost of living.
I know the House is committed to dignity and security in retirement as a key part of the social contract that we seek to uphold. I have even heard anecdotal evidence that pensioners affected by the change have had to return to work after they have retired, or have downsized from their family home to make ends meet. No pensioner should see their dignity and security eroded by an accident of timing. I therefore urge the Government to do more to apply the current values to pre-1997 pensions. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister on this matter.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) on his excellent speech and on securing this debate, and all those who have participated in it. I thank the Minister for allowing me a few words.
On your behalf, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will mention your constituent Steve Mawby, because he has been a key campaigner in this important and very difficult area. I first got involved in it before I became a Member of Parliament in 2007, and I pay particular tribute to the late Roy Harries and Les Collard, because they brought to my attention the injustice that had been perpetrated on older pensioners by the Special Metals Wiggin pension fund. Hundreds of people were affected by that, and, alas, many of them are now dead. They were almost invariably widows, who were left receiving half of a much-diminished pension. These pensioners have not received a single penny in top-up payments since the legislation kicked in, because the company’s trustees have decided not to pay any discretionary bonuses at any point. The result is that those pensioners’ incomes are 55% lower than they would have been, and, for widows, half of that. It is an absolute outrage and a great historical injustice, and as the hon. Member says, the fact that an injustice occurred in the past does not mean that it is not important to address it now.
Of course, there was a clear blunder in the legislation. I have raised this issue in the House over the years, and it is a matter of great embarrassment that previous Conservative Administrations and the coalition Government did not address it, but there is now the opportunity to do so. On the Special Metals Wiggin pension fund, I recognise that the trustees are often directly or indirectly controlled by the company, regardless of whether they are formally independent. The company has not paid any bonuses or top-ups, and it is now owned by a large American company, Precision Castparts Corp., which is itself owned by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. I have written to Buffett, who has said that he is not willing to help either. It is a source of great sadness to me that even such a great philanthropist and entrepreneur such should have failed to do so.
My question to the Minister is this: given that the Special Metals Wiggin pension fund has been in surplus for many years, could he, as well as considering the question of historical injustice, consider the question of whether the trustees should be required, out of the surpluses they have, to pay top-ups to the pensioners? I hope they will consider doing so retrospectively but, if not, they should do so in way that is generous, that recognises the terrible injustice that has been done, and that pays proper tribute to Les Collard, Roy Harries and all the great men and women of the Wiggin pensioners, who we justly celebrate and whose injustice we seek to fight.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Torsten Bell)
I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) has secured the debate on this important matter and thank him for the thoughtful way in which he described the impact on his constituents. He spoke on behalf of many others as well, and in particular those members of the Nissan pension scheme. I join him in praising the persistent campaigners on this issue. He mentioned one organisation in particular—I have met its members, who have been campaigning for many years and have not shown any let-up in their energy during that time.
A period of high inflation and the return of many defined-benefit schemes to surplus has rightfully put up in lights of the situation of members whose pre-1997 benefits are not protected by statutory indexation. That wider debate has rightly featured heavily during the passage of the Pension Schemes Bill. It was also discussed by the Work and Pensions Committee prior to the election. As my hon. Friend said, it was considered in some length here when we debated new clause 22, when we heard many powerful speeches, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith). The right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), as he said, has been raising the issue for many years, and I have also discussed it with the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis).
I have met many scheme members and their representatives. Recently my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli and I met three members in Swansea to discuss exactly this issue in a lot of detail. I was grateful for their time and to her for organising that discussion.
I have listened, and I recognise the difficulties faced by some scheme members who can now see their income, their living standards and the quality of their retirement eroded by inflation, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham said. It is particularly understandable that members are disappointed when schemes do not award discretionary increases when they are in a strong funding position—that is obviously the change that has happened over the last few years.
As my hon. Friend will know, defined-benefit pension schemes have very different approaches to awarding pre-1997 indexation. The truth is—obviously, we will not be discussing these schemes at length today—most do provide for increases under their scheme rules; others do not allow it or require it at all; and a significant number allow discretionary increases only where there is agreement between both trustees and the sponsoring employer. Those are the cases that we are mainly focusing on in this debate. The result is that, in some cases, when employers are unwilling to support discretionary increases —even when the scheme is in a strong funding position—trustees can effectively be prevented from acting.
Jesse Norman
I will not detain the Minister long. If a group of trustees never pays a discretionary bonus, even though the scheme is in surplus, it starts to look like it is a policy of theirs to discriminate against a subset of their beneficiaries, and I think that is illegal. I would be grateful for his guidance on that.
Torsten Bell
I think there is a slightly harder case, which is examples where schemes had an established practice of paying discretionary increases—my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham mentioned Nissan cases from before the turn of this century, where that was the practice—and that was seen as the norm, and then, for different phases, such as when schemes slipped into deficit, as many did, they stopped and then did not restart when the surplus arrived. That is the case raised here. In many ways, those are the harder cases to understand, and I will come to how we think about such cases as we go forward.
Jesse Norman
I can understand why the Minister thinks those cases are harder; in some respects, they are less hard, because in those cases changes have been made reflecting circumstances. In the cases that I am talking about, there is a policy to discriminate against a settled group of beneficiaries. That is the bit that I think is potentially illegal.
Torsten Bell
I hear the right hon. Member’s point. I am not going to comment on individual legal cases, obviously, but the basis of the distinction at 1997 reflects the decisions taken in 1995 by a previous Conservative Administration to introduce statutory indexation, but not wanting to do that for accruals that had already taken place. The Pensions Act 1995 brought in statutory indexation from 1997 onwards.
We can recognise the underlying reasons for this situation—not retrospectively changing the basis of scheme rules—while sharing Members’ huge frustrations with it. It is why I continue to encourage trustees and sponsoring employers to think carefully about the effect of inflation on member benefits when making decisions. The Pensions Regulator already sets out that trustees should consider specifically—not just generally—the situation of those members and whether the scheme has a history of making such awards.
Pensions legislation sets minimum legal standards that all schemes must meet, and they are designed to strike the balance between fair and workable, and having a stable DB landscape. I completely recognise the case for change that the right hon. Member for New Forest East has made today and in the past. The challenge is that it would be unreasonable to retrospectively change long-standing rules in blanket terms in a way that would put some schemes’ stability at risk, whether that is today by fundamentally changing their funding position, or in future, when we do not know what the world will look like.
Sir Julian Lewis
If the Minister would follow the recommendation of at least giving the trustees the full power to make the decision over discretionary awards and taking it away from the company, one could be pretty sure that if the scheme went into deficit, the trustees would act accordingly.
Torsten Bell
I will come in a second to the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, which is about where power lies in the system.
Dame Nia Griffith
I thank the Minister for his time in meeting us in Swansea, as well as the time he has spent on this topic here in the House. He mentions the disadvantages of making any sort of blanket legislation, but does he not agree that there are ways we can caveat that, such as applying it when the scheme is in surplus? Does he not recognise that most of these schemes were paying increases until they stopped, either because of financial crisis or because they realised they did not have to? There are options that could be explored. Would he be willing to do that?
Torsten Bell
My hon. Friend has been a powerful campaigner on this issue. I recognise her point about situations where there was a habit of paying discretionary increases in the past. On the question of what we do about it, let me come to the Government’s approach, and then I will perhaps offer two reflections specifically on the points that have been raised on which we might want to continue making progress, even if I cannot satisfy all the demands for instantaneous change today.
So, what are we doing? The reforms introduced in the Pension Schemes Bill will give more trustees of such schemes the flexibility to release surplus. That will help shape the balance of power between trustees and employers when it comes to well-funded schemes. There is not nothing we can do, and the Pension Schemes Bill will make a difference, particularly for the kind of schemes being raised tonight—those which have a surplus today.
The decision to release surplus will remain entirely with the trustees. That will place them in a better position to negotiate benefit improvements as part of any release. It is entirely for trustees, working with the employer, to determine how members may benefit. Let me be really clear: if trustees wish to insist on discretionary pre-1997 indexation as a condition for surplus release, they will be entitled to do so. I expect that many will, given the discussions I have had with them. We are obviously in the early stages of that Bill; it has not passed through Parliament yet. Employers and trustees are thinking through a world where they suddenly find themselves with a surplus, and in many cases are thinking about what that means for the future of their pension scheme. These reforms recognise trustees’ and members’ understandable frustration with the status quo, but also the diverse circumstances of DB schemes.
Let me end with two reflections on the wider contributions that Members have made, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, who has brought us here today. First, whatever the scheme rules, there is no excuse for employers not to fully engage with trustees on these decisions and questions, and I have too often heard from members and trustees that employers have not done so. I will take that away to consider what more we can do to make sure there is an open consultation and people are clear about what is going on and how decisions are taken.
Secondly, given the importance of this matter, I recognise that it would be beneficial to develop a clearer understanding of the circumstances, particularly in relation to the issue that has been raised about well-funded schemes are choosing actively not to award discretionary increases, particularly where employer consent is the binding constraint. The Pensions Regulator has been considering how to build its evidence base in this area, and I will talk to it in the weeks and months ahead about what more we can do about that.
I will finish by paying tribute to my hon. Friend and the other right hon. and hon. Members who have participated in this debate, but also to Members who are not here, but have consistently raised this issue with me. In the coming weeks, I will be meeting other Members who have asked me to discuss this with them and their constituents. It is important that we have the chance to discuss these important matters, and I am glad that we have done so.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
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Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Past
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. I also ask you to be mindful about issues of sub judice; we have been given some flexibility by the Speaker, but I urge you to err on the side of caution when referring to ongoing cases.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Second Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, The Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland, HC 586, and the Government response, HC 1716.
It is a privilege, as always, to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain, and I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for allocating time for the debate. We launched our inquiry in December 2024, and it stretched across 2025, culminating in the publication of our report shortly before Christmas. Alongside receiving almost 80 pieces of written evidence, we held eight evidence sessions with representatives of victims and survivors, veterans, retired police officers and human rights groups. We also heard twice from the Secretary of State. Importantly, we visited Northern Ireland several times to hear at first hand from people directly and indirectly affected by the troubles.
As a cross-party group, we recognise the significance of raising our concerns with a unified voice. As I said during my statement on the Floor of the House when we published this report, I am deeply appreciative of my colleagues’ collaborative spirit in shaping a report built on consensus. It is a serious and comprehensive piece of work, engaging meaningfully with all communities and demonstrating a strong cross-party consensus on outstanding issues of concern and specific provisions in the Bill that require amendment. Our hope is that the level of detail contained in our report will help to shape and inform the parameters of debate in this House and beyond across a wide range of issues. Although the Government provided a detailed response at the end of January, for which we are grateful, a number of important matters remain outstanding, and this debate offers an opportunity to explore some of those further.
I will start with resourcing. Beginning with the very foundation of the legacy process, my Committee repeatedly heard serious concerns about resourcing, which we set out in detail in the report. Put simply, no amount of reform, good will or political momentum will deliver truth or justice if the necessary funding is not in place for investigative bodies or those responsible for information disclosure. Even the current legacy investigation body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, pointed to concerns about sustainable financing going forward, given the increase in demand for its services—an increase that we hope will only continue under the new legacy commission. If the commission is to receive relevant information in a timely manner, the resourcing of organisations such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland also needs to be considered, given the new demands on them to retrieve and categorise their records.
However, the Government’s response does not fully address the concerns we raised. Despite the commission being given new responsibilities through the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, the Government have not updated the initial funding allocation of £250 million following the passage of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. We put that to the Secretary of State when he appeared before my Committee earlier this month, and he acknowledged that further discussions will need to take place with the Treasury about the funding of the commission. Those conversations need to happen now.
Moreover, the Government state that funding for the PSNI is a matter for the Department of Justice and that it is for the Northern Ireland Executive to consider how and where they allocate funding. However, the Chief Constable of the PSNI told us in January:
“I get sent by the Secretary of State to the Executive, and by the Executive to the Secretary of State. The Executive will say, ‘This is Westminster-related’ and Westminster will say, ‘We give a significant grant to the Executive. It is for them to pay for this.’ I am caught between the two”.
That is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed.
On the requirement for bodies such as the PSNI to classify documents as sensitive or prejudicial before transferring them to the legacy commission, the Chief Constable also told us that, alongside that being logistically and financially burdensome, there are severe implications for trust and confidence in the PSNI. Again, the Government told us that the question of funding for the PSNI and other devolved organisations is a matter for the Northern Ireland Executive, and that those organisations are best placed to identify sensitive material. However, Operation Kenova did not undertake such a predetermined assessment of legacy materials. I therefore reiterate our call for the Government to reassess the current financial envelope and to consider the wider implications of their reforms, particularly the substantial and currently underfunded administrative burdens they place on organisations such as the PSNI, which are already under significant pressure to deliver core services in the present, while also addressing the past.
On victims, financial resourcing may form the foundation of the legacy process, but victims and survivors unquestionably sit at its heart. We heard a range of concerns about how the new approach will operate in practice for them. For instance, on the proposed victims and survivors advisory group under the proposed legacy commission, questions have been raised about its membership, the method of appointment to it and the risk of it duplicating the important work already undertaken by the victims forum in Northern Ireland. I welcome the fact that the Government commit to complementing the work of existing groups, but we await further information regarding the composition and operation of this new group.
The Northern Ireland Commissioner for Victims and Survivors, Joe McVey, recently expressed concerns that the debate on legacy legislation had been reduced to a false dichotomy of “veterans versus victims”. His warning is important, and I encourage us all to bear it firmly in mind as we move forward.
On veterans, as I said at the outset, we took evidence from veterans’ representatives throughout our inquiry. The Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, whom we heard from twice, told us late last year that the Government had been listening to veterans’ concerns “to an extent”, but said that the proposals were not really “protections” for veterans so much as safeguards for all witnesses. Therefore, we concluded that in packaging these as protections, rather than as safeguards available to all, the Government risk undermining trust in this process among the very groups—veterans and others—in which they hope to instil confidence.
In response to us, the Government acknowledge the concerns that measures may not go far enough for many. They add that they are in active consultation with veterans on further steps, emphasising that any additional proposals must be “practically deliverable” and compliant with human rights obligations. I welcome the fact that the Government are listening, but we still await the detail of further measures before we can make a proper assessment.
On the structures proposed to address legacy, our report highlights several areas of concern. Owing to time, I will concentrate on some overarching ones, namely investigations, inquests, and information disclosure. On investigations and the question of who may request one, we heard from many stakeholders that the Bill’s narrow definition of a close family member risks excluding relatives who have often been central to pursuing answers, sometimes for decades after the events in question. Because the trauma is often carried from one generation to the next, our legislation must be designed with an awareness of these long-term and cross-generational effects.
Organisations including the ICRIR have urged the Government to broaden the definition of a close family member. In response to our report, however, the Government maintain that their current approach is “balanced”. None the less, they acknowledge that views differ on the matter, and have committed to continued engagement and careful consideration of those perspectives. Again, I gently encourage the Government to revisit the definition. We heard similar concerns regarding the rigidity and exclusivity of the list in the Bill stipulating what is considered
“serious physical or mental harm”.
On inquests, the Government’s plan for an enhanced inquisitorial mechanism through the legacy commission is seen by some as an improvement on the system introduced by the 2023 Act, but concerns persist, including regarding why judges are to be appointed by Ministers, rather than through the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission. The Government reject the call for appointments to be routed through the commission, arguing that their approach is consistent with that for appointing inquiry chairs under the Inquiries Act 2005 and making many other public appointments.
Information disclosure has been and remains one of the more significant issues with legacy policy. The troubles Bill assigns the Government a new role in balancing information disclosure with national security—something that Ministers did not undertake under previous legacy measures before the 2023 Act or with Operation Kenova. Our report highlights concerns about trust, appeal rights and how this provision will operate in practice. It is clear from the Government’s response that the proposals on information disclosure will not be revisited. That is likely to concern those who argue that retaining the so-called ministerial veto over what is disclosed presents a serious challenge to the Bill’s overall architecture and risks undermining trust and confidence.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South and Mid Down) (SDLP)
I thank the hon. Member for all her efforts on behalf of victims of the troubles and others. This is a chance to put in place accountability mechanisms that we should have put in place decades ago, particularly for those who do not have a judicial pathway. Families in Derry know what happened in their city on Bloody Sunday, regardless of a verdict. IRA victims know what directing terrorism looks like—the explaining away, the casualness with life—regardless of a judicial process.
Does the hon. Member agree that legislation alone will not get us to truth and a reconciled future, and that this must be an opportunity for those who created victims to step forward, bravely, to give that long overdue accountability: for the UK Government to accept that they compromised key human rights protections and at times colluded with paramilitaries; for loyalist paramilitaries to accept that their war was with innocent Catholics; and for the IRA to step up and acknowledge their decades of coercion of communities, and their casualness with human lives—in seeking to achieve an outcome that could never have been achieved in any way other than democratically?
Tonia Antoniazzi
I thank the hon. Member for the work she does and the perspective she brings to the Committee, and I agree that this is a matter of building trust and confidence and building a better future across these islands. That requires everybody to step up.
We noted a range of concerns in our report regarding the role of the Irish Government, including in relation to the timeline for equivalent legislation and information on the proposed legacy unit in the Garda. The Government response offers some welcome clarification. It confirms that the legacy unit is now operational and that the Irish Government intend to publish the necessary legislation to facilitate co-operation in either April or May this year. However, actions will matter far more than assurances, and we now await the practical outworkings of those commitments.
Finally, we know and respect the fact that, for some, reconciliation may be impossible. For others, it could be the basis of a better future. My Committee will soon begin an inquiry that explores that in detail. The Government’s response did not fully address the concerns we set out in that section of our report, particularly those relating to part 4 of the 2023 Act. We will use our forthcoming inquiry into reconciliation to continue pressing these questions.
We await the next stage of the troubles Bill, when we will all have the opportunity to put those who carry the legacy of the past at the heart of a new approach for the future. We owe it to them to get it right.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I would like to start by referring to the intervention of the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna), who is sadly no longer in her place. She talked about people stepping forward and speaking the truth. I believe that the Government’s new approach makes that less, rather than more, likely to happen. In their response to the Select Committee report, the Government speak in disparaging terms about the immunity provisions that the previous Conservative Government laid down; those immunity provisions are described as an affront to democracy. I do not believe that is true at all. It is not true any more than claiming that what happened in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela sought to heal that society, was an affront to their new democracy.
Sir Julian Lewis
I would like to make a little progress first, then I certainly will. I chaired the Defence Committee when we produced a report that recommended the combination of a statute of limitation with a truth recovery process as the best way to proceed. That report took evidence, as I have mentioned many times, from four eminent professors of law. They pointed out that that recommendation was a perfectly legal way to proceed, provided that, if immunities were introduced, they would be brought in for everybody, and provided that the matters concerned would be properly investigated. That investigation could consist of a truth recovery process; it did not have to involve prosecuting people after the investigations had taken place. Some of us have been very concerned about the malicious and vexatious prosecution of service personnel.
If the idea is, on the one hand, to rule out the vexatious pursuit of service personnel and, on the other hand, to heal society by allowing people who suffered in the troubles to find out the truth, then the package of a statute of limitation coupled with a truth recovery process seemed ideal. I cannot quite understand why the Government, and those who support their approach of reopening all those investigations, seem to think that their approach will lead to effective truth recovery. How much more likely is it that people will come forward and tell the truth when they know that they could be incriminating themselves because the Government have reopened that lethal can of worms? That compares with a situation inherent in the original package: by giving everybody immunity, people could then come forward and tell the truth without any fear of adverse consequences to themselves.
The other objection that is made, which I see spelled out explicitly in the Government’s response to the report, is that it is insulting to put everybody on the same level—that it is putting terrorists, service personnel and security forces on the same level. I have pointed out on countless occasions—and never heard a convincing refutation of this—that that ship has already sailed. The Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 laid down that if anyone is convicted, even of the most appalling atrocities—murders, tortures, rape, you name it—in relation to the troubles, they will not actually serve more than two years in jail. Why does it say that for everyone? Because the law has to be impartial. Just because the law applies impartially to service personnel and terrorists alike does not mean that it draws a moral equivalence between them, and neither did the package here. Its purpose was to give immunity to stop vexatious prosecutions and to enable the truth recovery process to allow the victims to find out what had happened.
A third point that has been put forward is: “Well, they want justice.” But in order to get justice, there has to be a realistic prospect of securing convictions. Even in the case of Bloody Sunday, where we would have thought there was the maximum chance of securing convictions, no conviction was secured. So why do people want to reopen all the prosecutions of service personnel? The answer is that it is not because they expect to get convictions, but because they want to rewrite history and put service personnel through the trauma of being tried, investigated and pursued, even though it is overwhelmingly unlikely that they will be convicted of anything. As has been said before, and deserves to be said again, the punishment is the process, not the actual conviction at the end of that process, which would not be obtained.
I appreciate that the Government have a mandate to try this approach, and I have to respect that. I hope that they will be proven right, and that we on the Opposition Benches will be proven wrong, but somehow I do not think so. It does not help for the Government to insult those of us who tried genuinely to put forward a combination of measures that we were told was legal by four professors of law—a package with immunity for everyone on the one hand, and a truth recovery process to fulfil the obligation to investigate on the other. That package would have been far more likely to lead to reconciliation and the recovery of truth, and to avoid the vexatious pursuit of brave service and security personnel. The Government cannot say that they have not been warned.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain; I wish you a happy St Patrick’s day. I thank the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for securing this debate and choosing this topic, and I commend her and the Committee for their solid work. Their useful report brings together many different aspects of the Government’s work on this issue, and gave a platform to so many victims, organisations and voices that are often not heard in this place to talk about the impact it has on them, what they think about the current work and what they hope for in future.
This Friday is the anniversary of the 1993 Warrington bombing, when Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball—two children—were killed and 54 people were injured. Not a week goes by, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, when we do not remember the victims. They are the people we should have in our minds when we talk about the troubles, and about legacy and reconciliation. Secretary of States do not often come to Westminster Hall, so I welcome the presence of the Secretary of State, who I know has taken a personal interest in righting the wrongs of the previous Government’s legislation, and in what that can do for society in Northern Ireland, both now and for future generations.
It is important to remember what this is fundamentally about; I could see that it was on the minds of all Committee members throughout the inquiry. More than 3,500 people, across Northern Ireland and in towns, cities and military barracks across England, died in the troubles. They included nearly 2,000 civilians and more than 1,100 members of our security forces. Nearly a third of those deaths remain unsolved, and a great many victims and families, some of whom I had the privilege of meeting when I was a Minister, are still seeking answers. Their questions remain with me. I will never forget sitting in the WAVE Trauma Centre in Belfast and talking to victims, who, so many years later, have so many questions and just want to know what happened to their loved ones.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is delivering an excellent speech. Does she recognise the fact that there are also 200 service families among those victims who are seeking answers, and that the Bill will help to address that issue at the same time?
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree, and my hon. Friend makes a very good point: this also includes service families. No matter what family someone comes from, it is a huge loss. These are people missing from family tables, about whom there are still questions, and it is a trauma not to know what happened—that is what this legacy legislation aims to resolve. We are so many years on, and there is so much investigating yet to do. I understand that many people simply want to know how their loved ones died.
The ICRIR is taking forward 100 investigations, some of which Peter Sheridan listed in his evidence to the Committee. Those include the deaths of Alexander Millar in 1975; Seamus Bradley, a 19-year-old; Rory O’Kelly in 1977; Kathleen O’Hagan in August 1994, who was seven months’ pregnant, and her baby also died in that attack; James and Ellen Sefton in 1990; and Judge Rory Conaghan in 1974. Those are just some of the people who died—their families have questions, and they are being investigated by the ICRIR.
The commission’s caseload also includes the 1974 Guildford pub bombings, the 1974 M62 coach bombing, the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, and the 1979 Warrenpoint massacre, which was the deadliest attack on British forces during the troubles. We must ensure that those investigations can progress and deliver answers for families, and that all communities can have confidence in the commission, as trust was also a key element of the evidence given in the report.
The last Government’s legacy Act had no support in Northern Ireland, and it is clear why that was the case. It shut down the right of individuals to pursue a civil case, whether against the state or perpetrators of terrorism. It cruelly stopped a number of inquests midway through, and it ended over 1,000 police investigations in Northern Ireland and England, including those into the deaths of more than 200 UK service personnel, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) highlighted.
The Act was also widely opposed in Northern Ireland by political parties and victims and families. In November 2025, Sandra Peake—the chief executive of the WAVE Trauma Centre—wrote to all MPs, and she also gave very powerful evidence to the Committee for the report. In her letter to MPs, Sandra said:
“The then Government wanted to draw a veil over the past but there isn’t a veil thick enough to hide the blood and bones of murdered loved ones or to muffle the cries of their families.”
The arbitrary ending of troubles-related inquests, and closing the civil action route to justice, confirmed the belief that the interests of victims were not only not on the agenda, but had not even made it into “Any other business”.
Leigh Ingham
I, too, met victims at the WAVE centre when I was on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. When I read the letter that my hon. Friend just mentioned, this comment really resonated with me:
“Whatever the then Government’s intention, the result would have been that terrorists who carried out the most egregious crimes imaginable would be able to walk free if they told their story”.
They felt like that was too much, so does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are right to address this issue for victims who have come forward?
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree; it was just too much even to ask or encourage more people to come forward—if they did come forward, there would be no justice. The families of victims often see those people in their local supermarket; they are living in their communities, but the families know that there is no hope of them ever having justice. That is too painful to contemplate.
Like the report, I welcome the fact that the Government have taken a very different approach. I know that the Secretary of State engaged widely on the drafting of the Bill with victims’ groups, families, veterans and other affected parties, and I was pleased to play a part in those discussions. The troubles Bill will restore civil cases and enable the resumption of halted inquests. It will mean that legacy cases are dealt with sensitively and efficiently through a reformed legacy commission, with the fullest possible disclosure of information to families. Rather than making false promises to our veterans, as the legacy Act did, the Bill will put in place six genuine protections for any veteran who is asked to give information, and nobody who carried out acts of terrorism will be given immunity.
We should be clear that it was terrorists—the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Irish National Liberation Army and the Ulster Defence Association—who were responsible for the vast majority of deaths during the troubles. It is right that where there is evidence of criminality by anyone, those responsible should be held to account. Frankly, it is shocking that many Opposition Members disagree and would prefer to grant immunity to those who carried out the most heinous acts of terrorism on UK soil.
The Government agreed information-sharing commitments with the Irish authorities under the joint framework announced in September. I welcome the fact that the Select Committee visited Ireland before and during the compilation of the report. The agreement is unprecedented and could be hugely significant in enabling answers to be found for families once the new legacy commission is established.
I am glad that the report highlights the powers of the Secretary of State, the definition of a family member, and the need to listen to victims, listen again and keep listening. These are people who have lost trust in the system. Slowly but surely—through the Government’s actions and the actions of organisations such as the South East Fermanagh Foundation, WAVE and so many others working in mental health across Northern Ireland—the trust of families has been built up. But they will need to see good outcomes.
I welcome the increased funding for the commission and the PSNI, and the reiteration of the need for speed in this work. As has been pointed out many times, many of the family members are now elderly. They are seeing out the end of their days and just want the answers they seek in time.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and she was an excellent Minister in her own right. Will she join me in paying tribute to Councillor Tommy Judge, who has been the Labour councillor for Sharston ward in my constituency for many years, and who was a victim of the 1974 bus bomb? He is standing down after many years of public service, but he will carry that with him, in his retirement, to the end.
Fleur Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning Tommy Judge, the work he has done and all that he has lived with throughout his life. My hon. Friend and I have met many other people across England who are working to support victims and survivors in Great Britain, as well as in Northern Ireland.
The report ends on a cliffhanger. It ends by talking about wider reconciliation, which is very important, because the legacy legislation is just part of a piece of wider work that needs to be done that is important for reconciliation. When I have been to Northern Ireland, I have asked many times: “What is reconciliation? What does it mean? What will be the outcome? What will it look like?” It means different things to different people. Some people do not want reconciliation; for some people, reconciliation means answers; for some people, it means the ability to live together in a community peacefully; and for some people, it means good jobs, education and opportunities, and hope for the future.
With the world watching the peace process in Northern Ireland, this work could not be more important. It is a beacon of hope for people in other conflicts around the world, who look to Northern Ireland and say, “It has been possible in Northern Ireland,” and who look to the ways in which we continue to build that peace, bit by bit. It is hard, and we are seeing how hard it is, but the ultimate aim must be for communities to be able to live and thrive peacefully together, and to reduce the generational trauma—to reduce the amount that is passed down to future generations.
I hope that future Select Committee reports will look at other aspects of reconciliation, including integrated education, which is an absolutely necessary part of bringing together communities, especially young for people. Just living and working together in a school all the time is so important, as has been reiterated to me so many times by parents and peacemakers in Northern Ireland. I am sure the Committee will consider that aspect too.
Having made that recommendation for future reports, I congratulate the Committee on the report we are debating, on the work the Committee has done, and on how influential I am sure the report will be on the work done not only by the Government but by many organisations and people across Northern Ireland.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on bringing forward the report, and the Chair, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), on the way she has stewarded the debate and taken evidence from so many groups. Bringing forward a unanimous report on such a delicate issue in Northern Ireland is testament to all those who were involved and to those who gave evidence. It is a very difficult issue, because it is still very raw in Northern Ireland.
On this day in 1988, two British Army corporals, Derek Wood and David Howes, were attacked, beaten, abused and then shot because they happened to drive into the middle of a Provisional IRA funeral in Belfast. I was a teenager at the time, and I remember watching the reports on television and the brutality of the attack—the seemingly unwarranted deaths of two serving officers in Northern Ireland. That is where the troubles Bill does a disservice to some of our veterans with regard to how they served in Northern Ireland and how they are now being treated.
The concerns of veterans have been touched on many times and are referenced in the report, especially in the six promised protections for Northern Ireland veterans. The Secretary of State knows well that we have had many debates in which those specific protections have been highlighted and exposed as being there for all, not specifically for veterans, as detailed in the wording of the Bill. Words are fine, but unless they are on the face of the legislation, they can be lost, misinterpreted, repealed or even weakened in the interpretation as the Bill goes forward, and even through the judiciary.
I thank the House for allowing this debate on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee’s reflections on the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, because we have not yet had the opportunity to do so in the main Chamber. When the remedial order came before the House earlier this year, we were given the impression that the troubles Bill was only days or weeks away. Yet the Leader of the House today gave indications of next week’s business, and we still have no sight of when the Bill will reach Committee stage, so that the Committee of the whole House can delve into what it will mean for victims, veterans and Northern Ireland society alike. That is why this debate is important. In that regard, I am disappointed by the absence of some Northern Ireland MPs, because we asked for this opportunity to debate the detail of the Bill and they have not taken the opportunity to be here today. I understand that others have other commitments.
A remedial order—I think the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said it is an unusual type of legislation, seldom used—was brought forward in January.
Alex Ballinger
I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so sensitive in his speech. He mentions the remedial order that does away with the immunity scheme set up by the last Government; does he accept that that scheme was never actually in place, because it was struck down by the courts in Northern Ireland? The remedial order is really just a tidying-up exercise, rather than changing anything while the new Bill goes through Parliament.
Robin Swann
I do accept that point. If the hon. Gentleman looks back to my contribution in that debate at the end of January, he will see that I made that same point, because I could not understand why the Government were in such a rush to bring forward a piece of legislation that was not actually necessary, as he indicated.
Sir Julian Lewis
I am not an expert on the more recent developments, but I think I remember correctly that the previous Government were appealing that particular court decision, and this Government took a deliberate decision to discontinue the appeal.
Robin Swann
The right hon. Member is correct. That appeal was being heard at the time, and I remember those issues being raised.
I am conscious that this debate is on the Select Committee report, and I want to congratulate the work that has been done, and its sensitivity in balancing victims and veterans. Over the past number of weeks and months, concerns have been raised that the debate over here has focused on veterans and is doing a disservice to victims of the troubles. I think that is an inaccurate portrayal of the work done by members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and by those who take an active interest what the Bill is about.
I want to concentrate on one recommendation for the Bill that my party introduced, on the inclusion of sexual crimes in the types of crimes and incidents that can be looked at. It has been mentioned that the biggest objection to the previous Government’s legacy Act was that no Northern Ireland Executive party supported it. The Northern Ireland Assembly has debated the issue of sexual crimes, and there was cross-party support for a motion that said that the Assembly
“accepts that crimes of a sexual nature, including child sexual abuse, have a particularly insidious effect on society and have a long-lasting physical and psychological impact on the victim and their wider family”.
The motion called on the UK Government
“to ensure that victims of Troubles-related sexual violence can seek a legacy investigation as part of the proposed Legacy Commission and that crimes of a sexual nature, including rape and child sexual abuse, are included as a separate qualifying criteria alongside serious injury and death”.
I mention that because have tabled an amendment on the issue, and I am thankful to other Members for their support for it, but the Secretary of State’s response to date has been lacking. He said that the legacy commission can
“investigate Troubles-related sexual offences which are connected to a death or serious injury or that cause such injury”,
but that leaves out some cases.
Máiría Cahill, a young woman from a prominent republican family who was raped by a senior member of the IRA in west Belfast, has asked that such cases be included. Paudie McGahon, who was 17 at the time, was raped by an IRA man who had been moved to safehouse in the Irish Republic, but instead of facing justice for rape, the rapist was exiled. The Secretary of State has said in correspondence that these cases can now be investigated by the police. The reason why they were not brought to the police at the time was the threat of paramilitary reaction to the individuals and their families.
Yesterday, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee heard from the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence against Women and Girls. I encourage anyone who does not serve on that Committee to listen to her evidence, because it relates to the type of abuse that happened during the troubles. That coercion, power and control is seen in abuse elsewhere, so I wanted to highlight that recommendation put forward by my party in its response to the inquiry.
A number of Members have raised the issue of trust and confidence in the Government and the new process. What worries me, as the Government move on with their changes and what they see as adaptations to the previous institutions, is a loss of trust and confidence. A lot of work has been done by key members of the ICRIR to engage with all sections of the community to make sure that those who in the past never came forward to seek justice are now engaging.
What concerns me about the new commission is that we begin to lose some of the credibility and trust that has been built up by the likes of Sir Declan Morgan and Peter Sheridan, who have put a lot of time, energy, sweat and personal commitment into driving forward the work of the ICRIR. It is the small things, such as the creation of two directors of investigation rather than one, which could take away from the work that has already been done.
The Select Committee Chair raised the influence of the Irish Government, and the Secretary of State has heard me say many times that I think the Irish Government are missing in this process. They have not stepped up. They have used words of favour and encouragement about what they will do and what they will bring tomorrow, but they have not produced anything in relation to what the UK Government are currently doing. If they had been honest actors, the two pieces of legislation would have run concurrently and been delivered at the same time.
The Secretary of Secretary of State referred to legislation around the Omagh investigation; that is completely separate legislation. The two should not be equated. The Omagh legislation is a specific response to the Omagh inquiry, not to anything that is currently being done. I do have concerns about what the Irish will do. There has been talk of them producing legislation in April or May. The Irish Government, I think, and the Teachtaí Dála we engaged with at Committee level, talked about the publication of a heads of a Bill, which is completely different from what we do.
I put on the record again my and my party’s concerns that the Irish Government will not be honest actors in this matter. We have experienced that in the past. We experienced it when they promised the release of documentation and records in respect of Kingsmill. What they actually produced was a folder of newspaper cuttings, which left the families deeply disappointed.
I congratulate the Committee on the publication of the report and I thank those who have come to take part in the debate. I look forward to continual engagement with all those involved, so that we can see the outworkings of the Government’s proposed legislation.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I apologise to the two Members who are standing; we have 12 minutes left for Back-Bench speeches, so that is six minutes each.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain, and I am planning on being brief today. As a member of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, it gives me great pleasure to contribute to this debate and to the work that the Committee has done—the formal and informal evidence that we took and the people that we met. Even though I have friends who lost family members, it was exceptionally helpful to get that overall perspective.
It is clear that the troubles affected everybody who lived or served in Northern Ireland, particularly those who lived close to the border with the Irish Republic and those who lost loved ones in horrific circumstance, whether they were innocent civilians or members of the armed services. The bus tour that we took along the border with the South East Fermanagh Foundation will stay with me for the rest of my life. I know the Secretary of State and Minister have met with many of the same people that we did and the effects will be just as clear to them.
The report from the Select Committee about the action that needs to be taken is a recognition that this is probably the last opportunity we will get to try and do the right thing for those who lost loved ones, those who survived horrific attacks, and everybody who is still looking for answers.
I will concentrate on the recommendation to expand the definition of a close family member. In my mind, the current Bill and the response from the Government fail to recognise the issues about many of the service personnel who lost their lives in the troubles. Those who served on the frontline in our armed services were often young; they were in their late teens and early 20s. My constituent Donald Blair, who lost his life at Warrenpoint, was 23—others were 18 or 19. They had not settled down or started families, even at a time when people married much earlier than they do now. For somebody who was killed in 1971 at the age of 18, it is exceptionally unlikely that their parents will still be alive. In some parts of the country, it is increasingly unlikely that their siblings will still be alive, and they are also unlikely to have had children or grandchildren. Those victims are remembered by their cousins and more distant relations. Certainly, in cases that I know of, it is cousins who are the ones fighting for this information. They are fighting for enquiries for information that the legacy commission should be able to provide. We owe it to them not to bar them from getting answers; we owe it to them to expand definitions.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I call Jim Shannon—a brief Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Eight minutes of brevity, Dame Siobhain. I will try and squeeze it into eight minutes, but it will be difficult. I am very pleased to be here. I thank the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, and particularly the Chair, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for her hard work on this topic, which is a complex issue with numerous concerns. I understand that it is impossible to please everyone, but we must always please the tenets of truth and justice. I do not believe that this has been achieved. I say that with great respect to the Committee and the Secretary of State.
The hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) has just reminded us of the murder of the two corporals. I remember where I was: it was Saturday, I was sitting watching the TV, and it felt like a film, but the brutality and violence of the despicable murder of those two soldiers was happening in real life.
My party has deep concerns that the Government have chosen to press ahead with their intent to restore provision for inquests without a fundamental appraisal of how the coronial system in Northern Ireland approaches troubles-related cases, specifically the actions of the security forces.
One need only to look at the disgraceful coroner’s report on the Clonoe inquest, where the coroner exceeded his remit by questioning the honest belief of ex-SAS soldiers during the 1992 ambush, where four IRA members were killed after attacking Coalisland Royal Ulster Constabulary station. That disgracefully politically motivated overreach of the coroner merely confirmed the view that those inquests are not designed to meet the obligations of truth and justice, but can ignore the actions of the terrorists and make victim-makers into victims.
The Government have taken no steps to rectify the system that allowed the Clonoe inquiry to report as it did, and therefore the right-thinking people of Northern Ireland—those who lived through the troubles: my generation and my parents’ generation—have no faith in the system, which they believe exists as a sop to terrorism, aiming to rewrite the evils we lived through as though they were understandable and excusable. Ask those burnt at La Mon, whose scars receive medical attention to this day, if they understand or excuse the bomb that murdered innocent people. If God spares me and I get home in time, I will be at the La Mon Hotel tonight, and it will be a reminder of what happened there.
The balance in the focus of investigations towards members of the security forces is in itself a barrier to fairness. Inquest proceedings have often enabled legal representatives to use high-profile public hearings to aggressively examine witnesses, including ageing veterans, and to push spurious and unchallenged narratives of the troubles.
The Democratic Unionist party does not agree that legal aid should be provided to the next of kin in an inquest —nor does it agree with the form of what Government have called “enhancing inquisitorial proceedings”, the bulk of which will focus on state involvement—but not to witnesses to those proceedings, or to those seeking answers and redress for their loved ones via legacy investigations. Many families bereaved through terrorism faced the ignominy of tick-box inquests, with little in the way of information provided and no state funded legal representation. That should not be compounded by sustaining a deep inequality in how inquests are dealt with going forward.
Subsequently, we cannot and will not support this approach, which gives power and funding to those who wish to paint blood on to the hands of RUC and service personnel who were held to account at the time and since, and yet allow republicans to be painted in glowing colours of glory. That is unbearable, and we will not ask our people to bear it. Neither can we allow to go unchallenged the repeated refusal of the Irish Government to admit their collusion, and continuing to be a haven of safety for republican terrorists, who knew they could skip across the border and not a question would be asked, not a car would be searched, and not a murderer of babies and women would be held to account.
I remember the murder of those two superintendents that the hon. Member for South Antrim referred to. Superintendents Breen and Buchanan were murdered by the IRA on the border. They had been at a meeting in the Republic of Ireland, when, coming back up north, the two of them were blown up at the border. This question has often been posed, and I pose it again today. The Garda Síochána had a mole who gave the information, the intelligence, to the IRA who then murdered those two guys at the border. The Republic of Ireland—forgive me for pointing the finger—has a case to answer in relation to those two men. They were murdered because they were RUC personnel, and yet the Garda Síochána never had an inquiry into the intelligence breakdown, or compassion for the families. I make that case.
I also make a case for Daniel McCormick and Kenneth Smyth—people might know that Kenneth Smyth was my cousin—murdered in December ’71. I also think of Lexie Cummings, murdered in Strabane. The people who murdered him escaped across the border. Where did the people who murdered Winston Donnell, the first UDR man ever to be killed, go? Across the border. Why did they go to the border? Because they could get away with it. I want accountability, so let us make the Garda Síochána and the Republic of Ireland accountable in this process. We hear about collusion in the RUC and the armed forces, with spurious allegations put forward, and yet the truth that the dogs on the street know about the Garda Síochána and the Irish Government is their shelter of murderers, and that is left as just the way things are. Well, that is not for me, and not for anyone else.
I remind the Westminster Hall Chamber that my family knows at first hand about that collusion, and we understand it. We know about the future of Unionists in the Republic of Ireland—it is a dark, cold and unforgiving place for Unionists. I hope they are listening down in the Republic of Ireland, because that is how my people see it. That is how my family felt, who left there to go north, because that was where they had a future. There was no future for my family, for my mum and dad, and those others from the Republic of Ireland who came north.
That is why any form of Irish co-operation with any inquiries can only begin with sincere apologies. Let us get those apologies. Let the Republic of Ireland apologise to us for giving sanctuary, security and a haven to those murdering scum that they were. That is what I want to hear about. Any form of Irish co-operation with any inquiries can only begin when that happens, and when we get some information leading to the prosecution of murders. Until that day comes, there can be, and should be, no co-operation with those whose hands are as bloody as some, such as Gerry “I was never in the IRA, by the way” Adams—we know him, as he is the one.
I said at the outset of my comments that we cannot satisfy everyone, but we must satisfy truth and justice. My mother was about truth and justice, always about what is right. This approach does neither, and merely further alienates the true victims of the troubles. That is why we ask any right-thinking Member of this House to refuse to allow legislation to pass that lets the murder of two unborn children in Omagh be painted as part of a glorious cause. It was not—it was evil and wicked. We stood for many years against that evil in Northern Ireland, so I stand against it today, together with others in this House. It cannot be permitted. I ask all Members present to join me and others in satisfying truth and justice, which is what it is always about. Eight minutes is almost done, so thank you, Dame Siobhain, for giving me the chance to speak for that wee bit longer.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing this debate. I begin by warmly acknowledging the men and women who served during Operation Banner.
Everyone knows—even the Tories, in their more candid moments—that the Conservatives’ legacy Act was a profound mistake, granting immunity to terrorists, creating a shameful moral equivalence between paramilitaries hellbent on breaking the law and our brave veterans who risked, and in many cases lost, their lives upholding the very rule of law that the legacy Act undermined. In the Dillon case, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal was clear: core provisions of the Act were incompatible with the European convention on human rights. Yes, the new Government abandoned the appeal on that point in the Supreme Court, but with no faith in the position, they were right to do so.
That is why the remedial order mattered. It was a necessary step to bring the UK back within its legal obligations, and to restore a measure of trust for those who have waited decades for truth and accountability. The Conservatives, however, treated the order as a political opportunity, rather than as a moment for sober reflection. To use the plight of our veterans to rage against the ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998 and to play destructive party politics is something that has not gone unnoticed among the many veterans organisations with whom I have been working—[Interruption.] I will give way.
Mr Kohler
I will now move on to consider the Government’s response to the more salient recommendations made by the Select Committee. Turning first to the treatment of sexual offences, the Government acknowledge that the previous Act created a de facto bar on investigating sexual offences not linked to death or serious injury, but their proposed split model raises concerns. Clause 32 limits investigations to what is deemed necessary for ECHR compliance, which will result in the commission handling some cases while others fall to the police to investigate, creating potential confusion.
On the disclosure of reports, the commission is required to examine all circumstances while also considering specific family questions, but it is unclear how those duties will be balanced or the commission’s findings reported. When I visited the WAVE Trauma Centre, concerns were expressed that, by answering sometimes deeply personal questions, published reports could reveal issues and concerns that victims would not want made public. The chief commissioner, Sir Declan Morgan, has assured me that the commission will act with sensitivity in such circumstances, but victims’ families want something more tangible than that.
That leads directly to the role and powers of the commission. The proposal to grant powers through established statutory procedures rather than enshrining them in the Bill risks opacity and reduced accountability. While a “small number of cases” where current powers fall short are acknowledged, it is far from clear how or if those gaps will be addressed. Alongside the topic of powers sits the question of resources. While the Government’s commitment to a £250 million total funding envelope for legacy mechanisms is welcome, there is widespread agreement that that is not enough. The PSNI chief constable, Jon Boutcher, has given compelling testimony that he has insufficient funding to address his legacy responsibilities. The Government suggest that PSNI funding is a matter for the Northern Ireland Department of Justice and the Executive. However, the costs of legacy, arising as they did under what occurred during direct rule, must surely be borne by the British state, not out of funds provided by the Province’s normal funding formula.
The thorniest issue is, of course, the safeguards afforded to veterans. The Secretary of State has been at pains to stress the centrality of his six protections, but as he acknowledges, in their current form they
“do not go far enough”.
I know he has been in discussion with many veterans’ groups, and I have heard from many of them their gratitude for the time and consideration that he has given them. A date for the Bill Committee has still not been published, which I assume means that discussions within the Northern Ireland Office and the Ministry of Defence are still ongoing. While I have no desire to unduly rush the Secretary of State on this issue, I respectfully remind him that the many veterans’ groups to which he has been talking are anxious to know what extra safeguards will be included in the promised Government amendments to the Bill.
Closely connected to victims’ safeguards is the question of disclosure and national security. A major concern is the Government’s refusal to introduce a merits-based appeal against ministerial denials of disclosure, and the reliance instead on judicial review, which considers procedural correctness rather than the merits of a decision. While the Government cite the primacy of the Executive, that principle does not sit comfortably within a legacy process that is aimed at restoring public trust and transparency. I have consequently tabled an amendment to the Bill that would require any decision to block disclosure on national security grounds to be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee. That would ensure proper scrutiny and accountability to Parliament.
Our goal is reconciliation. Whenever I ask about reconciliation, I am directed to part 4 of the legacy Act, which is not going to be repealed. Part 4 focuses on oral history and memorialisation. Those have an important role to play, but it is striking how little attention appears to be given to restorative justice in any meaningful sense, because reconciliation cannot be addressed through reports and archives alone. My primary concern is that justice is still being mediated through the narrow lens of lawyers, with criminal or civil actions given too great a prominence in the process. I have personally participated in the restorative justice process, and I know that it begins with the questions that many victims of the troubles are asking: “Why me?” or “Why my loved ones?”
Restorative justice creates a space for answers, acknowledgment, and some form of resolution. The current Bill offers no meaningful avenue for restorative justice, which is why I have tabled amendments to incorporate that formally into the process, ensuring that victims and veterans have a voluntary, structured mechanism with which to engage and seek meaningful reconciliation. Without that, reconciliation risks being misconceived and incomplete.
At its core, this process will command confidence only if victims feel heard, veterans are treated fairly, and the system delivers answers that are credible and transparent. Broad commitments alone are not enough. The Government must address the gaps highlighted by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Without doing so, the process risks failing those who it is intended to serve, undermining trust and leaving decades of questions unanswered.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
I thank the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for its work. The Committee is always incredibly thoughtful and diligent in the prosecution of its duties, and the report has been very interesting. I will try to resist the opportunity to re-litigate the whole troubles Bill and the argument around the legacy Act in the next 10 minutes, rather than focus on the report. However, it is important that hon. Members remember how the legacy Act came to be, and how the previous Labour Government treated the whole issue of the peace process.
The idea of immunity was good enough for the Labour Government in 1998—indeed, it was fundamental to the legislation that fell within the peace process. I think of the two-year limit on sentences that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) referred to, but also of the legislation regarding bodies that had been buried, and about the destruction of weapons where forensic evidence was destroyed. Those were all forms of immunity, and it is why—this is the point raised by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann)—an appeal to the Supreme Court could easily have been successful. Very experienced legal advice shows that that would have been the case, so it was wrong of the Government to drop it.
The Government have decided that they are opposed to immunity, but they were not opposed to immunity in 1998. They were not opposed to immunity in 2005, when Peter Hain brought forward a Bill that would have given immunity only to former terrorists. Only under enormous pressure from the House, which decided that it would have to introduce immunity for soldiers as well, was that measure dropped under pressure from Sinn Féin. The Labour party has a very selective memory on those issues.
Fleur Anderson
In 1998 immunity was in the Good Friday agreement, and the whole population got to vote on that, and on whether or not they agreed with that immunity—it was very controversial. There was no vote on whether the population agreed with immunity in the legacy Act. In fact, all the democratically elected parties lined up to oppose that immunity.
Alex Burghart
It applied to only one side, and over time that one-sidedness became apparent to lots of people, including veterans. That is why it was important. In 2005, there was no democratic mandate for what the Labour Government tried to do to give immunity to terrorists. What we are trying to do, and what we tried to do in our legacy Act, is rebalance the argument, and in so doing bring about the sort of process that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East spoke so powerfully about. The adversarial system will not bring about proper truth and reconciliation, and it will not encourage people to come forward with new information. Instead, it will reopen old wounds and allow for the continuation of the troubles by other means. For that very important reason of principle, we cannot support the legislation.
To return to the report issued by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, I will quickly pick up on four areas. On the consideration of the ICRIR, I pay tribute to Sir Declan Morgan, who has been an excellent head. Every time that I have heard people question the ICRIR’s independence, I have felt the need to come to Sir Declan’s defence. Anyone who has met him and seen his work will know that he is thoroughly independent, and woe betide any politician who tried to lean on him.
The argument that the ICRIR has struggled to build the trust and authority needed to operate effectively is already outdated. As of 30 November 2025, 231 requesting individuals had approached the commission, 245 cases were recorded, and 110 investigations had been opened into a total of 188 deaths and five cases of serious harm. Those numbers were growing every month. Indeed, the more time that the ICRIR was given, the more public trust it gained and the more its work was flourishing. Now, just as it is getting going, it is going to be cut off at the knees. I was pleased that the report mentioned the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal finding in 2024, which said,
“we find that these arrangements do not of themselves offend the principle of independence given the fact that ICRIR is ultimately made up and staffed by independent investigators and decision makers including the commissioners.”
I would much rather that the ICRIR was being given time.
It is clear that there are no explicit or particular protections for veterans in the Government’s legislation, and I was pleased that the Committee said that the Government were overselling that claim—indeed they are. No armed forces bodies believe that these protections are sufficient. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) said, many veterans’ groups are concerned that the Government are moving away from the policies established by the Conservative party in power.
On the subject of Ireland, there were very powerful contributions from the hon. Members for South Antrim and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We all want this element of the Government’s arrangements to work, but we must remain sceptical, not least because of the Republic’s long-standing failure to produce the goods in this area. As the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee outlined on page 85 of its report, equivalent legislation structures are not expected. The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) used a wonderful phrase, stating that there is a lack of “practical outworkings” in this area, and indeed there is. With all due respect to the Secretary of State, it was a dreadful missed opportunity that the framework did not include a commitment from the Republic to start its own Omagh inquiry. That was the most wicked attack of the whole troubles, and it is shameful that there are only investigations into what the British state could have done to prevent it, rather than investigations into the people who committed that dreadful atrocity.
I was pleased that the Committee referred to costs, as did several other hon. Members. The PSNI estimates that it will need an extra £1 billion over the next 10 years to cope with the new caseload. The legacy commission is seriously underfunded for the additional caseload that it will acquire as it transitions from being the ICRIR. Without that money, there will be a huge backlog in the caseload of the legacy commission, and there will also be a reduction in frontline policing in Northern Ireland. That is unacceptable. We strongly disagree with what the Government are doing, but if they are going to do it, they must make the money available to ensure that public services and institutions in Northern Ireland function properly. Finally, I ask the Secretary of State one quick question: when will we see the Bill again?
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who chairs the Select Committee with such distinction, on securing the debate. I thank the members of the Select Committee who have come today, including those who I know have made a very special effort to be present. The Government have published their response to the report. I will not rehearse all those arguments and details today, but I will do my best, in the limited time I have, to respond to many of the points that have been made.
As we have heard, not least from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the legacy of the troubles still affects the lives of many people in Northern Ireland. We need to get this right. We know how we got here: the previous piece of legislation, whatever its intentions, did not work, and that is why we have the troubles Bill before us. I am confident that the provisions contained in the Bill will bring about the necessary reform to the commission. I think it is fair to say that it had a reasonably positive response from victims and survivors and others in Northern Ireland, although there is still a deep lack of trust in what has happened.
We undoubtedly owe our Operation Banner veterans an enormous debt. I will be clear: there will be no rewriting of history. The Bill is not going to change the way in which people view the troubles. As we have hard, terrorists were responsible for the vast majority of deaths. There was always an alternative, and there never was—never will be—any equivalent between our brave armed forces and those who set out to kill their fellow citizens.
The Bill includes strong safeguards for veterans that were not in the legacy Act. They have been introduced to try to ensure that veterans have fair treatment, but I am, with the Secretary of State for Defence and the Armed Forces Minister, looking at what more we can do to build greater confidence. The House will see the result of those considerations in Committee, and the date will be set in the normal way. I have to be frank in this debate, however, that we are not going to accept any proposals that seek to reintroduce the immunity provisions. The Government disagree with immunity as a matter of principle and there is no support in Northern Ireland. Equally, there is no question of anyone who followed the rules being prosecuted.
To respond to the points raised, on funding, as I said to the Select Committee, there will need to be further discussions as the caseload of the commission unfolds. The victims and survivors advisory group has a very specific role. I made it clear that I am looking to ensure veteran representation on it. I agree with what Joe McVey said about the nature of some of our debate, but I think we have had a more balanced debate this afternoon.
On close family members, which was raised by the Chair of the Select Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray), we have to strike a balance. Clearly, if there are no close family members, other family members—for example, grandchildren—can bring cases, but the House needs to think about what happens if one family member says, “I want it investigated,” and another says, “I do not.”
On the appointment of judges, the point was made that Ministers appoint judges to public inquiries and I do not hear people saying, “That means the judges are not independent,” but of course the holder of this office will take advice from judicial experts. On disclosure, which was raised by the Chair of the Select Committee and the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), we are making two changes: there will be a duty to conduct a balancing exercise and to give reasons where possible, and it will be open to anyone to judicially review.
On the point about the Irish commitments that many Members have raised, the Irish Government have said that once our legislation is in place, they will give the fullest possible co-operation to the legacy commission. They had already established by the end of December the Garda Síochána unit and it will pursue potential investigative opportunities. I was in Dublin to discuss that earlier this month. The Irish Government have now published the legislation to enable witness evidence to be given to the Omagh inquiry. I take the point about the separation, but I think that shows good faith because I have no doubt in my mind that the legislation to give effect to that fullest possible co-operation will appear soon.
I have great respect for the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis). I do not think I have ever insulted anyone in any debate about legacy, and I respect the point that he advances. However, with respect, there are no vexatious prosecutions—please can we not use that phrase? If we go down that road, it says something about independent prosecutors that I think is not justified by the evidence. I would draw to his attention and that of the House the protected disclosure arrangements under the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval that the troubles Bill will introduce, which were negotiated by the last Government under the Stormont House agreement.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) made a powerful point about investigations that were shut down. I say to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) that the protections were designed for veterans—that is why they are in the legislation—but they apply to all, mostly for the reasons that the right hon. Member for New Forest East set out: we have to treat people fairly under the law.
On sexual crimes, the Bill will deal with the gap that the legacy Act created, because there will be no alleged sexual offences that occurred during the period of the troubles that cannot be investigated, and that is extremely important. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch, who serves on the Select Committee, that this is probably our last best chance to get this right. No Member of the House shows more clearly the effect that the troubles have had on individuals and families than the hon. Member for Strangford. I agree with the hon. Member for Wimbledon that victims need to feel heard.
I say to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), for whom I also have enormous respect, that it is not a case of reopening old wounds. The wounds have never healed, which is why so many people are still searching for answers. I agree that attitudes towards the ICRIR are beginning to change; the growing caseload is a sign of that. I would, however, suggest that the fact that there will be further changes to the way it works—I took the decision not to abolish it, because I have confidence in Sir Declan, as the hon. Gentleman does—gives people greater confidence in coming forward, because that is what this is all about.
Given the wide range of views held by so many people, it will not be possible—let us be honest—to give everybody everything they are looking for. As I have said before, if dealing with legacy were easy, we would not be sitting here this afternoon debating it; it would have been done a long time ago. It is the unfinished business of the Good Friday agreement, and we have to find a balance.
I pledge to the House that I will continue listening to everyone who has views to express, including the Select Committee, because every single one of us is only too conscious of the passage of time. For families, time is running out and they still do not have the answers. That is why the Government are determined to sort this out and build the trust that has been so absent for victims, survivors, those who serve and wider society in Northern Ireland. We really must make every effort we can to get this right, above all for the families who have waited far too long for answers.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I thank the Secretary of State for his response to our report. As Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, I know it is very important that we work collaboratively. I am a Welsh Member of Parliament, and many members of the Committee do not have Northern Ireland seats, but we have all been touched by the troubles. My constituent Private Robert Davies was shot in Lichfield station in 1990. He would have been my age if he were still alive today. The troubles touch the lives of everybody across the country and across the world, but particularly those in Northern Ireland.
I pay tribute to the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who made an excellent speech. I thank our friends in Northern Ireland and everybody who has worked with us.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Clerk of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Mr Stephen Habberley, who will be moving on after five years of work with us. His team, his leadership and the help that I and other Committee members have been given should be noted in Hansard.
I thank everybody for their contributions. This debate has been handled with such sensitivity by everybody in the Chamber. I hope that we can continue with our piece of work on reconciliation in the same manner, and that we can have the same constructive dialogue with the Government.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Second Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, The Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland, HC 586, and the Government response, HC 1716.
Backbench Business
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Banking Services: Accessibility
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the accessibility of banking services.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for permitting me the opportunity to raise the issues and concerns about access to banking services across the country and in our communities. These are nationwide concerns, and the issue vexes many MPs and constituents—certainly in my constituency, where a large number of banks have closed in the last decade. Many people, particularly the digitally excluded and the most vulnerable, have been left in extremely difficult circumstances.
My relationship with banking is rather rudimentary, and I hope that those more engaged in debates on banking and financial services will tolerate my rudimentary dialogue on this issue; it is not one of my specialist subjects by any means, as I think will become apparent. Nevertheless, as a Member of Parliament, I have taken a very close interest in this issue, largely provoked by the closure in January this year of a bank in my constituency —in Penzance, west Cornwall. That has had a rather offensive impact on the town.
I am also concerned about the rather high-handed manner in which this closure was carried out, without any consultation—simply an announcement that was then followed through. I was shocked by the impact and many resulting factors of the closure, as well as the dismissive attitude of the bank when it came to that impact on some of the most vulnerable, disabled and digitally excluded people in the community. I have had a nine-year sabbatical from this place; when I was here previously, I did not face these issues as there were not any bank closures. There have been significant closures since. I was surprised at the dialogue and the attitude of the high-street bank—in this case, Lloyds.
I declare an interest in that I was a loyal Lloyds customer until last week; I had been for more than the last half century. I have been so dismayed by the attitude and approach of the bank to this closure that I have withdrawn all my custom and taken it elsewhere, and the bank knows it. The same applies to many in the Penzance area of my constituency.
When it announced the closure, the bank promised the local community a community banker who would come for one day every fortnight into a public building to offer an alternative service to help those people who needed face-to-face banking. I have had the following information from a constituent who attended one of those sessions very recently; they have only just been set up. The hub, held in St John’s Hall, a local authority building in Penzance, consisted of one community banker, with equipment in a very large room; no cash or notes were available, only advice. There were 28 people queueing to see the community banker, waiting in a very public place in an echoey room; there is no confidentiality there. The first two people waiting were in the meeting room for one hour—20 people stayed; eight left because they could not wait any longer.
This person’s wife arrived at 9 am and arrived back home just before 12 midday, having walked to and fro. It was a total shambles, which shows the disregard Lloyds has for people. The next time the community banker arrives, which is apparently now in three weeks’ time, the hub will be held upstairs, which is not good for older and disabled people. The nearby post office at St Clare could not dispense any cash during that time because the system was down, including the cashpoint outside the post office. Lloyds has recently stopped people from cashing cheques at post offices as well, so banking services that should be and have been provided to people have been withdrawn.
According to Fair4All Finance, more than 20 million people across the UK are in “financially vulnerable circumstances”. One in 10 people has no savings, and 21% have less than £1,000 in savings—nearly a third of our population are in extremely financially vulnerable situations: just one or two pay packets away from homelessness. Nearly 2 million people have used an unlicensed lender or loan shark in the last year, and 4.5 million people in financial vulnerability prefer face-to-face banking with a person. The issue has grown in urgency in many parts of the country. Access to in-person banking should be an essential public service. Closures affect people’s financial security, local economies, small business survival, digital inclusion, and the independence and dignity of older and disabled people.
The Minister will no doubt refer to the fact that banking hubs have replaced the banks, which have all been removed from towns, falling like a house of cards. However, having looked at the services available through hubs, I have to say that they are very limited in scope. I wonder about their sustainability in the longer run.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate, because so many people in my area of Devon, as well as his area of Cornwall, feel strongly about the issue. Not only are fewer services available when a bank closes its high street branch, but, if they are available a banking hub, they are available only one day per week rather than five. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is in the gift of the Government to reconsider the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, and to look again at the ease with which banks are closing their high street branches?
Andrew George
I strongly agree with my hon. and gallant Friend. I will come to questions to the Minister in a moment; I believe that the Government need to look at the robustness and sustainability of those services. What has been put in the place of banks is rather flimsy in the longer term, and that represents a risk to the future of financial services, which are essential, particularly for the most vulnerable and digitally excluded in our society.
It is worth reflecting that Members of Parliament using digital technologies perhaps do not entirely comprehend how difficult that is for some people. I am not one of the most IT-savvy people on the planet by any means, so I sympathise with those people to a certain extent. Even when someone gets on top of the electronic capacity required to use electronic services, the services often still contain degrees of linguistic ambiguity that leave even the most intelligent and educated among us rather confused. Unless someone can speak to a human being, that ambiguity remains and the inaccessibility of those services continues as well. It is not just the electronics, but the fact that someone cannot ask anyone who has designed the system what on earth they mean by the options available.
I am surprised that the review of access to financial services has been reduced to an assessment of merely cash. That is what the regulations seem to say. My hon. and gallant Friend suggested that the Government need to look at this again, and I hope they will. The framework designed to protect communities from losing central banking services is far too narrowly focused. Current legislation and regulatory oversight look almost exclusively at access to cash, but needs to look at access to banking, banking advice, account advice and other services. Even Link’s formal assessments openly state that it does not consider access to more complex banking needs. It allows banks to close branches even when communities remain deeply dependent on face-to-face support, as we found in the case of Penzance, which I mentioned earlier.
I ask the Minister to extend the regulatory framework, including the 2023 Act, which my hon. and gallant Friend has referred to already, so that it protects access to banking and not just cash; so that it strengthens and widens the FCA’s role to ensure that local impact, equality analysis and access to banking services more widely are mandatory considerations before closures are permitted to go ahead; so that it requires realistic travel assessments for rural and island communities; so that it improves standards and the roll-out of service standards for banking hubs; and so that it considers proportionate service obligations on banks, not least because these banks are, after all, too big to fail. In 2008, Lloyds was bailed out to the tune of more than £20 billion of taxpayers’ money.
The bank says in its branding that it is “By Your Side”—but apparently only until it finds that to be unsuitable: an empty branding slogan, one is bound to observe. I hope the Minister looks at this issue. It is a matter not of consumer choice, but consumer displacement. Around 14% of adults in financially vulnerable communities in the UK—that is 2.8 million people—live in rural areas, and the rural nature and travel involved need to be considered, too.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. He makes a really pertinent point about the issue of transport. One of the most frustrating elements for me, apart from the initial announcement of a closure of a bank on my high street or in the villages that I represent, often occurs when they tell people the location of their nearest alternative branch. I do not know whether the people running the banks understand the local transport system, but it can often take three and a half hours on public transport to even get to those branches. Does the hon. Member agree that it would be helpful if, when banks made these decisions, they consulted the public transport available to those losing their branch?
Andrew George
The hon. Member makes a pertinent and relevant point. That is why these matters need to be taken into account; it cannot be purely about access to cash, which is all that Link currently needs to consider. As long as there is an ATM in some corner within a mile or two of someone’s community, that is deemed to be sufficient to justify any bank closing anywhere. However, it is not sufficient.
Now that the Penzance branch has closed, of the 39 Lloyds branches in Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly, only two are left in Cornwall. People on the Isles of Scilly have to travel by ferry, paying £220 for a return ticket to the mainland—as well as for an overnight stay and a two-hour bus ride to Truro and back—to get access to face-to-face banking. That is the reality my constituents face to get access to the services.
Why are face-to-face transactions important? They are important for identity verification, resolution of fraud or scams, handling significant disputes or matters of banking interpretation, complex account queries, CHAPS and international payments, business cash deposits, and change-giving services. They are also important when there are bereavement or probate matters, as well as for community organisations, when counter-signatories are required, and for sports clubs and voluntary organisations. Those things are absolutely essential to the life of such organisations.
I am conscious of time; although I could say a great deal more on this important issue, I want to make sure that other hon. Members have an opportunity. Since 2015, around 6,700 branches—68% of the whole banking network—have closed. That is significant, and the impact on our communities has been fundamental and wide-ranging. On the day in January this year that Lloyds decided to close its Penzance branch, the bank had been in the most iconic building in the centre of our town, Market House, for literally 100 years. It was still serving 33,000 customers. Twenty-nine per cent of those local customers used the branch exclusively, and more than 1,000 regular weekly users—around one in 20 of the town’s residents—relied on it. The local population is older than the average and, as I mentioned, there was no consultation on the closure. Banks are able simply to ignore those facts.
Another pattern is that the banks will refer to the significant increase in people using apps, online banking, telephone banking and other alternatives to the face-to-face banking available on the high street. Often, that increase is a result of enforcement by the banks themselves; they fail to take into account that it results from their policy of making it difficult for people to use face-to-face services. Indeed, when customers go through the front door of branches that the banks are trying to close down, they are often met by someone who triages them out of the door again, to go and use an app or online service that they do not want to use. The banks are creating the circumstances in which they can justify closing branches.
I hope that the Minister will consider strengthening the regulations, recognising the limitations that exist, and challenging the banks on the services they are providing, as well as the dismissive way in which they ignore the most vulnerable in society—the people who will be suffering the most. In towns such as Penzance, the impact on the viability of the town is significant. When high street banks have closed in other towns, footfall—the lifeblood of commerce in the centre of a market town—has been significantly depleted as a result. That is certainly one of the great fears in Penzance if the other bank branches fall like a house of cards after the closure of Lloyds. We are trying to stop that by demanding that the other banks demonstrate their loyalty to the town. One by one, we are getting them to commit their loyalty, but only for a limited period, up to 2030; we need to go way beyond that.
I hope that my comments have helped to set the debate up for others to contribute, and I hope that the Minister is listening.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I am grateful to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for securing this timely debate.
The debate is particularly timely for me, because only last week the last bank in the whole of my constituency—Lloyds in Tunstall—closed its doors for the last time, leaving Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove without a single bank. In Kidsgrove, the last bank, Barclays, closed back in 2023, and Burslem residents have been without a bank for years. I remember going to the bank in Burslem with my mum when I was a kid. I queued up and watched people pay in and take out money. It was a place with a social purpose and someone to speak to. It was part of my everyday life and the everyday life of my family, and I know that is true for all members of our community. That has been lost.
Since my election, I have fought, alongside residents and local councillors, against the final bank’s closure. When Lloyds announced that it would leave Tunstall, I wrote to the bank and met its representatives to make the case against the closure, but really the decision had already been made. It was a case of “computer says no”—that is what it felt like. That is the problem: these decisions are made far away, on the basis of narrow commercial logic with little regard for communities like ours.
I have been campaigning on this issue in my constituency, but I did not stop there. I campaigned to bring banking hubs back into my constituency, and pushed for provision in both Tunstall and Kidsgrove. In Tunstall, we have a banking hub that is open, and I want to place on record my thanks to Aaron and the team at the post office who are doing great work with residents who have lost access to what I call “proper banking”, but we need to be clear that a banking hub is not a replacement; it is a mitigation. Meanwhile, in Kidsgrove, there is no banking hub at all—or no proper banking hub, I ought to say. There is something that is branded as a banking hub, but I do not class it as a real banking hub. Let me say it plainly: Kidsgrove needs a full-time banking hub, and it needs it now. We are told that alternatives are available. We are told to go and use post offices, but the post office in Kidsgrove has been closed for a year. We are told to go elsewhere, but “elsewhere” simply is not accessible for many people, particularly older and vulnerable residents, people without transport, and people who run small businesses.
I am really pleased that we pushed forward on banking hubs in our manifesto. They are part of the solution, but they are not good enough yet. They are limited and can be inconsistent. My question to the Minister is simple: what more will the Government do to expand banking hubs and make sure that they provide the full services that people need? This is about more than purely banking. Banks were anchor institutions on our high streets. They brought footfall into our town centres, supported businesses and gave confidence to our towns.
When the last bank leaves a town like Tunstall, Kidsgrove or Burslem, it sends a message that the place does not matter any more. We need to decide what level of access communities should be able to rely on, because right now the answer seems to be whatever is left behind, and that simply is not good enough. I urge the Minister to act. We need to strengthen the rules on bank closures; we need to expand proper banking hubs, including in places like Kidsgrove; and we need to recognise banking for what it is: a basic, fundamental service. If the market will not provide it, the Government must act. My constituents cannot be left behind, and they tell me that today, they are.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for introducing this debate on a subject that is so important to his constituents and those of so many other Members.
Lloyds Banking Group recently informed me, with only four months’ notice, that it is set to close its Tewkesbury branch alongside 94 others across the UK. Members who represent rural constituencies similar to mine will understand just how hard that will be for residents, not only of Tewkesbury but of the smaller settlements around it. The closure of Lloyds is only the latest in a sorry pattern that we have faced in recent years. In Tewkesbury town alone, the Barclays branch was shuttered in 2025, following the closure of Halifax only a few years previously. In Bishop’s Cleeve, NatWest and TSB have perished, as has the Lloyds mobile banking service. Winchcombe has not had a bank branch since 2018, and had lost face-to-face banking altogether for a brief but painful period until the post office was reopened in 2025. I take this opportunity to thank Councillor Gemma Madle for her excellent work in securing the reopening of that branch, and indeed to thank the Post Office for providing that lifeline.
As I said, such bank closures are prohibitive for residents in rural communities, particularly the elderly, the digitally excluded and those who fear the transition to digital banking due to the threat of criminal exploitation, but they are damaging in other ways too. For our high street businesses, a bank closure means the added administrative burden of closing their account or moving it to a bank with a continuing presence, if one remains. It means that the footfall that would otherwise occur on Tewkesbury high street, from people who live in outlying villages and bank with Lloyds, might now benefit the high street in Cheltenham or Evesham. It means another empty front on a historic high street and another signal from the bank that it will no longer justify serving its customers face to face.
I cannot make this case without also stating that these closures are occurring while Tewkesbury borough continues to develop as the fastest-growing borough outside London. How can it be sustainable that, as the local population grows so quickly, the services on our high street continue to diminish? On 13 February, I wrote to Lloyds Banking Group with my concerns. I have yet to receive a response. I echo the criticism that my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives made of Lloyds Banking Group’s communication. Like his constituents, mine were not consulted; neither were my local businesses, and I certainly was not. It is a continuing pattern, which I experienced as a Lloyds customer until I ended my association with the bank, several years ago.
The Government have pledged to open 350 new banking hubs across the country by the end of this Parliament. I am glad for those communities that now feature one. Sadly, there is not a single banking hub within the Gloucestershire local authority, and I understand that Tewkesbury will not qualify for one until its final bank branch closes. With only TSB remaining on Tewkesbury high street, will the Government support my residents with a banking hub now, or must they wait until they have no access at all? This paints a picture to me that we need more than the 350 hubs pledged.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. After a long campaign in my constituency, we have been lucky enough to secure a banking hub in Ilkley. It opens in a couple of weeks. I fear that more bank branches will close in Keighley and we will need to secure a banking hub there. One challenge has been that when Cash Access UK and Link assess whether a banking hub should be opened, they look at when the last bank closes but also assess access to cash through a cash machine. I suggest that when the hon. Member is trying to secure banking hubs in his constituency, he should pay attention to making sure that there is a cash machine on the outside of the hub, because I have had that challenge in my constituency.
Cameron Thomas
I thank the hon. Member for the advice; I will certainly take that forward. I am glad to hear that his constituents are served by a banking hub.
I close by welcoming the formal review of access to cash that the Financial Conduct Authority is undertaking, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives pointed out, it does not incorporate access to other banking services. I worry about communities such as mine, which will suffer in the interim.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this timely and appropriate debate. I will tell you a tale of three towns with relatively big populations on the outskirts of Glasgow, of a number of banks, of the actions of one banking group in particular, and of a community fight back.
When a bank moves out, what replaces it? For far too many communities the answer has been nothing. In Kilsyth in my constituency, that was exactly the situation. The last bank branch, the TSB, closed in 2021 prior to any automatic assessment for a community banking hub. When that branch went, something more than a service was lost. It meant longer journeys, less footfall, and real anxiety for people who simply want to manage their banking face to face.
I know from experience, having lost my father last year, that my mum—in her 80s, dealing with the bereavement and having to close his accounts—wanted to deal with the bank face to face. She did not feel comfortable using an app and did not want to talk to a call centre—they did not understand Scots law. I have spoken to local businesses that handle cash every day, which were left asking where they were supposed to go, and to older residents—not my mum—who do not bank online and should not be expected to, and I heard time and again that people should not have felt forgotten.
But Kilsyth did not accept it. The community spoke up. A request was made by my team, working with the local Labour councillors, Councillor Jean Jones and Councillor Heather Brannan-McVey, whose mum, Nan, was one of the previous bank staff—Heather is still known as “Nan from the bank’s daughter”—and indeed the whole local community. Link carried out the assessment, and we are expecting the interim banking hub for Kilsyth to be opened in the next few weeks.
This is what good looks like, in an area that lost its bank five years ago—a shared banking space; cash in and cash out; bill payments at the counter; customers being able to speak to somebody who will talk them through all the things they need to do. Every bank does different things through the hub. One improvement that could be made would be to offer a full range of banking services—but on different days, staff are there from different banks to deal with things that cannot be done on the app. It is not a perfect replica of the past, but it is a practical solution for the future. Crucially, it puts banking back where it belongs: in the community. In Kilsyth, it enables people to manage their money locally again and lets businesses bank their takings without leaving town, without pushing aside those who rely on cash. But communities like Kilsyth should not have to fight that hard just to get the basics back.
I want to talk about another banking group and the closure of Santander in Cumbernauld. We were notified in 2024 of a plan to close the Cumbernauld branch of Santander, with a suitable alternative available in Kirkintilloch, eight miles away or 25 minutes on one bus. The Cumbernauld branch closed on 3 July 2025. In late January, a few months ago, notification was given that the Santander branch in Kirkintilloch would close on 29 April, with alternative provision available in central Glasgow, 10 miles away from Cumbernauld and over an hour by most buses. I contend that if the plans had been more transparent, the original Cumbernauld closure should not have been supported, because there was not a reasonable alternative in place.
This is about making things transparent, being honest with communities, making sure people are not pushed aside and making sure we have systems for everybody. Banking hubs show what is possible when communities are listened to and industry steps up, but they are not a one-off success story. I ask the Minister: how do we go further and faster? How do we ensure transparency? How do we make sure more communities like Kilsyth, Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch get the access they need? How do we make sure we get face-to-face banking and not just cash? It is not a luxury.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for securing this vital debate. He represents a similar constituency to my own, with the additional challenge of some extra islands, and I was struck by some of the similarities in our experiences—particularly the dismissive attitude of Lloyds, which was mentioned by several Members.
My hon. Friend spoke about the reliance on community bankers, which banks have provided as an alternative, but, similarly to him, I have found in my constituency that the locations in which they are offering those services are not up to scratch, and local residents do not feel comfortable with them. My hon. Friend also said that the FCA criteria need to be widened, a call that I certainly agree with.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) spoke of the impact of closures on small towns and local economies. There is only one bank left in Tewkesbury; I am sure that is causing a huge inconvenience for his residents. Likewise, I agree with his call for the number of hubs to be increased. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) spoke of Lloyds’ “computer says no” approach, and the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) spoke about the community campaigns in her constituency and the impact of Santander’s closures.
Across my constituency of Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, we are seeing a steady and deeply worrying erosion of access to basic banking services. The issue here is whether people can withdraw their own money, whether small businesses can function, and whether elderly residents can manage their day-to-day lives. In rural Wales, access to cash and in-person banking is not a luxury; it is a necessity.
Take Hay-on-Wye, an internationally renowned tourist destination and home to the Hay festival, with a thriving high street built on independent businesses. It is heavily cash dependent, particularly during the tourist season, yet it has no bank, and its only 24-hour ATM is routinely out of action, often for weeks at a time. What message does that send—a town that welcomes the world yet cannot guarantee access to cash for its own residents or its many visitors? That is not just inconvenient; it is economically damaging.
In Presteigne, the situation is even more stark: the town has lost its bank branch entirely. The nearest alternative—this speaks to the point about long bus journeys—is now two hours and 40 minutes away by bus. This is a town with a large elderly population—people who are far less likely to bank online and far more reliant on face-to-face services. Those people are effectively being told that accessing their own money now requires a full day’s travel. That simply cannot be right.
In Brecon and Llandrindod Wells—the largest towns in Brecknockshire and Radnorshire respectively—each town is now down to its last remaining bank. Those towns are key hubs for their counties, serving not just local residents but the wider Brecon Beacons and Radnorshire area, with a significant tourism and agricultural economy. Yet, under the current rules, those towns must wait until the final bank closes before they can be considered for a banking hub. That forces us into a perverse situation in which communities have to lose everything before they qualify for any support. Why are we waiting for failure when we can clearly see it coming?
In Pontardawe, residents have already been left without a bank. They are now forced to travel to Neath—a round trip by bus that can often take more than two hours. Again, that disproportionately affects older residents, those without cars and those on lower incomes. Financial access is becoming a postcode lottery.
The fundamental problem is that the criteria for banking hubs are deeply flawed. They simply do not reflect how rural communities actually work. The current model looks at whether there are 7,000 people within 1 km of a high street, but rural Wales does not work like that, and nor do many areas across the United Kingdom. Towns like Brecon, Hay, Llandrindod and Presteigne act as hubs for vast surrounding areas—villages and rural communities many miles beyond that arbitrary radius. The system therefore systematically underestimates need, and communities lose out as a result.
Banking hubs are about more than convenience; they are also about inclusion. We still have significantly high levels of digital exclusion, particularly among older residents and in rural areas, where many struggle to get a mobile signal at home. Many people simply cannot manage their finances entirely online, and they should not be forced to. Banks should have a duty of care to their customers. After all, their profits are built on the money that customers entrust to them.
We also need to ensure reliable access to cashpoints. An ATM that is frequently out of service is no access at all. Let us be clear: this situation is not inevitable. The major banks are making significant profits. They are benefiting from higher interest rates and, in many cases, generous tax arrangements. Yet at the same time, they are withdrawing services from the very communities that helped them to build those profits.
In Powys, for example, a county that covers nearly a third of the land mass of Wales, there are no remaining Lloyds branches at all. That is an extraordinary withdrawal of service. Yet Lloyds made a £6.7 billion profit last year, which was up 12%. Its CEO, Charlie Nunn, received a total pay package of £7.4 million for 2025, and he is reportedly set up for a potential maximum payout of £17.7 million under a new performance-related pay policy proposed for 2026. There we have it: he will get a £10 million pay rise for closing bank branches across the country. Communities are being abandoned unnecessarily while banking profits are being prioritised.
Cameron Thomas
I hope my hon. Friend does not mind if I join in on his last point, which adds to the comments made by our hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) about the branding that Lloyds uses to portray itself as “By Your Side”, as though it is a member of the community. It uses the powerful image of the black stallion and powerful music, the name of which evades me. The reality is that it is a multi-billion-pound juggernaut and that black stallion has well and truly bolted from 94 of our communities, ridden by a CEO taking home £17 million.
David Chadwick
My hon. Friend is quite right. Many of my constituents certainly would not say that Lloyds is by their side. That is why it comes down to the Government. They have to show that they are on the side of our constituents, not just of the big banks.
Ultimately, this is a question of political choice. The Government can choose to stand up for rural communities and those reliant on in-person banking—which is all of us—or they can continue to allow this managed decline. Right now, the choices being made are the wrong ones. Labour has chosen to keep the tax breaks handed to the big banks by the previous Conservative Government and hinge its economic strategy on appeasing those same banks. At the same time, it is asking the small, often family-run businesses on our high streets to shoulder more of the burden to raise revenue. While big banks are being rewarded, rural communities are being left behind and local businesses are being squeezed.
That is not fair, balanced or sustainable. We need a reform of banking hub criteria to reflect rural geography, a proactive provision of hubs before the last bank closes, guaranteed access to free-to-use ATMs, and stronger obligations on banks to maintain services in underserved areas. Without intervention, the current trajectory is clear: more closures, further exclusion and more communities left behind.
Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I join everyone in congratulating the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on not only securing the debate but opening it so clearly. He laid out the particular issue in Penzance, but in doing so highlighted common concerns about bank closures. He raised some interesting questions in his excellent speech. I am sure the Minister will address them, but I will highlight a couple that I thought particularly interesting. The first was about the manner in which the closure was done—there was no consultation. He also talked about access to banking, not just to cash. The Minister will be aware that the Labour party had thoughts on that prior to the election; I do not want to prejudge the consultation, but I would be interested in her observations about that.
The hon. Member for St Ives has been joined by several other Members. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) made an important point, among many, about the communal role that banks have played historically, and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) mentioned the impact on town centres. Those two points highlight how central bank branches were to our country’s culture. The hon. Member for St Ives also talked about the buildings that once housed the recently closed banks. The withdrawal of bank branches not only strikes at the way financial services operate in this country, but says a lot about the type of country we are. I will come on to that point later.
In his intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) raised the issue of the criteria used in the selection of banking hubs. I would be interested to know whether the Minister is considering that. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) talked about face-to-face banking, which goes to the nub of the matter: future trends in banking, an issue that I will raise in my own comments. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick), made a wide-ranging speech and talked about how mobile banking must be dependable to be successful, as well as the availability of mobile networks.
I had an exceptionally brief ministerial career, part of which included introducing to the House of Commons the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, which contained the provisions that provided for banking hubs. It might be helpful to share some of my own thinking, or the thinking of the Conservative Government at the time. Some comments have been made about the impact of closures. I share people’s concerns about that issue, but the Government of the day—the Labour Government, today—must take a view on whether they will work with trends in how financial services operate in this country. They must decide either to seek to mitigate the social consequences, which is the rightful role of Government, or to stand steadfast against such changes. Patently, the decision made by the then Conservative Government, which has been supported by this Labour Government, was to work with the grain of how financial services are moving. It is about facilitating that, as far as possible, while recognising the social disbenefits that can arise.
It is fair to say that when consultations were done at the time, which was during covid, accessibility to cash was the primary focus of concerns about the decline of branches. It is also fair to say that the provisions in the 2023 Act on the future accessibility of banking were not set in stone. It was clear that we were in a period of trend and change that would require further consultation and review on how it was working, and what further trends were occurring. The Opposition welcome the Government’s taking the opportunity to look at these issues again.
To give a sense of the pace of change—this has not been mentioned so far—in 2024, for the first time, cash accounted for less than 10% of payments in this country. We need to go back only eight years for it to be, by far, the No. 1 form of transaction in this country. For those Members who are old enough to remember them, cheques now account for only 0.2% of all payments, so there has been a significant change.
On the pace of change of bank branches, since January 2015 there have been 6,700 bank branch closures, according to Which? magazine. To put that into context, there are approximately 12,000 towns in the country, and about another 100 cities. That shows the significant withdrawal of physical premises across the country. The number of ATMs has also fallen by 40% since 2015.
On the plus side, we have largely seen an end to the long decline in post offices in this country. One of the benefits of our post office network was that post offices were present in many locations, although not all, and could provide aspects of the banking services that were important to people. The change to the trend for post offices is welcome. We want our post offices to continue to provide a broad range of services to local communities. Postmasters and postmistresses are often among the most trusted people in their community, and they can provide a range of services, but of course they do not necessarily have the same level of expertise in banking that one would find in a bank branch.
That takes me on to another point. This debate was starting to look like a bit of a hit-job on Lloyds bank. I think that it was just by chance that the first three bank closures referred to were all of Lloyds branches, so let me say that this is not just a Lloyds thing; it affects all financial institutions. On the other hand, our financial institutions and banks do a very good job for people. They are effective in making sure that people have a safe place for their money and that money can be transferred from A to B. They are good at developing new products and at trying to adapt to technological change.
David Chadwick
The hon. Member says that banks do a very good job. Is he not aware of the numerous outages that Lloyds has had on its banking apps over the past couple of years and indeed the past couple of weeks? Those outages create a reliance on physical infrastructure for people to access cash if they need to.
Does the hon. Member also agree that the banks can afford to pay for banking hubs? It is not the Government who should have to pay for them. Does he agree that banks have more than enough to cover the cost of these hubs?
Richard Fuller
I have to say to my Liberal Democrat friend that the Liberal Democrats’ position is that taxing big businesses, big banks and big tech can pay for everything. I think I have heard the moneys from that being allocated to well over 20 different applications. That may have a role—it is up to the Liberal Democrats to say—but the key point I was making is that, whether we like it or not, a vast number of the things we do are moving from analogue to digital, and banking is not isolated from that. Look at the way in which people communicate, the way in which legal services are likely to change and the way in which public services are likely to be delivered. The role of Government, back in 2022-23, was either to put up a block against that or to facilitate the change. We said that we would facilitate the change.
There are contributions made through the banks to fund the banking hubs. More broadly, on the major transition of banking into the digital age, I take the hon. Member’s points about outage concerns and about someone receiving £1 million in their bank account and wondering how it got there, but overall the transition by financial services in this country has been done very well. It is important, though, that the Government of the day recognise the importance of maintaining essential banking services as a foundation for public confidence in the sector.
The issue of footfall is crucial, as is the point about being able to talk to a person. I recently went into a bank to withdraw some cash—not a huge amount, but a fair amount. I was asked, “Why are you taking your money out?” That might seem a rather intrusive question—I was going to say, “I’m putting it all on red in Las Vegas,” although I was not, obviously—but the reason for asking the question relates to a serious point that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch made. One issue that, back in 2022-23, I did not anticipate becoming so significant was how sinister online fraud on vulnerable people would become. With just a phone conversation, people can be intimidated or forced into thinking that they have to take money out of their account, and it ends up in criminal hands.
Online fraud is an evil crime, and it can affect anyone. It is a very sophisticated way to get to people who feel vulnerable. The best defence against it is the fact of having to go into a branch of a bank or financial institution and have someone over the counter look you in the eye, see how you feel, and ask important questions to reassure themselves that you are not the victim of a crime. I take that very seriously; when I was looking at the issue a few years ago, I was perhaps not as cognisant of it as I am now. I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts.
Notwithstanding certain disagreements about the overall role of banks, this has been a debate in which all sides have urged the Minister and the Government to look at the update and the consultation in a serious way, think about what has been done correctly and see what, in today’s world, are the best changes to be made to the regulations.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Rigby)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this debate. I thank him for setting out the concerns of his constituents very well, and I thank other hon. Members for their contributions: they have been powerful and in some cases very heartfelt.
It is fair to say that access to banking continues to attract significant interest from colleagues across the House. The hon. Member is right that that interest is increasing. He referred to his own experience of the trajectory of this issue, and I agree: I am seeing hon. Members raising this issue in the House with increased salience, which I am sure reflects how our constituents feel. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have taken the time to share their experiences and those of their constituents.
Some hon. Members who spoke in this debate have attended my banking hub surgeries, which I hope the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick), found valuable. The fact that I hold those surgeries, which Members of Parliament from any party can attend, demonstrates that the issue is being raised more and more by Members across the House.
I recognise that rural and coastal communities such as those in the constituencies of the hon. Member for St Ives and of the hon. and gallant Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) face particular challenges in accessing banking services. I very much appreciate the fact that in many circumstances local geography and transport may make it more difficult for elderly and disabled people, as well as those who are vulnerable or digitally excluded, to reach face-to-face banking when branch provision changes locally.
The hon. Member for St Ives mentioned services in his constituency being provided in an upstairs setting. I will come on to address accessibility issues, but I was sorry to hear that example. On transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) raised concerns about travel times, which I will also address. Many points have been raised, and I will do my level best to address them all.
The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), rightly referred to the fact that the banking landscape has changed in recent years. Many people have greatly benefited from digital innovations that allow them to manage their finances more easily. For many, those changes have increased accessibility and convenience. Many of us are able to access banking services just from an app on a phone. It has been clear in this debate, however, that although digital services work well for many people, others still want, need or prefer to access banking in person or use cash in their daily lives. That includes some older customers, people who are more vulnerable, or those—as with the family member of my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray)—who have been through a significant life event. Being vulnerable at that point, they may just want to speak to another human.
This Government are on the side of each of those categories of people. We recognise that cash remains important for people and businesses right across the country. That is why we have been clear that, alongside digital innovation, it is critical that people have access to the services that they need. Hon. Members know that access to cash is protected in legislation and the FCA has responsibility and powers to ensure that people and businesses can continue to withdraw and deposit cash.
I want to address the serious concerns that have been raised by hon. Members about the impact of bank branch closures on our communities. In particular, the hon. Member for St Ives articulated his concerns about the closure of a Lloyds branch in Penzance. I fully understand his concerns about that situation. The Government understand the importance of those services, and there are other similar instances across the country. Banking services and other services must reflect customer and community interest.
I welcome the fact that some banks have made commitments to maintaining or improving their existing branches, because they recognise just how important they are to their customers. Nationwide Building Society has committed to maintaining 605 branches until at least 2030 and HSBC UK has committed to keeping 327 branches open until at least 2027; we very much welcome those important commitments. I also draw attention to the fact that, according to the Building Societies Association, 35% of the branch network is currently provided by building societies. As a Government, we fully support and value the role that mutuals play in our economy and society.
Branch access is an important feature for a number of customers. Many have used the free current account switching service to change provider. The switching service ensures that all payments and balances are automatically transferred to a new account, but for those firms that are changing their branch network, there are rules and obligations. In those circumstances, it is important that all Members know that decisions to close branches must be taken with regard to their impact on customers and communities. The FCA’s branch closure guidance is very clear that firms must carefully assess the effect of a planned closure on customers’ everyday banking and cash access needs.
Let me underline that point: it is very important, not least because of some of the contributions to today’s debate. Banks are expected to put appropriate alternatives in place. Where they fall short of those expectations, the FCA can and will ask for closures to be paused and I fully support those FCA powers. As a Government, we expect the FCA to use them where they consider it necessary to do so. Crucially, we also believe it is right that no branch can close until any recommended services are put in place.
Andrew George
At the end of the day, the issue is that the FCA and Link primarily undertake an assessment of access to cash, and not to the full range of banking services. The Minister says that adequate alternatives are in place. Of course, the banks will no doubt attempt to put some facade in place to satisfy that requirement—as she notes, I am unimpressed by the case in Penzance—but fundamentally, the test is access to cash, and that is insufficient. Surely that measure needs to be significantly widened.
Lucy Rigby
I appreciate that there is a difference between access to cash and access to banking services; I will come on to the latter, if the hon. Member will give me a moment.
The Government wholeheartedly recognise the importance of banking services to local communities; that recognition underpins our manifesto commitment to support industry to roll out 350 banking hubs across this country by the end of this Parliament. I think I am right to say that the hon. Member attended the opening of a banking hub in Helston in his constituency.
Lucy Rigby
It is always welcome when Members attend such openings. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) is no longer in his place, but I was pleased to hear him welcome the upcoming opening of the banking hub in Ilkley. I note what he says about the need for a hub in Keighley as well.
David Chadwick
Mine is the biggest constituency in England and Wales, and four or five towns in it sorely need a banking hub: Brecon and Presteigne are two such examples, beyond the hub that has already opened in Ystradgynlais. Does the Minister agree that there is a need for more than the 350 hubs that the Government have already committed to?
Lucy Rigby
The hon. Member has tried to trick me into saying the name of his constituency or the towns in it before; as he well knows, I cannot pronounce them anywhere near as well as he can. I was about to answer the exact point that he makes. It is really important to note that the 350 figure is a floor, not a ceiling. Our manifesto commitment sets that floor of 350 hubs. I appreciate that the hon. Member is not asking me to call it right now, but I will: the Government, working with industry, hope to go above that number. That is not least because more than 270 hubs have already been announced. Our commitment is for 350 hubs over the course of this Parliament, and 18 months into the Parliament we are already at 270—hon. Members will see the trajectory. Of the 270 hubs that have been announced, 225 are now open. The remaining hubs that have been committed to are yet to open, but we expect them to in due course. To answer the hon. Member’s question, it is entirely possible that the 350 target will be surpassed, as and when more communities need banking hubs. I would welcome that, it sounds like he would welcome it and I am sure that other Members across the House would too.
Banking hubs provide assisted cash services through post office counters alongside community bankers from individual banks who meet customers face to face in a private room to offer support, as they would in a traditional branch, as has been mentioned. I was very sorry to hear the experiences with community bankers noted by the hon. Member for St Ives; that was not what I understood from colleagues in this place and what I have heard anecdotally outside this place. Indeed, when I visited the banking hub in Warwick in your constituency, Mr Western, I did not see queues of people waiting to see a community banker. Everything was happening in an orderly way, and community bankers could see people in a timely fashion. Nevertheless, I note the experiences that the hon. Member put on the record, and I am more than happy to look specifically at the issues in that banking hub.
Andrew George
I want to make sure that the Minister understands that I was simply describing what the community banker working on behalf of Lloyds was providing. I was referring to the Lloyds replacement for the closed branch, not a banking hub.
Matt Western (in the Chair)
I remind the hon. Member that he will have time to wind up at the end. Perhaps the Minister could start to conclude her remarks.
Lucy Rigby
On that cue, I will skip further ahead in my speech. I was going to talk about all the services that are available at banking hubs, which the industry is working hard to increase. Customers can now open accounts, change names and addresses, register complaints or receive help with online and telephone banking. I have met the industry on a number of occasions and I would like to put on record that we are working to try and make sure that the services provided at banking hubs meet the needs of communities. Fraud and scams were mentioned; they are concerns that the Government are thinking about.
Let me cut to the chase and answer many of the questions that have been raised. Despite everything that I have said about the importance of banking hubs and our manifesto commitment to open 350 of them, it would be premature to conclude that all communities are consistently receiving sufficient support for their banking needs. That has been clear from the contributions of hon. Members in this debate. In direct response to one question was raised by the hon. Member for St Ives—a point that was also well articulated by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams)—that is why, as might be expected, we are keeping any need to go further, including on access to banking services, under close review.
There is much more I could say about the health of our high streets, digital and financial inclusion, and alternative options to banking services, but in the light of the time and your strong cue, Mr Western, I will wrap up there.
Andrew George
We have had a good debate and I am pleased that the Backbench Business Committee has permitted us to have it. It is clear that although we have aired so many of the issues today, there are still matters to be resolved. The Minister has helpfully addressed the Government’s position on the points that I raised at the beginning of the debate. Some should be part of an ongoing dialogue with Members who have been affected by the significant changes in banking services over the last decade and are therefore conversant with the impact it is having on constituents.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) strongly and articulately argued the case for improved services in his constituency. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) did the same. Their examples illustrate that much more work is needed to improve accessibility to banking services, particularly for the most vulnerable and the digitally excluded.
Andrew George
I do not know whether that is permitted or not, but I will if the Chair allows it.
David Williams
My point is about the focus on vulnerable customers: it is not only about vulnerable customers; it is about older people. My mum and dad would not be described as vulnerable. I bought them a smartphone last year, and I spent weekend after weekend trying to get them to use it. When their bank closed, they were offered half an hour with the bank on how to use apps. Would the hon. Member agree that that is not going to work, and that banks need to do more to help older residents?
Matt Western (in the Chair)
I remind Members that this is the summing up by the Member in charge, not an open debate.
Andrew George
I do not wish to reopen the debate. I have no summed up a debate before so I was uncertain about the procedure; thank you, Mr Western, for your advice. I will not accept any further interventions and will bring my remarks to a close as soon as I can.
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) made a telling contribution talking about the impact the situation is having on customers seeking support from banks. Very often, the banks have designed centralised systems for the convenience of the banks themselves, rather than for the customers. They seem to be retreating behind the digital and electronic walls of the bank, and not making themselves available to offer advice to people who really want to be able to eyeball people and see them face to face to get those services.
Fundamentally, my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) illustrated how what is going on epitomises the widening inequality in this country. A chief executive of a bank runs off with £17 million. The big banks are creaming it on the back of the massive tax advantage that they have in these circumstances. On the other hand, the poorest in our society have been pushed out from these banks, and it has been made significantly more difficult for them to get access to banking services and support.
The issue epitomises the widening inequality in society and people’s digital exclusion. That is why I hope that a Labour Government, working with Liberal Democrats who share the same values, would address these issues, and not simply allow the banks to get away with what I consider to be blue murder. I am grateful to the Minister, and I hope that the conversation can continue.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the accessibility of banking services.
Written Statements
Horizon Family Members Redress Scheme
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Blair McDougall)
On 8 July last year, my predecessor announced the Government’s intention to launch a redress scheme for postmasters’ family members who were most severely affected by the Horizon scandal. This statement provides further information to the House about the scheme’s form, scope and eligibility criteria. While the scheme remains focused on personal injury, we have made significant changes that will make it easier for more family members to qualify for redress.
This scheme follows the Government’s acceptance of recommendation 18 in volume 1 of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry report (that financial redress should be provided to close family members of those most adversely impacted by the Horizon scandal), and of similar recommendations made by the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board.
Over the past months, my officials and I have been working with stakeholders, including the Lost Chances group, Horizon redress claimants lawyers and the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, to develop a fair approach to redress that recognises the difficulties that some people may find in providing evidence of the harm which they have suffered. In doing so, we have drawn on lessons from other Government schemes to ensure that this scheme delivers timely, accessible support, while minimising the potentially re-traumatising impact of a lengthy claim process.
The outline scheme announced by my predecessor focused on personal injury—which in many cases we expect to mean damage to mental health. That earlier version of the scheme would have allowed applications to be made based only on contemporaneous evidence of medical issues or a fresh assessment of an ongoing medical condition arising from Horizon.
Stakeholders have told us that very few people would be able to provide this type of evidence. In response, we have created an alternative route to redress for people whose postmaster relatives faced some of the most stressful specific consequences of the Horizon scandal (such as prosecution or bankruptcy) and were therefore more likely to have experienced significant harm. So long as we can confirm the event experienced by the claimant’s postmaster relative, we will not require them to evidence any further harm.
Because we are not asking such claimants for specific evidence of any harm for events-based claims, we cannot differentiate between claims. We will therefore offer flat-rate “recognition payments” to people who claim through this route. This simple approach may result in some individuals receiving an amount that differs from what they would have been awarded following the assessment of a personal injury claim. However, given the evidential problems, the alternative would have been to give them no compensation at all. Those who do have evidence will still be able to apply for an assessed personal injury claim and provide contemporaneous evidence of medical issues arising from Horizon, or a fresh assessment for any ongoing medical condition, as outlined by my predecessor.
I believe this enhanced scheme for family members is the best approach, striking the right balance between a low-evidence approach and an individual personal injury assessment to meet our original promise—and Sir Wyn Williams’s recommendation—to support family members of those most severely affected by the Horizon scandal.
I have today written to the Lost Chances group setting out details of our proposals. I am placing a copy of my letter in the Library of each House, and have copied it to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee. The letter is published at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/horizon-family-members-redress-scheme
Restorative Justice
The Department’s response to volume 1 of the report of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry announced that with the Post Office and Fujitsu we had jointly embarked on a restorative justice project for postmasters, facilitated by the Restorative Justice Council. On 31 October 2025 the RJC published a report on the pilot phase of that programme, which set out what postmasters wanted from a restorative justice programme. They have continued to engage with postmasters in the intervening period.
The RJC is today publishing a second report which gives a further account of many postmasters’ terrible experiences of the impacts of this scandal, considers how a restorative justice programme can help, and describes what will now be delivered. As was always our intention, the programme is very much postmaster-led.
The Department, the Post Office and Fujitsu have agreed to support the programme both financially and practically for up to five years initially. Responsibility for funding will be shared between the three organisations. Fujitsu’s financing of the programme is separate from their contribution to compensation, which will be agreed once the Williams inquiry has reported.
I am placing a copy of the Restorative Justice Council report in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS1420]
UK Steel Strategy
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Peter Kyle)
The Government are today announcing a comprehensive set of measures to secure and enhance the long-term future of UK steel-making, strengthen national security and position the UK as a world leader in clean, modern steel production.
Steel production has played a central role in the UK’s history and is essential to our economic success and national security. It underpins key growth-driving sectors of the industrial strategy, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence and digital technologies. The sector supports thousands of skilled jobs and remains integral to communities across the country. It is a bedrock of our economic resilience and national security.
Despite its strategic importance, the UK steel sector has faced 20 years of decline. High operating costs and global over-capacity have significantly affected the competitiveness and viability of the UK steel industry, and manufacturers have increasingly turned to imported steel at artificially low prices. This situation has contributed to reduced investment, diminished capabilities and severe impacts on steel-making communities. Crude steel production has fallen by more than 50% over the last decade. Successive Governments have intervened to support individual companies, but have not addressed the underlying causes of decline across the sector, or fostered broader, long-term conditions for a sustainable domestic industry.
While the sector faces challenges, this Government do not accept that decline is inevitable. That is why we have today published our new steel strategy, which sets out a comprehensive plan to reverse historical trends and build a strong and resilient industry, supported by up to £2.5 billion of Government investment, in addition to £500 million for Tata Steel.
A key part of the strategy is the introduction of a new trade measure to ensure the future of domestic steel production in the face of global over-capacity, given the sector’s central role in critical national infrastructure, defence, and economic resilience. From 1 July 2026, overall quota levels for steel imports will be significantly reduced by 60% compared with the safeguard, and steel coming into the UK above these levels will be subject to a 50% tariff. This measure will apply to imported steel products that can be made in the UK.
A stable, thriving steel sector will provide a secure supply of high-quality steel to downstream customers. The tariff will apply only once import quotas have been met, which will facilitate continued imports for industries that rely on them, including those in the automotive, construction and defence sectors.
Following engagement with downstream importers, we are exploring a transitional arrangement under which the new tariff would not apply to goods under contract agreed before 14 March and imported between 1 July and 30 September 2026. We are finalising the details to ensure that the agreement provides genuine support to firms facing unexpected costs, while still protecting the UK market from excessive imports. Our quotas will be administered on a quarterly basis, with roll-over between quarters within the same accounting year. We will also review the measure after 12 months to ensure that it remains effective.
Alongside the new trade measure being announced today, the Government will also launch a process at the World Trade Organisation under article 28 of the general agreement on tariffs trade to negotiate and agree an increase in the UK’s maximum most favoured nation steel tariffs to 50%. This will create the space for applied MFN tariffs to be increased in the future, protecting domestic industry in the long run from the impacts of global over-capacity.
The Government’s approach is the result of extensive engagement with the Steel Council, trade unions and businesses, and with responses to the recent call for evidence on supply chain needs. It aligns with the Government industrial strategy and trade strategy, which supports resilient supply chains and secure growth in critical sectors.
The UK is not alone in taking steps to improve the security and resilience of the steel sector. Our neighbours and allies face the same challenges from over-capacity, which is challenging global markets. The European Union announced its own measure on steel trade last year. We are acting on the basis of shared concerns. That is why we are focused on engaging constructively with the EU, with whom our supply chains are so connected.
This trade measure, alongside our wider strategy, will reinforce the UK steel sector’s resilience and help us meet our ambition for domestic production to meet 40% to 50% of the UK’s steel demand. Achieving these goals will also require investment in the sector’s future. Building on the direct support the Government have provided so far, the National Wealth Fund will be the main mechanism for providing further financing for investment in the steel sector. The NWF is actively seeking engagement with steel firms and is looking to crowd in significant private capital to support the sector.
The Government have reformed the clean industry bonus to create new incentives for manufacturers to invest in UK steel in domestic wind turbines and wind farms. In parallel, electric arc furnace capacity will be expanded, recognising that stabilisation of the sector will mean a transition to more highly productive, decarbonised steel-making. As we see at Sheffield Forgemasters, electric arc furnaces have the technical capability we need to produce steel at the highest of standards, including for safety-critical sectors such as nuclear, aerospace and defence.
Blast furnace capacity will continue to be required in the immediate term, and the Government will therefore pursue a managed transition to ensure security of supply.
The strategy also places renewed emphasis on recycling. Greater use of domestically available scrap steel is a major opportunity for growth, and the Government, through the creation of a new working group, is engaging with industry, academia and other stakeholders to ensure this potential is fully realised. We are announcing a new innovation working group, chaired by an expert to increase collaboration between our research community and industry. It will develop a clear direction for steel research and development. Through the Steel Council, we will foster collaboration between industry, devolved Governments and wider stakeholders to address the sector’s workforce requirements.
To improve the business environment, the Government are addressing the long-standing challenge of high energy costs as set out in the industrial strategy. Under our clean energy superpower mission, we will increase our energy security and reduce electricity bills by investing in clean energy and strengthening our connections to the EU energy market. While we will focus on translating the cheaper wholesale costs of clean power into lower bills, we also recognise the need to act quickly to support sectors with high growth potential and significant exposure to high electricity prices.
The British industry supercharger policy has already delivered substantial savings for steel-making firms, and further benefits will follow from forthcoming changes to the network charging compensation scheme; the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which could save eligible firms up to £40 per megawatt hour from April 2027; and continued support for the energy intensive industries compensation scheme, announced in the Budget, which has delivered financial support for steel businesses since 2013, and will continue to deliver electricity costs support for steel companies. These measures help reduce electricity costs for steel companies to make them more competitive.
The Government recognise that public investment alone cannot deliver the scale of renewal required. New private sector investment is essential to increasing capacity and capability and stabilising the sector. Britain welcomes new entrants to the market, supported by Government finance where appropriate. We will continue to work closely with the devolved Governments in Wales and Scotland to attract further investment.
The steel strategy sets out a vision of Government, industry and communities working together to make the UK steel sector more attractive to investors, more financially stable and more internationally competitive. This vision is already being realised. UK Export Finance has today signed a major financing agreement with Nigeria for the refurbishment of two major ports. Under this arrangement, British Steel Ltd will supply 120,000 tonnes of steel billets, a contract worth £70 million and the largest British steel order that UKEF has ever backed.
The steel strategy will support the country’s broader ambitions in infrastructure, defence and technology. Steel produced in the UK will be required for the delivery of 1.5 million new homes, and for the approved third runway at Heathrow, which alone will require 400,000 tonnes of steel. Steel made in the UK will be key to delivering the AUKUS submarine programme, a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the United States. The strategy will also support new data centres and gigafactories, including the Agratas facility in Oxfordshire, where 23,000 tonnes of steel, fully sourced from the UK, have already been used in construction.
The Government are taking action to secure the future of the UK steel industry, recognising its importance to the nation’s economic and national security. Britain’s industrial past was built on steel, and our future will be too.
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Manchester Digital Campus
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The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
Today I want to inform the House that the Manchester digital campus programme is progressing well following the formal approval of its outline business case.
This programme will change how Government works, bringing together Departments with a major digital focus on a new, purpose-built site in central Manchester. It supports our places for growth policy, wider Government priorities, and our Government digital and data strategy. The Manchester digital campus is expected to open in 2032.
By consolidating our footprint and moving high-quality decision-making roles out of London, this transformation will drive long-term estate efficiencies and deliver a more resilient shared infrastructure.
We will continue to work closely with local partners and across Government to ensure the campus delivers value for money and a clear strategic advantage for the United Kingdom. We will keep the House updated.
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UK Common Frameworks Publication
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Ward)
Following sustained and constructive dialogue with the Scottish and Welsh Governments and the Northern Ireland Executive, I am informing the House that three frameworks have been published by the UK Government on behalf of the Scottish and Welsh Governments, and the Northern Ireland Executive:
Blood safety and quality common framework
Organs, tissues and cells common framework
Late payment common framework
This brings the total number of finalised common frameworks to eight. This is in addition to four bilateral common frameworks finalised with the Northern Ireland Executive and published on 26 February by the Department for Transport: rail technical standards; commercial transport and operator licensing; driver licensing; and motor insurance.
These documents have been updated to reflect changes in both policy and legislation since the common frameworks were laid for scrutiny, and accommodate many of the recommendations made, not only by the UK Parliament, but also legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In addition, changes have occurred in key areas such as the Windsor framework replacing the Northern Ireland protocol. The Windsor framework has reduced regulatory divergence between Great Britain and Northern Ireland for goods remaining in the UK. The standard text was updated in the relevant common frameworks following agreement by the four Governments.
The continued efforts and joint working by the four Governments have enabled the operation of the full programme of common frameworks since they were provisionally published in 2021-22. The final publication of these frameworks is an excellent example of strong communication and collaboration. It demonstrates that together, the four Governments of the United Kingdom can take the right decisions for the benefit of citizens and businesses, protecting the integrity of the UK internal market.
For completeness, it was agreed between the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive that the specified quantities common framework was no longer required as this had little risk of divergence, and the four Governments also agreed that the mutual recognition of professional qualifications framework is not required at this time.
As we look ahead, we are focused on the future transparency of the programme. The UK Government are clear that this should not only allow the four legislatures of the UK insight into the effectiveness of common frameworks, but also ensure that all relevant stakeholders with a specific industry interest can utilise this information.
Finally, the UK Government are firmly committed to the speedy finalisation of the remaining common frameworks. We continue to work with the devolved Governments to complete the remainder of the programme and the Government will update the House on those developments in due course.
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Northern Growth Strategy: Next Steps
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
My noble friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) has today made the following written ministerial statement.
On Tuesday 17 March, the Chancellor updated Parliament on the Government’s economic plan to increase living standards, build resilience and bolster the security of the UK economy. I am today setting out more detail on a core part of that plan—how the Government will drive growth in the north of England, working alongside local leaders, as part of our wider regional growth strategy.
Today the Government have laid the “Northern Growth Strategy: Next Steps” (CP 1549). As set out in the “Northern Growth Strategy: Case for Change” (CP 1485) published in January, there is significant national benefit to boosting growth in the north. Just growing the north’s five most populous mayoral strategic authority areas’ productivity to the national average could add around £40 billion per year in gross value added, alongside around £15 billion per year in fiscal revenues. That is why the Government have put the north of England at the centre of their regional growth plans including through unlocking the northern growth corridor, stretching from York to Liverpool across the Pennines; and making the most of unique strengths in the north-east, and wider north.
The publication laid today sets out how investment in Northern Powerhouse Rail will serve as the backbone for economic transformation across the region, alongside action to grow and densify northern cities, to back industrial strategy clusters where they excel, and to decentralise our political system and put real power in the hands of local leaders. This publication begins a new phase of deeper engagement with a wide range of local partners, to further develop the northern growth strategy, with a further update intended for the autumn.
The document sets out the next steps the Government are taking now, to support their strategy, including through:
City Investment Funds
The city investment funds, announced earlier this week by the Chancellor, provide £2.3 billion of new grant, loan and patient capital funding, with up to £1.7 billion going directly to mayors of the largest city regions in the north, to unlock large-scale city centre development, in particular where there are issues around viability.
The fund will bring together different types of finance, deployed flexibly to accelerate projects, expand city-centre housing and office markets, and support major regeneration schemes across the north, including:
The Victoria North development in Manchester, one of the largest city-centre regeneration schemes in the UK
Transformation of Liverpool central gateway and sites at the Knowledge Quarter
Regeneration and densification around Leeds City station, Leeds South Bank, and the new Bradford Northern Powerhouse Rail station
Developing projects in the Don Valley corridor, Sheffield city centre innovation spine, and Rotherham town centre
Accelerating development across the proposed mayoral development zone spanning Newcastle and Gateshead, with Gateshead Quays and Forth Yards as flagship anchors.
By combining early catalytic funding with a long term focus on reinvestment, city investment funds will support sustainable growth, crowd in private capital, and help cities realise their full economic potential.
Industrial Strategy Cluster Partnerships
The Government are backing five areas in the north, supported by £150 million clusters investment from the British Business Bank, supercharging growth driving sectors where they already excel. New place based partnerships will be established with local leaders, businesses and universities to strengthen and accelerate growth in the north’s globally competitive industrial strategy clusters. For example:
Transforming Greater Manchester into a “global growth cluster” in life sciences, advanced manufacturing and digital and technologies, including through investing hundreds of millions into the development of Manchester digital campus. The campus will bring together 8,800 civil servants and Ministers in the heart of the city, solidifying Manchester’s status as a digital and AI hub, bringing more high-skilled jobs to the area, and saving the taxpayer billions through consolidating existing estate.
Strengthening Liverpool city region’s role as a leading centre for life sciences and digital technologies, including through investment in a new national cryogenics facility that will help establish the north-west as a hub for ultra-low temperature research, expected to attract investment from sectors such as quantum, healthcare and fusion; creating high-quality jobs and boosting our national security.
Supporting West Yorkshire’s financial services and professional and business services “Northern Square Mile” in Leeds, promoting it as a destination for global financial services businesses supported by the Office for Investment: Financial Services concierge service.
Working with partners to further develop the clean-energy “supercluster” across the north-east, Tees Valley, York and North Yorkshire, and the Humber. The Government will work in partnership with local leaders and businesses to attract and develop clean energy industries investment and infrastructure into the region.
Building on South Yorkshire’s strengths in advanced manufacturing and defence through its £50 million defence growth deal to strengthen sovereign manufacturing capability. This will boost the region’s strengths in the research, development and engineering of materials critical to the next generation of defence capabilities.
Fiscal Devolution
Looking ahead to the Budget, the Chancellor confirmed that she has asked Treasury officials to work with mayors and businesses to develop a road map for future fiscal devolution. This will set out plans to give regional leaders a share of the revenue from some national taxes and will consider income tax alongside other taxes. The Chancellor’s objective is to provide mayors with the long-term financial certainty that they need to invest in a way that is practical and responsible. Therefore this work will be guided by four key principles: empowerment, accountability, sustainability and fairness.
The Government will continue to develop the northern growth strategy in partnership with local stakeholders. To support this, an invitation for views is being launched alongside the document laid today. This sets out a series of questions around connectivity, regeneration and densification of cities, business investment, skills, and culture. The invitation for views will close on 31 July 2026. The Government will review responses over the summer to strengthen the approach, ahead of a further update in the autumn.
Across the north, places are demonstrating what sustained investment, strong local leadership and clear long-term direction can achieve. The challenge now is to build on that momentum and scale it up at pace. We look forward to working together with mayors and local partners on this collective endeavour over the coming months.
The report is published on gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/northern-growth-strategy-case-for-change/northern-growth-strategy-case-for-change
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Official Development Assistance Programme Allocations 2026 to 2029
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The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Yvette Cooper)
In recent years, the world has been reshaped by global instability. Faced with growing global security threats the Government last year took the decision to increase spending on defence by reducing official development assistance to the equivalent of 0.3% of gross national income by 2027. The UK will return to spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA when fiscal circumstances allow.
Our commitment to international development is as important as ever—it reflects UK values, supporting those in conflict and extreme poverty, and is also in the UK national interest because in an interconnected world, crises and instability across the world undermine our security and prosperity at home. Over the past year we have taken the time to review our priorities and redefine how we work. We are modernising and improving our approach to development to have the greatest impact abroad and secure the best value for money for taxpayers at home.
The spending review 2025 set the FCDO’s ODA budget from 2026-27 to 2028-29; it will no longer be automatically adjusted for unforeseen changes to the ODA budget. The new cross-Government ODA delivery and impact board chaired by the Minister for Development will ensure all departments work coherently together. This means we have been able to set three years of ODA programme allocations, providing teams with the predictability required to effectively manage the transition to 0.3% of GNI. All future plans are subject to revision as, by its nature, the Department’s work is dynamic. Programme allocations are continually reviewed to respond to changing global needs, including humanitarian crises and other ODA allocation decisions.
In the attachment available online, see table 1: cross-Government ODA programme allocations.
Priority themes
Our priorities remain humanitarian, global health, and climate and nature, underpinned by economic development. We are prioritising support for fragile and conflict-affected areas and linking it to conflict and atrocities prevention. We will ensure that women and girls are central to development decisions.
The UK plans to spend approximately £1.4 billion each year in the places with the highest humanitarian need over the next three years, in addition to our planned commitment to the UN and Red Cross for humanitarian work. Over the next three years, the UK will spend around £6 billion of ODA as international climate finance. We will balance support between mitigation and adaptation and maintain a focus on nature. By using different instruments and levers, we will aim to generate an additional £6.7 billion of UK backed climate and nature positive investments and to mobilise billions more in private finance.
We have fully protected central programme spending on violence against women and girls, women peace and security, and preventing sexual violence in conflict. We are strengthening our approach to mainstreaming gender equality across the FCDO’s work and have raised our ambitions, committing that at least 90% of FCDO bilateral ODA programmes will contribute to gender equality by 2030.
Multilateral ODA programming
We are increasing the share of FCDO’s programme ODA which we spend through multilateral organisations, targeted strategically towards the most effective multilateral organisations. We have already confirmed we will honour our pledge to IDA’s 21st replenishment, an increase of 40% from our previous contribution. We are pledging £650 million to the African Development Fund, as the largest donor to a record replenishment of $11 billion.
We have already pledged £1.25 billion to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. We also announced in November our commitment of £850 million from 2026 to 2028 for the eighth replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We will continue to support the World Health Organisation and UN Population Fund in delivering vital support on reproductive and maternal health. To prioritise the most effective investments, we plan to end our funding to the pandemic fund, the global polio eradication initiative, and support these objectives through other investments. We will match our current pledge for the 2027 to 2030 period to Education Cannot Wait, delivering an effective humanitarian response to education in crisis settings. In due course, we will set out our multilateral plans on climate and other education multilateral organisations when negotiations are further advanced.
In the attachment available online, see table 2: planned multilateral ODA programming.
Country and regional ODA programming
FCDO bilateral ODA allocations are reducing as a proportion of our ODA budget. We will prioritise our country and regional ODA where humanitarian needs are most acute—to reach those in greatest need and reduce the harm caused by violence and atrocities. The proportion of spending in fragile and conflict-affected states will increase by around 13 percentage points to over 70% of all country and regional spending by 2028-29.
Set within the UK’s 100-year partnership with Ukraine, we remain committed to providing vital humanitarian, development and economic support to Ukraine. We have protected Ukraine’s bilateral ODA allocation at £240 million per year. In addition, FCDO will provide $2 billion of loan guarantees through the World Bank to help meet Ukraine’s 2026 financing needs. FCDO has also allocated over £109 million ODA over three years to Ukraine from the integrated security fund and British International Investment has committed £250 million over five years. The UK remains ready to play its part in fully supporting Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s illegal aggression, provides for its population under constant bombardment, and rebuilds its economy and society. The UK will explore financing options to Ukraine to ensure support remains durable and as effective as possible in addressing Ukraine’s most pressing needs.
We are limiting our reduction of bilateral aid to humanitarian crises across the middle east. We are fully protecting our allocation to Palestine. The UK is committed to providing lifesaving assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, supporting Gaza’s early recovery, and strengthen Palestinian institutions, governance, accountability, and civil society, including reform of the Palestinian Authority. In Lebanon, we will protect funding at current levels during the ongoing crisis. The UK’s humanitarian programme in Lebanon provides lifesaving support, while strengthening national disaster preparedness and shock responsive social protection systems, in turn reducing the drivers of irregular migration.
We are fully protecting our allocation to Sudan. UK ODA is responding to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis alongside making progress towards ending hostilities and laying the foundations for a political process and civilian-led transition, protecting civilians and mitigating regional threats.
In a range of countries, we will transition away from spending high levels of grant ODA, but our ambition and effort will remain high, delivering through modernised partnerships, and making the most of what the whole UK has to offer. We will also make the shift to investment and mutually beneficial partnerships and phase out FCDO bilateral country allocations to G20 countries, except in Turkey where we help to share the burden on account of their hosting of refugees.
This approach means that the proportion of FCDO country and regional ODA allocated to Africa will reduce. However, we are pivoting our multilateral ODA even further towards the African continent including the African Development Bank and the World Bank’s International Development Association, which delivers two-thirds of its financing in Africa. The UK’s new Africa approach recognises that delivering strong partnerships requires looking beyond aid, consistent with our modern international development approach. It is a shift towards modern, equal partnerships based on shared interests—growth, security, climate, and global reform—using the full range of UK tools, not just ODA.
As we rethink and reset our approach, we will shift from donor to investor and providing expertise rather than grants. We will support systems capacity building rather than service delivery and support local solutions. Areas where partnerships are in place, but bilateral funds have been substantially reduced, will have the opportunity to draw on the communities of expertise, central funding and mobilise British International Investment and climate finance.
In the attachment available online see table 3: planned country and regional ODA programme allocations.
Thematic directorates
To support our international development reset, FCDO’s ODA programming managed from headquarters has been restructured to focus on: the delivery of effective multilateral programming and reform of the international development system; programmes that support financial leverage and private capital mobilisation, and the provision of a responsive offer to partners in areas where the UK can add value or broker expertise. Communities of expertise will help our posts bring the most innovative and practical thinking to joint problem solving with their hosts. Financial transactions will fund investment in developing economies.
We will prioritise our ODA-funded research and development where high-quality evidence, science and innovation can deliver the greatest impact for people most in need, and where the UK has a clear strategic role to play. Through the global research and technology development portfolio, we will invest in high potential R&D to tackle shared global challenges, focusing primarily on fragile and conflict affected contexts in Africa and south and west Asia, where poverty, insecurity and climate risks are increasingly concentrated.
In the attachment available online, see table 4: thematic directorates.
Arm’s length bodies, public corporations, private sector investments, subscriptions
In addition to the regional and thematic directorate programming set out above, the FCDO delivers through arm’s length bodies such as the British Council, public corporations such as the BBC World Service and through the UK’s development finance institution, British International Investment, which will deliver on the UK’s shift from donor to investor.
This Government will increase ODA and non-ODA funding for the BBC World Service, providing an additional £33 million in total across the spending review period, or £11 million per year for the next three years. That means this Government have increased its contribution to BBC World Service funding by 42% since coming to power, showing how highly we value it. This Government are also providing a non-ODA uplift of £40 million across the spending review period to the British Council. This supports our objective of a financially sustainable British Council for the long-term.
In the attachment available online, see table 5: arm’s length bodies, private sector investments, subscriptions.
Attachments can be viewed online at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2026-03-19/HCWS1425/
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Probation Delivery
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jake Richards)
My noble Friend, the Minister of State for Justice (Lord Timpson), has today made the following statement:
The Government are committed to strengthening public protection and ensuring the Probation Service has the tools and capacity it needs to keep communities safe, protect victims and change lives.
Today I am setting out a package of reforms that will deliver tougher, more targeted supervision for offenders who pose the greatest risk, expand the use of electronic monitoring to improve management of offenders in the community, and ensure probation officers can focus their time where it has the biggest impact on public safety.
For too long, the Probation Service has operated under immense pressure. Years of unsuccessful structural reforms, rising caseloads, outdated systems, and chronic under-investment under the previous Government left the service overstretched and without the tools to manage risk effectively. These pressures were exacerbated by the wider criminal justice system challenges we inherited, including the prison capacity crisis.
This Government have already taken decisive action to stabilise the system, including through the independent sentencing review and the Sentencing Act. We are now going further to ensure the Probation Service can better supervise those most likely to reoffend, strengthening protection for victims and the wider public across the country.
The Government are investing up to £700 million into probation and the community by 2028-29—a 45% increase on current funding —which will be spent on measures including tagging, accommodation, and a new commitment to onboard at least 1,300 additional new trainee probation officers in 2026-27. This is on top of the 1,000 brought in in 2024-25 and the 1,300 committed to for 2025-26, which we are making progress on.
A central part of strengthening the Probation Service is professionalising the workforce, building upon its legacy of over 100 years of dedicated service but equipped with skills to reduce reoffending in the 21st century. Later this year the Government will publish a consultation on introducing external regulation for the Probation Service, to gather views on the most effective approach and legislation required. External regulation would aim to strengthen public understanding and provide formal recognition of the status of probation practitioners. This fulfils a long-standing commitment to recognise the professionalism, qualifications, knowledge and skills required for the unique role of a probation practitioner, in providing trusted advice to the courts and protecting the public. Regulation would enhance confidence in the workforce and secure parity with other recognised professions.
The Government are also committed to ensuring that probation staff are safe at work and we are taking action to protect them. We are installing visitor lockers in all probation contact areas to reduce the risk of weapons being brought into interview spaces, and rolling out bleed control kits and defibrillators to every probation office. In addition, we will pilot enhanced safety and security measures in seven probation offices from April 2026, including the use of archway scanners, handheld wands, body-worn video cameras for unpaid work staff, and enhanced personal safety training focused on de-escalation and aggression management.
These improvements form the groundwork for a more resilient and effective Probation Service that enables staff to build the right relationships to motivate change and spot early signs of escalating risk. Building on this foundation, and the encouraging signs of improved performance already emerging across probation regions during recent ministerial visits, the Government are today announcing a set of measures that will significantly strengthen how offenders are supervised in the community.
First, we are significantly strengthening the service’s electronic monitoring capabilities. Performance of the service is now significantly improved and, as part of up to £700 million investment in probation by 2028-29, we will introduce a presumption that all offenders released from prison will be tagged for the period of time they would have been in custody. This is unless probation practitioners deem it unsuitable for that individual. This step alone will mean thousands more offenders are electronically monitored on release. To enable this the Government will invest £100 million to deliver the largest expansion in the use of electronic monitoring in the service’s history to enhance public safety.
The Government will invest £5 million of this £100 million to pilot proximity monitoring within this Parliament, as committed to in the Government’s 10-year violence against women and girls strategy. This new technology—used to different extents internationally in countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, and Australia—enables us to know if an offender comes within a preset distance of a victim, adding a further layer of protection for victims of high-harm domestic abuse and providing a further powerful tool for managing risk.
We are also expanding intensive monitoring for priority groups where technology can provide even stronger safeguards. This includes the national roll-out of our domestic abuse perpetrators on licence (DAPOL) pilot, which will extend from eight probation regions to all 12 across England and Wales. This programme gives probation staff the ability to tag any offender they assess as posing a domestic abuse risk, not only those with a domestic abuse-related conviction. Tags can be used to impose curfews confining the offender to an address between certain times, require the offender to stay away from specific locations such as the victim’s home or workplace, and provide constant whereabouts monitoring to see exactly where they have been. Probation staff working with victims report high confidence in the scheme—83% say that tagging provides victims with greater peace of mind, and 75% say it has improved victim protection.
Further, we are expanding the use of technology to tackle some of the most persistent and harmful offences in our communities. The acquisitive crime pilot, already operating across 19 police force areas, sees burglars, robbers and thieves required to wear GPS tags which map their movements against the locations of recent unsolved offences. Any matches are shared with the police to support their investigations. This acts as a strong deterrent to reoffending with our impact evaluation suggesting that the pilot has cut reoffending by this group by 20%. From autumn 2027, the pilot will be rolled out further, being made available to all 43 police force areas by the end of this Parliament.
We are also improving the way electronic monitoring data is shared. The new electronic monitoring data insights tool will provide probation staff with quick access to electronic monitoring and behavioural information. Timely sharing of behaviour patterns—such as licence condition violations—will help staff make better decisions and support rehabilitation through earlier interventions, while easing their workload by replacing inefficient data collection processes. A small pilot will start in June 2026, and we aim to fully roll out by autumn 2026.
Alongside expanding tagging, we are taking steps to improve offender supervision. Persistent pressures on the Probation Service have meant that staff have not been able to deliver the levels of face-to-face supervision expected with all offenders. Between 2023 and 2025, 31% of target probation appointments did not take place due to unmanageable workloads. The position has been improving—the proportion of target appointments not completed fell from 35% in 2023, to 31% in 2024, and 27% in 2025. However, the system remains under significant strain. We must take further steps to ensure our most dangerous offenders receive the frequency and quality of supervision required to manage their risk effectively.
We are therefore making a number of key changes to ensure staff time is focused where it has the greatest impact on public safety. First, we are changing the way staff assess overall offender risk, integrating the use of statistical tools to the risk assessment processes. These tools will support practitioners when making their clinical assessments by providing information on an individual’s reoffending likelihood. Secondly, we will ensure we can deliver the face-to-face expectation with our highest-risk offenders through an overall rebalancing of staff time away from lower-risk offenders. This rebalancing will help us to set out expectations for probation supervision which are genuinely deliverable for staff, and which will protect the public by ensuring those most at risk of serious reoffending receive the most supervision.
There are two core safeguards we have considered in the design of these measures. First, practitioner judgment remains at the heart of the risk assessment process—those identified as posing the highest risk of reoffending and harm by probation staff will always receive the strictest supervision. Equally, in keeping with this Government’s commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, offenders we know have a history of domestic abuse will never be eligible for our lowest levels of supervision. These measures will help us to strengthen public protection practice, protect victims, and strengthen probation supervision by targeting it to where we can have the greatest impact.
Taken together, this package of reforms represents a major shift towards a more resilient, better-targeted and modern Probation Service—one that harnesses the expertise of its practitioners, makes full use of modern technology, and enables staff to build the right relationships to motivate change and spot early signs of escalating risk. By focusing probation’s resources where they are needed most and ensuring closer oversight of offenders who pose the greatest risk, we will strengthen public protection, support long-term reductions in reoffending, and give victims greater confidence and reassurance.
[HCWS1424]
Covid-19 Inquiry: Module 3 Report
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Prime Minister (Keir Starmer)
The chair of the UK Covid-19 inquiry has today published the inquiry’s module 3 report, which examined the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on healthcare systems in the four nations of the UK.
The chair emphasises
“the unbearable stress and distress to patients, their loved ones and the healthcare workers looking after them.”
She pays tribute to the extraordinary efforts of all those working in the healthcare systems across the UK. I too recognise the loss and pain people experienced during the pandemic, and the extraordinary efforts of health workers across the four nations. The disruption and effects of covid-19 on our society were profound, and its effects were particularly felt through the health and social care system.
The chair has found that the UK entered the pandemic ill-prepared and with highly stretched healthcare systems, and that the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare systems of the UK was devastating. The chair concludes that the UK needs better pre-pandemic planning. She recommends measures to strengthen national preparedness for future pandemics, with clear accountability for the provision of guidance on infection prevention and control, an ethical framework for resource allocation, improved data systems for risk stratification, and tested plans to rapidly scale hospital and urgent and emergency care capacity. She also recommends measures to protect patients and health workers, including guidance on visiting restrictions, standardised advance care planning, transparent reporting of health worker deaths, better preparation for FFP3 mask fit-testing, and psychological and emotional support for healthcare staff.
This Government are committed to learning the lessons from the inquiry and ensuring the NHS and the social care sector are prepared for a future pandemic. We will work with our colleagues in the devolved Governments as we carefully consider the recommendations in the report. It is clear that the NHS and the social care sector remain under pressure across the UK, and in many cases healthcare services are still recovering from the pandemic. This Government are committed to investment and reform to build a health service in England that is fit for the future and there for people when they need it.
I would like to thank Baroness Hallett and her team for their thorough work on this report. The Government will carefully consider all the findings and recommendations of the report and respond in due course.
I have laid a copy of the report before both Houses of Parliament.
[HCWS1426]
House of Lords
Unpaid Carers: Patient Hospital Discharge
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which unpaid carers are consulted before a patient is discharged from hospital, and what plans they have to monitor this.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, the Health and Care Act 2022 requires NHS trusts to involve patients and unpaid carers in discharge planning, reinforced by 2024 discharge guidance. However, this is not always done consistently and carer involvement is not monitored nationally. We will support better implementation by commissioning work from the LGA’s better care fund support programme this year. Care transfer hub guidance also promotes best practice by encouraging early identification and involvement of carers in planning.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her Answer. It was important, though not easy, to win for carers the right to be consulted at the point of discharge. I am sorry that better statistics are not being kept, but I am glad to hear the plans for improvement. The survey from Carers UK shows that the number of carers being consulted is decreasing rapidly. Although I fully understand the pressure on the NHS at the point of discharge and the difficulties of securing proper social care support, does my noble friend agree that it is very short-sighted not to consult carers at this point? If they break down from lack of support, the patient is readmitted and there is further pressure on the NHS.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I completely agree with my noble friend that the involvement of and support to unpaid carers is crucial when a patient is discharged because, as she says, it is vital not just for patient recovery but for the whole healthcare system. I welcome the recent Carers UK report that was published last year, which focused on how government legislation and guidance is or is not being implemented and monitored in practice. That has been and will be very useful work for us to continue with.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, further to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, there are 120,000 young carers aged between seven and 18, many of whom are the principal carer for a parent or sibling, accompanying them when they go into hospital. Although many hospitals are good about identifying the young carers, not all of them are. What more can be done to make sure that these young carers are identified right at the beginning of the process and fully consulted about arrangements for discharge?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord is right to emphasise the role that many children and young people have as young carers. The Children’s Social Care National Framework is statutory guidance for local authorities, which have duties to identify young carers who may need support and to assess their needs. I am well aware that young carers may not be aware of this, but there is a right to request assessments. Improving joint working between adult and children’s social care services, as well as health services, is key. Lastly, I hope that the electronic patient record would identify where there was a carer, including a young carer.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA. The model of unplanned discharge places an immediate burden on unpaid carers. What assessment have the Government made of the financial impact on unpaid carers during this period? Specifically, will they consider a discharge support grant to provide immediate short-term funding for carers for the first four weeks following an unplanned or non-thought-through discharge?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I know the noble Lord will be aware of the better care fund, to which there is a commitment of some £9 billion. It can be used in various ways, including in the way that he described. I look forward to the work of the LGA’s better care fund support programme that we will commission this year so that we can work with NHS and social care partners, because we need to strengthen the approach of not just involving but supporting unpaid carers. Discharge should not take place if carers are not able to fulfil the duties that it is assumed they can fulfil.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, it is good to hear that there is real awareness of the issues caused by this. It is one of the most acute problems in the whole provision of social care, and it falls hard on unpaid carers when they do not even know how or who to ask for help. It has been diagnosed many times as a big issue. There used to be co-ordinator discharge people in hospitals who would help with this process. Are there still such posts? The news about the LGA work is welcome in relation to co-ordination when it counts and support for unpaid carers, who are the experts here. They are not passive arbitrators; they need to have their own knowledge and expertise recognised in this process. Is there provision at the hospital level for this?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My noble friend makes exactly the right points. We certainly recognise the vital role that unpaid carers play in supporting those who are to be discharged. Decisions about staffing and the approach—I emphasise that a multidisciplinary approach is clearly needed here—are a matter for local areas, but I can say in addition that there is a regular cross-government meeting, which is really important when it comes to joining up the approach, that looks at providing unpaid carers with the recognition and support that they need, as my noble friend said. We are also working towards publishing a cross-government action plan later this year. So in this area, including the LGA work, the kind of approach that my noble friend talks about will certainly be considered.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for being a tireless champion of unpaid carers over many years and successive Governments. She quite rightly pointed out that Carers UK found that only 14% of unpaid carers were asked about their ability and willingness to provide care before hospital discharge. I want to follow up on the previous question from the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. One of the problems faced by successive Governments is that trusts and what were previously CCGs and are now ICBs are very bad at learning from other parts of the system that do things well. For example, Northumbria has been known to have a really good discharge system: it embeds co-ordinators and works out how to get that discharge going. How can the Minister’s department improve learning across the system where there is good practice, take that best practice and appropriately transplant it into other areas so that we can really tackle this problem once and for all?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The whole system needs to do better, as the noble Lord outlines. It will be helpful that we are also looking at commissioning research in this area to look at best practice, as well as barriers and solutions, regarding the involvement of unpaid carers—I think that has been somewhat overlooked, if I am to be honest with your Lordships’ House. We have regional teams that have issued very practical toolkits to help hospitals implement their legal duties; we should remember that there are legal duties in this response. In addition, that is why we are involving the LGA’s better care fund support programme, as I said, as well as seeking to publish a cross-government action plan. These will be steps in the right direction, but I very much acknowledge that we do not start in a good place.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, although the better care fund is a help, its success depends on how hospitals and the LGA work together. Would the Minister agree that the fund is still used to fund short-term gaps, particularly winter pressures, and that the yearly funding cycle does not help for longer-term planning? Could that be improved?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I can see the pressure and difficulties that can bring. There is a range of reasons why discharges do not take place in a timely fashion—not just processes but the interface between health and social care, and capacity. As we look at how we involve carers and improve discharge rates, matters of funding will be key.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, we live in a world where we have constant criticism, both of government—rightly, quite often—and of many individuals for their behaviour. But here we have a situation where the health service and, indeed, society are being saved many billions of pounds as a result of the work of people who volunteer to care for their relatives and others—those in the voluntary sector, in our hospice movement and all over the health service. Without these people, we would be in real trouble. Is it not marvellous, and can we perhaps commend them and approve of what they are doing both to save us resources and to show that people are basically good?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I and the Government are certainly cognisant of the role that unpaid carers play. That is why, last year, we increased the carer’s allowance weekly earnings limit. This was the largest cash increase ever and means that 60,000 additional carers will qualify. That is part of our recognition, but I share the views the noble Lord has given and the comments about my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley and Carers UK—I am grateful to all.
Flood Detection and Prevention: Technological Assistance
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the use of technological assistance for flood detection and prevention.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, the Environment Agency routinely uses technology to improve flood detection and prevention, including enhanced warning systems, drones, and digital tools to support early detection and preparedness. It is expanding the use of remote sensing and real-time monitoring to assess the condition of flood defence assets, strengthening forecasting and optimising maintenance. In 2025, the agency published a new national flood risk assessment outlining current and future flood and coastal erosion risks across England.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. The severe flooding that we have experienced again this winter makes it clear that increasingly urgent further action is surely needed to protect homes, businesses and communities. In south Yorkshire, where the River Don has flooded to devastating effect at least three times in the past six years, Rotherham council is trialling CCTV to monitor water levels in high-risk areas. It may not sound very sophisticated, but I gather that the early warning potential is real. What steps are the Minister and his colleagues taking to consult local government to harness the very best practice and deliver the most effective innovations at scale?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing the actions of Rotherham council to our attention. He is absolutely right that the whole of south Yorkshire has been subject to severe flooding. As he said, sometimes, as in places such as Rotherham, basic and simple solutions are the best.
To address his wider point, we are working closely with local government to ensure that lessons from recent flooding and innovations that we are seeing across the country can be adapted at scale. The purpose of the Government’s Floods Resilience Taskforce is to improve co-ordination across the whole system and translate local experience into national practice. Recently, the taskforce met in Manchester to consider how case studies from local partners in areas such as Greater Manchester—and from devolved Governments, such as Northern Ireland, in the case of the meeting the other day—including innovation in forecasting, community resilience and emergency response, can be replicated more widely. Local partners are directly engaged through regional flooding coastal committees through local resilience forums, which ensures that local knowledge, such as in Rotherham, as cited by the right reverend Prelate, on innovations to reduce flood risk through natural flood management and sustainable draining systems, informs national decisions on how best to roll out new technologies and share best practice across regions.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Does the Minister agree that some of the most natural, sustainable and environmentally beneficial projects are those such as Slowing the Flow at Pickering, which has prevented Pickering flooding in recent years? Will he use his good offices to ensure that farmers will be reimbursed through environmental land management schemes, and that upland farmers in particular will benefit from flood prevention money as a public good to the community, especially common land graziers and others who farm on common land?
Lord Katz (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right to point to the potential for natural flood management to improve the environment in a holistic way while providing sustainable flood defences. That can be through a variety of approaches, including restoring riverbeds, changing the way in which land is managed, as the noble Baroness says, to absorb more water, or creating salt marshes in coastal areas to absorb wave energy. That is why this Government have pledged to invest at least £300 million in natural flood management over the next 10 years—the highest figure to date for the floods programme—as well as work for other programmes, including environmental land management schemes, to ensure that farmers are properly part of the flood defence picture.
Baroness Grender (LD)
What additional steps are the Government taking to ensure that the benefits of new flood technology reach people in rented, social and low-income housing and are not confined to owner-occupiers who are better able to afford private resilience measures?
Lord Katz (Lab)
It is worth pointing out that a fair amount of work has been done, particularly by the Environment Agency, to improve community outreach and engage with the kinds of households that the noble Baroness describes. For instance, more than 1.5 million users are signed up to receive EA flood warnings in advance of flood incidents. The Environment Agency provides the online “check for flooding” service, which has recorded 2.2 million users and 30 million page views since September 2024. There is some great work going on around education. Together with Microsoft, the EA has worked in partnership to develop three national award-winning Minecraft game suites designed to teach key stage 3 pupils about flood risk.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for clearly illustrating that the Government are already on top of this subject, but want to encourage him a little further along the way. With changing weather patterns that have resulted in persistent rainfall in winter periods over several years, and droughts now characterising our summer period, can he have discussions with his ministerial colleagues in Defra about a technologically innovative solution involving the storage of this water, which would help promote better land use management and food security?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for raising that interesting example. I will certainly go back and talk with colleagues about how we make sure that we adapt to changing environmental factors. We say that local flood risk management planning should follow this sort of adaptive approach over time, which takes account of climate change and other needs, such as demographic change and food security, and ensure that climate change protections are built into the design of new flood defences.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, no matter how good one is at detection and prevention, there will always be floods. That is why it is important to have insurance. The Flood Re scheme, which was generated some years ago and was time-limited, applies only to buildings that were built before 1 January 2009 and only to residential buildings, so anything that has a micro-business in it is not insurable. As so much time has moved on, and as it is important to support micro-businesses in flood-plain areas, does the Minister agree that it is time to look again at Flood Re to see whether the eligibility criteria could be expanded?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I will have to write to the noble Lord with details about our future plans for Flood Re. He is right that it is important that the Environment Agency focuses on outreach, not only to households but to businesses, to help them adapt to changing weather conditions and demographic changes, as well as to new developments which will have an impact on flood risk in their local area.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, the United Kingdom has developed some excellent technological flood detection and prevention solutions, including FloodAdapt, Nautilus barriers, Floodstop, flood defence and others. The UK Government’s funding strategy of November 2025 promised to use public money to unlock additional contributions from public, private and charitable sources and to encourage joint working. Can the Minister tell us what progress has been made in bringing on board private finance to utilise some of our technological solutions?
Lord Katz (Lab)
The noble Lord is right to quote what we said in our funding strategy from last autumn to assist with flood prevention. To be clear, the new funding policy is designed expressly to unlock additional investment from public, private and charitable sources. The new rules simplify eligibility and prioritisation, so that more projects can attract external contributions. We are expanding opportunities for natural flood management and sustainable drainage systems, in which private and charitable contributions are already established, and the EA is working closely with local partners. However, it would be remiss of me not to mention at this point that, on Tuesday, the Environment Agency announced a record-breaking £10.5 billion for flood defences over the next decade. It is important that we combine that heavy lifting from government investment with investment from other sources.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, last year, Professor Peter Bonfield undertook an independent review for Defra on how to improve the resilience of people and properties to flooding. Defra produced a report last November, called FloodReady—An Action Plan to Build the Resilience of People and Properties. Has this plan been brought to the attention of citizens who suffer from flooding, as did the citizens of Monmouth last autumn, so that they know how best to cope with and prepare for future floods?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for raising that important report—an example of engaging with communities. Apart from building flood defences in the first place, the most important thing we can do is make communities aware of early warnings to ensure that they can cope when floods occur. The Environment Agency is pioneering a number of different projects, such as working with Hello Lamp Post—I am glad I have the opportunity to mention this because I could not quite believe it when I was told about it. That firm has worked with AI to develop Hello EA, which allows people to talk to flood defences using mobile text messages and AI. It helps individuals learn how structures work and how flood risks are managed.
Rail Infrastructure Resilience: Storms and Floods
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the resilience of rail infrastructure against future storms and floods.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, my department’s climate adaptation strategy for transport embraces detailed work on the railway infrastructure by Network Rail. That organisation has produced weather resilience and climate change adaptation plans by railway region, looking out not only over the five-year control period to 2029 but further into the 2030s. Those plans identify priority sites for maintenance, renewal and enhancement. Beyond 2029, work programmes will be firmed up and funded in future control periods.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that Answer and to know how much work Network Rail is doing to mitigate the effect of global warming. But when we look at the south-west, we see most of it cut off for several days—weeks, occasionally—not just by high tides, which are going to get higher, but by river floods. We may get a situation where the whole railway between, say, Newton Abbot and Exeter is closed and not repairable, so is it not time to start a formal study into the viability of inland routes and how they could be developed? That would give people who live in the south-west some comfort that the long-term resilience of the whole rail network down there is being looked at and preserved.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
As an engineer, my noble friend will know that Brunel built the railway around the south Devon coast in 1846 and that it has been under attack by the tides and weather ever since. The most serious closure was of nearly 60 days in 2014, and that was remedied by a large-scale investment project that spent £165 million. That resulted in a railway that was sufficiently resilient to remain closed for only 36 hours earlier this year, despite terrible weather.
The citizens of Devon and Cornwall can be quite comfortable that the future resilience of the railway is being looked after. The alternative route, which stopped operation some 60 years ago, in fact closed temporarily for a much longer period due to the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the south-west. It would not be a sufficiently resilient route, even if it could be afforded to be rebuilt.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, I start by wishing the Minister a happy birthday—
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, first, I wish the Minister a happy birthday. As we have been discussing, extreme weather is our new reality, leading to the Tarka line, which links Barnstaple to Exeter in the south-west, already being closed for 24 days this year as a result of the recent storms. Will the Government commit to increased investment to help our railways adapt to the new climate and to keep passengers moving, whatever the weather?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her good wishes. There have been quite a lot of birthdays in my life so far. The Tarka line is part of what was the Southern route around the northern edge of Dartmoor. The highest rainfall ever in the south-west of England closed the line for a long period of time simply because the bridges had to be inspected to make sure that they were safe for traffic. There was a terrible accident some 40 years ago in Wales, when a bridge collapsed due to erosion after a storm. I can reassure the noble Baroness that Network Rail is looking at some advanced sensor technology in order not to have to wait for rivers to subside sufficiently for divers to inspect the foundations of bridges. That is a fairly modest expenditure, and I think it will help the resilience of the lines to Barnstaple and Okehampton.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, what progress is being made on doing some of this resilience work outside just bank holidays and weekends? A programme was set in place by the previous chairman of Network Rail to ensure that this work is done at other times of the year. Is that still being undertaken, and what progress has been made on that front?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think the previous chairman of Network Rail recalls one of the previous Secretaries of State telling him to do something like that—and, as an obedient public servant, that chairman went off and did it. The lines north of Exeter to which the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, referred are, rather unfortunately, closing for two weeks in just a few days’ time. They are being closed in the winter season, when use is less, although it will still be inconvenient, precisely because it is cheaper and much more efficient—and the work gets done better—to do large-scale track renewal and maintenance of drainage and other structures. That cannot be done everywhere but, where it can be done, the noble Lord is absolutely right that the railways should do more of it. The co-ordination that will come from Great British Railways will enable more of that sort of work to be done.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, Network Rail—being, of course, a state entity—does not buy third-party insurance from anywhere, but the insurance industry has an amazing number of modellers and information about the natural perils in the United Kingdom, particularly the sweet-water peril and the salt water peril that we are discussing. Can the Minister tell us whether the insurance industry is being tapped for its expertise in trying to manage and predict these perils?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Earl asks a very pertinent question, and I will write to him. I believe that is true, but I cannot say for certain. Following the Carmont disaster, when people were killed as a result of an earthworks failure, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, wrote a very powerful report on earthworks maintenance for Network Rail, and Dame Julia Slingo did similarly on the weather. During my tenure at Network Rail, it started by buying the cheapest weather forecast it could. Dame Julia has pointed out that you can now forecast the weather in two-kilometre squares throughout the country; that is what Network Rail now does, and it helps prevention. I take what the noble Earl says very seriously and will write to him to make sure that the knowledge in the insurance industry is used.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, the Minister has a very reassuring attitude towards travel, particularly in the south-west, but I think it will be many more birthdays before he resolves issues such as Dawlish Warren and the current closures we have in south Devon. Does he understand that users of the Tarka line, of which I am one, are not just people like me? There are a lot of students travelling from places in the north of Devon, such as Barnstaple, and all the villages and communities in between, trying to get to places such as Exeter College for sixth form on a very regular basis. Very often, the buses that are put in place do not necessarily tie up, and it is extremely difficult for them, particularly when they are facing things such as exams.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I absolutely recognise that. The prolonged closure after the recent flooding has meant that Network Rail’s attention has been very sharply drawn to the need for both the structures and the earthworks to be more resilient, and for the inspection process for bridges, which I referred to earlier, to be done in a more expeditious way. I entirely recognise that many communities in north Devon rely solely on that railway, and that it must perform better in the future.
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
My Lords, in light of the repeated flooding of key routes operated by East Midlands Railway in the area that I serve, particularly the Erewash flood plain near Ilkeston, as well as the Trent Valley, what assessment have the Government made of the cost effect on businesses from loss of trade and overall productivity, and the wider social costs that arise, when railways are not functioning properly due to persistent flooding?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is completely right that the real costs of an interruption to the train service are suffered by individuals and businesses. This Question has so far concentrated largely on the south-west, but the right reverend Prelate reminds us that this is prevalent throughout the country. The adaptation plans that I referred to in my original Answer cover the whole of Great Britain, including the railway in Scotland and Wales. They are designed to reduce, as far as possible, the risks posed by flooding and other weather events to the whole railway on a continuing basis, precisely because of the effects of an interrupted service, as the right reverend Prelate says.
Refugee Movements: Lebanon
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of refugee movements following Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are gravely concerned about the conflict in Lebanon and the humanitarian impact. We strongly condemn Hezbollah’s ongoing attacks against Israel. These must cease immediately. The forced displacement of 1 million Lebanese people as a result of Israeli operations is unacceptable and could have further disastrous humanitarian consequences—900 people have died. The UK Government have committed an additional £7.5 million to support immediate humanitarian needs in Lebanon, on top of our existing support.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
I am grateful to the Minister for that response, and particularly for his call for de-escalation in the conflict. I imagine that many of us are shocked by the Israeli Defence Minister drawing parallels with Gaza, and I know that Lebanese officials have expressed concern. Indeed, I was present at a meeting recently where the Lebanese ambassador to this country spoke with great anxiety about Lebanon as the new Gaza. This outcome must be prevented at all costs, although the Lebanese people are of course already caught in the crossfire of hostilities, as the Minister has said. The UNHCR now says that, officially, over 800,000 people have registered as displaced. So I welcome the Government’s commitment to increased humanitarian aid and diplomatic steps to prevent further regional destabilisation, but how will they sustain support for countries in the region hosting refugees? What progress has been made on the establishment of safe and legal routes to enable asylum seekers to apply to travel safely to the UK?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
We condemn Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel. Hezbollah is a proscribed terrorist organisation and must immediately cease its rocket fire. Israel must not expand this war further into Lebanon, and we are deeply concerned by the scale of Israeli military action. We are providing humanitarian funding in Lebanon, as I have said. Since 15 March, the Foreign Secretary has announced a total of £15 million in humanitarian support for Lebanon and other countries in the region. Of the total £15 million, half the funding announced will support organisations in Lebanon. We are sustaining political engagement with both Lebanon and Israel. Minister Falconer spoke to Lebanese Foreign Minister Rajji, and the Foreign Secretary has spoken to Prime Minister Salam and to Israeli Foreign Minister Sa’ar. The Foreign Secretary has been clear that we need diplomatic action to prevent this conflict widening and to respond to some of the wider concerns the right reverend Prelate raises.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We have plenty of time. It is the turn of the Cross Benches.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the Minister did not mention a joint statement last week by a number of middle-ranking powers, including the UK, calling for an end to the hostilities in the south of Lebanon and Beirut. That was very welcome. But what is that group of countries doing collectively, in addition to what they may be doing bilaterally, to enable the President of Lebanon and the Lebanese armed forces to apply correctly the old ceasefire, which has now broken down?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that question. He is right to say that we are working with our allies and partners. As he knows, we are long-standing supporters of the sovereignty of Lebanon, and we welcome the commitments made by the Lebanese Government, including banning Hezbollah’s military activities. The UK has provided over £850 million in official development assistance in Lebanon since 2011, going back through several Governments, right back to the coalition Government. This includes humanitarian and development assistance to Syrian refugees and the Lebanese community hosting them—in response to the right reverend Prelate’s question—as well as support to the Lebanese security services. I can say more if noble Lords want to ask me about international co-operation to move forward on the Strait of Hormuz.
Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)
My Lords, the Palestinian refugee camps have been particularly affected by the military action. I have visited Shatila and Ain al-Hilweh in Lebanon, and life was pretty fragile at the best of times. I understand that the Lebanese Government are doing all they can to help the people affected, but some of the Palestinian and Syrian refugees are unable to access all that the Government are doing. With the money the Government are very generously giving to help, is anything specifically being done at this moment, in very difficult circumstances, to help the Palestinian refugees who started off with very little?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I recognise the picture the noble Baroness paints. I am very happy to find out more, and to take that back to the Foreign Office to see if we can learn more about the specific questions she raises about the refugee camps. As far as the humanitarian situation in Lebanon is concerned, the crossings are still open and commercial flights are still running—at least, they were when I last heard. I am very happy to come back on the specific point about the Palestinian refugee camps.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the Lib Dem Benches next, and then the Labour Benches.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests; I am supported by the RAMP organisation. Based on yesterday’s figures, one million people are displaced in a country that already takes more displaced people than any other country in the world. We are talking about a massive humanitarian problem. The United Nations refugee agency has drawn attention to the fact that it needs an extra $61 million in funding before the beginning of June. Can the noble Lord tell us whether the £7.5 million that is to be provided is part of that United Nations’ massive appeal to assist? More than that, this situation is a feeding ground for people smugglers. What actions are the UK Government taking on the ground to deter those who may be enticed to make these disgraceful and dangerous journeys to the United Kingdom? That is an issue we will face, as a country, if we are not willing action now.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. Existing bilateral programming continues to bolster preparedness and national response capacity. This includes a £1 million top-up in January to pre-position emergency supplies via the British Red Cross and the Lebanese Red Cross, as well as smaller reallocations by the UNFPA, IOM, UNICEF and others, to meet urgent needs. We will, of course, keep under consideration any requests for further help. We are very mindful of the situation in Lebanon. It is an enormous displacement: hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and are sleeping in temporary shelters on the seafront in Beirut. We will certainly take that forward. With regard to people smuggling, this is a fast-evolving situation, as I am sure the noble Lord knows. We will continue to monitor that, but we are very mindful of those dangers.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
I did actually say that we would hear from the Labour Benches next.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, the increasing turbulence in the Middle East—in Lebanon, yes, but also in Sudan, South Sudan and Iran—means many more humanitarian tragedies and many more people who technically qualify as refugees and asylum seekers. Are we prepared for this? What are we doing in consultation with our European allies to prepare for a greater influx of refugees and asylum seekers?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
My Lords, I have answered questions before at this Dispatch Box about the situation in Sudan and elsewhere. We are very mindful of the movement of refugees.
UK Energy Sources and Cost of Energy
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Earl of Effingham
To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the recent military strikes in Iran and Qatar, what steps they are taking to secure UK energy sources and reduce the cost of energy for UK citizens.
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl for his Question. The UK benefits from a strong and diverse range of energy supplies. The physical supply of fuel to the UK is stable. The only way to protect ourselves from these and future potential price spikes in the longer term is to get off international fossil fuel markets controlled by the actions of petrostates and dictators. That is what our clean energy mission for homegrown power that we control is all about.
The Earl of Effingham
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. Last night’s escalation proved that we should not be dependent on imported oil and gas and that the UK must make use of its domestic energy supplies. Given this and the fact that, by autumn, we could be producing enough gas to heat 1.6 million homes by simply approving production at the Jackdaw gas field, will the Minister today commit to approving Jackdaw for gas production?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Earl will be aware that the present crisis is essentially a price crisis rather than a supply crisis. I emphasise again that the UK has a strong and diverse range of energy supplies and that the physical supply of fuel to the UK is stable. However, the Government have not been idle in this respect. Among other things, the Government have introduced transitional energy certificates for North Sea and associated producing fields that allow producers to engage in tie-backs, which is the development of fields additional to fields that are already in production. That is completely in line with IEA recommendations on how production can be increased in the not too distant future.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the measures that the Government have already taken, particularly around reducing the cost of heating oil. Does the Minister agree that it is important that we work with allies and partners to encourage all involved to stop targeting energy infrastructure?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Earl is absolutely right that one of the key issues in the recent escalation has been the targeting by both sides of oil and gas installations. Clearly, this brings into a further spotlight the need to seek an urgent de-escalation of hostilities and the resolution of this crisis by negotiation rather than continued bombing of everyone’s oil and gas facilities.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in the light of the Times report earlier this week on energy links between the United Kingdom and Xinjiang, has the Minister read the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on supply chain transparency and modern-day slavery? Will he say when he last discussed with Great British Energy its compliance with Section 3(2)(e) of the Great British Energy Act, which was added following an all-party amendment in your Lordships’ House and prohibits the use of products, such as solar panels, made by slave labour?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
I will have to write to the noble Lord on the specifics he mentioned. He should know that the UK Government are pursuing very robust measures to ensure that the supply of products such as solar panels is not the product of modern slavery. Efforts are under way on the diversification of supply and on the certification of panels to ensure they are not subject to modern slavery. The noble Lord will of course appreciate the difficulty of getting exact information on the sourcing of particular products, but the British Government are doing everything they can to ensure that they are not from the sources that the noble Lord is so concerned about.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, does the current crisis and the vulnerabilities that have been exposed lead the Government to re-examine the case for tidal power in the UK?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Lord mentions what is potentially a very effective, long-term and secure method of homegrown energy. As I mentioned in my initial Answer, the long-term way to protect ourselves from these price spikes is to develop homegrown energy. Clearly, tidal range, which has a very stable supply of energy and a not particularly long period of development, could play a role in that process. However, I emphasise that we are very far at the moment from developing tidal range in the way that the noble Lord seeks to promote.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, two days ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that all countries must play their part in boosting oil and gas production. The Energy Secretary demonises and bans drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Who is right?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
No, the Energy Secretary does not wish to see drilling for North Sea oil banned. What he is doing, as the noble Lord will know, is developing transitional energy certificates, which will enable tie-backs to take place in existing fields. The noble Lord will know that the existing structure of the North Sea fields largely consists of fields that have not been tapped—small fields that are adjacent to additional fields—and so the tie-back arrangement will ensure both production and drilling for those tie-back fields in association with the existing fields.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet. Given what the Minister said about this being, in essence, a price security issue, what progress have the Government made on the issue of decoupling the price of other forms of generation from the price of gas? As we know, that is hugely volatile and has an enormous impact on both domestic and industrial consumers.
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Baroness is exactly right. As she will know, part of the price increases that are being suffered at the moment go into the market-making price of gas that secures the general price of electricity, for example, in our markets by marginal cost pricing. Certainly, the renewed and continuing volatility in international markets is likely to be a substantial driver of high price levels and price increases in the future. Therefore, the Government are actively looking at measures that could decouple the UK energy market, where it is green and low carbon, from that marginal cost pricing arrangement, which is still driven by gas in about 65% of settlements at the moment. That will be part of the UK’s drive for clean energy sources for the future.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, surely the issue is one of supply, and it is not the Government’s fault. However, there is one thing that is the Government’s fault: we do not have a single ship in the Persian Gulf that can assist with guarding the Strait of Hormuz. Does the Minister share my disappointment that we do not have anything in the Gulf that can assist?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Lord will know that we do have quite a presence in the Gulf, not of ships but of other defence capacity which can play some part as far as the Strait of Hormuz is concerned. He will also know that the US has already indicated that it does not wish to have the UK and other NATO countries’ assistance in undertaking the clearance of the Strait of Hormuz. Nevertheless, we regard the opening of that strait as imperative as far as fuel supplies are concerned. As far as UK fuel supplies are concerned, only about 1% currently comes from sources relevant to passage through the Strait of Hormuz—for example, Qatar. We are not as internationally exposed to those supplies as a number of other countries.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, following up on the question from my noble friend Lord Russell, who mentioned support for domestic users in particular of heating oil, my question is on highly energy-intensive industries, particularly steel. What support, if any, are the Government thinking of providing, particularly if this war continues for weeks and months rather than just ending in days, as we hope, for the steel industries in south Wales, Scunthorpe and South Yorkshire?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The Government are open to all eventualities as far as this crisis is concerned and are keeping the position under review on a very regular basis. The noble Lord will know that immediate support has been for heating oil, particularly for those customers who are off grid in the UK. The Government recently announced over for supplies of heating oil, with particular reference to Northern Ireland, where a substantial proportion of the population are dependent on oil for heating. Of that £50 million-odd, £17 million has gone to Northern Ireland for that purpose.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will agree that the cleanest, greenest, cheapest and most secure energy is the energy that you do not need to use. France, for example, is far ahead of us in avoiding wasteful use of energy, with measures such as switching off the lighting for shops, ensuring that offices switch off lights during the night and taking measures to stop wasting energy, such as with video screens with advertising. What steps are the Government taking to reduce the wastage of energy, which will make us all more secure?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The first issue is, as the noble Baroness suggests, the efficient use of energy by more intelligent means and planning how that energy is deployed on a highly intelligent basis. That is activity that the Government are advanced on as far as the management of our energy system is concerned. The second point is, as the noble Baroness mentions, the energy security from energy that is not used. The Warm Homes Plan that the Government have recently introduced—a multi-billion programme over a number of years to increase the energy efficiency and resilience of people’s homes, particularly those in fuel poverty—will produce not only a win for fuel poverty but a substantial win for the efficiency with which energy is used and the amount of energy that is used in the domestic sphere.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
It is definitely the turn of the Conservative Benches.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, the crisis is immediate. What assessment have the Government made about the essential products that rely on gas—ammonia, CO2, aniline, soda ash, ethylene and sulphuric acid—without which a modern economy cannot exist and without which factories will close?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Lord will know that we have recently engaged in an extensive conversation in corridors about the question of ammonia in the UK economy. This is related to the energy crisis, in as much as we do not have ammonia manufacturing sites in the UK and the manufacture of ammonia is highly energy dependent. One of the ways forward on that is to produce green ammonia, which he will know was a subject of our discussion just recently. That is one way to secure the future of ammonia supplies in the UK without resorting to high levels of fossil fuel in the process.
Further Education (Initial Teacher Training) Regulations 2026
Baroness Blake of Leeds
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 22 January and 5 February be approved.
Relevant documents: 50th and 51st Reports from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the second instrument). Considered in Grand Committee on 17 March.
Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022 (Consequential Amendments) Order 2026
Renewables Obligation (Amendment) Order 2026
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Whitehead
That the draft Order and Regulations laid before the House on 2 February be approved.
Relevant document: 52nd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 17 March.
Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026
Lord Leong
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 2 February be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 17 March.
Pension Schemes Bill
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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12:27 - Division on Amendment 49 - Ayes: 217 / Noes: 107 - Amendment 49 agreed.
13:16 - Division on Amendment 52 - Ayes: 217 / Noes: 113 - Amendment 52 agreed.
13:56 - Division on Amendment 77 - Ayes: 191 / Noes: 118 - Amendment 77 agreed.
14:28 - Division on Amendment 105A - Ayes: 184 / Noes: 118 - Amendment 105A agreed.
14:47 - Division on Amendment 115 - Ayes: 135 / Noes: 110 - Amendment 115 agreed.
Baroness Sherlock
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment corrects a consistency mistake.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment corrects a consistency mistake.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment corrects a consistency mistake.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment corrects a consistency mistake.
Baroness Altmann
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would only classify an unused pension pot as “dormant” if it had been left alone for at least three years, not just after one year.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will not detain the House too long on this amendment. It is a small amendment, but it is very important for members of pension schemes in auto-enrolment, particularly women.
The proposal in the Bill is to move small pots, under £1,000, which are considered dormant—in other words, they have had no contributions paid in and no contact from the member with the provider for 12 months—to a consolidator scheme without member consent. My argument is simple: 12 months is simply not long enough to consider that a scheme that has not had contributions paid into it is dormant and that that member has no interest in the scheme. Imagine a woman, for example, who stops work for a period to care for loved ones or elderly parents, partners or children. They may stop contributions for quite a while longer than a year, but their pension could be moved if the provider had not been able to contact them, and their money would be put into a consolidator scheme approved by the regulator over which they had no control.
Amendment 49 would extend the period before which somebody’s pot could just be taken away from one year to three years; and Amendment 50 would extend it to two years. This would give time for the Government’s correct aim of improving data accuracy to take place. We know that most pension schemes have huge errors in their data and do not always know even how to contact a member. It would also allow time for providers and trustees to trace members and for the pensions dashboard to start and members to be able to find their pots themselves.
I understand that pension providers do not want these small pots and they may make a loss on them, but they should not just be able to get rid of them with such unseemly haste. I hope the Government may accept the spirit in which this amendment is meant, which is to protect members while obviously still allowing the pots to be moved once it is beyond doubt that they are indeed dormant. I beg to move.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, once again, we have another policy designed by civil servants sipping lattés in that rather agreeable ground-floor coffee shop at 1 Horse Guards Road, safe in the knowledge that that regular monthly salary, their generous taxpayer-funded pension and their ability to work from home a couple of days a week provide that comfortable lens through which they view the world outside.
But outside, in the real world, there are whole armies of people who do not do the nine to five; they live by their wits, self-employ and undertake seasonal work or term-time employment—the men or women for whom the Labour Party was established and who salt money away for their retirement when they can.
Many of them work hard and ask their accountant to do the books at the end of the year. It might take some time. Neither the worker nor the accountant work to strict 12-month timescales. It might take three months to finalise the numbers in one year, nine months in the next. That is the untidy way in which the real world works.
To legislate to confiscate someone’s pension after 12 months, as if it was fly-tipped by the side of the road to be swept into the dumpster of some poorly performing default scheme, amounts to theft and an abuse of trust that undermines confidence in the pension system.
I totally endorse Amendment 49 in the name of my noble friend Lady Altmann for another reason as well: throughout the canon of pensions legislation, we have a three-year carryback, where people can make up their pension deficit over three years. This amendment is entirely consistent with that. Consistency, simplicity and understandability are the watchwords with which we should proceed.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lady Altmann’s amendments. Whether she chooses Amendment 49 or Amendment 50 on which to divide, I will support her by voting with her.
The important point here is that people’s lives are unpredictable. One reason why we are extending this even now is that the pensions dashboard is so late in helping to get people informed. Those are the sorts of issues that we are still dealing with. The sooner that people can be better informed, the more agile they will be able to be in consideration of contributions that might need to be made in the future. So, this is an important amendment.
I gently say to my noble friend Lord Fuller—how can I put it?—Caxton House is not as glamorous as the Treasury pitch that he sets out. I know that officials have been working carefully on aspects of this, but it is the wrong move. It was the decision of Ministers rather than civil servants to make this recommendation. That is why I am sure that we will all be in the same Lobby.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, in a less confrontational way than the noble Lord Fuller, from these Benches, I confirm that we support Amendment 49. The Government should not fail to support this. It is in the name of noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and it would increase the time before a pot was considered dormant in order to provide greater flexibility for savers such as mothers, those on sabbatical or mature students, who may not add to their pots for one to three years. We have no hesitation on these Benches in supporting amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, but not in quite such confrontational terms as the noble Lord, Lord Fuller.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, in continuing the spirit of good grace, I wish our Deputy Chief Whip a very happy birthday today.
I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, which I was pleased to sign. Fundamentally, the amendment is about ensuring that we do not move too quickly to classify pension pots as dormant and, in doing so, risk making decisions on behalf of savers before they have had a fair opportunity to act for themselves.
By extending the period before a pot was treated as dormant, the amendment would delay when pots became eligible for automatic consolidation. That is important, because it would reduce the risk of pots being moved prematurely, perhaps at a point when an individual was between jobs, was taking a short break, on maternity leave or simply had not yet re-engaged with their savings. It would also give savers more time to re-engage with their pension, to make further contributions and to take an active and informed decision about what they want to do with their savings.
If we are serious about putting savers at the centre of this system, we must ensure that pots are not automatically consolidated after only a short period of inactivity. The new period proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, seems to be eminently sensible. I therefore hope that the Minister will give it careful and serious consideration, and I hope she will adopt it. If not, we will be pleased to support the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, if she chooses to test the opinion of the House on the amendment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords—at least, most noble Lords—for their contributions to that little debate. It is probably worth saying at the outset what this is about. Anyone who listened to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, would assume, first, that theft was involved; secondly, that pots were being taken away from people; and, thirdly, that they were being taken away from hard-working, self-employed businesspeople. None of those things is true. These are pots where people have had a series of jobs, they have moved on and they have left small-value pots scattered around in different places, on which they are paying often quite significant charges, and the value of those pots is diminishing.
The policy was consulted on not by civil servants sitting in Horse Guards Parade but by the previous Government in 2023. This is the proposal that was consulted on by the previous Government and I happen to think that they got this right. So too did the range of opinion that was consulted, and I will say more about that in a moment.
The intention behind the policy is to capture the rights-dormant small pots and have them transferred to a consolidator, which will be clearly classified by the regulator as being one that has been classed as having value for money, and only to such a pot. The intention is to capture the right small pots that are genuinely dormant while avoiding transferring pots belonging to members who remain actively involved with their pension saving. Of course, no eligibility test will operate perfectly in every circumstance, but we believe the current 12-month period provides the right balance between effective consolidation and member protection. I shall explain why in a moment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, wants to extend the period to 24 or 36 months. That would significantly extend the period during which a pot remains dormant. This is not about industry; it is about risking detriment, both to individual members, who would continue to face charges for longer, and to the wider scheme membership, who, in practice, subsidise these small deferred pots. Either of those extensions would delay the consolidation of genuinely dormant small pots, leaving inefficiencies in the system for longer, resulting in—
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
If a pot has been forgotten about for many years, this problem will not exist even with my amendment because it will have been dormant for over three years, if it was left behind from a long time ago. I am concerned about the people who are working at the moment who may take some time off, and to give them a better chance.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
If the noble Baroness could have just a bit of patience, I am just coming to that. I ask her to bear with me for a moment.
Either of the noble Baroness’s proposals to extend the period of dormancy would delay the consolidation of genuinely dormant small pots, leaving inefficiencies in the system for longer, resulting in higher costs for schemes and for members through higher charges.
Where someone holds several small pension pots across multiple schemes, they will find themselves subject to multiple sets of charges over a number of years. The longer the dormancy period, the longer that members will face those charges. It is well recognised that many schemes apply a flat-fee charge structure, particularly those most affected by the proliferation of small pots, and that can compound the issue. For example, a saver with three separate small pots held across three schemes, each applying its own annual flat-fee charge, could see those charges accumulate over an extended dormancy period. If the period were lengthened to 36 months, they could face four more annual charges. Given the relatively low value of many small pots, such cumulative charges represent a significant risk of detriment to the member.
On the point about people taking a career break with the intention of returning to work, in the majority of cases such members will be adequately protected by the 12-month dormancy window. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, mentioned maternity leave. This was looked at carefully during the consultation. Where someone is on paid maternity leave, employers should carry on paying pension contributions. Where contributions are being made, the pots are not dormant, so any period of dormancy would not start until no contributions were paid, and those pots would not be subject to dormancy criteria and would not be consolidated.
Anyone taking an unpaid break that lasts longer than 12 months would find that the system included various safeguards. First, every member will get a transfer notice before consolidation takes place, giving them a clear opportunity to opt out if they judge that consolidation is not in their best interests. As we develop the delivery design, we will look to explore different forms of communication to understand how they can best support members’ engagement with the process.
Secondly, under Clause 115, the Government are taking a power to require employers to provide updated information to schemes periodically. We will consult on how that should operate, but if subsequent evidence shows that career breaks present a genuine issue, we could simply require employers to notify schemes where a break was planned or under way. Where appropriate, that would allow such pots to be made exempt from consolidation under regulations made under Clause 25.
However, the current evidence does not indicate that this is expected to be a widespread problem. As I said earlier, the 12-month timeframe formed part of the proposal consulted on with stakeholders across the pensions industry and consumer representative bodies in 2023 and represents a supported middle ground—long enough to ensure that pots are genuinely dormant, but not so long as to delay consolidation unnecessarily. It is essential that the policy maintains the right balance between operational efficiency and member protection. Just to be clear, the Bill currently requires the regulations to set a minimum of 12 months for a pot to be classified as dormant. That means that if evidence suggests that extending the period is necessary, that period could be set at a higher level or it could be extended subsequently through secondary legislation.
We all want to avoid negatively impacting individuals who take periods of unpaid leave, but if we think about it, applying a blanket extension to the dormancy criteria cannot be the right way to provide that protection. A more appropriate approach is to design the policy framework with the necessary safeguards built in from the outset, and that is what we have done. Introducing a universal increase to the dormancy period would exacerbate the risk of detriment for everybody involved.
Finally, government Amendment 51 is a minor and technical change. It replaces “specified” with “prescribed” in Clause 23 to ensure consistent terminology throughout the Bill. The amendment improves clarity and brings the clause into alignment with the drafting used elsewhere in the measure. In the light of what I have said, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment and that the House will support government Amendment 51.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. What she describes sounds very good in theory. My amendment is designed to address the issue that that theory does not work in practice in the kind of pensions world that we have right now. There will be improvements, but they are not in place yet. There is no compensation for a member whose pot is moved away to a worse scheme. They may have higher fees or they may have lower fees. They may get better performance, they may get worse performance. It should be incumbent upon all of us to make sure that there is as much protection as possible. If somebody has not paid in for years, the three-year limit will be fine because they will have exceeded it. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 49.
Baroness Sherlock
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment corrects a mistake.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, we debated Clause 40 and the new FSMA Section 28C issues thoroughly in Committee. I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed and to those who have spoken to me since. The amendments in this group would remove the reserve power that would allow the Government to mandate asset allocations for workplace pension savers. We will vote on Amendment 52, which is a consequential amendment, but it carries with it the business amendments—the thing that it is really about. These are Amendment 78, which would delete Section 28C, and Amendment 96, which would delete the now redundant savers’ interest test and all associated references.
My objection here is one of principle. Why should government override trustees? We all know that UK pension funds have invested too little in UK assets and private markets, but we also know why: regulatory interventions, the charge cap and pressure into low-cost indices and gilts have made it difficult to invest in anything that requires governance or research. The track record of intervention is not good, yet this clause proposes more intervention. It is described as a back-up to the Mansion House Accord, to be used if industry does not deliver. But if industry does not deliver it will not be out of obstinacy; it will be because the opportunities are not there at the right price or at the right risk. Mandation does not solve that; it simply overrides fiduciary and professional judgment. Even the threat of mandation is intended to do the same.
If regulated for, this clause would reverse the burden of proof and raise the evidential bar for trustees. Trustees, who already must act in members’ best interests, would additionally have to show the regulator that the mandated allocation would cause material detriment to be exempted from allocation. That is a very high bar, flying under the guise of a savers’ interest test. We would be placing trustees under a new adjudicator of fiduciary duty that has no fiduciary responsibility itself, and a Government with an inherent conflict of interest—and, if I may say, no technical or regulatory qualification. Spending workers’ pensions instead of raising taxes is not fiscal discipline; it is concealment.
The power itself is extraordinarily broad. There is no time limit, no percentage, no end date, and a rather dodgy exemplary asset list—available to any future fancy. Nothing prevents a Government from choosing their preferred assets, including those that no one else will touch, and compelling 22 million savers to invest in them. That is not the route to pension security.
For all these reasons, the only responsible course is to remove this power, and I intend to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I fully support everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, said. I am very sad to be in the position of needing to do so, because I support the Government’s aim of helping pension schemes to put more money into UK investments and growth. However, the way in which it is being done is the issue here, with unlimited powers and not incentives but diktats. If you threaten a pension scheme that, unless it does what you want, it cannot auto-enrol workers in this country then clearly that is not any kind of carrot; it is just a big stick. Incentivisation is normally what we do to encourage pension investments, and it is what we should be doing. One of my amendments would achieve that, but if the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, is successful with Amendment 52, we will not need to go into those details.
I hope that the Government, even at this late hour, will rethink their approach to have a two-step approach: to have a voluntary agreement and commit to do certain things, but then the second step would be, if the voluntary agreement was not stuck to or if schemes did not do any of the things that they said that they were going to do, that they would force schemes to do what they wanted anyway. That is not the way to make the best of people’s pensions, and I hope that the Government will think again.
Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)
My Lords, when you are trying to solve a problem, it is best to try to understand the root causes of the problem and then resolve those causes—diagnose and treat the disease, not the symptoms. That is why I have repeatedly asked the Minister why she believes UK pension funds have been so reluctant to invest in so-called UK productive assets. I know she gets frustrated with me asking this question regularly, but she has never answered it. She always responds, as she did again on 11 March, by explaining what the symptom is: that UK pension funds invest a much lower proportion in UK productive assets than international comparators. She is right, and, as noble the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, just pointed out, I do not think any of us disagree with that, but that does not answer the fundamental question. Why are UK assets apparently so unattractive to UK pension funds? What are the barriers to investment that we need to remove?
The Minister has often told us that the mandation power is just a backstop to the voluntary Mansion House agreement and probably will not be used. That is precisely the problem. It does not need to be used; its very existence is, in effect, mandation. As the Times pointed out so clearly on Saturday:
“A voluntary agreement … ceases to be voluntary … if it is underwritten by the promise of compulsion”.
Even if the power is not used, it still creates a fiduciary duty problem: the trustees are still, in effect, being forced to act in a way that they might not believe to be in the best interests of members, but they will not even have the defence of ,“We were only following orders”, if it turns out badly. The Minister has never given an adequate response to the question of who should bear the risk if the government-mandated assets result in poor performance.
On 11 March, the Minister said:
“This power does not direct schemes into specific assets or projects. What it does is set a broad framework aligned with the industry’s own voluntary commitments under the Mansion House Accord. Trustees retain full discretion over individual investment selection and the balance between asset classes”.—[Official Report, 11/3/26; col. 279.]
But that is not what the Bill says. What it actually does is give the Government power to require that an undefined and unlimited percentage is invested in qualifying assets, which are defined as
“an asset of a prescribed description”.
I stress that it says “an asset”, not just a class of assets.
There is no limit in the Bill on what those assets can be, except that they cannot be listed on a recognised exchange. Contrary to what the Minister has told us, specific assets or projects can be prescribed. Nor does the Bill require them to be in the UK; they can be anywhere in the world. The first regulations to define the asset allocation are subject to the affirmative procedure, but after that, any future Government can prescribe any asset, anywhere in the world, on any percentage, under the negative procedure.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, pointed out, a scheme can apply for an exemption, but it is an incredibly high hurdle. A scheme must prove that the asset allocation requirement would cause
“material financial detriment to members”.
That is extraordinary—not just that it is “not in members’ interests”, but “material financial detriment”.
Contrary to the Minister’s assurances, this unlimited mandation power can be used to direct trustees to invest in classes of assets or specific assets. It fundamentally undermines the fiduciary duty of pension trustees. This dangerous power must be removed from the Bill. Instead, the Government should, as I said at the beginning, focus their efforts on identifying and removing the underlying barriers to UK investment.
Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
My Lords, I speak in this mini-debate in full support of this amendment. I am extremely concerned about the principle of government directing any form of investment. I do not think any Government have a strong record on making investments, and to compel pension funds to make such investments would be incredibly dangerous. As the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, has so wisely said, we are setting ourselves a very dangerous precedent here that we will all—as people who want to retire at some point—live to regret.
My second point is a technical one, which the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, touched on but is worth exploring slightly further: namely, the description of what a directed investment is. What is a UK investment—the sort of thing we would be told we have to invest in? Is it a company where the headquarters is domiciled in London, or that employs a certain number of people, or that does a certain thing in the UK specifically related to certain asset classes?
The reality is that you will have enormous problems if you try to force money into certain parts of the economy. You will get crowding out and excess price. An example could be to force these pension funds to invest in infrastructure. You would have a crowding out of other investments into infrastructure projects that would be mispriced, and that would create problems when it came to trying to generate returns. We should be very careful about that. Prescription over investment is one of the worst things a Government can possibly do, and I think we should acknowledge that in this House.
As has been mentioned, why are we talking about forcing people to buy things that other people do not wish to buy when we should be trying to create an economy that people want to invest in? I call upon the Minister to put that as the priority, rather than trying to force people to do things they do not wish to do, which will cause enormous problems in the long term.
Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise (Con)
My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as chief executive of NEXT plc, a company that has over 20,000 colleagues enrolled in an auto-enrolment pension.
I want to convey to the Government just how worried people are at the idea that the Government are planning to mandate how their pensions—their life savings—should be invested. To be told that a percentage, as yet to be determined, should be invested in certain classes of assets, as yet to be defined, by Ministers who can give no indication as to what they want to do with these powers is deeply worrying.
Good investments do not need to be mandatory. In fact, there is the inherent suspicion that investments which are compelled are unlikely to be very good investments. It is worse than that, because if the demand for certain asset classes is artificially increased then the returns are likely to fall further. Why pay a healthy return to an investor who has no choice but to invest in your class of asset?
It might be argued that while mandated investments are not so good for pensioners, they will be good for the nation as a whole. This is a dangerous precedent, and it is not credible, because the Government are not well placed to allocate capital in this way. They are subject to political pressures, the competing priorities of their Back Benches, the media and the polls.
I join other noble Lords in saying that the Government are not wrong to worry. The British pension funds show an alarming tendency to avoid investing in UK businesses, but there are better answers than this—reform the regulatory regime, make the UK a more attractive place to invest in. Compulsion is the worst possible solution, and it is that compulsion that goes to the heart of my concerns, and those of many others, about this power.
The greatest risk of this power is that the Government abuse it—that in the thick of some political storm, under pressure to boost the economy and to serve some interest group, they mandate large-scale misguided investment in some part of the economy as a last roll of the dice. I stress that I completely accept that this Government would not abuse the power. However, can the Minister be so sure that all future governments, perhaps led by their political opponents, will not abuse it?
Other noble Lords have rightly spoken about the breadth of these skeleton powers. They are not quite Henry VIII powers but, to me, they look very much like Robert Maxwell powers—the power to control and direct the investment of other people’s hard-earned savings for purposes other than their benefit. Back then, we said that never again would we put the savings of so many people in the hands of so few powerful people, or risk people’s life savings being invested for anything other than their benefit. This power takes us back in the wrong direction. It should not stand. I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, those people who have done the right thing and saved for retirement have made a bargain with the state: in exchange for a little help on the way in, the state will be relied on a little less on the way out—that is the deal. The responsibility for finding people to look after your money lies with the individual and the trustee or investment managers they appoint. On that simple truth, London has developed global leadership in asset and investment management, and the entire City ecosystem has created a tax gusher that pays for defence, schools and hospitals. We should not place it or its reputation under threat.
We have heard a lot from the Dispatch Box over the last 12 months or so about the sort of investments that the Government think we should invest in. We need to learn some lessons from history. One such investment is green schemes, forgetting that when they tried this under political direction in Sweden it created the $5.8 billion Northvolt disaster and all the public sector pensioners lost their shirts. The Minister from the Dispatch Box lionised the large Canadian public sector schemes as the model that should be followed. Last year, their investment returns went down by 5%, at the same time as our own LGPS went up by 9%.
Ministers want schemes to backfill UK infrastructure, and perhaps steel, which we now learn could cost us over £1 billion in a little over a year—money that will never be seen again—or carbon storage and passive funds, which, by arithmetic, lead you into bubbles or into high-risk private assets. At 5 am this morning, the Financial Times published an excoriating demolition of the claims that private equity funds do as well as the Chancellor claims, especially as the J-curve gets stretched out beyond 10 years. I could go on, but I will not.
The point is that, while Ministers want to pick winners, they have been selling lemons. The pound shop pundits are trying to force-feed the riskiest parts of the market—the bits the other professionals turn their noses up at or consider are not right for the man in the street—down the throats of those for whom taking excessive risk is not necessarily the right thing. The Government’s job is to create the environment for the best and most attractive investment ideas to come forward, not to beat pensioners with a stick and strong-arm them into financing their high-risk pet projects, with high fees and uncertain returns.
But, worst of all, if mandation does come, it will create the sort of value-sapping moral hazards and conflicts of interest that will allow the most poorly performing managers to have a “get out of jail free” card—“It was that Torsten Bell chap what told me to do it, guv”—while trashing the global reputation of the UK asset management business and imperilling that tax gusher we all rely on. But, ultimately, it will be the little guy who pays the price, poorer long after Rachel Reeves and Torsten Bell have become a footnote in history. It is our duty to stop this, and we must.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as an employee of Marsh, whose sister company Mercer is a pension consultancy, master trust provider and signature to the Mansion House Accord. I speak in strong support of this group, beginning with Amendment 52, which would remove the power to mandate asset allocation while preserving the requirement on scale. This is a targeted, proportionate change. It keeps the legitimate objective of ensuring sufficient scale in the market without stripping trustees of the fundamental responsibility to make investment decisions.
I have never supported—and it has become abundantly clear in recent weeks that the bulk of industry does not support—the Government’s proposed power to mandate asset allocation. I have listened carefully over the past weeks to Ministers in both Houses, who say that these clauses are simply a reserve power intended to ensure that the Mansion House Accord operates. Even accepting that characterisation, the House should not lose sight of two important points. First, the schemes that signed up to the accord did so in good faith and with trustee agreement. Secondly, those signatories did so on the basis of explicit caveats—caveats that recognised trustees’ fiduciary duties, the necessity of a reliable pipeline of assets and the imperative that the market shifts from a narrow focus on cost to a broader assessment of value across the whole investment chain, including by clients.
It is therefore deeply disappointing to see the Government invoke the Mansion House Accord agreement as though it represents blanket industry support for intervention in private finance and trustee decision-making. It does not. Conflating a voluntary conditional industry commitment with a license to centralise investment allocation decisions risks doing grave damage to good governance and to member outcomes. For these reasons, I urge noble Lords to support these amendments, remove the dangerous power to mandate asset allocation, keep the focus on scale and let trustees, acting with their fiduciary and statutory duties, continue to determine the investment strategies that best serve their members. These amendments achieve that balance.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
I signed Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, because—let us be candid about this—this is not the Government’s money. There seems to be an attitude that, because the Government use tax relief in other ways to encourage people to invest in private pensions, all of a sudden they are somehow going to tell people what to do with their cash—instead of putting government taxpayers’ money into those projects—just because that cash is not being invested in projects the Government want.
Even auto-enrolment, which has been a force for good, is not mandatory; people can opt out. There has always been a recognition that it is somebody’s salary, and so it is their choice what they do with their take-home pay. The approach in the Bill goes completely against that because—I will not use unparliamentary language—the Government are almost blind to the fact that it is not their money.
My particular concern is that there never was a human rights impact assessment. I have written to the Attorney-General to understand that, because I think this could well be covered, in effect, as personal property under Article 1, Protocol 1 of the ECHR. Yet the Government seem quite happy to say that this meets the human rights test. We have never seen that backed up, so I would be grateful if the Minister could publish any assessment they have done before we get to Third Reading.
To be straightforward, this is the wrong approach. The voluntary accord is the right approach, which is why I will support the amendment if it is tested.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, we know that a much higher percentage of pension fund assets could happily be invested in UK assets; indeed, that was the case when I was managing pension funds. It is not the case now entirely because of what politicians have done to the system. We should seek to undo that, not fudge it, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, said.
My recommendation to the Government is that, rather than giving themselves power, they should give pensioners and investors in pension schemes power. There are structures in the Bill that allow pensioners to express their opinions on what their money is being invested in, but nothing that gives any effect to that. I suspect that most of us receive our annual returns from the pension funds we are part of and put them straight in the bin, because there is nothing we can do with them. We ought to be in a position to do something that would have an effect. I recommend that the Government choose that route rather than the one they have chosen.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, of all the amendments we have tabled and discussed on this Bill, for me, this group is the most important. Mandation is, rightly and understandably, the most contentious part of the Bill. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have helped raise awareness of this issue, which, as I am sure the Minister is aware, has garnered a lot of attention—and criticism—outside of this place.
The ABI has written to the Minister in the other place, Torsten Bell, to warn him of its “serious concerns” about the mandation power, saying that it is “not necessary” for the Government to mandate investment. It has asked the Government to withdraw this part of the Bill. Pensions UK has been unambiguous on this point. It too has called on the Government to remove this power from the Bill, warning that it would harm
“free and open market competition aimed at driving better saver outcomes”.
It has said that mandation would
“put those outcomes at risk”.
More recently, Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, wrote strongly against mandation in an article in the Times. Just the headline and strapline will give the Minister all the information she needs:
“Telling pension funds where to invest will not end well. The government’s desire to boost UK assets is understandable, but overriding the fiduciary duty of trustees crosses a line”.
The industry is clear, the experts are clear and much of this House is clear that the Government should not be directing private sector investment. It is obvious that this power overrides the fiduciary duty of trustees. This is a radical step, and it establishes the principle that it is appropriate and desirable for Governments to tell schemes how to invest to meet their own political objectives. The Government are right to want investment in UK assets—indeed, I am sure that no one in this Chamber would not welcome more money in UK assets. However, if the picture is not where we want it to be, the question for the Government is: why? Why is the UK not attracting that capital? What barriers exist? What reforms are needed?
Instead of doing that work, the Government have reached for a shortcut, a reserve power that is really a threat to compel investment. This is reckless. It sets a dangerous precedent, and the Government’s central defence—that they do not intend to use the power—raises two unavoidable questions. First, if they never intend to use the power, why are they legislating for it? Secondly, how can the Minister assure us that the power will not be used when they will not be in office for ever? This power is going into law, and I am afraid it will outlast the Minister and indeed all of us. The noble Baroness cannot speak for future Administrations, or indeed political parties such as Reform, God help us, which has signalled a great willingness to direct investment. The Government are handing this power not merely to their own Ministers but to future Ministers.
I will not detain the House any further than to say that this power must be removed. It is a massive overstep from the Government and, despite all the assurances of the Minister, no one is yet convinced that this can remain. Industry rejects it, experts have expressed serious concerns about it, and the Minister must remove it. I am sure she has listened to all noble Lords’ contributions. As my noble friend Lord Wolfson said, we must remove this Robert Maxwell power. We on these Benches, and I am sure others, will support the noble Baroness wholeheartedly if she seeks to divide the House on this matter.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, as we have heard, the combined effect of these amendments would be to remove from the Bill the Government’s reserve power to require certain pension schemes to hold a prescribed percentage of their assets in qualifying assets. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, indicated, we explored this territory in some depth in Committee, and noble Lords made a number of detailed and considered arguments. It has been good to have an opportunity to talk to a number of colleagues since then and to discuss their concerns. The Government have reflected but continue to regard the asset allocation reserve power as a necessary part of the reform package that this Bill introduces, and I will set out why.
The headline case is that there is strong evidence that savers’ interests lie in greater investment diversification than we see today in the DC market, and there is probably broad agreement on that. DC pension providers themselves have recognised this. A small allocation to private markets, as part of a diversified portfolio, offers the potential for better risk-adjusted returns over the long term. But despite that recognition, many providers are not yet acting on it. That is not because diversification is against savers’ interests. It is in significant part because of competitive dynamics, the pressure to keep headline costs as low as possible in order to win and keep new business from employers, and the difficulty of any single provider moving ahead of the market. This is not just the Government’s view. It is what the industry has said repeatedly.
Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that in most industries, moving ahead of your competitors is an advantage, not a disadvantage? It is certainly not a reason not to move in the right direction.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
It depends on how the market is structured. The decision-makers here are employers. Let us look at what happened under the Mansion House Compact, the predecessor of the accord, brokered under the previous Government. The words were that
“‘too much focus on cost’ remains the key barrier”.
In other words, we have a market in the employment sector where the focus has been for too long on cost, not value. The noble Lord shakes his head, but we have heard this from around the House. Indeed, in Committee many people who do not agree with this power accepted the underlying diagnosis, and that is the basis on which the Government are proceeding.
The Government want the industry to invest in the full range of assets. One of the reasons, I suspect, that the Mansion House Accord is moving together is to make sure that it is clear that the market is going in that direction. That is the problem, we think: there is a risk of a failure of collective action. The accord is a commitment. The power gives providers assurance that the whole market will move so that they will not then be in a position where somebody faces a competitive advantage by reverting back to focusing on cost and not on value.
Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)
As I understand the noble Baroness’s argument, the focus on cost is the problem. This Bill solves that with the value-for-money framework, so why do we also need the mandation power?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
This all comes as a package. A lot of attention is focused on this particular reserve power, but in fact it is the combination of all the elements of the Bill that we discussed in some detail in Committee over recent weeks: the question of the investment in scale, the need for the value-for-money framework, the need for the option to consolidate small pots. All these things come together to create the conditions in which this will work. This reserve power is to address a particular question, the risk of collective failure. I fully accept that the noble Lord does not agree with it, but I want at least to have the opportunity to make the argument as to why the Government are proposing to do it in this way.
The Mansion House Accord represents a voluntary commitment by 17 of the UK’s largest DC pension providers to invest 10% of their default funds in private markets, at least half of that in the UK, by 2030. We continue to be encouraged by progress, but the risk of a collective action failure in this market has long been recognised. As I said, individual providers face strong commercial incentives to keep costs low and to defer action until others move first. The reserve power exists as a backstop to ensure that if voluntary progress stalls, the Government have the means to act. Its presence in the Bill sends a clear signal that the commitment to change is underpinned by more than good intentions, and it helps to give each provider confidence that the rest of the market will move too.
At earlier stages we discussed a range of issues around safeguards and other things, which I thought would come up in later groups but that will obviously depend on what happens next. First, the power is time limited. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, thinks this power will outlive us all. I hope it does not, because if it has not been used by the end of 2035 it falls away, so I very much hope that it will not outlive the noble Baroness and me, although obviously we are in the Lord’s hands: should we be called home, what can we do? If it has not been used by 2035, it falls away. If it has been used, any percentage requirements in place cannot be increased beyond that date.
Secondly, the Bill establishes a savers’ interest test. Pension providers will be able to apply for an exemption from the targets where they can show that meeting them would cause material financial detriment to their members. Thirdly, the Government must consult and publish a report on the expected impacts, both on savers and on growth, before exercising the power for the first time, and a post-implementation review must follow within five years. Finally, the regulations implementing any requirements will be subject to the affirmative procedure, so Parliament would have its say.
I will respond to some specific questions. There was a question about how to define UK assets. This would be done in regulations were the power ever to be used. Consideration would have to be given to the characteristics of different asset classes. The Mansion House Accord is accompanied by some high-level guidance on how a UK investment should be identified within each of the different asset classes. That asset class by asset class approach to establishing the location is also the one that the FCA has taken as it consults on the upcoming value-for-money disclosure requirements, which will require firms to provide UK overseas asset allocation split. If the Government ever came to exercise these powers, we would expect similarly to take an asset class by asset class approach.
Questions were raised about a future Government and how this might be used. The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, prayed in aid the European Convention on Human Rights, and I commend her on that. First, on the question on property rights, this applies to default schemes and people can choose to opt out, but she raises a relevant point. Obviously I hope there will never be one, but if there ever were a Government of a different persuasion, were they to seek to use it in a way beyond what is here, I think they would run into problems. This Government have made it quite clear, in Committee in this House and in the other House, that the purpose of the power is to assure good outcomes for savers and the economy, recognising diversification benefits and the potential for higher returns. It is not an instrument for channelling investment into pet projects or specific companies.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, quoted me on this point. It was marvellous—“What he said” is what I would say. That is the Government’s view, and I have spoken about the various safeguards, but even if a future Government wanted to use these powers to do something either much broader or much more specific, of course they would have to abide by established principles of public law, including the requirement for Ministers to act rationally, ensuring procedural fairness and compatibility with ECHR rights when making secondary legislation.
The Government are under no illusions about the significance of this power. It is a substantial intervention and, if we ever found the need to use it, we would have to proceed with great care. I understand the strength of feeling on this. These powers, alongside the scale provisions, the value-for-money framework and the consolidation measures, are a package. Together, they are designed to deliver a step change in outcomes for millions of pension savers. If we remove the reserve power, we remove the mechanism that gives the rest of this framework its teeth when it comes to investment diversification.
For a long time, successive Governments have recognised the need to channel pension capital into productive assets. Auto-enrolment has brought millions more people into saving. We now have a responsibility to ensure that those savings are put to work properly to deliver better long-term returns. But the question before us is whether the Bill should contain the backstop at all. In the Government’s view, the answer is yes. Without it, the voluntary commitments made by the industry would rest on good faith alone. The experience of previous attempts to shift investment patterns in this market suggest that that, on its own, may not be enough. For those reasons, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken. The overwhelming view is still that this power goes too far. Many of the issues on which the Minister comments are around cost but, as I said, the whole focus on cost has been brought about by regulation. Changing to value for money will, I hope, adjust that, although I have concerns that it will still be too bound up. But the more I listen to the Minister, the more I hear that there is a deliberate intent for market manipulation and control. That really worries me, because it does not seem to be at all market sensitive or prepared to use what is supposed to be one of the strengths of this country—its asset management.
I think this is dangerous and market distorting, even without any legal effect. As has been eloquently said, it is the wrong direction of travel—I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for that reminder. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Baroness Noakes
“(c) able to demonstrate that they deliver investment performance which exceeds that achieved by the average of all Master Trusts which hold an approval under section 28A in respect of a main scale default arrangement.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment allows Master Trusts which deliver good investment performance to be excluded from the scale requirements.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 55 is in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I will also speak to Amendments 60 and 94 in this group.
This group of amendments concerns the so-called scale requirement in Clause 40. In practice, the Government’s proposals concentrate only on size, with a vision of the DC pensions provision landscape comprising 20 or so schemes with assets of over £25 billion. I have no quarrel with the proposition that the current pensions landscape is too fragmented, which may well have contributed to investment returns for some pension savers that have not been good enough. It is, however, a massive and unwarranted logical leap to move from that proposition to the proposals in the Bill, which mean that virtually all schemes with below £25 billion of assets will cease to exist in a few years’ time. The plain fact is that investment returns do not correlate with the size of assets under management.
When the Government produced their report on pension fund investment and the UK economy in November 2024, it was disarmingly honest. It said:
“The evidence linking pension provider scale and gross investment returns is mixed … Across the AUM spectrum, there are examples of small, medium and large-sized schemes with both high and low gross returns”.
It also said that studies suggested broadly a wide range of benefits of around £25 billion to £50 billion, in particular the ability to invest in certain asset classes. But it did not claim, as it should not, that that amounted to a guarantee of superior returns.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, the Government are obsessed with size, but everyone knows that it is not about size but what you do with it. That point was made forcefully in the Financial Times this morning, which discussed the fact that the larger funds are not necessarily better performers, with the sub-headline:
“Seeking size for its own sake can distract fund managers from focusing on clients and shareholders”.
There is so much I can say, but I will restrict myself to one substantive point. When schemes get large, their normal market investment size gets bigger too. They do not have the time, capacity or need to go away from the big global stocks, most of which are, by their nature, overseas. It limits the constellation of investment ideas, so they chase the same MSCI stocks, creating a value-destroying bubble and systemic risks by all chasing the same thing. It becomes all about speculation.
That is not necessarily what capital markets are for. Capital markets exist to provide capital so that smaller companies can become big ones. Right now in the UK, there are lots of smaller companies with bright ideas and great prospects that could become bigger if only they were relevant to the funds—a few million pounds here, perhaps a few tens of millions there. But they are all but invisible to the superfunds, for which anything less than half a bar is a rounding error.
The problem for the UK is that, while Ministers are worshipping the false icons of scale, they will actually make it harder for the stock market to invest in small British businesses at home. If the schemes are forced to bulk up, they simply will not have the time to look for or after the small fry. British companies that are crying out for long-term patient capital will go hungry, which directly contradicts the Mansion House objectives. Once again, the Government have been suckered into a position by the big boys, understandably keen to cut out the competition, visiting harm on the UK economy and especially on small British firms we all want to see do well. As the Financial Times says today:
“A substantial body of evidence in academic research suggests that mergers in financial services frequently lead to prolonged periods of underperformance. Revenue synergies often fail to materialise and cost synergies tend to be overstated”
—quite.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 55, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. There is a questionable theory of change in the Bill—that bigger pension schemes are necessarily better, suggesting the minimum scale of £25 billion. While scale certainly creates advantages, Australian experience suggests that funds can be run at less than this size and still provide value and good outcomes for members. However, concentrating the market into a few megafunds introduces a new system of risk, of schemes that become too big to fail and so are effectively the state’s problem.
Also, megafunds are unlikely to allow for nuance and specialism, such as faith-based funds. Unfortunately, the understanding of faith-based funds in the commentary on the Bill seems to be limited to Sharia-compliant funds and exclusions. The understanding of and engagement with the nuances of faith-based investing in the Bill commentary are superficial at best. There may be perfectly good arrangements with faith-based or ethical distinctiveness; such arrangements may perform well for members in financial and non-financial terms and be significantly smaller than the threshold envisaged. The distinctiveness that they offer might easily be lost in generic megafunds. This amendment makes the important point that absolute size and performance for members need not be correlated.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
Obviously, I support Amendment 55 and a number of the other amendments in this group, but I urge the Minister to consider the dangers of trying to engineer a few large schemes while at the same time knocking out new entrants and competition. From now to 2030, if a scheme is not yet at the £25 billion scale requirement, it will find—and it is finding, such as in the case of Penfold—that it cannot get new business. The employer cannot be confident that it will reach the £25 billion in time, and knows that it could potentially have to change provider. This requirement is undermining innovation and competition in the market right now, and may continue to do so. I hope that the Minister will recognise the dangers.
I apologise to the House, as I should have declared my interests. As stated in the register, I am a non-executive director of a pensions company and an adviser to a pension master trust.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I think that everybody in your Lordships’ House wants good investment, whichever side of the House we are on. If you are investing, with apologies, sometimes faith is not enough—you have to see what happens in the market. It is about the choices that are made.
These amendments would allow pension schemes to demonstrate a strong investment performance or innovation in members’ services and administration to be exempt from the scale requirements set out in the Bill, and would introduce greater flexibility on how scale is assessed, including recognising assets held across multiple arrangements.
The amendments reflect concerns that the Bill places disproportionate emphasis on size rather than outcomes, risks disadvantaging smaller or newer entrants and may reduce competition and innovation in the pensions market without clear evidence that larger schemes consistently deliver better returns for members. Amendment 77 would allow exemptions to scale requirements if the regulator deemed that there was no evidence of improved outcomes for members in the case of a proposed merger to meet the scale requirements. This would make sure that members’ interests are protected. On these Benches, we support Amendment 77, and if it comes to a vote, we will support it.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have amendments in this group, which broadly seeks to refine the Government’s scale requirement as set out in the Bill to reflect the fundamental principle that size is not everything. We have heard a lot about that in this short debate. For the sake of brevity, I shall limit my remarks to my Amendment 77. The scale requirement as currently framed is too blunt an instrument. It risks prioritising size over quality, process over performance and structure over outcomes—in other words, it risks innovative and high performing funds merely because they are small. These remarks have been echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann.
The central question we must always ask in pensions policy is: does this improve outcomes for savers? This was the essence of my noble friend Lord Fuller’s remarks. If the answer is no, then we should think very carefully before proceeding. When this power comes into force, it will bring into scope schemes that are already delivering strong outcomes—schemes that are well run, well governed and performing effectively for their members. In such cases, forced consolidation is not just unnecessary but may be actively harmful. It risks disrupting successful investment strategies, increasing costs and ultimately undermining the very outcomes that we are seeking to improve.
This amendment would introduce a vital safeguard. It would give the regulator the discretion to recognise where consolidation would not benefit members and to treat such schemes as meeting the scale requirement. It would ensure that the policy is applied intelligently and does not run roughshod over schemes that are already doing what the Government want. Crucially, it would also reinforce fiduciary duty: trustees and managers must act in the best interests of their members, not in pursuit of arbitrary thresholds set by the Government. This amendment would ensure that they are not compelled to take actions that run counter to that duty.
Scale should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. Where scale improves outcomes, it should be encouraged, but where it does not, where schemes are already delivering for their members, we should not force change for its own sake. This amendment would simply ensure that savers remain at the centre of the policy, and therefore when this amendment is called I will seek to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, Clause 40 delivers the Government’s commitment to ensure that DC workplace pension savers benefit from the advantages that flow from scale and consolidation. The framework that the Bill establishes for scale is integral to securing better member outcomes, improved access to productive investment and stronger in-house capability. Evidence shows that scale can bring the ability to invest in diversified assets as well as lower member fees and investment costs. There is also evidence that scale can enable greater investment and governance capability in running a scheme. As DC schemes become more complex, these things will drive improved member outcomes and support the delivery of an income in retirement.
We had a debate on various issues in Committee, and one of the questions was about scale and competition in the marketplace. I reassure the House that the Government have considered this. Our analysis suggests that, once the scale measures have taken effect, there will be 15 to 20 master trusts and GPP megafunds operating.
There are a number of amendments in this group, and I will try to say something briefly about each. First, on the amendments that seek to add further exemptions to scale, the Government’s policy in this area is to allow day one exemptions that are based on a scheme’s permanent design characteristics. In other words, it should be as clear as soon as the regulations are in place whether a scheme meets an exemption, rather than it being subject to regular assessment. That is important because it is about providing certainty and stability for members and employers.
Amendments 55 and 60, from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, would create an exemption to allow master trusts and GPPs to be excluded from the scale requirements where they deliver investment performance that exceeds the average achieved by all master trusts or GPPs that meet the scale conditions. While I hear the noble Baroness’s arguments, I am concerned that this would undermine the Government’s objective: a market of fewer, larger and better-run schemes where economies of scale deliver sustained benefits for members.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
I am going to disappoint the Minister. There is just a fundamental disagreement: the Government think that size is the most important thing and most of the rest of us think that the judgment on which schemes should be allowed to survive the initial cull that consolidation will require should be much more nuanced and based on what is good for savers. If schemes are delivering for savers and have the capacity to deliver for savers, they ought to be allowed to stay within the population of pension schemes that will continue.
The Government seem not to trust their own value-for-money test, which should deliver over time. If schemes that are allowed through at the moment disappoint over time, the value-for-money test would deal with that. We think that taking scale out will, with the value-for-money test, in the long term produce exactly what the Minister requires, which should be good returns for pension savers.
I said that I would not move my amendment because my noble friend on the Front Bench will be moving his Amendment 77. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
“28BA Exemption from scale requirement(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that the Regulator may determine that a relevant Master Trust or a group personal pension scheme is to be treated as meeting the scale requirement in section 28A or 28B if the Regulator is satisfied that the condition in subsection (2) is met.(2) The Regulator must be satisfied that there is no reasonable evidence that consolidation of the scheme into another arrangement would be likely to improve outcomes for members.(3) In determining whether the condition in subsection (2) is met, the Regulator must have regard to—(a) net risk-adjusted investment performance;(b) governance quality and operational capability;(c) whether the scheme benefits from integrated, pooled or cross-scheme investment arrangements not reflected solely in the total value of assets counted under section 28A(4) or 28B(4); (d) whether the scheme invests wholly or substantially in a default arrangement operated by another scheme or manager meeting the scale requirement;(e) whether the scheme derives material investment benefit from participation in a wider asset management group of substantial scale.(4) Regulations under this section may make provision about—(a) the duration, renewal and withdrawal of a determination under subsection (1);(b) reporting and disclosure requirements.”
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I have spoken to my amendment and as warned in my remarks, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Bull) (CB)
I must advise the House that if Amendment 78 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 79 to 92, by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 78
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Baroness Sherlock
“(7) Regulations may make provision of a kind mentioned in section 28A(10) or (11); and for this purpose a reference in those provisions—(a) to an approval under section 28A is to be read as a reference to an approval under this section; (b) to a relevant Master Trust is to be read as a reference to a relevant Master Trust or a group personal pension scheme;(c) to the trustees or managers of a relevant Master Trust is to be read as a reference to the trustees or managers of a relevant Master Trust or the provider of a group personal pension scheme.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment correct a consistency mistake and provides for regulations about approvals under inserted section 28E of the Pensions Act 2008 to make equivalent provision to regulations about approvals under inserted section 28A of that Act.
Baroness Sherlock
“(3) Regulations may make provision of a kind mentioned in section 28A(10) or (11); and for this purpose a reference in those provisions—(a) to an approval under section 28A is to be read as a reference to an approval under this section;(b) to a relevant Master Trust is to be read as a reference to a relevant Master Trust or a group personal pension scheme;(c) to the trustees or managers of a relevant Master Trust is to be read as a reference to the trustees or managers of a relevant Master Trust or the provider of a group personal pension scheme.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment correct a consistency mistake and provides for regulations about approvals under inserted section 28F of the Pensions Act 2008 to make equivalent provision to regulations about approvals under inserted section 28A of that Act.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Bull) (CB)
I must advise the House that if Amendment 96 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 97 and 98, by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 96
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Bull) (CB)
I must advise the House that if Amendment 102 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 103 and 104, by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 102
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Baroness Noakes
“(a) after subsection 1, insert—“(1A) In making regulations under section 20(1A), 20(1C), 26(7A), 28A, 28B, 28E, 28F and 28J the Secretary of State must have regard to—(a) the encouragement of innovation in the design and operation of pension schemes, and(b) the benefits of competition among providers of pension schemes.”;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require regulations concerning the operation of the scale provisions in clause 40 to have regard to innovation and competition.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has graciously allowed me to intervene briefly. Earlier today during Question Time there were two Questions which involved insurance. I forgot to mention my insurance interests in the register. I would like to update the House’s record for that.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry for forgetting having agreed to that intervention.
In moving Amendment 105A, I will also speak to Amendments 114 and 115 in this group. I thank my noble friends Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Neville-Rolfe for adding their names. In the previous group, we concentrated on size not being everything when determining which pension schemes will be allowed to live on after the consolidation enforced by the scale requirements. My noble friend’s Amendment 77, which the House has just agreed to, has modified the size test. However, even with that important change, the scale requirements will represent a major market intervention by the Government. It is the DC schemes market that I am addressing with these amendments.
My amendments focus on the role of competition and innovation. The one thing that we really need in the long term is a market that will continue to evolve and work for the interests of pension savers. The one thing that we do not need is a mature market consisting of a limited number of large players untroubled by the potential for market disruption. Mature markets can still be competitive and there would be incentives to innovation within a mature market, but that innovation tends to focus on incremental and often process-based improvement. The plain fact is that factors such as incumbent inertia and investment in legacy systems act as counterweights. Disruptive innovation is typically associated with new entrants that spot underserved markets, structural rigidities and the opportunities to harness technological breakthroughs. They do not all succeed but often end up reshaping mature markets, such as is happening with fintechs.
The rules that the Bill sets out for pension schemes must ensure that the benefits of competition and innovation, which ultimately deliver better returns for pension savers, are kept alive and well in the new pension scheme universe that the Bill will deliver. My Amendments 105A and 115 focus on the regulation-making powers surrounding the new scale requirements in Clause 40, and the new entrant and consolidation powers in Clauses 42 and 44. They would both require those making the regulations to have regard to
“the encouragement of innovation in the design and operation of pension schemes, and … the benefits of competition among providers of pension schemes”.
These regulation-making powers will be operated in part by the Secretary of State and in part by the FCA and the Pensions Regulator. The important thing is that, when deciding on the regulations, the person making them must keep competition and innovation in mind as relevant factors for shaping how the detailed rules are framed and will affect how the market develops over time. This is especially important in relation to the Pensions Regulator, whose statutory responsibilities are very narrowly drawn and do not extend to the pension provision market as such.
My other amendment in this group, Amendment 114, would add competition and innovation to the matters to be addressed by the review of non-scale default arrangements as required by Clause 43. I am currently minded to test the opinion of the House on the two amendments seeking to affect the regulation-making powers—Amendments 105A and 115. I beg to move.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 105A and the proposed new clause in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes, to which I added my name. It is essential, in my view, to require the regulations to be pro-innovation and pro-competition rather than over-exclusionary. The £25 billion minimum provided for in the Government’s reforms seems set to deter innovation. My noble friend Lady Noakes has explained the case and the reach of our proposal very well, so I will not speak at length.
I was a trustee of the pension fund at Tesco, which at the time was worth less than £25 billion. We were innovative: we invested in private equity, including US private equity, when others did not, and we had part of our portfolio in housing—just the sort of innovation that the Chancellor is seeking to encourage. However, today that would not be seen as innovation. I am sure that my successors are looking at today’s innovative investments: fintech, quantum, space, rare earths, new types of weapons and other types of disruptive innovation. I have also been struck by the arrival in the pensions market of online-only operators. They started small, made good returns and are a growing part of the market.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, this degrouped set of amendments is very narrow in drafting but, we believe, important in principle. Amendments 105A, 114 and 115 would require the Secretary of State and the reviews and regulations under these clauses to have regard to innovation and competition in the design and operation of pension schemes and in the treatment of non-scale default arrangements.
On these Benches, we strongly agree with the proposition that pension legislation should not inadvertently—this is the problem—freeze the market in favour of the largest existing players. Whenever the Bill pushes schemes towards fewer, larger structures, we believe that Parliament must ask what happens to specialist providers, digital entrants, more tailored propositions and competitive pressure generally. A market that is tidy—tidy is not always right—for Ministers but closed to challengers does not necessarily serve savers well.
This concern was expressed repeatedly in Committee. The critique of the Bill’s scale provisions has been not simply that small is beautiful but that innovation can come from schemes that do not yet meet an arbitrary threshold and that competition itself is one of the mechanisms by which member outcomes improve. I have spoken in this vein on earlier parts of this Bill, warning against an overemphasis on size, which may crush newer entrants and reduce competitive discipline in the market.
There is nothing radical about asking Ministers to have regard to innovation and competition. It is a modest discipline, not a veto. It would not prevent consolidation where consolidation is justified; it would simply ensure that regulations and reviews must notice what might be lost as well as what might be gained. In our view, it is an entirely reasonable request. A well-functioning pensions market should be safe, well-regulated and member-focused, but—this is important—it should also remain open to new ideas and new providers. These amendments would do something to help that balancing view, which is why we on these Benches support them.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for her amendments in this group and I am grateful for the helpful remarks made by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer.
These amendments recognise an important point: a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach risks crowding out innovation, flexibility and ultimately better outcomes for savers. Schemes are not identical, nor are their members, and it is entirely right that providers should be able to design different default arrangements to meet different needs.
Amendment 105A is especially important in this regard. It would require regulations concerning the operation of the scale provisions in Clause 40 to have regard to innovation and competition. The Government have said time and again that they are pursuing a growth mission and that growth will underpin their ability to fund day-to-day spending. Yet what we have seen instead is very different: an ever-greater reliance on taxation to plug the gap, something that is not only economically damaging but ultimately unsustainable for the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, put it well. If the Government are serious about growth, then they must be serious about fostering innovation and competition in sectors such as pensions. Recognising and ensuring that innovation is not stifled is a practical and constructive way to support that mission.
This amendment does exactly that. It ensures that, in shaping the regulatory framework, the Government actively consider the importance of a competitive and innovative market—one that delivers for savers and contributes to wider economic growth. For those reasons, the Government should accept this amendment. Should my noble friend Lady Noakes wish to test the opinion of the House, we would be glad to support her.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for introducing her amendments. The Government think it essential that pension schemes remain competitive post scale and we expect that schemes with scale, as well as market disruptors, will continue to innovate and drive competition. We actively encourage competition through the provision of the new entrant pathway to allow new innovative schemes to enter the market.
The scale measures place a requirement for a main scale default arrangement at the centre of the scheme, to deliver scale and the benefits that that can bring. Amendments 114 and 115 relate to measures on consolidation and addressing fragmentation within schemes that are in the market. There is currently significant fragmentation within the market, with high numbers of default arrangements that do not ultimately serve member outcomes.
While I recognise that much of the fragmentation is a product of history in contract-based schemes, we have seen that the number of default arrangements is increasing across the market and in a number of master trusts. We do not want to see the same issues arising over time as exist in GPPs, where members are in too many default arrangements that do not offer value.
Let me be clear: the measures in Chapter 4 do not cap or limit the number of default arrangements, nor do they impact on the ability of a new entrant to enter the market. What we want to see is default arrangements being created where this meets and continues to meet genuine member or employer need in tandem with the scale measures. That is why we are introducing measures to prevent new default arrangements from being operated without regulatory approval and carrying out a review into current arrangements to establish where they should be consolidated or the reasons for them to continue.
Amendment 114 seeks to require the review of default arrangements to consider the extent to which arrangements contribute to innovation and competition. I agree with the spirit of this amendment, but I do not think that it is necessary. The review must already consider the circumstances where it is appropriate for non-scale default arrangements to continue operating and it is right that competition and innovation will be part of that work. The review will consider how competition and innovation have driven the operation of non-scale default arrangements and what they are expected to deliver for members.
Amendment 115 seeks to require that regulations under Clauses 42 and 44 will have regard to competition and innovation. Again, I agree with the intention behind the amendment, but it is unnecessary. I shall explain why. It is reasonable to expect that the regulations that set out the criteria in which regulators can approve new default arrangements will include innovation and competition. Indeed, we expect these arrangements to meet a specific need or offer something different to the market. It is also reasonable that these will be considerations in setting out where non-scale default arrangements will have to be consolidated. However, as the Bill sets out, those regulations already have to take into account the conclusions of the review, and that will consider competition and innovation.
Amendment 105A seeks to require regulations across the scale measures to have regard to innovation and competition. I reiterate the Government’s support for an innovative market, and we expect providers to continue to innovate. The amendment is not needed to achieve that but, although well-intentioned, the duty that the amendment would introduce ignores the policy objectives of the scale measures and the benefits they are expected to bring. To be clear, the benefits of scale include lower charges, diversified investments and improved governance. We are already creating space in the market for innovation through the new entrant pathway and, as previously outlined, we still expect the market to be competitive.
More than that, though, we need to remember something crucial about the nature of the DC market. A competitive market is vital but we also have to recognise that the ultimate beneficiaries—the members—do not select their scheme. That is done by the employer. Employers are the decision-makers on pension provision. They are the buyers in this market and they will try to do the best for their workforce, but ultimately, of course, their focus will be on current rather than past employees. We therefore need to drive schemes to deliver for all members, not just those who are actively contributing, and too narrow a focus on competition and innovation will not do that. The needs of members should be paramount.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Before the Minister proceeds, could she tell us whether competition and innovation feature at all in the Bill?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, there is, of course, an innovation pathway; innovation therefore clearly has to be in that. The innovation pathway is the innovation pathway, so it clearly is in that. I have set out on the record my expectation of what will be considered in the review and the fact that the regulations will have to take account of what the review says. I hope that satisfies the noble Baroness.
The needs of members should be paramount. It is right that the Government are acting to protect them and to drive schemes to have the capability and capacity to deliver better outcomes. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, can see that we share the same overall objectives and that the Bill as drafted accommodates the intent of her amendments. I hope she feels able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, the Minister, as usual, talks a good story on competition and innovation. Our concern is that the Bill as drafted makes it difficult to see that the virtues of innovation and competition are in fact reflected throughout it. In particular, there is no mention of innovation or competition in the regulations restricting the creation of new non-scale default arrangements in Clause 42. That would be addressed by my Amendment 115.
Those who are exercising the extensive powers in the Bill to circumscribe the way in which the markets are allowed to develop need to have competition and innovation absolutely in their focus, but the Bill does not achieve that. The Minister could cite only the innovation pathway, but the Bill is much more than that. That is why I believe we need to make changes to the Bill. As I mentioned, I will seek to press both my amendments, but I will start by begging to move Amendment 105A.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is connected to another amendment in the name of Viscount Younger to insert new section 28BA into the Pensions Act 2008.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, seeks to remove provision on the asset allocation condition from Chapter 3, while preserving provision related to the scale condition.
Baroness Altmann
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Altmann, seeks to ensure pension schemes are not excluded from the market for going beyond ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches and can design arrangements for different cohorts of membership. It also seeks to clarify the language used in relation to these arrangements.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, Amendments 112 and 113, which I shall not press to a vote, are designed to ensure that we try to keep the needs of pension scheme members at the heart of all the policy changes that we make. For me, pensions have always been about people; they are not just about money.
In relation to the clause that concerns restricting the creation of new non-scale default arrangements, these amendments seek to permit default arrangements below scale—for example, where a company seeks to identify different types of member and put together a default arrangement that is specifically suited more to that type of member than to the traditional one-size-fits-all policy that pension schemes so often seem to be based on, and that certainly do not suit many of the members who are put into them.
I hope that the Minister will help me understand why the Government want to have just one default arrangement—potentially with just one common investment strategy—rather than encouraging more of a pension market that can serve individual groups of members with different needs. That could include those who are in poor health and who might need a different approach, or those who may not know when they are going to retire and therefore a life-styling fund that takes them out of higher return investments would not be appropriate for them.
The idea of pension companies asking members about themselves, beyond just looking at their chronological age, seems to be rather alien. However, I hope it could become much more common, given the digital enabling that is available to pension companies. That would allow them to ask two or three relevant questions, including about someone’s health or whether they have a final salary pension alongside this scheme that they could rely on instead. That is the intention behind these amendments, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, this amendment speak to a principle that we on these Benches have returned to throughout our consideration of the Bill: the framework we are putting in place must reflect the reality of outcomes, not simply a rigid set of predetermined requirements. This amendment recognises that many schemes quite properly design different default arrangements for different cohorts of members. That is not a weakness; it is a strength. It reflects an understanding that savers are not all the same, and that good outcomes often require a degree of tailoring.
Where such schemes are performing well and delivering strong outcomes for their members, they should not be penalised simply because they do not conform to a single uniform model. In that sense, this amendment is important. It does not undermine the objective of improving scale where that is beneficial, but it ensures that we do not lose sight of the ultimate goal, which is—returning the same theme—better outcomes for savers.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for introducing her amendments. I covered quite a bit of this ground in my response to the previous group, which was quite long, so I will not repeat that—I hope that the noble Baroness will not mind.
As I set out in the previous group, Chapter 4 of the Bill relates to default arrangements and the fragmentation in schemes that are in the market. To reiterate, the measures in this chapter do not cap or limit the number of default arrangements, nor do they impact on the ability of a new entrant to enter the market. I previously mentioned innovation, which features in the new entrant pathway, but what we want to see is default arrangements being created to meet member needs. That is why we are introducing a range of measures for them to need regulatory approval before they begin to operate.
On Amendment 112, I understand that the intent is to allow a scheme to have
“several non-scale regular arrangements”.
However, it is not clear what is meant by a “regular” arrangement in the description, as it is not defined.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
I did not go into detail for reasons of time. However, my intention with the word “regular” was to get away from the standard industry jargon of “default fund”, which has quite negative connotations for an ordinary member. Therefore, having the word “regular”—or “standard”, or whatever we want to call it—would be much better for the pensions industry than the negative term “default”. Most people would ask, “Why would I want to default on my money? I want to do something good with it”.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
The noble Baroness should not worry about time—it is only 3.45 pm. We have all the time in the world, so I am very happy to carry on debating this.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
Tell me about it. To pick up on the point the noble Baroness made, we have had the discussion about language before, and I am completely with her on how we describe things when we are facing customers and individual savers. However, language that goes into Bills has to be precise because it gets litigated, and therefore things have to be capable of being defined. That is why definitions matter. It is not about a desire to obscure or put things in language that is not easily understood. The key is to be precise in legislation, and in member-facing communications to be as clear as is necessary.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
I thank the Minister for her response, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Noakes
“Innovation and competitionIn making regulations under sections 42 and 44 the appropriate authority must have regard to—(a) the encouragement of innovation in the design and operation of pension schemes, and(b) the benefits of competition among providers of pension schemes.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require regulations dealing with non-scale default arrangements to have regard to innovation and competition.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
Amendment 115 is a mirror to Amendment 105A which I moved successfully earlier. I move this amendment formally.
Baroness Sherlock
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that default pension benefit solutions must be designed and made available to deferred members (as well as active and pensioner members).
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 116 I will speak also to government Amendments 117, 118 and 119. These are all minor and technical amendments.
Amendment 116 to Clause 49, concerning guided retirement, makes a technical change needed to ensure that the legislation functions as intended. The amendment provides greater clarity that deferred members—those no longer actively contributing to the scheme but who are not yet drawing their pension benefits—are considered eligible members. This ensures that the framework covers the broad range of individuals for whom it was designed and reduces the risk of misinterpretation. The amendment does not change the policy; it simply provides the clarity needed for effective implementation, consistent with the policy intent.
Government Amendments 117, 118 and 119 will help to ensure that well-funded superfunds will not be forced to wind up when they still provide a high level of security to their members. Under the superfund supervisory framework that will be established through the Bill, a breach of the technical provisions threshold may result in the capital buffer being released to the scheme’s trustees, whereas a breach of the protected liabilities threshold may result in the superfund winding up.
In drafting this policy, we anticipated the upside-down situation which can arise within a superfund in certain circumstances when the protected liabilities threshold is breached before the technical provisions threshold. We have therefore taken powers in Clause 85(4) to determine that a breach of a threshold may not take place in specified circumstances. However, further engagement with industry and changing market conditions have indicated that the previously little-known occurrence in which these thresholds swap could be more common in future. Therefore, we need to build more flexibility into the forthcoming regulatory framework. As I said in Committee, it is important that we recognise that higher benefit levels in the PPF are good news for members of all schemes supported by the PPF.
The protected threshold has an important purpose: to ensure that members are protected in the rare instances where superfunds are deemed to be failing. Retaining the threshold will help the Pensions Regulator monitor the risk of a superfund failure. However, we recognise that forcing a superfund to wind up in instances where its technical provisions are lower than its protected liabilities would not be in members’ best interests if the scheme were otherwise able to meet its liabilities.
These amendments therefore seek to create further flexibility to ensure that superfunds are both secure for members and commercially viable. Other approaches may risk tying superfunds to absolute requirements before experience, insight and evidence can clarify the appropriate approach to take. We need to consult fully on superfunds’ funding thresholds, which will be set out in regulations, with a particular focus on this very issue. I hope the House can accept these amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have the pleasure of supporting these amendments. I am very pleased that the Government have made the decision to improve flexibility and help the working of these new superfunds. We do not yet know quite how they will go, so I thank the Government and fully support the amendments.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this group of amendments. At the outset, I recognise that a number of these amendments are either technical or consequential. It is entirely right that the Bill should be internally consistent and operable in practice.
However, Amendment 117 raises a more substantive issue on which I would be grateful for some clarification from the Minister. This amendment alters the way in which the protected liabilities threshold for superfunds is determined, moving to a model in which the threshold is defined as a percentage set out in regulations. I know that we are on the cusp of closing proceedings on the Bill today, but I am afraid that I have a number of questions on this.
First, will the Minister set out clearly what problem this amendment seeks to address? What deficiency has been identified in the current approach? Secondly, what assurance can the Minister give that this change will not weaken the level of protection afforded to members? Is there any scenario in which this more flexible, percentage-based approach could permit lower funding levels than would otherwise have been required? Thirdly, how does the Secretary of State intend to determine the appropriate percentage? Will there be a minimum floor or is this entirely to be left to future regulations? Finally, given the importance of this safeguard, can the Minister explain why it is not being set out in the Bill and what level of parliamentary scrutiny will apply to the regulations that determine it?
Flexibility can be valuable, but when it comes to member protection it must be accompanied by clarity and by robust safeguards. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for her support. I know that she recognises the problem that this is designed to solve and why the Government have done this.
In response to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, obviously I completely failed, but I thought that my speech explained the problem that this was designed to solve. Let me try again. If I say it again slowly, that might help—that is a comment on my speed, not on his comprehension, if I may say so.
The Bill is establishing a permanent supervisory framework for superfunds—there is only an interim arrangement at the moment. There are two different issues. A breach of the technical provisions threshold can result in the scheme’s buffer being released to the trustees, whereas on the other hand, if you breach the protected liabilities threshold then that can result in the superfund being wound up. If those end up being breached in not the traditional order, the superfund could end up being obliged to wind up, when in fact it could meet its liabilities other than because of this issue. That is the problem. I have tried to explain it more simply, and I apologise that I did not do so more clearly at the start. We discussed the problem in Committee, when the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, tabled an amendment and we had a conversation about it. That is the problem we are trying to solve.
I said at the time that it cannot necessarily be in members’ interests to force a superfund to wind up when its technical provisions are lower than its protected liabilities, if it could otherwise meet its liabilities. I said that there was an option to use a clause in the Bill to deem that a threshold had not been breached, but if it is potentially going to be a more common problem, it makes more sense to deal with that in the way we have. The way we have set the threshold is about providing flexibility to make sure that schemes are not wound up unnecessarily.
We currently do not expect to set the threshold below PPF levels of benefits—I suspect that that is what the noble Viscount was aiming at. That is not what we intend. The focus is on ensuring the best possible member outcomes and protecting the PPF. Until the evidence gathering is complete, it would not be appropriate for me to speculate on precisely where that will be set, but I can say to him that that is the case.
On how it will be provided, there will be regulations. The superfund regulations will therefore be subject to the affirmative procedure. When those come back here, there will be every opportunity for the House to discuss them. I hope that answers the noble Viscount’s questions. If there is nothing else, I beg to move.
Baroness Sherlock
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for the protected liabilities threshold in Part 3 (superfunds) to be met if the total value of the assets of the relevant scheme and the capital buffer exceeds a percentage of the scheme’s protected liabilities specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of Baroness Sherlock to clause 71 at page 86, line 24.
““specified” means specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of Baroness Sherlock to clause 71 at page 86, line 24.
Middle East
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving the House the opportunity to ask questions on this Statement. Before I say anything else, I thank the men and women of our Armed Forces who are serving in the region and who stand ready to support operations there, as well as all the officials and diplomatic and consular staff who are working under great strain. I also thank our Gulf Cooperation Council allies for all they have done to support British nationals in the region.
Can the Minister provide the House with an update on the support being provided to British nationals in the region? The case of Craig and Lindsay Foreman has been raised on a number of occasions in your Lordships’ House. The impact of the ongoing Middle East conflict is clearly extremely worrying for them and their family. Can the Minister please provide a further update on the work Ministers and officials are doing to support them, and redouble our efforts to secure their release?
Turning to the conflict itself, Iran has attacked our military bases, currently holds British nationals captive, has indiscriminately attacked states across the Middle East and is blocking the Strait of Hormuz. In that context, we cannot be silenced. Iran’s actions have implications all over the world, and they will, in particular, affect every British household through higher energy prices. Earlier this week, it was reported in the Times that the Prime Minister was weighing up the legality of whether Britain can join the US military operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
On the issue of international law, can the Minister confirm whether it is the view of His Majesty’s Government that Iran has violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which includes the right to transit? While we are on this subject, can he say whether Iran’s indiscriminate strikes across the Gulf region are lawful? Finally, if international law serves to protect rogue states, does he accept that international law will have failed?
Iran is seeking to hijack the global economy. My noble friend Lord Effingham asked the Energy Minister earlier today about the steps to protect British households from rapidly rising energy costs as a result of Iran’s actions. Can the Minister update the House on the work Ministers are doing with our international counterparts to ensure the smooth transit of vessels through the Persian Gulf?
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz must be the priority, but we must develop and secure our domestic supply of fuel. Will His Majesty’s Government approve the Jackdaw gas field development?
Finally, we must not forget the appalling conduct of the Iranian regime. It has murdered its own citizens in droves simply for calling out for democracy, it has refused to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and it has been responsible for unacceptable, illegal state-sponsored activity on our shores. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I join the noble Earl in commending the commitment to our country of our service men and women. It is a deep regret that they are in a position where they are having to risk their lives on an unlawful and unwarranted conflict. On 2 March in this House, the Leader of the Opposition said that when President Trump called the UK should have answered and that the UK should have been fully involved in all the offensive actions in this unlawful conflict unleashed by President Trump with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Government. If we had heeded that, the UK would currently be bombing civilian areas in Tehran and targeting energy installations. Because of the impact on the Strait of Hormuz, we would be seeing the consequences for the UK as a result.
Seeking to tie us directly with President Trump’s decisions was a major strategic error on the part of the Conservative and Reform opposition, especially in the context that more than two weeks into this war we still do not know what the justification was and see no clarity on any endgame and a lack of strategy about what will be next. The Opposition asked us to be fully part of the measures for regime change two weeks ago. They are now silent on this issue. It is appropriate for them to state their position. However, this is the Government’s Statement, the Minister will answer for the Government and I will have a number of questions in a moment.
One of the consequences today is that we are seeing concerns about energy prices in the United Kingdom. This was a wholly predictable outcome. Earlier, we heard questions about seeking greater UK domestic production to try to mitigate this. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the global energy market works and how the United Kingdom is part of it. There is no direct correlation between greater North Sea production and greater domestic consumption. Even if there were, North Sea product is traded on the global market. Therefore, the impact on the global oil and gas market has a direct consequence on the United Kingdom. We export almost as much oil as we produce from the North Sea because of the complexities of the UK energy market.
Given all this, what action will the Government take to prevent some of the extremes if the trajectory of energy prices is up? What package of support can there be, particularly for the most vulnerable who need fuel and those living in rural areas? What is the latest with regard to our Government speaking with other like-minded countries that are seeking to mitigate what could potentially be even worse consequences? Can the Minister state whether any British Ministers have visited the region since the start of this conflict? If so, who have they met and what are our priorities for that diplomatic dialogue?
Turning to something of great concern in Lebanon, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, on behalf of the Government spoke very clearly this morning at the Dispatch Box. I agreed with everything he said with regard to the Government’s position on the concerns for Lebanon. It is extremely worrying to hear senior political figures within Israel talk about cleansing part of Lebanon and creating buffer areas. It is becoming apparent that the tactics that have been used in Gaza may well become the tactics used in Lebanon. The consequences of that, given the UK’s support for sovereign territorial integrity for Lebanon, should be significant.
What consequences would there be for the Netanyahu Administration if indeed there were territorial incursions into Lebanese territory? What are the UK Government doing to ensure that civilians are protected? This should not be discretionary in conflict. The protection of civilians is mandated under the United Nations in international humanitarian law. We are seeing far too many civilian areas targeted. What is now becoming apparent is the potential for collective punishment of certain parts of the Lebanese population, which we have seen elsewhere.
If I had asked the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, a question earlier, it might have been, just to follow through what he accurately said, on the fact that the UK has been a very major supporter through official development assistance for Lebanon over many years—£850 million, I recall him saying. The next sentence, however, is that our current level of capacity is an 88% cut in what the UK is providing to Lebanon for a humanitarian crisis, which is now almost on a par with what it was in 2014. The £30 million of humanitarian support, which has been uplifted with a further amount, is less than a quarter of what the UK provided in 2014. So, the UK is simply, in many respects, not at the table when it comes to humanitarian support.
There is also the very considerable concern that there is likely to be an ongoing cycle of violence and trauma of civilians. That includes the Israeli population, which is having to withstand unjustified attacks from Iran, but we are also seeing continuing violence within the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. What is the latest from the Minister with regards to our representations to the Netanyahu Administration on the West Bank? Have we warned them that there will be repercussions if attempts are made for full annexation? Former Prime Minister Olmert has warned of this, and we should equally be warning of the consequences of it.
Finally, the Minister will probably not be surprised to hear me make an appeal to the Government on the associated issue of Sudan. Much of what is happening in the Middle East and Iran has consequences for the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Sudan. What are the latest actions taken by the UK, as the penholder, to seek an end to that war and sustainable civilian government for the country?
Before I sit down, I want to close by saying that whatever our differences—and perhaps on this conflict, compared to previous ones, there are differences across this House—these Benches are resolute in believing that the Jewish population in this country should not be held to account for an external, foreign Government, and there should be no excuse for antisemitism on our streets in the United Kingdom. Some of the incidents that we have seen recently are deeply troubling. Likewise, the growth in Islamophobia, especially against young Muslim children in this country, is utterly unacceptable. I wonder whether the Minister would seek to convene cross-party talks, because even worse incidents are likely. We need to be united across this House to ensure that both those are considered to be completely unacceptable and are stopped.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Lords (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
I thank both noble Lords for their questions and contributions. I join both of them in acknowledging the service of our people in the region, covering a range of services. It is not just military people; the diplomatic and consular staff are doing an amazing job.
On the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on our community cohesion, we addressed that issue on Monday. It is important that we speak with one voice and say that the rise of antisemitism is absolutely unacceptable, and that also applies to Islamophobia. Sadly, we heard some comments from members of the Opposition recently about people praying in public, which were totally unacceptable. We need to come together to ensure community cohesion, because there is no way that anyone alone can be responsible for something such as what is going on at the moment.
The noble Earl mentioned the opinions on our response. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Purvis: the Opposition, and certainly the leaders of Reform, have gone from saying very strongly that we must take action to them now reconsidering their position. The Prime Minister has been absolutely correct on this. As he said on 16 March, leadership is about standing firm for the British interest, no matter the pressure. I believe that time will show that we have taken the right approach—on the economy, on the cost of living, on defence, on energy and on this war—in the best interests of the British people.
On the Strait of Hormuz, we continue to work closely with our allies on a range of options to support commercial shipping through the strait as the threat picture develops. As the Prime Minister said today, alongside partners, we are ready to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait. We know the impact that it is having on the global economy, the global energy markets and, more importantly, our communities here—people. I repeat to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, what the Prime Minister announced yesterday: we are providing £53 million to support those households who are most exposed.
We are not just working with allies on the Strait of Hormuz. The Energy Secretary has spoken to BP, Shell and National Gas in the last few days. As noble Lords would expect, their primary concern is the safety of vessels passing through the strait and their duty of care to their employees in the face of ongoing threats from Iran. More broadly, the DfT constantly monitors UK shipping and, as I say, we are working closely with allies and providing advice and guidance where necessary.
As part of their work, the Chancellor and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury have both spoken with Lloyd’s of London over the last week to ensure that appropriate insurance cover is available for operators in the light of the ongoing conflict, including policies to cover businesses for losses and disruption caused by the war, civil war and revolution.
I also stress that we are absolutely focused on our consular work. As the noble Earl said, over 101,000 British nationals have returned to the UK since the start of the conflict, including those who returned on the six UK Government charter flights from Muscat and Dubai. We will continue to work with airlines to increase commercial capacity and volume for British nationals. Commercial options have certainly increased. On Sunday, we saw 35 flights, carrying over 8,000 nationals, arrive back home. There is an estimate of a further 300,000 remaining in the region and, obviously, we will provide what consular support we can. I reassure noble Lords that we are making every effort to support the couple who have been arrested and detained. We are doing everything we can through our consular support.
The question from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, related to that from the noble Earl. Obviously, our diplomatic relationships with Iran ensure that we can make those clear representations. I am aware that my honourable friend the Minister for MENA, Minister Falconer, has called in the ambassador here to make those representations strongly, as well as trying to provide consular support.
The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, asked what ministerial engagement we have had. Minister Falconer has been constantly engaged with the commissioners and the embassy here, but also in many phone calls. The Foreign Secretary visited Saudi Arabia on 12 March to demonstrate our support for regional allies and particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council. We are with them absolutely. She saw the defensive support that the UK is providing in response to the immediate Iranian strikes, and discussed how the UK and Gulf states are working together to address threats to energy and civilian infrastructure. Our priority is to make sure that we keep the economy moving, because it helps us back at home. Our Saudi partners are certainly playing a critical role in protecting critical infrastructure and civilians, including the more than 25,000 British nationals who call Saudi Arabia home. The Foreign Secretary has also spoken with leaders across the wider region, including G7 partners, about that.
I turn to the humanitarian situation, particularly in Lebanon, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. As we discussed earlier with the Oral Question to which my noble friend Lord Lemos responded, it is a critical situation. We not only announced £5 million initially but have added another £10 million to make £15 million of humanitarian assistance to Lebanon and neighbouring areas. As we have heard, the situation is incredibly dire—the infrastructure and the bombing.
We have certainly made our position very clear: we have condemned the escalation and the Foreign Secretary has been very clear with all sides that further escalation of this conflict is in no one’s interest. Hezbollah must cease its attacks on Israel. We have also been clear with the Israelis that they must not expand this war further into Lebanon, but must do everything to protect civilians and comply with international humanitarian law.
I appreciate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, mentioning Sudan. This conflict is taking our eyes away from the current situation there. We heard from President Zelensky, who was in Parliament this week, who made it absolutely clear that Putin must not benefit from this conflict. We have been very clear about that. We also must understand that many of the sides within Sudan’s conflict have had support from the players who are now involved in this conflict. We must ensure that we do not forget Sudan and that we keep it high up the agenda.
I do not doubt that we will cover more points, but I conclude that we are engaged in supporting our allies and determined to do what we can through defensive measures to protect our interests. We will continue—the Defence Secretary visited Cyprus earlier this week—to take all possible actions to do that.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, the key justification of President Trump in launching this war of choice was that it was a pre-emptive action on his part because Iran was poised to produce nuclear weapons. Has not that claim been blown out of the water by the evidence just given to Congress by his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, that Iran had not sought to enrich uranium since the massive attacks last summer, and that therefore there was no justification for pre-emption, as suggested by the President? Does this not justify our Prime Minister in his cautious response to the US demand for assistance and his tilt towards closer co-operation with our European allies?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
As I said in my initial response, the Prime Minister has been absolutely correct in ensuring that we focus on international law and on our interests. We should not underestimate the threat of Iran—it is a serious threat to us. That is why the previous Government and this Government have put so much effort into ensuring that it does not get nuclear weapons. With our E3 partners, we have engaged in extensive negotiations in the lead-up to snapback, and Iran chose not to accept our demands; faced with Iran’s continuous nuclear escalation, we were compelled to trigger that snapback, and we ensured that we got decisive UN Security Council support for that. We are absolutely clear about the requirement to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons remains—it is a threat that is serious. We also need to understand its actions in the region, not only to do with its proxy facilities but even in what this terrible regime has been doing to its own population. We should be clear about the threat that Iran is to the whole of the world.
Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)
Would the Minister accept that many of us applaud the caution of the Government in this situation? I was proud to visit, in a previous generation, the Armilla patrol, but the situation is entirely different from then. Forcing the Strait of Hormuz against organised opposition would be an extremely dangerous undertaking. If anybody wants to cast their minds back into history, they will see that we have a precedent for that from almost this month 110 years ago. Will the Minister accept that we should be very careful in engaging in military action to clear the Strait of Hormuz before there is an operative ceasefire of some kind?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have been very clear that the most important outcome is a negotiated settlement and agreement to achieve the end of this war. The Strait of Hormuz presents us with a problem. We are in detailed negotiations with our allies because, as the noble Lord accepts, what we are facing now is very different from what we faced 10 or 20 years ago. Technology has changed. As the Foreign Secretary said in the other place, we have not just air drones but sea drones and other different things—it is not just about guns along the bank. It is important that we understand that. We are actively working with our allies to see how we can address this.
Either the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, or the noble Earl—by the way, I should have said happy birthday to him; dealing with this Statement at the end of the week is not a birthday occupation—referred to international law and the law of the sea. The law of navigation and trade is the number one priority for the UK and our ability to trade and be economically viable, so we are going to continue to work with our allies. The noble Lord is right that in the end we need a negotiated settlement.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. I associate myself with the constructive and thoughtful way in which he has responded and with the comments made by other noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, because of the issues that he raised on Sudan.
Does the Minister accept that there is no hierarchy of wrongs, whether we are talking about the attack by the US and Israel in an unprovoked war on Iran and its population or about Iran itself conducting a blatant disregard of human concerns and pouring wars on its neighbours? I utterly condemn both those actions. Does the Minister accept that there was a peaceful solution in place, according to the Minister from Oman, and that it would have been possible if international laws had not been broken?
I have two questions. First, can the Minister assure this House that in our measured action—and I congratulate our Government on the way they have conducted themselves so far—no support is provided for killing innocent civilians in Iran? Secondly, the Minister will be aware that the al-Aqsa mosque has been closed to Palestinian Muslims for prayers at this auspicious time. Tomorrow is Eid. Has he had any opportunity to make representations to the Israeli Government to say that the mosque should be open?
Lastly, I wish Eid Mubarak to all those who are going to celebrate the end of the month of Ramadan.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I certainly join the noble Baroness in her last comment in wishing everyone a successful conclusion to Ramadan.
It is not a question of simply saying, “That’s wrong and that’s wrong”. What we have faced in relation to Iran is a state that has committed crimes across the globe, even here in this country, and we need to be aware of that. We are facing a situation where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Iran for standing up for their democratic rights.
The Prime Minister was clear why we made the determination in terms of our view of international law and not putting our forces in any doubt about their role. But once Iran started indiscriminately bombing and attacking its neighbours, which had not participated in the first attack, that was when we needed to ensure decisive defensive action, which we will continue to do. I come back to what I said to the noble Lord just now. At the end of the day, we want to see a negotiated settlement and something that is sustainable, but it cannot be on the basis that Iran can continue to develop nuclear weapons or to pose state threats.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too thank our Armed Forces and echo the greetings “Eid Mubarak” to all who are celebrating tomorrow, but I want to pick up on what the Minister has already said. The Iranian regime, through the IRGC, has cracked down violently on its own people, killing tens of thousands. Via its proxy, Hezbollah, it has attacked British interests at RAF Akrotiri. Can I ask about the threats of Iranian-linked activity on British soil? Twenty IRGC-linked plots are being monitored and four recent arrests of people conducting surveillance on Jewish sites have been made. The pro-Iran regime vigils and demonstrations have added to the sense of threat felt by the Jewish communities in this country—and I declare my interest as a proud British Jew. When will the Government proscribe the IRGC?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I think I have indicated the nature of the regime in Iran and the way that it has undermined and attacked people not only within its own country but across the globe. That is why the UK now has over 550 sanctions against Iranian-linked individuals and entities, including, let us not forget, the IRGC, which has been sanctioned in its entirety. Over 220 designations have been imposed since this Government came into office. It is a long-standing position under successive Administrations, as the noble Baroness knows, not to comment on the detail of security and intelligence matters, including whether a specific organisation is being considered for proscription. But we recognise, as she rightly pointed out, the threat posed by the IRGC and will not hesitate to take the most effective measures against the Iranian regime. A separate list of proscribed terrorist organisations is kept under review, and the threats to the UK are kept under review. I remind the noble Baroness that we have made a commitment: Jonathan Hall KC, as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has examined how the UK’s legal framework should address hostile activity by state actors and entities, and we are committed to taking his recommendations forward.
Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for this Statement and applaud the Prime Minister and the Government for the way that they have responded to the crisis in the Middle East all the way through, both in relation to British people abroad and the entire international situation. I speak as the FCDO envoy on Palestinian governance; I have been there regularly over the last couple of years. I am trying, in a small way, to assist the Palestinian Authority to build an effective Palestinian state, with the rule of law, for the future. This is fundamental work if we want a two-state solution in the future.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for raising the issue of the West Bank in his remarks. The West Bank is suffering quite significantly from a tightening economic stranglehold, where the tax revenues are collected by the current Israeli Government and not transferred regularly to the Palestinian Authority, so most public sector workers are on a small proportion—25% or 30%—of their salary. In addition, there are a thousand checkpoints across the West Bank and, in some cases, there is aggressive settler violence. That is making the growth of the economy, never mind the governance of the West Bank, ever more difficult. But there are some very powerful, effective, thoughtful and constructive Ministers in the Palestinian Authority, and I am delighted that the British Government are doing their best to help them. Does the Minister agree that this is a time, with all the other distractions in the Middle East, to continue that work to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and, if possible, to make its work even stronger and more effective?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his comments and agree completely with him. When the Foreign Secretary presented her Statement in the other place, I think she said that we must redouble our efforts in focusing on and supporting a two-state solution. I acknowledge the work that my noble friend undertakes to support the Palestinian Authority. We made that support clear, which is why we took the decision to recognise Palestine, because we need to ensure that that is the focus.
The Foreign Secretary responded to a number of things. When I last visited the West Bank, I saw the groups of thugs—I do not call them settlers—who sit on top of the hills above Palestinian villages. They do not just harass people: the most horrendous case that we saw this week was a family returning from the shops, and young children being shot. We have made representations and are asking for clear investigations into this. The rule of law applies to Palestinian people too. They deserve the opportunity to be able to live and work in peace.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, particularly around how conflicts abroad should not result in hate on our streets. I fully back his call for a cross-party meeting of senior Members of your Lordships’ House to look at how we can work together to ensure that antisemitism and Islamophobia are not allowed to spread, given what is happening in the Middle East.
I also wholeheartedly back the Minister’s comments about what is happening in the West Bank. Those incidents, such as individuals being attacked, are heartbreaking. Often it is not just the young but the elderly who are brutalised and beaten up for no reason other than the fact that they live there. Your Lordships’ House should be very clear that the Government of the United Kingdom will take strong action against anyone who is involved in that, including sanctioning further individuals.
One point that has not been mentioned so far is the Houthis in Yemen. At the moment they have stayed out of this conflict, but what assessment have His Majesty’s Government made about the impact, particularly on trade, if the Houthis were to enter this conflict? There is huge attention on fuel at the moment, and the fact that energy prices are both affecting us domestically and, as I mentioned in the earlier debate, affecting energy-intensive industries such as steel, in places such as south Wales, south Yorkshire and Scunthorpe.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
On the comments about the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia, we all have a duty, across political parties, to ensure that we focus on greater community cohesion. That is fundamental, because there is no doubt that there has been an increase in both Islamophobia and antisemitism, and we need to address that. My noble friends across Whitehall have been working on how we can work across government to deal with that issue. The idea of discussions is something that the usual channels could look at; it is certainly worthy of consideration.
The noble Lord discussed Yemen. We have seen a huge humanitarian crisis there as a consequence of the actions of the parties, particularly the Houthis. We constantly review the situation and work with our allies: we have had discussions with Saudi Arabia in particular, but our focus at the moment is on the whole region. This conflict is destabilising the whole region; we need to ensure that we give support to our allies so that they can defend their position.
Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on avoiding the pull towards an illegal and pointless conflict in the Middle East, despite the pressure brought to bear from some national and international corners. We have heard much about the impact of the conflict on oil and gas supplies. What we have not talked about quite so much has been the impact on our diplomatic efforts in the region, and no doubt there will have been a large impact and much disruption to those diplomatic matters. Your Lordships’ House has heard and asked questions in previous weeks about the conditions for Craig and Lindsay Foreman, the two Brits jailed in Tehran a few weeks ago, just before the conflict began. Can my noble friend the Minister update us on the diplomatic efforts that are continuing to be made to secure their safety, security, health and ultimate release, despite the devastating impact of the conflict on the usual diplomatic channels?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. The noble Earl raised the Foremans in his contribution and I responded by saying that we are making every effort through our consular services and maintaining that diplomatic link. My noble friend is right to focus on the importance of diplomacy. We talk about the need for defence and for ensuring that our allies have the appropriate support, but the sort of dialogue that we have been engaged in is vital, and we will continue to do that. Our thoughts are very much with the Foremans and with their family. It must be incredibly concerning to be in this situation, and we are making all efforts to provide consular support and make representations to ensure their release.