Greenhouse Gas Removals Sector

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)]

May I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) on securing a debate on this important topic? I thank him for all his engagement on this and many other issues, and for his leadership on the energy transition. In the rising noise in and outside this place against facts on the climate crisis in front of us today, it is genuinely a relief to have conversations with him about what we can do about the reality. On that, he makes a hugely important contribution to the House. In all my engagements with him, I come away having learned something new; I thank him for that.

I will start where the hon. Gentleman started: by recognising that we cannot put off our response to the climate crisis to tomorrow. We are now living through extremely hot weather caused in part by the action that we did not take to tackle the climate crisis. While this is one of the hottest summers that we have lived through, it is almost certainly one of the coldest summers that we will live through, so every single step we can take to tackle this crisis should be taken.

We absolutely need greenhouse gas removal technologies to reach net zero and to tackle the climate crisis. Such technologies give us a not just a huge opportunity to balance the residual emissions from hard-to-decarbonise sectors, but—as we have said throughout all of the work the Government are doing on the clean power mission and beyond—an exciting opportunity to grow our economy and secure new investment into the UK. When I say that, I mean all parts of the UK, including Northern Ireland, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly always challenges me on. This is not just the Government’s view; it is firmly the view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and our own independent Climate Change Committee. That is why we are looking ahead and investing in these technologies.

Last year, in our carbon budget and growth delivery plan, we set out how the UK will continue to reduce emissions in a way that lowers bills and secures good jobs, including developing and deploying GGRs at scale. We forecast 0.7 megatonnes of engineered GGRs deployed in 2030, with that figure increasing exponentially to 21.8 megatonnes by 2035. We are laying the groundwork now to support the massive growth that we expect to see in the 2030s, because, as exciting as these technologies are, they are new, and it will take a comprehensive and holistic policy framework to get us to where we need to be.

I will set out six steps, many of which will respond to the points made by the hon. Gentleman. The first is providing support to incentivise private investment through a contractual revenue support mechanism. That is the GGR business model, designed to stimulate private investment in GGRs by providing revenue support under a contract for difference mechanism. It aims to capitalise on growing demand for high integrity GGRs in the voluntary carbon market and, in the longer term, in the UK emissions trading scheme, designed to enable the deployment of GGR projects at scale in the UK while ensuring at all times value for money for taxpayers.

We are employing similar approaches to support energy from waste, with carbon capture and storage through the waste industrial carbon capture business model and large-scale bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, through our power BECCS business model. We are also exploring the case for financing GGR technologies not reliant on CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure, such as enhanced rock weathering and CO₂ mineralisation in building materials, as we recognise that there are a number of benefits to a diverse portfolio of GGR technologies. No decisions have been made on the particular intervention or mechanism.

I want to reference the point that the hon. Gentleman has raised with me before and he raised today as well on the British carbon bank, or the idea of some kind of revolving fund. It is a serious idea that we will look at carefully, because we recognise that there is a real benefit to having that portfolio in place. We have already invested money, as I will come on to, but looking at interventions like that is important. We will continue to engage with him and the wider sector on how that could work.

Secondly, we are introducing a new standard to ensure that investors and the public have confidence in these technologies. To complement the business models, we have commissioned the British Standards Institution to develop methodologies under an official UK GGR standard, and that is expected to be published next year. This is about making sure that carbon removals are genuine and verifiable, and having a standard in place so that we can objectively assess the viability and suitability of projects applying to the business model.

The BSI development process generates high-integrity standards and benchmarks, bringing together industry specialists, academics and policymakers from across relevant sectors to produce a consensus-based final product. It is an example of a strong point made by the hon. Gentleman: everything we need to make this work is already here in Britain. The academics, the industry specialists, the skills and the capabilities are all here, and we just need to look at how we capitalise on those resources as quickly as possible.

Thirdly, we know that carbon capture, usage and storage infrastructure is critical for enabling some of these technologies, and we have been committed to deploying CCUS at scale. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) about the need to capitalise on investment that we have already made, and to continue down that path by investing in these projects. In October 2024, just a few months after we took office, we made a significant funding commitment of up to £21.7 billion over 25 years to kick-start the CCUS industry here in Britain. GGR projects have been able to apply to the expansion of the HyNet and East Coast clusters through the HyNet Track-1 expansion process, the Teesside selection process and the non-pipeline transport pathfinder process—all very catchy names. I can already confirm that the HyNet Track-1 expansion includes two GGR projects that are in the negotiation phase of that process.

Fourthly, we are investing in innovation. For many of these technologies, there is research that still needs to be undertaken and there are breakthroughs that are waiting to be made. We have already invested over £80 million through the direct air capture and greenhouse gas removal innovation programme and the UK Research and Innovation funded greenhouse gas removal demonstrator programme and its co-ordinating hub.

The carbon budget and growth delivery plan committed to launching a series of cleantech innovation challenges that target mission-critical innovation. These will set specific, measurable, time-bound goals for innovation, co-owned with industry, which will mobilise public and private sector investment and focus policy efforts on creating the necessary market pull for new technologies and, in the process, de-risking those investments into new innovations.

That leads me to the fifth point about how we stimulate market demand. We want to engineer GGR projects to generate high-quality carbon credits that can be sold on high-integrity negative emissions markets, and so we will maximise the opportunity for the voluntary carbon markets to channel private finance into those GGR projects. At COP29, we launched six principles for voluntary carbon and nature market integrity to guide organisations into taking voluntary action towards nature-positive and net zero goals.

When we consulted on those principles with stakeholders, they highlighted that, in order to unlock the full potential of the voluntary carbon market, there is a need for greater clarity on the definition of high-quality carbon credits and how credits could be used in corporate net zero claims. Alongside the Governments of Singapore and Kenya, we are leading development of the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets to strengthen corporate demand for high-integrity carbon credits, and anyone and everyone is welcome to join that coalition.

Our long-term ambition is for a competitive negative emissions market, underpinned by demand in the carbon market and the UK emissions trading scheme. We have signalled our intention to include GGRs in the UK ETS. Last summer, the ETS authority published a response to the consultation on the inclusion of GGRs in the ETS, setting out further details on how we will do this.

Finally, we are considering the findings of the independent review into GGRs that we commissioned last year under my noble Friend and all-round GGR and general energy expert and nerd, Lord Whitehead, who did fantastic work. I can assure the hon. Member for West Dorset and the House that that review is certainly not gathering dust on my desk; I have been flicking through it far too much for it to be gathering dust. I can say to the hon. Gentleman that the review includes many interesting and useful conclusions. We are taking time to go through them in detail, but we aim to publish the response this month. I am sorry that that is not quite an exact date, but I hope it is close enough.

I hope that the steps that I have outlined today will reassure the House that this Government take the future of GGRs extremely seriously. We know that these technologies will be essential to reducing our emissions while growing the economy on the road to net zero by 2050, and that is why we are acting now. I want to conclude by coming back to the point where the hon. Gentleman started. It is absolutely critical that we rebuild, where we can, the consensus on acting on the most existential crisis that this planet faces. The climate crisis is not some future threat that we can have a theoretical debate about now and worry about later; it is a very real and pressing threat, and GGRs will play a really important part in addressing it. The Government are determined to make that happen, and there is an economic opportunity if we get this right as well. I absolutely commit to working with the wider industry, with the hon. Gentleman and with everyone else who has an interest in this fascinating subject in order to make this work.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Unless I am misunderstanding him, the Minister has committed to making a policy announcement this month. There are only a few more sitting days, and he will know that Mr Speaker does not take lightly policy announcements being made outside the House; this House is where those announcements should be made for scrutiny by Back-Bench MPs. No doubt the Minister’s staff will be scribbling that down.

Question put and agreed to.

Commonhold and Leasehold Reform: Managing Agents

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing and leading this important debate. I pay tribute to the work of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee under her leadership, which generated a 159-page report containing a series of recommendations. I am conscious of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not comment on the remarks made by Members from all parts of the House, but I extend my thanks to all those who made considered and important contributions.

The Opposition support leasehold reform. As we have heard many times, there are approximately 5 million leasehold properties in England and Wales, and it is clear that the leasehold system comes with problems and requires change. For too many leaseholders, the costs just keep piling up. In 2023-24, the average ground rent paid by a leaseholder in England was £304. Alongside that, there was a 5.8% increase in the annual service charge, taking the average annual cost to nearly £3,000. In London, those costs are even higher, with an average of £412 charged for ground rent and service charges sitting at about £8,000 in some modern high-rises.

Even at their highest, the costs continue to rise, bringing more uncertainty for leaseholders. Service charges in particular can rise astronomically, leaving leaseholders having to pay thousands of pounds more than they ever intended or believed they would pay, and some flats virtually impossible to sell. On top of that, for too many leaseholders, the costs they pay come with no transparency about how their money is spent, how spending decisions are reached, and who signs off on them. Lack of clarity around these costs is a problem that policy makers cannot ignore.

Knowledge of these problems is not new. In 2018, the then Government established a regulation of property agents working group under the chairmanship of the noble Lord Best. The group examined the key issues impacting leaseholders and the need for reform in the sector. The group issued its report in 2019 and proposed a new regulator and regulatory regime, and a new enforcement system. Neither the previous Government nor the current one did a great deal to bring that about. Seven years later, we still await any meaningful Government action building on the recommendations of the report, and the draft Bill is silent on that issue.

It is not the only thing that leaseholders have to wait for. In two years, the Government have not yet implemented the full measures promised in the Conservative Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. The Government have said that they have their own plans for leasehold reform, but leaseholders have been told time and again to wait for a new Bill because of significant flaws in LAFRA. For two years, we have been told that primary legislation is required to fix the Act, but nothing has been done, and the draft Bill produced by the Government in January this year does not address the supposed flaws of the previous Act.

That prompts the question: where is that legislation and what is taking so long? Why are the Government proposing to bring forward a Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill that does not offer these fixes? If the eventual Bill remains in line with the previously published draft Bill, when can we expect the next Bill to address those changes? Assuming this Parliament lasts for a full term, we are now 40% of the way through its life, and we have had more Secretaries of State in that time than actual leasehold reforms.

The Housing Minister himself spent the end of his time in Opposition highlighting the need for speedy implementation of new rights for leaseholders, pressing the previous Conservative Government to

“give us a sense of the timetabling of some of the more important provisions in the Bill, because leaseholders watching our proceedings will want to know when the rights provided for by the Bill can be enjoyed.”

Well, he was clearly correct, so I wonder what the shadow Minister of that day would say to the Housing Minister of today. I believe he would ask the same question as me: if not now, then when? When can leaseholders expect to see their rights come into force?

At the end of January this year, the Government published the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill. According to the draft Bill, leaseholders can expect a ban on leasehold for most new flats; a new commonhold system, including rules for mixed use, mandatory reserve funds and quicker debt recovery; a ground rent cap of £250 per year for many existing leases, which reduces to a peppercorn after 40 years; abolition of forfeiture and the introduction of a more proportionate court-based enforcement regime; and the repeal of rentcharge powers on freehold estates.

Perhaps most eye-catching of those is the much-touted ground rent cap, as the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee set out in her opening speech. The Opposition recognise the need to support leaseholders facing high costs, but while capping ground rent may sound like a silver bullet, for many leaseholders it might be closer to a damp squib. That is because ground rent is usually nowhere near the level of service charges, which can have a genuine and very real impact on a buyer’s ability to find a mortgage. For the many leaseholders burdened by excessive and unclear service charges and rising council tax, the ground rent cap is a mirage in a desert of higher council taxes, escalating service charges and poor building management.

While this move may have some marginal benefit to leaseholders, there could be ramifications elsewhere. Investors have expressed deep-seated concerns about the potential impact on investor confidence and faith in the UK system. That is because the UK has long been seen as a safe, secure and predictable place for sound investment, and ground rent investments, favoured by UK pension funds among others, have become an important part of that environment. The Government’s plans to unilaterally and retrospectively revoke key aspects of pre-existing ground rent contracts have rippled through our financial districts and risk significantly negative impacts on investor confidence, with a wider undermining of our economy.

The risk of freeholder insolvencies does exist and could be dangerous, as the Government know because their own impact statement lists freeholder insolvencies as a realistic cost that could have spillover impacts on leaseholders. If the Government get this wrong, there could end up being a significant, albeit unintended, risk to leaseholders—people with families and mortgages, or those living in their first home. All of this prompts the question: why is the Government’s focus on ground rent and not service charges? I hope the Minister will take the necessary time to address these very real fears and explain his choice.

As outlined by the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green in her opening speech, one of the main focuses of today’s debate concerns the question of the regulation of managing agents and the Select Committee’s recommendation that clauses providing for this are inserted into any forthcoming Bill. We have heard compelling arguments from hon. Members from across the House, and powerful testimonies.

With the Government’s plans for a wholesale market conversion to commonhold, this issue becomes all the more pressing. That is because in moving to commonhold, there is the prospect of responsibility for building safety and management for thousands of flats moving from professionals to residents. That might work perfectly with a dedicated, well-trained and attentive residents’ committee at the helm, but what about the multitude of buildings where that may not be the case? What happens when the roof begins to crack, the water starts to seep in and the lifts begin to break down? What happens when the sinking fund has been drained and the residents’ committee chair, who might be under mounting social pressure, is forced to cut service charges to unhealthily and impractically low levels?

If commonhold is to become the norm, we must ensure that the Government are not laissez-faire in how they implement the system. They must not blindfold residents who may sleepwalk into a situation in which their homes are under management without proper training, a strong mandate and adequate knowledge of building safety and flood risks. To guard against that, it may very well be that commonhold residents choose to hire a managing agent to care for their homes.

Managing agents exist today—some are good, and some are not—but, as I outlined at the start of my speech, many leaseholders have spoken about the bad experiences they have had at the hands of some agents. The difference between managing agents being appointed under a commonhold system rather than a leasehold one is that the managing agent’s client would be the homeowners themselves, not a distant freeholder. The residents themselves would have the power to hire and fire the managing agent. That is why the Committee’s recommendations are so important.

If there is to be a regulator, it must have teeth, as the noble Lord Best said in his 2019 report and implied again in his evidence to the Committee on 10 March, and as the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green said in her speech. If there is a regulator, it is absolutely crucial that it works as intended. It would need to have the requisite expertise, personnel and budget to discharge its duties efficiently. Lessons must be learned from the failings of other regulators, such as the Building Safety Regulator.

The Government are considering bringing their Bill forward and examining the Committee’s work. If the Government decide to heed the recommendations of the Committee, I hope the Minister will commit to working across parties and with the whole industry to ensure that the Government get it right the first time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Minister Pennycook has agreed to give a short speech to accommodate the next debate.

British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

When I was elected nearly two years ago, the very first person to contact me was a BCSSS member. There are about 750 BCSSS members in my constituency, and the campaign has certainly been part of my heart ever since I was elected. I know that many BCSSS members will be watching tonight and listening to the debate, and I am sure that the stories you tell will ensure that they are—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. No “you” or “your”.

[Jo White]

May I take this opportunity to reassure those BCSSS members that, whoever is the next Prime Minister, this issue will continue to be the No. 1 issue for most of my colleagues and the Members here today?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Pitcher]

The Minister talked earlier about putting the wrongs right, and those decisions that will be made in the future will hopefully do just that, but once that is done, we want to make sure that they are future-proofed for everyone, regardless of what happens in the future. Will the Minister also commit to ensuring that once those wrongs are put right, that will continue, whoever governs in the future?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. You have had more than one intervention, Mr Pitcher.

[Chris McDonald]

Like my hon. Friend, I sincerely hope that these changes will permanently right the wrongs. It is important that we think carefully about moving as much money as possible out of the scheme, but also ensuring that there are sufficient funds to pay existing pensions.

Let me briefly raise the issue of the mineworkers’ pension scheme. The Government are taking a similar approach to both schemes. In 2024 they transferred the mineworkers pension scheme reserve, increasing pensions by 32%, but I want to reassure members of that scheme that I am also considering proposals for future arrangements put forward by their trustees. Those proposals could further enhance members’ benefits, and we are seeking to do that as swiftly as possible, while also managing the future funding risks.

Steel Tariffs

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. May I ask the Minister to keep his responses short? Back Benchers should keep their questions on point as well?

[Chris McDonald]

I will endeavour to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Let me say to my hon. Friend that I will do exactly what I have done since the day these draft measures were announced: engage with Members on both sides of the House and with all businesses. I hope Members will feel that I have endeavoured to do that. We have had had cross-party discussions and I have had many meetings with businesses, trade associations and individual colleagues, and I am determined to continue to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)]

This issue has raised a great many concerns in my constituency and across the Black Country. I have been working closely with my colleagues in Sandwell in particular, and we have had many meetings with local companies and communication with my hon. Friends the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) and for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes).

Hadley Industries, a large employer, is already considering downscaling its number of employees. Pargat Housewares in my constituency, another large employer, is a significant manufacturer of pots, pans and bakeware—in fact, it is one of the largest manufacturers in the UK, supplying most of our superstores and exporting. However, steel suitable for kitchenware is not manufactured in the UK in significant quantities and at competitive prices. What advice would the Minister give you give companies that are facing a 60%—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call the Minister.

[Chris McDonald]

I am familiar with the issue of kitchenware, which is very similar to some of the other issues that have been raised. If a particular kind of steel falls within a tariff area, not because it is made or could be made in the UK but because it is grouped in that way as part of the trade measures, the quota is designed to resolve that. If the business in question feels that there is a problem with setting the quota, I ask my hon. Friend to write to me. Alternatively, representatives of those businesses could come and meet my officials.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. If Members have prepared a long question, I suggest they cross most of it out.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

On Monday my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) asked the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), about the impact of these new steel tariffs on the defence investment plan. His answer was not particularly clear, which surprised me, given the strong representations that both he and I will have had from the Plymouth Manufacturers’ Group. What conversations have the Minister and his colleagues had with the Ministry of Defence about the impact of tariffs on the DIP, and will he agree to meet me and the Plymouth Manufacturers’ Group?

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I am going to let colleagues in on a secret: I cannot read their minds. If you are not continually bobbing, I do not know whether you are uninterested or want to be called.

[Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)]

May I ask about jobs? I appreciate that the Minister has answered a lot of questions about tariffs, but a lot of my constituents work in Trostre, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith). We have talked a lot about the £2.5 billion steel fund. Nearly two years later, sites such as Trostre are still waiting, with no commitments, no timelines and no certainty on investment. No answers were found in the steel strategy, which was published in March. Can the Minister give me a straight answer on when Welsh steel sites will see investment from the steel fund?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris McDonald]

The right hon. Member is quite right that there is a 12-month review. I thank him for his engagement, particularly with Stannah Stairlifts, but also for his further suggestions to me privately about how we might manage the transition. I want to reassure him that I am looking very carefully at the ideas he has raised.

To be clear about this, I think everyone in this House believes in free and fair trade, and we all wish we lived in a world where there were no tariffs. UK Steel has welcomed these measures, but has also said it would prefer it if there were not any tariffs. Unfortunately, this is the product of the world we are in. I do not think this is “mucking about with tariffs.” Essentially, we are responding to the global trading situation, and trying to ensure we have a strategy for a viable UK industry.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Sir John Whittingdale, who, after hearing the answer, may wish to get into the private Members’ Bills queue.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Indeed. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can Minister state what assessment he has made of the grades of steel that are simply not produced in this country? What is his message to companies such as C&M Precision Ltd in my constituency, and all those mentioned this afternoon, that face an immediate increase in their costs, because they have absolutely no alternative except to import their steel?

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Monday 8th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue of the London Screw Company, and also for the discussion he had with me about that very company last week. It looks to me to produce an extraordinarily high-quality range of products, and certainly better than I normally find for my DIY projects, so it is my intention to patronise that company in future—we should all have more high-quality ironmongery, I believe. In a similar vein, if my hon. Friend writes to me with further details, I will ensure that my officials look at that matter, but in the first instance we would look to see whether those steels are made or could be made in the UK.

Unless there are any further questions about downstream steel producing, I will move on to address more of the shadow Minister’s comments. She talked about the public interest test in clause 2. Some of the amendments would limit the test exclusively to consideration of the three factors in clause 2, whereas amendment 23 seeks to expand them to include the prevention of closure or job losses in Wales. The inclusion of the three factors in the Bill offers some additional weight, and of course any assessment of an intervention will need to be considered against them. However, there may be a good rationale for an intervention that moved beyond that and did not sit squarely under those factors, so in our view it would be sensible not to bind the hands of the Government in that way.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

Steel provides vital materials for our national infrastructure, from defence to renewable energy, and creates thousands of jobs across the UK. The Liberal Democrats therefore welcome the action that the Government are taking to protect British Steel and ensure that the blast furnaces in Scunthorpe do not go cold, but we are clear that the nationalisation of British Steel must be a temporary step to rescue the business before it can be returned to the private sector. We believe in a thriving, privately run steel industry, supported and empowered by the Government through an effective steel strategy.

Although the Liberal Democrats support this step, the Government must provide more detail on the plan, including how they will find private co-investors who can help to modernise the sites and put the money in to help to create more jobs. They must also ensure that the key stakeholders, including industries that rely on steel such as defence, are properly engaged in and represented through the process. We cannot afford another collapse of British Steel in a few years’ time, and we must move on from interim short-term measures to create a robust long-term plan for the future of the plant and sustainable domestic steel production, with an emphasis on national security.

I wish to speak first in favour of amendment 1, which stands in my name. Fundamentally, it is about parliamentary accountability. If the Secretary of State is to exercise a significant transfer power, Parliament should, at the very least, be told why that action is necessary and in the public interest. The amendment would not prevent the Government from acting; it would simply require Ministers to explain their reasoning before exercising the power, providing far greater accountability and transparency. Requiring a statement to both Houses would help to ensure that the use of the powers is proportionate, justified and open to democratic oversight. The Government already argue that the powers will be used only where necessary. If that is the case, there should be no objection to setting out those reasons clearly before Parliament. Amendment 1 proposes a modest and reasonable safeguard. It does not create a veto or impose an onerous process; it merely asks Ministers to account for their decisions.

I wish to speak in favour of amendments 2 and 3, which seek to ensure that regulations relating to property transfers and share transfers are made subject to the affirmative procedure rather than the negative procedure. The transfer of property or shares by ministerial regulation is not a minor or purely technical matter. These provisions are the heart of the Bill and give the Government significant powers with substantial financial, operational and public consequences. Given the importance of such decisions, does the Minister not agree that it is entirely appropriate that Parliament should approve such regulations, rather than having to rely on the limited scrutiny afforded by the negative procedure? The affirmative procedure would guarantee a debate and a vote in both Houses, ensuring proper democratic oversight before the powers were exercised. At their core, amendments 2 and 3 are about reinforcing accountability, transparency and parliamentary sovereignty in the exercise of delegated powers, and I urge Members to support them.

New clause 2, which also stands in my name, would establish a stakeholder advisory committee to ensure that decisions made under the powers in the Bill included input from the relevant groups and those most affected. The exercise of principal transfer powers could have major implications not only for the steel undertaking itself, but for workers, local communities, supply chains and strategically important industries across the country. The proposed committee would bring together voices from industry, the workforce and local authorities, ensuring that decisions were grounded in practical expertise and real-world consequences. The inclusion of sectors such as defence and critical national infrastructure is particularly important, given the strategic significance of the steel supply to national resilience and economic security. A structured advisory mechanism would improve transparency, strengthen confidence in decision making and help to ensure that interventions are sustainable and effective. New clause 2 is about ensuring that the public interest is determined not behind closed doors, but with the benefit of broad expertise and stakeholder input.

I wish to speak in favour of new clause 3, which recognises that intervention in a steel undertaking cannot simply be about ownership or transfer powers in isolation. It must be about people, jobs and the long-term future of industrial communities. If the Government exercise these significant powers, they should be required to set out a clear strategy for protecting workers and supporting economic transition. Not only is the steel industry strategically important to the national economy; it is often central to the identity and prosperity of the local communities within which it is situated. Workers in these industries possess highly valuable and specialised skills. Any transition strategy should therefore prioritise the protection of skilled employment wherever possible. Where change is unavoidable, there must be a serious commitment to retraining, reskilling and redeployment opportunities so that workers are not left behind. New clause 3 would help to ensure that Government intervention was accompanied by a coherent industrial strategy, rather than being another short-term fix and crisis management.

Steelmaking is of vital strategic importance to the UK. It creates thousands of jobs across the country and is central to many communities, and we rely on it for essential parts of our national infrastructure, from defence and transport to clean energy generation and advanced manufacturing. Although the Liberal Democrats are supportive of the pace and urgency of the Government’s action to protect British Steel, nationalisation must be a temporary step, and the Government must ensure adequate transparency and accountability throughout the process. I therefore urge the Minister to support these amendments, to ensure that the legislation can deliver the necessary support to the steel industry, while balancing the needs of local communities and workers and ensuring that the necessary steps are taken to ensure thorough parliamentary accountability.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Myer]

As a Back Bencher, I will always fight for more funding to modernise our steel industry. What I do know is that the current owners of British Steel are not responsible owners. We saw last year the crisis that was created when they failed to provide sufficient supply to keep the blast furnaces running. We cannot allow the current situation to continue if we are to protect our domestic industry. This Bill is about having the powers to nationalise and ensure that the national interest is served. Whether there is sufficient funding is a question on which I will continue to push the Government.

We are not focusing today on clause 58, but the freedom to make the necessary fiscal decisions to support operational stability and competitiveness is fundamental to the sunset clause we are discussing, as well as the potential for ongoing considerations on other critical assets that the Bill might be used for. It would be helpful to hear more about the Government’s intentions on issues like energy and procurement, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) said. We had a positive intervention from the Cabinet Office last year and the ambition to increase domestic steel market share back towards 50% is right, but the test will be in the delivery.

For too long, we have had industrial strategies while approving publicly backed projects that import vast quantities of overseas steel. Taxpayers rightly expect public investment to strengthen British industry and British jobs. Mechanisms like contracts for difference and other subsidy schemes must align much more closely with procurement objectives, so that public money genuinely supports UK supply chains. The forthcoming defence investment plan is a major opportunity to ensure that we are using UK steel across the country in industrial communities to support national security. At the end of the day, economic security is national security. Britain cannot become dangerously dependent on overseas steel for critical infrastructure or defence capability.

While I support the shift to electric arc furnaces and the increased focus on how we use domestic scrap, which is welcome, Britain should seek to retain some primary iron capability. Other countries are investing heavily in technologies like direct reduced iron. We need only look at Luleå in northern Sweden, for example, where an operational hydrogen-powered DRI facility is already producing steel. That has not held the region back in any way. Economically, it has had the opposite effect of attracting inward investment in new industries, from data centres to clean power. I would like to hear a little from the Minister about DRI and whether we will be looking seriously at that, but I do not wish to stray too far out of the scope of the Bill.

The legislation was brought forward in the context of British Steel, but we should not pretend that British Steel is the only critical asset that may ever require Government action. There may be other sites, capabilities and parts of the supply chain where future intervention is needed to protect jobs, sovereign capability and the national interest, so my concern with amendment 12 is that it would make these powers too easy to lose. A future Government may not share the same commitment to active industrial strategy and may not be as willing to renew the tools needed to protect the sector, so we should not remove the extension mechanism now because we may leave workers and industry more exposed later on.

Opposition Members made the point that politicians should not run businesses, although of course the Minister for Industry did run a steel business for many years and did so very effectively. They may mean that politicians from this country should not run businesses. The Bill is before us because of the approach that Jingye has taken. The Chinese steel industry has long benefited from huge state subsidies, and cheap state-directed finance, energy support and overcapacity policies. Beijing did not leave it to the market; it used state power aggressively to expand industrial capacity, which is worth bearing in mind.

I will finish on this point. While the Government cannot say which assets they wish to use these powers for, it is evident that British Steel cannot remain in Chinese hands. I do not know what the long-term ownership structure will look like—perhaps it will be modernised and sold to a new buyer, or perhaps it will be taken into public hands and remain there, with steelworkers having some stake in the company that they built—but I do know this. When a Labour Government intervened to create the nationalised British Steel Corporation in 1967, Teesside enjoyed such high employment and high wages that it was classified as one of the best places to live anywhere in the UK. It brought stability to tens of thousands of families and built the second largest blast furnace in Europe.

In 1979, a very different Government took office with a very different theory of Britain—a small state and a blind faith in the global free market. In just five years, our region had the highest registered unemployment rate anywhere in Great Britain. By the end of Thatcher’s premiership, almost 250,000 jobs in our region had gone. They took a British industrial economy and turned it into a globalised service sector economy.

Today the Thatcherites are back, with a new logo and a new face. They will talk a big game on steel, but we have been here before. It is my belief that only a social democratic Government can truly protect our steel communities and equip them to face the future, because a social democratic Government recognise something that a foreign private owner cannot: the value of protecting sovereign industry, even when the going gets tough.

This issue is about our jobs, but it is also about our security. Will we be left exposed in a volatile world, or will we build for the future again? I hope that this Labour Government have the courage and ambition to do so.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Minister McDonald, I believe you wish to contribute again.

[Chris McDonald]

There is so much so say, and so little time until the rise of the House. Members who are standing may wish to take a seat, because we might be here for a little while.

[The Chairman]

In case you are confused, Minister, we have until 10 o’clock.

[Chris McDonald]

Indeed, Madam Chair—I was banking on 10 o’clock.

I thank all Members, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin); the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney); and the former leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), for the extremely constructive and civil way in which this debate has been conducted. I know that that comes from a real enthusiasm among all Members in the Committee for having a successful steel industry.

In fact, there were many points of agreement in the debate. In debating the amendments to the first part of the Bill, the importance of the steel industry came through extremely strongly, as did the importance and reliability of the use of public money. We all share that view across this Committee, and we also want there to be extreme care in the use of the powers in the Bill. I know that Members who moved amendments in that regard are concerned about that, and the Government are too. I will address some of those points, and I will endeavour to address some of the points raised by Members during the debate. I will start by addressing a recurring theme in the debate: what nationalisation is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris McDonald]

From the Government’s perspective, there is certainly no intention to disadvantage Northern Ireland. The unique position that Northern Ireland holds is enabling it to attract additional investment above and beyond. In fact, the economic growth rate in Northern Ireland is incredibly impressive, and I look forward to seeing that when I visit in two or three weeks’ time.

Having addressed the amendments, I will move on to some of the new clauses. First, I acknowledge the incredibly constructive dialogue I have had with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) in preparing for the Bill and the tabling of her amendments. New clause 2 would place a requirement on the Secretary of State to consult an advisory committee as part of his decision-making process. The Government agree with the sentiment—we have had wide consultation with stakeholders—but there is a practical reality and in particular a commercial consideration for the exercise of the Bill’s powers. It is therefore not possible for us to accept that new clause.

New clause 3 relates to the detail of a jobs and industrial transition strategy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor asked a specific question about. I reassure Parliament that from a skills perspective, the Government will assess any impacts of a transfer on jobs, skills and local communities. In fact, that is an incredibly important part of why we would seek to intervene at all. Following an acquisition, the company’s objectives will be published as part of the shareholder framework document.

Finally, I will move on to new clause 5. Again, this issue was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor, and it also comes back to where I started the discussion about the nature of a nationalisation. While the Government in this situation would own a steel undertaking, and as the main shareholder in the business would have the opportunity to set the direction and appropriate strategic objectives, it is not the Government’s aim that the steel companies would then become an extension of the civil service, as amazing as my civil servants are. Instead, steel undertakings should be run by those who are knowledgeable and skilled in the industry, as we have seen at Sheffield Forgemasters and, as we heard, at the semiconductor factory at Octric.

Having covered the amendments and the new clauses, and perhaps tried the patience of the Committee to a great extent, it would be wise to conclude. I point out to hon. and right hon. Members that there is an additional day of debate on the Floor of the House on this Bill tomorrow. Rather than me standing here and talking to myself for six hours, they would be most welcome to come back then. If I have addressed their points sufficiently, perhaps some of those who have tabled amendments may see fit not to press them to Divisions, but otherwise, I feel I have addressed the points sufficiently for now.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

It is wonderful to see so many people interested in following this debate until 10 pm, which when our scrutiny of the Bill ends today. I will make just a few remarks, if I may. Despite the fact that we still have another day tomorrow, there were a few things in today’s debate that I have not heard sufficiently answered.

First, I pay tribute to the wise remarks from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright). I encourage the Minister to take on board his points about the wide scope of the powers the Minister is taking in this legislation. My right hon. and learned Friend is a former Attorney General, so his remarks should be heeded with a great deal of seriousness. I reiterate the questions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), who sought assurances that the blast furnaces will continue. I am not sure we heard that on the record. When the Minister next gets to the Dispatch Box in these days of debate, will he clarify his intentions as far as that is concerned?

Will the Minister provide clarity on the public interest test? Sensible remarks were made about the Regulatory Reform Committee and how the public interest test is too broadly defined. How can it ever be reversed once it has been invoked? I did not hear anything about limiting the contingent liabilities or the sunset clause, or the possible impact—mentioned in the impact report itself—on investor confidence in this country.

The Minister mentioned that he was willing to meet Members who have concerns about the steel tariffs, which are a separate issue. May I urge him, over the next 24 hours, to try to find some time in his diary so that they can raise specific examples with him?

Backing Business to Create Economic Growth

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury]

I very much welcome the work that the Minister for Roads has done on the proposed changes. I welcome the commitment to replace a patchwork of outdated rules with a single consistent framework, which will go a long way to addressing the out-of-area operations and problems that the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) outlined, and it will fix a system that too often has failed passengers and drivers.

Baroness Casey’s “National audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse” found that inconsistent taxi and private hire vehicle licensing creates vulnerabilities that can be, and were, exploited by grooming gangs. The announcement of that legislation follows the welcome commitment in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 to introduce minimum standards for drivers, operators and licensing authorities. However, many fear that minimum standards could perpetuate inconsistencies that affect vulnerable passengers, and they are seeking not minimum but absolute standards in taxi licensing.

Let me touch on something not directly connected to transport, which is the draft ticket tout Bill. While I welcome a Bill to stop ticket touts selling on concert and event tickets for vastly inflated prices, I wonder if it could be extended to car driving test slots sold by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. Or will we have to wait until the agency updates its IT systems, or possibly—perhaps successfully—manages to recruit and retain sufficient driving instructors, so that there is no longer more demand for tests than there are slots available, as that is fuelling the ticket touts? If the Eavis family have managed to stop ticket touts making a killing from Glastonbury tickets, surely a Government agency should have been able to do so before now.

The railways and passenger benefits Bill will establish Great British Railways as a new publicly owned company, setting up a new passenger watchdog that will set consumer standards for railways and investigate poor service, as well as simplifying fares and ticketing. A passenger-focused GBR could—not necessarily will, but could—improve reliability, simplicity and accountability across the network for passengers and freight.

Other Bills in the King’s Speech and the Government’s subsequent briefing are welcomed by many of my constituents. The social housing renewal Bill will benefit many of my constituents who will never be in a position to buy a home in west London. They just need a safe, secure, affordable and stable place they can call home, without being overcrowded or forced to continually up sticks, lose their jobs and support networks, and disrupt their children’s education, only to find themselves in another overpriced, overcrowded, damp, tiny space with shared facilities.

I welcome the fact that young people aged 16 and 17 will be able to vote, as those in Scotland have been for a decade. As someone who voted here nine years ago to remain in the single market and customs union, I welcome the proposals to bring the UK closer to Europe, our exit from which has been one of the most devastating shocks to the UK economy. Many parents and teachers in my constituency welcome the consultation to reform SEND, although they are keeping a watching brief on whether the resources will be adequate to their children’s needs.

Finally, on the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill, although it would be virtually impossible to scrap leasehold entirely overnight, the ban on new leaseholds for flats, the cap on ground rent, and the new process for converting to commonhold are all welcome measures, as is making it cheaper and easier for leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold. I also welcome the remediation Bill for those living in homes with unsafe cladding. Too many residents in Hounslow, Isleworth and Brentford are still living in fear of the consequences of a fire breaking out in their block.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

In the face of the local election results last week, it is undeniable that what we have done so far is not enough. The long tail of austerity means that we have so much more to do. People see a world moving at a rate of knots and are frustrated at this Government’s slow pace of change. We live in a world where we can order almost anything we want in the morning and have it delivered later that same day. For consumers, satisfaction is now almost instantaneous. That is in complete contrast to Government, where improvements are seen as slow. The expectations and the challenge that we face are there for all to see.

What does the King’s Speech do to address what I consider to be the holy trinity of what good Labour Governments do: jobs, homes and health? First, there are two pieces of legislation on homes. The social housing renewal Bill will alter the right to buy by increasing the eligibility requirement by 10 years, amending percentage discounts to better align with new maximum discounts and exempting newly built social housing from the right to buy for 35 years.

This area is like so many other Thatcher legacies. The sugar rush felt in the short term by those able to buy their home at a substantial discount has long been replaced by a broken social housing market in which people living in identical properties next to each other can pay massively differently rents. It is a market in which the taxpayer often subsidises inflated rents through housing benefit and millions of young people who might once have seen a council home as their natural route into adulthood have the option forever denied to them. We can see where the logic of right to buy takes us. Between April 2012 and March 2025, 133,000 social homes were sold, but only 51,000 were replaced. With 1.3 million people on council house waiting lists, the problem is obvious for all to see.

Secondly on housing, the long-awaited draft commonhold and leasehold reform Bill will bring us closer to ending the feudal leasehold system. It will finally ban the use of leasehold for new build flats, it will place a cap on ground rents, and it will create a new legal framework for commonhold. There is huge demand for this to be done as soon as possible, and I know the Minister is going as fast as he safely can, but he also needs to tackle rip-off estate management fees—he has to stop that model in its tracks. If we are determined to tackle the cost of living crisis, that is one obvious and indefensible practice that we can end.

Alongside addressing the problems that people face now, the Government must take steps to address the problems that are coming down the track. I believe that the unwritten social contract that if a person works hard and plays by the rules, they can expect a good standard of living in return, is disintegrating and under real threat. Across this country, economic growth no longer translates to better outcomes in life, something that is only set to continue with the increase in AI in the workplace and developments in automation. Graduate roles have already been hit—graduate vacancies have fallen by more than one third this year—and that trend will only continue and diffuse across other areas of the labour market. Young people are therefore growing up and entering a world of work that is detached from previous norms, and we are nowhere near ready for the resulting changes that we will see in the next decade. The state needs to be ready to respond to those shifts, to ensure that not only those entering the workforce, but those who are already in it and those who are displaced, are properly skilled for the needs of the future labour market.

That future labour market has to include significantly more manufacturing roles, as the Secretary of State acknowledged in his speech. The more we can make ourselves, the more insulated we will be from the inevitable disruption that AI is going to cause to jobs, particularly in the service sector, but it will also better protect us from the global supply chain shocks that we are far too exposed to at the moment. The moves to protect UK steel are the right first step in recognising that we need to do much more to protect our manufacturing base. I am not proposing that we nationalise everything—I will leave that for other people to do—but my visit to the local Vauxhall car plant last week was a clear lesson in how we need to sharpen up across the whole of Government to protect manufacturing, and the UK automotive sector in particular. The decision on employee car ownership schemes in the last Budget was welcome, as is support for energy costs next year, but of course, the industry would like that support to be much sooner and much stronger than what is proposed.

There are a number of factors challenging the automotive sector, but the biggest one and the one over which the Government have the most control is the ZEV mandate. There has been huge investment in the Ellesmere Port plant so that it can manufacture electric vehicles, and I believe that most of the UK automotive sector is supportive of an electric future. However, the reality is that the current level of sales is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to hit the ZEV mandate, and that gap is only going to get bigger each year. We need to be clear that this is not just a case of “Oh, well, we aren’t going to hit the target.” Every sale short of that target has direct financial consequences for UK manufacturers.

Looking around the world, we see that most countries that have put in place sales targets for electric vehicles have had to row back from them in light of the evidence that uptake just is not where it was predicted to be. We need to bring the review forward and make the decision now that the escalation of targets under the ZEV mandate needs to be turned off. This is not something to be looked at in the abstract, on a graph in the corridors of Whitehall; it needs to be looked at in the context of the cold reality of consumer choice and the importance of protecting UK manufacturing. Let us not lose good manufacturing jobs in pursuit of the unattainable—all that will do is supercharge the Chinese automotive sector. That is not going to help the planet as much as we would like, and it certainly is not going to help this country. We have a great tradition of building vehicles in this country, and we want to be at the vanguard of taking the industry into the future, but let us do it in a sustainable way that protects and builds on what we have.

We need to do more to support UK manufacturing through procurement. I was delighted recently to take a Royal Mail delivery van made in Ellesmere Port for a spin, with permission from the owner. That electric van, made down the road, is delivering mail to my constituents. We need to see much more of that, and we need to encourage UK companies to buy from the UK. Every part of the public sector should be required to buy British. Every council, every hospital and every school should seek to maximise that, because every taxpayer pound spent on UK goods goes back into our economy. We can do a lot without legislation, but we need to pursue it with great zeal.

This is all about levelling the playing field, because more needs to be done. When people see barber shops and vape shops proliferate on their high streets, they know that something is not right, as there simply is not the market to sustain them all. When they see some shut down, perhaps for selling illicit goods or for illegal working, it confirms their suspicions that they are not competing with legitimate businesses. When we see them reopen a few months later, perhaps under a different name, people see a system struggling to cope with the scale of organised crime infecting our high streets.

The time for which a shop can be closed for breaching the law will be doubled, but let us also go after the landlords for, at best, failing to do due diligence, and at worst for being complicit in illegal activity. We can do more to support our small businesses on the high street and get the level playing field that we desperately need.

We also need a level playing field in how we treat people at work. We have to accept that bogus self-employment is a business model based on denying workers basic protections at work, and it is absolutely the wrong direction for this country. We promised in our manifesto that we would tackle this, so we should get on with it.

On a related note, the proposed strengthening of the growth duty, which will apparently reduce unnecessary risk aversion, is misguided. Good businesses want their staff to work in safe environments, and they want them to be treated well. This so-called unnecessary risk aversion, referred to in documents that the Government have produced, is an illusion—a straw man—and it has been used to put up with other shortcomings.

We face many challenges. I think we are on the right track, but we need to go much further and much faster. The public are telling us that they need to see results. We are now two years into this Government, and as much as the news cycle is hyper-focused on personality, the King’s Speech is all about policy. It is about how we shape a better future and show voters that they were right to put their trust in the Labour party to deliver for them.

Everyone here knows the perils that lie ahead if we are not bold enough, if we are not determined enough and if we do not use the time that we have to deliver real change. We are nearing the halfway point of this Parliament and, while progress has been made, it is abundantly clear that we need to go much further if we are to show that we have the power to transform the lives of ordinary people in this country.

The clock is ticking. Incrementalism will not cut it. We now need a response that rises to the urgent challenges that our country faces, so let us go out there and do it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Sir Desmond Swayne.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman some, then.

We all know that this King’s Speech is not worth the paper it is written on—there is nothing in it. Speaking as a former Minister, it is made up of the very policies that officials pull out of the third drawer of a desk and hand to weak, inept Ministers who have no ideas of their own: “Here you go, Minister. Here’s a substitute for your own thoughts.”

I will tell the House some things that we would do— that Reform would do, were there a Reform Government. No. 1, we would get a grip on the ballooning benefits bill. Let us get the millions of people in this country who are out of work back into the workplace to get the benefits bill down, as a moral imperative. Why write off millions of our fellow citizens, especially the young? How can people be off work with mild anxiety? How can we have people claiming PIP who have not even had a face-to-face appointment with a genuine clinician? This is madness. It has to change. Of course as a country we want a proper safety net, but that is not what we have today, and we all know it. At the moment, we have a farce where people are choosing not to work. That can change. It will not change under this Labour Government, but it can change, and we can save billions of pounds from it.

I will give the hon. Gentleman a second thing we would do: scrap net zero, so that we end the deindustrialisation of our country. Steel, chemicals, fertilisers, glass, ceramics, car making: 2 million jobs depend on high-energy intensive industries. All will be gone within the next 10 years. I wager that many Labour Members represent the good, decent, patriotic Brits who work in those businesses. They are selling them down the river. We need to end net zero and adopt a pragmatic and intelligent way to decarbonise our economy that does not immiserate working people and ruin what remains of our heavy industry. Those are two things that we could do.

I will give the hon. Gentleman a last thing we would do: end illegal migration. The way we do that is not merely to stop the boats, but to end the farce of people coming here on indefinite leave to remain, knowing that they will ultimately become citizens of this country on a short path, costing the Exchequer hundreds of billions of pounds. The Labour party has a policy, we are told, that takes us some way to that; but then we have the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) saying that the Home Secretary should be sacked for having the audacity to propose some pretty weak, but none the less sensible, changes to our legal and illegal migration systems. That gives us a clue about what is to come.

Today is a pantomime. We know this King’s Speech does not exist. We know this King’s Speech will be chucked into the dustbin in a few months’ time. Maybe there will be another King’s Speech. What we know is that what follows will almost certainly be worse. The fate of our country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, does not rest on what is happening in this Chamber; it rests on the Labour party members who will choose the next Prime Minister, because this Prime Minister is finished. We all know that. What comes then will be more failed policies, no answers to the challenges that face our country and no response to the yearning in the country for real change. The only way to achieve that—and we all know it—is a general election.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The right hon. Member will know, when mentioning other colleagues in the Chamber, to ensure that those colleagues are given fair warning in advance. If that has not already been done, I assume that it will be done swiftly.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

As much as I enjoy lectures from the Widow Twankey of Reform, I see this King’s Speech as an opportunity for us all to reflect on the anger that I suspect we all heard on the doorsteps in every constituency across this country during the local elections. To do that, we must be honest with ourselves about the anger that we may feel. How can any of us who say that we believe this country is stronger together—that love is stronger than hate—not accept that we are also angry? I must be honest: this weekend I bumped into the “Unite the Kingdom” protesters, many of them swaggering, beer in hand, through my local station. I honestly felt a guttural sense of anger, which is not right. I do not know those people and I do not know their motivations, but in our current political environment, that was how I felt.

I was angry because I felt that their sense of uniting this kingdom would not include my beloved Walthamstow, a community where we pride ourselves on the diversity of thought, background, and cultures that we all share—although I can promise Members that they are of one mind when it comes to the importance of bin collections, stopping fly-tipping and Thames Water not ripping up the roads. It is now a community in which my Muslim neighbours are scared and my Jewish neighbours fearful because of the violence, intimidation and fury in this place and in our culture wars, where they are used as cannon fodder.

If I am honest, though, my anger was also at myself. I bumped into those people because I had been in central London, at one of those conferences that I think all political parties have on Saturdays, where we all make the same kind of speech, using the same buzz words that we have all been using for the last 20 years. They are a comfort zone of political life, where everyone nods along but no answers are provided. This country is crying out for answers—we are all agreed on that—but the honest truth is that people are not sure that answers are coming from this place, and that is the test that the King’s Speech must deal with.

People want change in every corner, in every community and for every citizen, because right now nobody thinks that anything is working the way it should. As ever, the problem is not Muslims or Jews or bankers; it is politicians—it is us. Whether here, in Palestine, Gaza, the White House or the Kremlin, if we want to show the public that we can build a better world through debate, decision making and discourse, that starts with us. It starts with what we spend our time doing here on behalf of this nation, and whether this King’s Speech offers the difficult questions and answers that this country needs to face the world we are in.

The reason I spend too much time at weekends talking politics is that, for my sins, I chair the Labour Movement for Europe—and yes, looking at the King’s Speech and the European partnership Bill, I think how Brexit has broken all of us. Whether we voted leave or remain, the evidence is indisputable that Brexit has not turned out how anybody thought it would. Jobs and businesses have been lost—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) asks what is the problem. He should go and speak to the 16,000 businesses that have given up trading altogether because the only benefit of Brexit was for paperwork creators.

We all walked out of the room, when we needed to be in the room to face the challenges of the modern world, whether that is national security, trade, or the climate crisis that we face. This is not a call to rejoin—that relationship with Europe is gone, and it will be a long time before we are able to rebuild it—but it is a call for us to recognise how damaging that has been for our chances as a country, and why we need to rebuild that relationship.

The European partnership Bill will do deals on food, emissions trading and electricity. Those things are all needed, but they are not enough to answer the challenge that our communities face us with: “How does life get better for us?”. Many of us who were here at the time of Brexit will already be deeply triggered by some of the things that have been mentioned, and it only makes sense to have this argument again if we are talking about a relationship that makes sense in 2026 and 2028, not 2016 and 2019. We must recognise that in the past six months we have been threatened with the invasion of Greenland, by continued aggression in Ukraine, and by a climate crisis that means we have to look again at the single market, the customs union and, yes, at freedom of movement. Any political party that denies that those conversations need to take place is not being honest with the public, because a customs union alone will not cut it.

The right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) might be surprised by this, but I agreed with the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) when he said we should get a deal that looks like the Switzerland deal. I am sorry he is not here today—I had hoped he would be, Madam Deputy Speaker, to refer to him—to agree with me that to do that, we must put behind us the fights of the past and the old red lines, and use the Bill to give the Government the negotiating mandate to do that.

We must also do what this place consistently fails to do: put families first. If we had not left the European Union, by now every family and every parent would have proper rights to paid leave to be with their kids, and we would finally be able to tackle the gender pay gap and the motherhood penalty. That is why we must ensure that the Bill does not just align for food; it needs to align for families and to put workers and their needs, not just businesses, at the heart of a new deal with Europe.

I give notice that I will try to amend the European partnership Bill, to give this place the chance to fix what it missed in the last Session: the missing piece of employment rights that businesses overwhelmingly support and that give dads and second parents the same rights as their European counterparts. We must also fix the mistake made in the last Session when we removed the European Scrutiny Committee, so that Members can be part of writing that legislation. Even colleagues who may disagree about the outcome of the European relationships that we might want to build would agree that it is time to take back control to this place.

This Bill, this legislation, this King’s Speech must be an opportunity to show our constituents that we get the challenges and barriers that they face in their lives. The honest truth is that they should be a place for discussion. None of the proposed legislation is good to go, but it can be amended through the parliamentary process to get there. Let us start with ensuring that people have confidence in our democracy. Of course we need a representation of the people Bill. There are 5 million reasons why we need to stop cryptocurrencies and company donations that are corroding people’s sense of confidence in British democracy, and we also need to end the loopholes that exist, capping donations for, and indeed from, individuals. Those who can get millions of pounds personally, or who use third-party organisations to hide their tracks, damage us all together.

We must get right the reforms for children with special needs and disabilities. For too long we as MPs have heard those vulnerable stories, seen the frustrations, and recognised that too often the tribunal has been the place of resolution. We must also get leasehold reform and the social housing Bill through. Housing is the cause of poverty in so many communities, particularly mine.

We must ban conversion therapy, because trans people are living in fear right now in this country, and that cannot be right for our fellow human beings. We need the energy independence Bill to work. I want the E in E17 to stand for energy: my community are stepping up to the plate, using our collective bargaining power to lower our energy bills by seeking bulk discounts on solar panels. We need the Government to work with us to get the interest-free loans to ensure that the community can bring everyone together in that energy transition.

We do not want the Government to be caught up in fighting to get rid of juries, when really, if we want to help victims, we should bring in specialist rape courts. Yes, we need to have the difficult conversations about immigration, because in my Walthamstow community we are proud of the contribution of our neighbours, whether they were born here or made their homes here. When we see people attacking others over indefinite leave to remain—people who are our nurses, doctors, scientists, friends and neighbours—we do not see a kingdom being united; we see people playing with culture wars rather than looking at the economic case. We want the legislation to reflect the benefits of immigration to our society.

I will defend to my death the right of people to disagree with me, to hold different opinions about the future of this country and to resolve those through the democratic process, but I will not let myself be silenced or sidelined by them. Maya Angelou taught us that hate can cause a lot of problems, but it has not yet solved a single one. I know in my heart of hearts that feeling angry at the world, including people I do not know at my local train station, solves nothing. It is up to us all in this place to rehabilitate politics through this Session, and to use the King’s Speech to show that we are truly capable of bold, radical thought. I hope to play my part in presenting ideas to my colleagues and securing their cross-party support to make that happen, because this country needs and deserves nothing less.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Kirsty Blackman, after whose contribution there will be a speaking limit of five minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Arthur]

I thank the hon. Lady for entertaining us all; she is having fun. I remember the shambolic end to Humza Yousaf’s tenure as First Minister in Scotland— it was shambolic; she will admit that. Having reflected on that period, which was a real crisis for her party and for Scotland, what advice can she offer Labour Members? What did she learn from that process?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. May I give a tiny bit of advice? Let us keep this short, because there are many hon. Members wishing to contribute to the debate.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I will try to give a short piece of advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. If I were in the Scottish Labour party, I would either say, “We are a separate party from UK Labour, and we make our own decisions”, or I would say, “We back the Prime Minister.” It is clear that Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, does not back the Prime Minister, and does not have confidence in him. He and many of his MSPs and MPs have said that Scottish Labour is a separate party, which makes its own decisions. I assume that the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) follows his Scottish leader, supports ending the Prime Minister’s reign, and is looking forward to that, like all his colleagues.

As I said, our amendment can hardly fail to be the most popular amendment tabled, given that so many hon. Members from across the House have explicitly stated how much they support our position, so I am sure that they will vote for it on Wednesday.

Post Office Green Paper

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Before we begin the next statement, I remind the Front Benchers that there are time limits on each of their statements. In particular, the Liberal Democrats tend to be running over.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

indicated dissent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I know—not the present Front-Bench spokeswoman, but they have been all afternoon. Please keep within time limits.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Blair McDougall)]

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the Government’s response to the results of the “Future of Post Office” Green Paper. We published the Green Paper in July, starting a national conversation about the future of the Post Office, an institution that has served every community in every corner of the United Kingdom for generations. More than 2,500 people took the time to respond to the consultation, including postmasters, small businesses, service providers, community groups and members of the public. We also held dedicated discussion groups with postmasters and citizens across the country. I therefore start by thanking every respondent; their views provided a wealth of insight, and have been carefully considered.

I am pleased to announce that we are publishing the Government response to the consultation today. Our response must echo the clear call we heard from respondents. They told us that they want a strong and convenient post office network, built around permanent, full-time and full-service branches that offer a wide range of essential postal, banking and Government services. They want a Post Office that is reliable, modern and transparent, and that puts postmasters at the heart of decision making. As such, I can confirm today that the Government will keep the minimum network size of 11,500 branches and will retain all six geographical access criteria, ensuring that communities across the UK continue to have local and reliable access to postal services, including rural and remote areas.

Alongside maintaining the network requirements, we are introducing a new requirement that at least 50% of the network must be full-time and full-service branches. This requirement sets 50% as an absolute minimum, and we expect the Post Office to continue to operate substantially above it. We are setting this requirement to ensure that the full-time, full-service branches remain the backbone of the network for the foreseeable future, as those are the branches that deliver the greatest social value and the strongest customer service. At the same time, we are not blind to the challenges facing the Post Office, and have built in an evidence-based process so that we know when it is the right time for Government to look at the post office network again.

However, stability requires investment. That is why over the next two years, the Government will provide up to £483 million to support the transformation of the Post Office, on top of network subsidy funding to support the costs of delivering Government policy, which will be £70 million in financial year 2026-27. This investment funding will modernise branches across the country. It will support new in-branch technology and the delivery of new products and services that will make sure the Post Office can do what its customers need it to do, while keeping its identity and its role at the centre of so many UK high streets. The funding will also enable a major technology transformation programme within the next five years that will transition operations away from Fujitsu and ultimately replace the Horizon system. Postmasters must be able to trust the technology that they use; it should make their jobs easier and help them spend their time doing what they do best, which is serving their local communities. The days of the Post Office relying on outdated systems must end, and this programme lays the ground for a modern, resilient and fit-for-purpose organisation.

The consultation reinforces the importance of the Post Office for post, of course, but also for banking and access to Government services. I would like to address some specific points about each of those areas. First, on postage, respondents told us that they value the Post Office as a multi-carrier parcel hub and want more choice and convenience in how parcels are sent and received. We will support the Post Office’s efforts to innovate in this space while ensuring that essential services remain accessible.

Secondly, on banking, the public were clear that the Post Office plays a critical role in ensuring communities have access to cash and in-person banking. Being able to access essential banking services such as cash withdrawals and deposits is valuable to many Post Office customers, in particular small businesses, and respondents expressed an appetite to increase their offer. Last month, the Government held discussions between the Post Office and the banking sector to explore where they may be able to work together on a commercial and voluntary basis to better meet the needs of individuals and businesses. Those discussions were based around areas of mutual interest such as banking services, financial inclusion, modernisation, and the importance of continuing to improve financial crime safeguards. Those conversations are ongoing.

Finally, on Government services, colleagues will know that many services have moved online. However, respondents told us strongly that vulnerable, digitally excluded and rural customers continue to rely on the Post Office for in-person services. In that spirit, we have established a cross-Government group to look at developing a common physical front door for Government services, expanded assisted digital support, and new propositions such as prescription collection and identity verification.

At the heart of the Green Paper and of today’s Government response is the need to strengthen the relationship between the Post Office and postmasters. The Horizon scandal was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in modern British history, and while the Government remain focused on delivering redress to victims as rapidly as possible, we must also ensure that the culture that enabled those wrongs can never return. The Post Office has already taken steps to rebuild trust, including the postmaster panel, a new consultative council, embedding postmasters in key teams at the Post Office’s head office, and the election of postmaster non-executive directors to the board.

However, we agree with respondents that more is needed. As such, I can confirm today that the Post Office will develop a culture strategy with measurable objectives that covers employees, postmasters, strategic partners and customers. The Government expect that plan to be in place by this summer. To ensure that these reforms genuinely meet the needs of postmasters, the Government have commissioned an independent external evaluation of the initiatives the Post Office has implemented to strengthen postmaster engagement, which will report later this year.

Our long-term goal is a Post Office that is financially sustainable, adaptable to changing markets and less reliant on Government funding, but this transition must be responsible and realistic. Respondents were clear that stability comes first, particularly while the Horizon inquiry continues. That is why the Government will provide £37 million of funding to the Post Office in the next financial year to support with the costs of administering redress and responding to the inquiry. While the Green Paper explored long-term governance ideas such as mutualisation or a charter model, the Government will not make any decisions on structural reform until after the final report of Sir Wyn Williams’ inquiry. In the meantime, we will work with the Post Office to ensure that the organisation demonstrates financial discipline, generates a trading profit by 2030, and continues to reduce reliance on taxpayer subsidy while protecting access for communities that depend on it.

This Green Paper process and the thousands of responses we received show the enduring importance of the Post Office to the life of this country. The Government’s response sets a clear direction: we are maintaining a strong and accessible network, backing postmasters through major investment and cultural reform, modernising services for a digital age, and setting the Post Office on a path towards long-term financial and operational stability. The Post Office must be modern, resilient and trusted, shaped by the communities it serves and built around the people who run it. With today’s response, we take a major step towards that future.

I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Blair McDougall]

My hon. Friend has made some important points, particularly about the smaller post offices which, as he says, are often the ones that struggle and may be less able to invest directly to tackle some of their problems. The money that we are putting into network transformation is important because it can enable those that may be struggling at the moment to become viable businesses. Just before the end of last year, Treasury Ministers and I chaired a banking roundtable. As my hon. Friend says, we are talking about a voluntary relationship, but all the banks recognise the critical importance of the post offices and of access to banking services for their customers, especially in the light of recent high street bank closures. That recognition is, obviously, shared by the Government.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Sarah Olney]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and I promise to set a good example for colleagues by keeping my response brief.

As the Minister has laid out, the responses to the consultation underscored the importance of post offices as community hubs that provide vital services, not least to NHS patients through the delivery of important medical correspondence. Some 99.7% of the population live within three miles of a post office, and 4,000 of these branches are open seven days a week. That is an increasingly important statistic, given the rapid closure of high street services such as banks over the past decade. The Minister has said that at least 50% of the network must be full-time and full-service branches. Many people rely on the post office to provide vital services, so can the Minister confirm that we will not see a reduction in the number of full-time branches and that he will ensure that opening hours continue to meet the needs of working people?

The Minister also referred to the important community banking service that post offices provide, but he did not provide specific assurances to the House about other services provided by the Post Office, such as Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency services and Passport Office services. He mentioned expanded digital services, but these will not help many of our constituents who live in remote areas with poor broadband access or difficult phone service access. Can he provide a commitment that the Post Office will continue to provide physical services for people who will have difficulty accessing DVLA and passport services digitally? Can he confirm that these will remain in post office branches beyond March 2026, and will he commit to multi-year contracts, in particular with the DVLA?

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Luke Taylor—I know you are in a lot of pain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I was going to call Olly Glover, but I was not sure whether the Minister would want to do that, given his earlier intervention.

[Chris Bryant]

indicated dissent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No? Then I call Olly Glover.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Maguire]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention; I could not agree more. We very much need a public inquiry to expose all the harms done to the victims and how the establishment in our country has seemingly played such a central role in that.

If our Government are sincere when they speak of a fairer, safer and more accountable society, they must show leadership rather than continued deference. They must show survivors that they will be believed, protected and heard in the UK. At the heart of this matter are not titles, reputations or institutions, but people—survivors, whose lives, like the victims of domestic abuse, have been shaped by fear, silence and power wielded against them, rather than for them. They deserve far better; they deserve a justice system that will fight for them.

Now is the time for immediate action. Will the Minister please consider not redacting any of the documents that do not relate to the ongoing police investigation? As my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) suggested, will the Government look at a full public inquiry into Epstein and his links to the British establishment? Finally, will the Minister go away and look to end the appalling negative privilege that prevents MPs in this House from speaking freely about members of the royal household?

This matter is a disgusting symptom of the deference that we have shown to those in positions of power at the cost of victims. Our constituents should no longer be silenced in what should be our proud British democracy.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My hon. Friend will be aware that we are in the week of St David’s day, which is a terribly important day for all of us in Wales. In terms of accountability, she will be very aware of the long-standing stance that the Liberal Democrats have taken on the Crown Estate, which in Wales regrettably still has not been devolved. Its powers and funding have been devolved to Scotland, but not—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Can I just check whether the Member has been here for a while or just arrived? Members should not be intervening after traipsing in during a speech. I will allow Ms Smart to continue.

[Lisa Smart]

I will stick more within the tramlines of the debate that we have all enjoyed today, though I think devolution is a very good thing of which there should be more.

Parliament is calling today for transparency. The public deserve answers, not further silence. Cleaning up public life means acting quickly, openly and honestly. This goes to heart of public trust. Sadly, what we are talking about today is ultimately not an isolated incident. There has been a drumbeat of scandals. We have had mention of partygate, and in other debates recently we have talked about Nathan Gill’s treachery. Peter Mandelson has also been mentioned. All those things further shatter trust in our politics. It is obvious that the current system is broken, so it is beholden on all of us to take action. We need to clear out the rot, and we will keep pushing until corrupt and criminal behaviour is stamped out and the muck is cleared out of our democracy.

We are campaigning for a public inquiry into Epstein and his relationship with the British establishment. A number of contributors this afternoon referenced the Polish Government’s investigation into Russian links with Epstein, and it will be very interesting to see what that investigation turns up. The Humble Address is very clear that we want the publishing of all the relevant documents relating to the appointment as a special representative for trade and industry. We should see an end to negative privilege. MPs should be able to speak freely in this place about concerns that they have and disclose information in this place, even if the individual in the public post is a member of the royal household.

We should go further: we should have criminal sanctions for public figures who fail to whistleblow. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) talked about the importance of having an office of the whistleblower. We should have new legal protections for whistleblowers and a dedicated office of the whistleblower.

UK-India Free Trade Agreement

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

As I begin my remarks in this important debate, I want to be absolutely clear that I do not oppose free trade deals. They have immense benefits, as was set out by the Minister. For once, or certainly on this very rare occasion, I accept some of the points made by the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), about missed opportunities. There has been one big missed opportunity in this deal: at what point do we sacrifice our obligation to protect human rights in favour of free trade? That is what I will focus on.

The free trade agreement before us raises many serious questions about our trade policy and human rights, but for many of my constituents in Bradford East, the debate is about not abstract trade policy, or distant diplomatic calculations, but an issue very dear to their heart: Kashmir, which continues to be occupied. I represent thousands of British Kashmiris with close family ties to Jammu and Kashmir. For them, the actions of the Indian state are not theoretical, but lived realities, felt through family separation, fear, arbitrary detention and the systematic erosion of basic freedoms. That is why the UK-India free trade agreement raises such serious and urgent concerns. It is a major agreement with over 30 chapters, as pointed out by the Minister, yet it contains no explicit enforceable human rights clause. It goes much further than tariffs; it is about standards, co-operation and the institutional machinery that will shape the relationship for years to come. The central question for many of my constituents is: how can we seek to deepen economic co-operation with India while remaining silent on the grave ongoing human rights violations in Kashmir and beyond?

Let me be clear at the outset: economic engagement can never come at the expense of human rights, and must never come at the expense of the Kashmiri people. For nearly 80 years, Kashmiris have endured persecution, repression and injustice. In recent years, the situation has dramatically worsened. Since the illegal revocation of articles 370 and 35A in 2019, Indian-occupied Kashmir has experienced prolonged restrictions on civil liberties, mass surveillance, arbitrary detention and repeated internet shutdowns. Political dissent has been criminalised. Journalists have been silenced, and human rights defenders have been targeted.

These are not isolated incidents; they form part of a deliberate and sustained policy to strip Kashmiris of their dignity, voice and agency. I hear about this from the wider community I represent. Their family members have been detained without charge, have their communications monitored, and have their basic freedoms denied. This is not an abstract foreign policy issue; it is a human rights crisis that reaches directly into our communities here in Britain.

Political prisoners remain behind bars without due process. Khurram Parvez, a globally respected human rights defender, has spent years imprisoned for documenting abuses. Yasin Malik has recently been convicted, following proceedings that have been widely condemned for lacking fairness and transparency. These cases symbolise a broader reality about the use of national security legislation to silence dissent, criminalise peaceful political activity and intimidate those who speak out. Despite that context, the UK-India free trade agreement contains no binding human rights safeguards, no accountability mechanisms and no credible system of monitoring. There is no dedicated human rights chapter, and under the agreement, no monitoring body would be required to monitor human rights risks, such as the risk of arbitrary detention and repression.

The Government present this agreement as a landmark deal, designed to deepen economic ties and open new markets, but trade agreements are not neutral instruments simply for economic gain; they reflect political choices and moral priorities. This agreement seeks to formalise and deepen economic co-operation with India, while deliberately excluding enforceable human rights provisions. What kind of message does that send? It sends the dangerous message that human rights violations can be overlooked in the pursuit of market access. It tells those responsible that there will be dialogue, but no consequences.

Engagement without conditions does not drive reform; it signals impunity. Independent organisations, including UN bodies and human rights non-governmental organisations, have documented widespread, systematic torture and ill treatment by Indian police and security forces, including custodial violence and abuse of pre-trial detention. India signed the UN convention against torture in 1997, yet by choice remains one of the few countries in the world never to have ratified it. The House will know that torture is absolutely prohibited under international law. That is not culturally relative and not negotiable, and it cannot be ignored while negotiating preferential trade access.

I also note that the agreement’s labour commitments are explicitly excluded from the dispute settlement mechanism, which means that they cannot be enforced in practice in the way that provisions in the core economic chapters can. If we are serious about a modern partnership, then workers’ rights and decent standards cannot be treated as optional add-ons. Warm words are welcome, but without clear accountability, they offer little reassurance to those at risk of exploitation, and they leave an imbalance between what the agreement compels and what it merely encourages.

Parliament’s duty to get the safeguards right is all the greater, given that UK-India trade is at around £43 billion, and given the deep ties across our communities. It is troubling that there are no monitoring triggers, safeguards or accountability mechanisms that speak to Kashmiri or minority protections. There are no graduated remedies for serious abuses—there is nothing short of tearing up the whole agreement—and there is no meaningful lever to use when violations occur. The agreement may have come before us, but what real influence does Parliament have, even in a debate like today’s? What ability do we have to add safeguards or human rights clauses?

Let me use the little influence that we have to ask the Minister some questions; I look forward to direct answers —he is normally very good at giving those. How can the Government justify advancing a trade agreement of this scale while excluding binding human rights protections, particularly in the light of the situation in Kashmir, which continues to worsen? What mechanisms are there, linked directly to this agreement, for monitoring and responding to credible reports of human rights violations? What assurances can be given to British Kashmiri communities that their concerns are not being sidelined in the name of economic convenience? Finally, the Minister will be aware that Indian-occupied Kashmir remains disputed territory. What safeguards are in place regarding any trade that occurs, as a result of this agreement, directly with an occupied territory, as recognised under international law? The agreement remains silent on that important point.

This agreement is not yet in force, and Parliament still has a responsibility. We must insist that trade policy strengthens justice, rather than undermines it. We must refuse to send the message that human rights, especially the rights of an oppressed people, are negotiable. For the Kashmiri community I represent, I cannot stay silent and see injustice continuing. I cannot accept a trade agreement that deepens economic ties while turning its back on human dignity and justice. The world has ignored Kashmir for far too long. Britain must no longer be part of that silence. We have a moral, legal and historical duty, and it is about time we honoured it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Like everybody across this House, as a proud British citizen, I of course support the Government’s intentions in the growth strategy and their efforts to agree mutually beneficial trade agreements between countries after the debacle of Brexit, with which we lost collective bargaining and the benefits that we enjoyed from EU membership.

I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) on the absolutely mandatory obligation on Britain to ensure that, whatever trade deals we negotiate with whichever country, wherever in the world, human rights are front and centre in those negotiations.

Thousands of my Kashmiri diaspora constituents and their families are suffering. They have been suffering for nearly 80 years, and it is about time that Britain took a lead in helping alleviate the occupation of Kashmir and the illegal treatment of citizens there to allow them the right to self-determination. Building on the issue of human rights, I also join the hon. Member and my hon. Friend in expressing my profound sadness and disappointment that we are signing a free trade agreement with a leader of a Hindu nationalist governing party that has, for decades, violently persecuted Muslims, Christians, Dalits and other minorities in India for their religious belief or their class status, and the millions of people in occupied Kashmir.

Most egregiously, as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, Modi facilitated a pogrom that resulted in over 1,000 individuals, the majority of whom were Muslim, being murdered amidst widespread reports of sexual violence, looting and property destruction. The exact death toll of the Gujarat riots is unclear, but it is estimated to have exceeded 1,000 men, women and children, the vast majority of whom were Muslim. According to Genocide Watch, during the massacres at least 250 women and girls were gang-raped before being burnt to death. A mob of 5,000 people set fire to houses of Muslims in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya neighbourhood, resulting in the deaths of over 65 people. Before being burnt and hacked to death, women and girls were gang-raped in public. Their male family members were forced to watch the rapes, and they were then killed.

I have a couple of heartbreaking examples. Hina Kausar from Naroda Patiya was pregnant when she was raped. Several eyewitnesses testified that she was raped and tortured, and that her womb was slit open with a sword to extract the foetus, which was then hacked to pieces and burnt alive alongside the mother. Bilkis Yakoob Rasool was five-months pregnant when she was gang-raped, and 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, were murdered in front of her eyes. The Gujarat Government have now granted early release to all 11 of her convicted rapists.

I was in Ahmedabad myself on the first and subsequent days of these riots. I climbed to the rooftop of my uncle’s home, and I watched the city burn around me. Black smoke was billowing from every direction. I saw at first hand how the leader of a state facilitated and stood by as fanatics murdered, raped and pillaged their way through Muslim communities and neighbourhoods. Modi was complicit in this ethnic cleansing, even if attempts at achieving legal justice have so far proven futile. Since then, he has continued to refuse to accept any responsibility or to apologise for the events that took place, thereby adding insult to injury for the bereaved victims and families.

As Prime Minister of India, Modi continues to engage in faith-based oppression of India’s Muslim, Christian and other minority populations. Homes, businesses and places of worship are unlawfully and arbitrarily demolished —a phenomenon that Amnesty International has labelled “bulldozer injustice”. Communal violence against Muslims is rife, with mob violence and lynchings on a daily or weekly basis.

I gently remind the Government of how innocent civilians are being treated by the Government with whom we are signing this trade deal. I urge them to do everything in their power to get the best deal that we can, but without compromising the principle of human rights for all. Muslims, Christians, Dalits and others are relegated to the status of second-class citizens and subject to collective punishment. The Government should instead pursue an economic diplomacy that recognises the importance of religious tolerance and pushes to promote peaceful co-existence of groups with different beliefs. Signing this trade agreement—and with it, exchanging a reduction in tariffs for our values—sends a dangerous signal to the world that religious bigotry and violations of international human rights law are permissible.

Since Brexit, successive UK Governments have shifted away from integrating enforceable human rights clauses into trade deals; they have instead opted for profit over people by adopting a values-free approach that starkly diverges from the human and workers’ rights provisions that the EU—albeit imperfectly—championed. Shame on them, and shame on this deal! The Government should follow the Human Rights Committee’s proposals that standard human rights protections should be included in all agreements, and that we should begin to treat human rights as something that applies to all individuals of any religion, anywhere in the world.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kate Dearden]

We are introducing new, permanently lower tax rates for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties worth nearly £1 billion per year, which will benefit over 750,000 properties. Next year, the rate for small RHL properties will be the lowest since business rates were introduced more than 30 years ago. This is paid for through higher rates on the 1% most expensive properties, which includes many large distribution warehouses such as those used by online giants—that high value multiplier is 33% more than the multiplier for small RHL properties. That is what we committed to in our manifesto. Creating a new, sustainable system with permanently lower multipliers for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties will make a massive difference for people. We will be publishing a call for evidence in September, exploring potential longer-term reforms, and I urge my hon. Friend to get involved in that call for evidence and to share it, too.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

The Minister has just heard from across the House continuing pleas to support the hospitality industry. It is always a good day when the Government U-turn and provide more support for pubs, so we welcome that. However, unless the Minister can explain to us when a pub becomes a gastropub, when a gastropub becomes a restaurant, and when a restaurant with rooms becomes a hotel and descends down that wormhole, will she make representations to the Chancellor to extend the same measures for pubs that she U-turned on this week across the whole retail, hospitality and leisure sector? The truth of the matter is that 90% of that sector will not benefit from this week’s U-turn.

[Kate Dearden]

Good morning to the shadow Secretary of State. I am sure he had a stiff drink after his performance at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday.

All pubs and live music venues that meet the definition set out in the guidance qualify for the support, and he will be able to see that clearly online. We will be working with local authorities to ensure that the definition includes establishments open to wide sections of local communities. I have already discussed valuations for pubs, how we take turnover into account and how we will work closely with the wider sector on valuations going forward. This is a Government who are working closely with the sector and are committed to listening. That is being a responsible Government, and we are doing the right thing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

The heavy burden of Labour’s national insurance contributions rise, compounded by high energy costs and the business rates increase, has raised alarm about the affordability of hospitality businesses’ monthly employment costs. Some 84,000 jobs in the hospitality sector alone have been lost since the NICs rise was introduced, and that is particularly damaging to young people, many of whom have traditionally found their first jobs in the hospitality sector, including the Minister, as she just said at the Dispatch Box. With the sector struggling to employ new workers, damage is being done to the career prospects of our young people, and it will be detrimental to the broader economy in the long term. Business confidence is down, job vacancies are down and unemployment is up, so what steps will the Department take to tackle high unemployment costs, support businesses and bring down those increasingly high levels of unemployment?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Dearden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his really important question; he is absolutely right to raise this issue. Reform voted against the Employment Rights Act at every single opportunity. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) would row back on the protections that we have given to 18 million workers across the country, including the vital day one paternity leave and parental leave, statutory sick pay for the lowest paid, protections for pregnant workers, increased protection from unfair dismissal, an end to exploitative zero-hours contracts, a new right to bereavement leave and so much more. Reform is simply not the party for working people; Labour is. Reform Members voted against the Act, and their plans would threaten employment up and down the country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Of course, it is not just Bracknell, and one day those on the Labour Benches will understand that there are no workers’ rights if people have no work. Youth unemployment is up significantly. That is a tragedy that everybody should be ashamed of, and it is going up on Labour’s watch. Small businesses, which provide so many jobs, are very worried about the administrative burden of trade union access. We are talking about the very smallest businesses—pubs, restaurants, garden centres and small catering businesses. They are the backbone of our communities. As the Minister tries to implement the Employment Rights Act, will she consider lifting the threshold for the trade union access agreements to a headcount of 250—that is recognised elsewhere in law as a threshold—which would protect our very smallest businesses from that administrative burden?

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Yet again, the Business Secretary is not here for his departmental questions. This time, he is in China, trying to sort out the mess that is British steel strategy. He is burning through £2 million a day of taxpayers’ money keeping the Scunthorpe furnace going, the Chinese owners are asking for £1 billion in compensation, and decommissioning could cost more than £2 billion. His steel strategy is literally melting before its long-awaited publication. Given that when the Prime Minister negotiates, Britain loses, what is a good outcome here?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris McDonald]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his positive and constructive engagement on this issue. I do understand the concerns of the steelworkers in Scunthorpe. I know precisely the projects he is referring to; they were not procured under public procurement rules, and the developers and tier 1 contractors involved have followed their own rules and commitments. However, it is the case that this Government want to see more British steel used in both public and other projects around the country, which is a matter both for developing steel capability and, potentially, for reviewing our procurement rules.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

For the final question, I call David Mundell.

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Latin America, I was interested to note that, after 25 years of negotiations, the EU has announced a trade deal with the Mercosur South American trading group. What is the position of the UK Government on a trading agreement with Mercosur?