Westminster Hall

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 8 January 2025

[Esther McVey in the Chair]

Social Housing Tenants: Antisocial Behaviour

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. Let us imagine a Government who believe that a council house should be a privilege, not a right, and that people have to be of good standing and in full-time employment to secure the keys. Let us imagine a Government who support the idea that a council house should be given on suitability rather than a need for social housing. Let us then imagine that same Government supporting the idea that people should keep their council house in good order: keep it decorated, keep it well maintained, do the garden, empty the bins, and make sure that their families do not cause trouble on the street. There was such a Government who believed in all that: the 1940s Clement Attlee Government.

Clement Attlee built over 1 million homes in our great country, and all the things I have just mentioned were beliefs of the Labour Government at the time. But if we fast forward 80 years I think Captain Clem would be turning in his grave after looking at some of the council estates up and down the country, such as Carsic estate, Leamington estate, Coxmoor estate in Ashfield, and estates over in Mansfield such as Bull Farm and Ladybrook, where we have families creating mayhem and misery. People call them “feral families” in my neck of the woods. There are people who cause problems on every single council estate throughout Mansfield and Ashfield, and it is a big problem. In this place we have the power to sort that out. I did try under the last Government, but it fell on deaf ears.

Before I came to this place, one of the main complaints that I got—I am sure many hon Members will agree—was about antisocial behaviour on council estates, which destroys and ruins lives. Most of us MPs, I imagine, live in nice houses; we have security, CCTV and panic alarms. Some of us live in nice big posh pads in gated communities—it is all right for us. We do not have to go home each night and put up with horrible, nuisance, criminal behaviour.

Let us imagine coming home after a hard day’s work at the factory, as many people in Ashfield do, and all we can hear is swearing, verbal threats, intimidation, shouting, screaming, outrageous noises—sounds a bit like a Labour Cabinet meeting. Joking aside, that is happening in every constituency throughout our great country. Let us imagine that we put up with that behaviour when we get home from a hard day’s graft. We go to bed and the noise continues. We can hear music playing and the idiots from across the road revving their motorbikes up and down the street. We open the bedroom window in the summer and the stench of weed comes wafting in. Then we manage to get a few hours’ sleep.

At 6 o’clock the alarm clock goes off and those idiots are just about going to bed, because they have been up all night creating mayhem, causing crime, and being complete nuisances. Yet when we get up in the morning to go to work—to do a shift; to do our seven days to pay our taxes—we are paying for those yobs, those idiots, to live in their social housing. We pay for their rent and benefits, and we wonder why: “Why are we doing this? Why can’t these people live by our rules? Why can’t they integrate? Why can’t they live our way of life?”

Many years ago—I am going back about 30 years—Ashfield district council had a brainwave. We had one particular street on the Carsic council estate that was notorious for antisocial behaviour, crime and poor behaviour. The council put all the nuisance tenants on one street. I am not saying that was a solution, but that is what it did. So when anything kicked off with any crime, the police went straight to one street and nine times out of 10 they knew where the culprits were.

Then the Labour council had a brainwave: it decided to take every single nuisance family off the street, spread them around the estate and put them on different streets. It thought that was a good idea. It thought that the good behaviour of the surrounding streets would encourage those nuisance tenants to be good tenants, to be good neighbours, to integrate and to respect their neighbours, but the opposite happened.

Just a few months after, we realised that every single street on that estate was having problems with antisocial behaviour, so the council had taken the problem from one street and spread it out to every single street on the estate. It was a complete failure, and our police and councillors could do very little about it because they are not backed up by the courts. When we get a nuisance tenant in Ashfield, for example, the courts sometimes carry out a lengthy investigation. They tell the complainants, “Keep a diary,” and give them diary sheets for about two years until they are fed up to the back teeth of filling them out, and eventually they just stop complaining.

In 2022, a Government survey showed that 26%—nearly one in three—of social housing tenants suffer from antisocial behaviour. That is a disgrace in this country. A 2018 report by Nottingham Trent University said that social housing tenants are 30% more likely to see antisocial behaviour, crime, drug dealing and so on.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on an issue that is exceptionally important in working-class areas. Does he agree that those who suffer most from the problem are those who live cheek by jowl with the very tenants he is talking about? It is working-class tenants in social housing, aspiring to a better life for them and their children, who suffer the most and are crying out for help and assistance to solve the problem.

[Lee Anderson]

I could not put it any better myself. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is the aspiring, decent, hard-working, working-class families who need a bit of a leg up. They get social housing—a council house—and they want to do the right thing; maybe at one stage they will actually buy the house. They put a shift in: mum and dad go to work, the kids behave themselves, but next door or across the road they have a nuisance family who are completely ruining their lives. That affects their mental health and it is absolutely shocking.

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

I rise to make a point about Wales. I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, which has particular relevance to my consistency of Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe. Rural crime is defined as crime and antisocial behaviour occurring in rural areas, where we have plenty of social housing. In my region, just 0.24% of staff in the local police force are dedicated to rural crime units, despite the significant impact that that crime has on places such as Brecon and Ystradgynlais. Does he agree that antisocial behaviour is a significant issue across mid and south Wales too, and that police resourcing should reflect that challenge?

[Lee Anderson]

Well, yes, I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am not sure we can blame all that crime on council tenants or social housing tenants. I take his point.

I am surprised that I have not yet had an intervention from the Government Benches, because I usually get asked, “Where are these nuisance neighbours going to live? Where do we put them?” Well, on the record, hon. Members, I am not bothered where they go, but I have two options for those people. They can either behave themselves and become good tenants, good neighbours, and integrate, or they can do what other people—normal people—do: go and get a job, stop committing crime, work hard, save some money up for a deposit or save enough for a bond, and go and rent privately somewhere.

The important thing is that we need a deterrent. When I was a local councillor in Ashfield, we had youths in the local park who were creating mayhem, making fires and attacking people—all sorts of horrible, feral behaviour. The local council and the police had a real problem trying to sort the issue out, but after a bit of an investigation we found that the parents of a lot of the youths who were causing problems lived in social housing on the nearby estate, so we wrote to every single one and said, “If your child carries this on, you are breaching your tenancy agreement and we might have to look at booting you out.” The poor behaviour stopped straightaway—overnight.

That is one option that I hope Ministers can look at for social housing tenants with poor behaviour. I believe in the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, where people are given one warning, then another, and on the third warning they are gone. Quite frankly, I am not that interested in where those people go to live. My focus and concern are the decent, hard-working people who put a shift in, have not got much money and rely on social housing.

I agree with the 1940s Clement Attlee Government that the allocation of a council house should be based on suitability rather than need. To do that, we need to repeal some laws passed here 40 odd years ago—housing and homelessness legislation—and look at the people who are in priority need. Based on suitability, those who should have priority need are people who will respect the house, be good citizens, go to work and not be a nuisance in their neighbourhood.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members that, should they wish to speak and be called in the debate, they need to bob. Members wishing to speak need to be here for the opening and closing statements. Wind-ups will begin at 10.30 am, with two minutes at the end for the mover of the motion.

09:41

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate. The Labour Government have a clear mission to tackle antisocial behaviour and halve violence against women and girls.

My constituency is troubled by endemic antisocial behaviour, both domestically and in our town centre. In addition, Mansfield is the worst affected town in Nottinghamshire for violent offences perpetrated by men against women. Hon. Members will know my concern for women’s welfare in both of those regards, having alluded to them in previous debates. My experience from listening to victims of antisocial behaviour in this context is that they are often women who are systematically failed by a response system unfit for purpose. That disadvantages women victims in their journey for justice when facing this abuse.

That is not a criticism of the police or necessarily of community safety and housing teams and officers in local authorities. Broadly speaking, my experience is that they are doing their utmost to deal with the situation, within the legal framework that they face and the resources that they have. Before I continue, I would like to pass on my gratitude to Nottinghamshire police, especially Inspector Davies and her neighbourhood team in Mansfield, as well as Mansfield district council, for engaging with my office about casework on issues outlined by the hon. Member for Ashfield. I can already see the impact of the new neighbourhood policing approach and strategy in Mansfield.

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Member makes some great points. Does he agree that if we can get it right and stop this horrible nuisance behaviour in social housing, there would be hardly any need for the police to come, thus saving police resources?

[Steve Yemm]

Indeed, and I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I agree, and I will address that in my comments.

We need named neighbourhood officers taking ownership of their patches in council estates and social housing areas in our town and becoming part of the community again. We are already beginning to see in multi-agency meetings the impact that that can have.

In the press over the weekend and again today, the hon. Member has talked about his desire to implement a three-strike rule for social housing tenants that would see them evicted after three instances of antisocial behaviour that meets the evidence threshold to demonstrate it. I would argue that this proposition is somewhat too liberal and lenient and does not go far enough to address the issues.

[Lee Anderson]

I am astounded that the hon. Member disagrees on this point. Will he now agree to a one-strike-and-out rule?

[Steve Yemm]

That is exactly what I am saying. I wish to address the issues that are being endured by social housing tenants at the hands of those who are consistently perpetrating domestic antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhoods, and a “three strikes and you’re out” approach would take many, many years of them suffering this type of abuse. I will outline why I think such an approach would be lacking in its effectiveness of outcome and deterrence.

First, my experience is that there are issues with the evidence threshold. Councils in my area and many others are asking victims of antisocial behaviour in social housing to bear the burden of proof by taking their own recordings and notes and submitting them. Many constituents who attend my surgeries have gone through all the stress and anxiety of doing that on numerous occasions, having put their mental wellbeing and often their personal security at risk, only to then be told that the evidence does not meet the threshold required to instigate an intervention.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I agree very much with the hon. Member’s points, and I wonder if he is a member of the right party on that basis. Is he not dismayed that the Secretary of State has ditched our plans to remove social housing for people who are consistently guilty of antisocial behaviour?

[Steve Yemm]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. My dismay is at what I hear from my constituents, many of whom have suffered for many years trying to prove a single instance of antisocial behaviour. Indeed, they are often then notified that the advised method of evidence collection—often recordings on a mobile phone app—does not satisfy the evidential requirements to take action. After many years of threats to their own security and a great deal of effort, they find that the action is dropped and has to be started again. This is not an isolated incident in my constituency. Many, many women—and it is almost always women—have come to me in tears at my surgeries.

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Member is being very generous with his time. He has mentioned women quite a lot in his speech, but let us talk about pensioners. We have this nonsense in Ashfield where there are flats and bungalows that were designed for pensioners and over-65s, but sadly, as some of them die off, the local council, with another brainwave, has started putting nuisances in these flats: druggies, ex-cons—people who live a life of criminality. When they put one of these people in a flat, all their friends and family come to visit, and it is creating problems in flats that were designed just for the over-65s. Does the hon. Member think we should have a policy to stop this straightaway and let these old people live in peace?

[Steve Yemm]

Again, I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. The experience that I have from casework tells me many of those things also; I see many examples of such casework at my surgery. I think councils should and must be better equipped for enforcement action than they are today. They need to make a dedicated response. It needs to be backed by stronger regulation. They need to work more closely alongside the police to gather evidence of reports of antisocial behaviour. I would hope that, in turn, that would free up our police officers to respond to more serious criminal activity, rather than having to focus their resources on these recurring incidents.

Secondly, in my outlook, affording up to three strikes under the current system may well perpetuate the crisis, leaving some of those upstanding and decent social housing tenants at the mercy of problem tenants in neighbourhoods in my constituency. I fear that tenants in neighbouring properties would be subject to a process that could take years to conclude or that failed to do so because of loopholes and inconsistencies in their self-collected evidence.

We have a new Labour Government. We are looking to renew the social contract between the state and individuals, but part of that contract requires certain commitments of responsibility to earn the rights that it provides. Like all other citizens, social housing tenants should be expected to respect their neighbours and not contribute to antisocial behaviour, or they should forfeit the right to be housed by their council. In my outlook, rather than affording three strikes, this should be a zero-tolerance policy, and I am confident that my constituents who suffer at the hands of those engaged in antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhoods would agree with me.

Finally, I want to outline the mechanism that I have collaborated in with Mansfield police and Mansfield district council to tackle this issue. It has in part been made possible by the Government’s neighbourhood policing strategy and the direction of Nottinghamshire police, under the Labour police and crime commissioner, Gary Godden. Often, antisocial behaviour is complex in nature and a multifaceted, multi-agency approach is required to resolve it—something that, in my limited experience, should prevent passing of the buck. However, that collaboration can only be as effective as the legislative support that it has to operate under. We have seen the effect that Government policy is already having on neighbourhood policing, and stronger powers for councils would enable them to provide peace and security for respecting and respectable social housing tenants who abide by their tenancy contracts and reflect our British values of decency towards their neighbours.

09:52

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure to speak in this debate and, as always, a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. Thank you so much for that opportunity.

I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for leading the debate and setting the scene. There is not one of us in this Chamber today who has not been impacted by this issue through our constituents. I want to give a couple of examples, and one of them will be incredibly extreme, but it does illustrate the issue. I know that this Minister has no responsibility for housing in Northern Ireland, but I know also that he has a deep interest in Northern Ireland. He has come over to Northern Ireland on a number of occasions, and we are always very pleased to see him there, because we know that he does that out of interest and wanting to help.

Issues involving antisocial behaviour impact all our constituencies, and we are no strangers to dealing with these issues in our offices. Unfortunately, probably nearly every week, I have at least one or two of these things to deal with. By the way, they are not always in social housing. Sometimes they are in private housing as well, so people should not ever think that it is just social housing where the problems are. There is more to be done to protect tenants and also give housing associations more rights to take control of their own properties, so it is great to be here to discuss that.

May I first commend the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell)? He made a very pertinent comment. Many of those in social housing aspire to own their own house, whether the one they are living in, under the system of purchase, or a house elsewhere. To give one story as an example, many years ago someone came to me and said, “Jim, I’ve been offered a house up in a certain place, and I’m not sure whether I should take it, because it’s got a reputation.” I said, “My suggestion to you is: it’s a lovely house, it’s a lovely area, and I think you should take it. The reason I say that is that you could go there and have the best neighbour you ever had in your life, or you could go to somewhere really special and you could have the neighbour from hell. That’s how it works. You have no control over who your neighbour is.” The area does not always mean that the house itself is in a bad area. That person took that house, by the way, and they still live there. That is an example of taking an opportunity, and of having neighbours who are genuine and lovely.

I have a great working relationship with the Housing Executive in my constituency, and with Ards and North Down council and Newry, Mourne and Down council, because they take in a large portion of my constituency after the boundary changes. I believe it is important to have a good working relationship with the housing associations: first, with the Housing Executive, which is the biggest house owner in Northern Ireland, but also with Choice Housing, Radius Housing, Clanmil Housing, Alpha Housing and Habinteg. I name them all because they are important housing associations and providers in my constituency. Working together, we can ensure that tenants are safe and that their issues are dealt with quickly and efficiently.

I do not agree with the “three strikes and you’re out” rule mentioned earlier. If someone is continuing to party, causing noise, disturbance and damage, and if someone has addiction issues, all those around them are impacted, especially in flats. If, for example, there is a six-block flat and one flat is partying all the time, the other five are all impacted by that, and maybe the neighbours next door as well, so we cannot ignore what is happening. When a tenant signs for a house, there is a list of conditions and rules to which they are supposed to adhere. If they cannot adhere to those rules, then they are out—the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) referred to that, and I think that is right. It is only right for those who want a decent life, who aspire to other things, who aspire to a quality of life, and who—even if they do not aspire to own a house—aspire to live peacefully with their neighbours. Those are the priorities we should be trying to achieve. The hon. Member for Ashfield has done us justice by securing this debate on an issue with which many of us have contact every day and every week.

Antisocial behaviour encompasses numerous disruptive activities, such as excessive noise, vandalism, harassment and other actions that cause harm or distress to individuals or the community. Another such activity, which is prevalent specifically in my constituency, seems to drinking and taking drugs. I am sorry to say that. I know that people have addictions—I am not here to criticise anybody—but I gently say that those with addictions, whether to alcohol, drugs or whatever, have a responsibility to look after, and not cause a problem to, their neighbours.

Both the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and the housing associations offer clear guidelines on what constitutes antisocial behaviour and provide mechanisms for residents to report incidents.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and commend the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this excellent debate. Does my hon. Friend agree that many good, hard-working families, predominantly in our working-class estates, are being absolutely tortured because of the inappropriate placing of people within their estates? Often, we see people with addictions placed beside elderly residents and folks. There needs to be appropriate placing by our housing authorities and, when a problem is identified, action needs to be taken against them. It cannot take three, four or five years just to get these people into court.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend and colleague for that intervention. I am mindful that I am not allowed to name certain things in Hansard, so I will give the example without naming the estates. We had an occasion that was the very thing that she refers to, where individuals with problems seemed to be moved. Why were they moved out of estates in Belfast, Newtownabbey and further afield to come to Newtownards? I will tell you why: because they caused bother in those estates and they had to be moved elsewhere. An estate in my town, Newtownards, was their destination, and they brought their problems with them.

We had to have meetings with the police, the Housing Executive and an intermediary body that tries to find solutions, as well as with the Tenants Association and the local representatives. It is a massive problem. The hon. Member for Ashfield referred to an example where the people who cause problems were all put together on one street. There is a responsibility on the tenants—they must adhere to the rules. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive emphasises earlier intervention and prevention strategies to address antisocial behaviours effectively.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland—it is important to have police working alongside—is instrumental in providing support for keeping the peace, because there are many cases where it comes to blows and fighting, which spills out on to the street, and sometimes worse things happen. The police’s first objective is to keep the peace and ensure that there is as little disruption as possible.

To give a perspective of the issue in Northern Ireland, in the 12-month period from March 2023 to February 2024, which is not that far back, there were 45,355 antisocial behaviour instances recorded by the PSNI, and the population in Northern Ireland is 1.9 million. My goodness! Those statistics give us an idea of the scale of the issue—in theory, they represent a decrease, and it is still an enormous figure.

Many may be aware—again, this is an extreme example—that one of the housing associations built a housing estate in Newtownards, and at the very beginning we expressed some concern that estates could potentially become aligned with one paramilitary group. I met the housing association at the very beginning to express that concern and ensure that that would not happen, and the housing association told me that it was constrained by the points system for allocating properties.

That estate was Weavers Grange in Newtownards— I will put this one on the record, because it became a fairly provincial story on a weekly basis over a period of time—where one organisation tried to ensure that the only people who could live in that estate were those who belonged to a certain group, and everyone else who wanted to go there found it impossible to stay there. Several homes were targeted, with windows smashed and graffiti sprayed—this was considered to be part of local, ongoing disputes. It has taken almost the last three years to erase that as a possibility.

By the way, the houses are lovely and really gorgeous—anyone would love to have one to live in, because they are modern and sought after—but if we cannot get peace in those estates, then we have a really serious problem to address. The housing association came round at the end of the day and understood the issues, and helped, along with the local community groups, which are critical to finding solutions and making places acceptable—the hon. Member for Mansfield referred to that as well.

Some of the instances of intimidation were actually death threats, so it was pretty heavy stuff. Efforts have been made by local neighbourhood policing teams, which include the community policing officers, the community groups, the housing associations and elected representatives, including myself, Members of the Legislative Assembly, councillors and community councillors. This is a clear example of the impact that antisocial behaviour can have on social housing developments, and in particular the impact it can have on other the tenants in the area.

When it comes to evicting a tenant, they have to go to court, and it takes such a long time, so my question is whether there is anything legislative that the Minister—who is always very helpful in his responses—could do to make the system quicker and take the niggle or aggravation out of the whole thing at an earlier stage?

I will commit to working alongside partners in my constituency to help to combat instances of antisocial behaviour. In the past, I have met members from the local policing teams to discuss strategies for combating ASB in local areas such as Newtownards, Killyleagh and Portavogie. I am sorry, Ms McVey, I am going on a wee bit; I am on the last paragraph now.

To conclude, there is more work to be done to tackle instances of antisocial behaviour in social housing areas, and the key word is collaboration. It is important that we have the collaboration among all the bodies, in conjunction with local police, housing associations, Members and other community politicians. There are so many other avenues that we can utilise to put an end to instances of ASB; and it is essential that we do this to make our towns and communities safer, happier and better places to live and work.

As I always do, I look to the Minister positively for his response, and for his commitment to ensure that more is done across the whole of the United Kingdom. I know that he will be in touch with the representatives and bodies back home as well; perhaps he can give us some assurance on that.

10:05

[Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)]

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

Antisocial behaviour affects the very fabric of our neighbourhoods. The problem not only impacts the lives and wellbeing of those directly involved but reverberates throughout our communities, creating an environment of fear, discomfort and division. Ultimately, it serves to undermine the sense of community and safety that we all strive to preserve.

The motion refers to social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour, which is clearly what the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) wishes to focus on, but it is important to give context. ASB occurs in all types of housing and in many other settings. As a councillor, some of the most serious ASB that I dealt with related to neighbour disputes in owner-occupied and private rented housing, along with problems in our town centre, none of which were caused by social housing tenants. Not a day goes by when my casework mailbag does not highlight another example of a family in desperate need of more appropriate affordable housing—which we need to get on and build. Well designed, well managed social housing has an important role to play in that.

That said, social housing providers are in a unique position, in that they are well placed to tackle ASB when it occurs and they can influence factors such as estate design and tenant support to try to prevent it from occurring in the first place. In my local area—which you will be aware of, Ms McVey—I have witnessed at first hand the problems posed by poorly designed and badly planned section 106 affordable housing. There are schemes where properties have been designed without proper outdoor spaces, or where properties have been clustered together for the convenience of the house builder, rather than prioritising good estate management.

With the explosion in homelessness that has occurred over the last 14 years, combined with the systematic dismantling of local government, support services for dealing with addiction issues have been overstretched. In some cases, the clustering of vulnerable individuals without effective support has led to significant antisocial behaviour that directly affects the neighbouring homeowners and the broader community. On top of that, it also diminishes the potential for recovery and stability for the people themselves. This is not a sustainable situation.

To effectively tackle these problems we must advocate for a holistic approach to support. It is crucial that social housing providers and councils work together to provide tenants who are grappling with addiction not only the necessary resources to address their challenges but comprehensive wraparound support systems to help them to maintain their tenancies and transform their lives. We cannot simply place individuals in homes without equipping them with the tools they need to thrive. The funding for homelessness prevention that the Government announced just before Christmas is the first step to tackling the problem.

Changes to the planning system are also needed to deal with this issue. Section 106 affordable homes are vital in tackling the housing crisis, but it is just not good enough to include social housing providers in the design only at the last minute. It is vital that affordable homes are thoughtfully integrated throughout new housing developments, rather than clustered together in one corner.

[Lee Anderson]

This is more like it. The hon. Gentleman talks about integrating social housing into new housing estates; this is a big problem for me in Ashfield. We have had all these new housing estates and they give about 10% for social housing. Most of the time the tenants who move into social houses on private estates are good tenants, but then we get one, two or maybe three nuisance families who create mayhem for the rest of the people.

Bear in mind that people have bought their houses—they are mortgaged. They work seven days a week to pay for their house and next door, in exactly the same built house, is a family who do not go to work. They are smoking weed, causing problems and making peoples’ lives a misery. I have had several cases where people who have actually bought their house have had to move out because the social housing provider has not acted on antisocial behaviour. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when we build social houses on new housing estates, all the lets should be sensitive lets and it should be based on suitability rather than need?

[Andrew Cooper]

Where I would agree is that a house builder might well release a lot of section 106 properties at the same time, the effect of which could be that, when people are at the top of the waiting list, perhaps at band A, a lot of them are placed simultaneously. When we do that without having the support mechanism in place, without dealing with the addiction issues in the first place and without looking at the issues that might be caused, we can have problems. It is not as simple as the hon. Gentleman perhaps makes out—

[Lee Anderson]

It is.

[Andrew Cooper]

Well, I disagree. It is important to look at this holistically and consider the wider support system we need to put in place when we place people in social housing in the first place.

Finally, we cannot overlook the importance of visible neighbourhood policing, which was disregarded and diminished under the previous Government. A strong police presence in our communities can serve as both a deterrent to antisocial behaviour and a reassurance to residents. It fosters trust and collaboration between law enforcement and the community, creating a safer environment for everyone. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to provide 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers. I hope the Minister can provide an update on the provision of those officers throughout the country, and particularly in Cheshire constabulary in my local police force area.

We must advocate for stronger strategic partnerships between local authorities, housing providers and law enforcement agencies to ensure that our communities are resilient to the threat of antisocial behaviour. Again, I hope the Minister can outline the importance of a multi-agency approach to tackling these problems, and tell us what steps are being taken to promote such collaborative working. It is clear that addressing antisocial behaviour requires a multifaceted approach. I believe that by providing holistic support to vulnerable tenants, advocating for better planning policies and enhancing neighbourhood policing, we can create safer, more harmonious communities for all.

10:09

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my excellent hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this debate. He has been most generous with some of his suggestions—almost unusually so, which I shall come to shortly.

It seems to me that we must have the courage to look internationally at what works elsewhere. We look to New York city in the early 1990s, which had a simple slogan: broken windows. It starts right at the ground level. What was a lawless city was transformed by saying, “We want no broken windows, no graffiti and no antisocial behaviour”. It worked. They flooded the streets with a visible security presence.

We know that having a proper deterrent also works. My hon. Friend was more than generous—unusually so—with his traffic light system of three strikes and out. I prefer a premier league football-style scenario: they get a yellow card and then they get a red card. The consequence would be that people would know that they, as a family, would lose their home if their youngsters misbehaved by, for example, revving their cars, smoking drugs or playing music from morning to dusk and throughout the night. These are the experiences that I hear about from my constituents in Boston and Skegness and in between. It is so unfair because, regardless of whether a person is a pensioner or they are going out to work to pay their taxes, mortgages or rent, it is unacceptable that those who live next door or nearby, who are not going to work, are causing absolute mayhem.

We have to have the courage to say that with rights come responsibilities. With the right to have a social housing home or a council home comes the responsibility both to look after it on the inside and to be part of the community on the street, in the housing estate and beyond. In the same way, the right for sick people, or people who are looking for work, to receive a benefit comes with the responsibility to contribute to society by looking for work. We must instil that within our culture. A deterrent is really important, so if someone does not behave, it should be two strikes and they are out and they should lose their home, in the same way that if someone does not look for work or misbehaves, they lose their benefits. If people understand that, maybe all of a sudden things will change.

We do not need more legislation—the legislation already exists. For example, public space protection orders can be used much more widely than they currently are, and councils need to be much braver in using them not just in town centres but in residential estates.

Police forces are massively stretched. In my county of Lincolnshire, the police force has the worst funding formula in the whole country. That is the subject of a review, and the situation has to change, but there are other things one can do. For example, housing associations could use PSPOs and private prosecutions. I have seen that recently, and we know it can work. Private prosecutions, rapidly used—they are always used by housing associations on nuisance tenants—would send a message: “Unacceptable behaviour has consequences. You will be fined. You will be prosecuted. You will lose your home.”

What is required is not more resources, but a proper focus on using the existing legislative framework and other aspects that are available. If we do that properly, we can make a significant difference, but it is a cultural thing. We have to make it clear to everybody that this selfish, horrific behaviour is unacceptable to communities, to decent, hard-working families and, frankly, to this country.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

We now move to the Front-Bench contributions, starting with the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats.

10:16

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing this important debate.

Liberal Democrats believe that everyone deserves to feel safe in their own homes and walking down their own streets, but for too many that is not something they can rely on. Antisocial behaviour can have a devastating impact on individuals, families and neighbourhoods, causing distress to tenants and landlords. Police force freedom of information requests obtained by the Liberal Democrats last April found that under the previous Government, average police response times to antisocial behaviour incidents increased by 37% from 2021. Some forces took an average of 17.5 hours to attend, if they attended the scene at all. In some ways, that is unsurprising, given that under the last Government 4,500 police community support officers were taken off our streets from 2015 onwards.

Only last April in my Taunton and Wellington constituency, we saw how the outgoing Conservative police and crime commissioner reduced PCSOs by a further 80 in Avon and Somerset, where only 19% of reported antisocial behaviour incidents are attended by the police. I am urging the chief constable to put more officers on the beat in Taunton town centre right now to tackle antisocial behaviour in that environment.

Years of ineffective resourcing under previous Conservative Governments, particularly since 2015, have left police forces overstretched, ending the kind of community policing that is so valuable in tackling antisocial behaviour. The Liberal Democrats stand for bringing back proper community policing and for a tough, evidence-based and therefore effective approach to eradicating antisocial behaviour for the benefit of all decent, law-abiding residents and communities.

Antisocial behaviour can include a range of nuisance and criminal behaviours that cause distress. Examples include noisy, abusive behaviour, vandalism, intimidation, drunkenness, littering, fly-tipping, drug use and excessively barking dogs. Whether someone’s actions can be classed as antisocial behaviour relies heavily on the impact it has on other people, so antisocial behaviour is a complex problem. It has many root causes, which means they all need to be tackled together to effectively address it.

Landlords rightly have important powers to remove tenants who are genuinely damaging property or the surrounding community, and I refer the House to my experience as a social housing landlord, as declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. However, those powers cannot come at the price of putting all tenants at unjustified risk of eviction for no reason. That is why we have long campaigned for an end to no-fault evictions, and we welcome the Government’s legislation to bring that to reality in the Renters’ Rights Bill. We fought hard for a fair definition of antisocial behaviour during consideration of the Renters (Reform) Bill under the previous Government, and we will continue to defend tenants against unfair eviction, which itself can be a form of antisocial behaviour.

Landlords, the police and local authorities rightly consider all the factors when deciding how best to deal with reports of antisocial behaviour. Each report is looked at individually, with consideration given to the suffering of the victims and the impact on the wider community, but just one such incident can lead to eviction from social housing—a form of “one strike and you’re out”, which is in place across the country. That is a vital tool, which landlords need and have, and the Liberal Democrats support it. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) support a similar approach.

Extending the one-strike approach we currently have to three strikes would simply be a soundbite and would make the law weaker, giving comfort and credence to the most antisocial culprits. The best deterrent would be to resource the powers and police forces we already have and to make them work. Simply evicting people on to the streets will not reduce the incidence of ASB—rather, it will move the antisocial behaviour from the house to the street, where all the evidence suggests it will only get worse.

One cause of antisocial behaviour, according to studies such as that by Stansfield in the British Journal of Criminology, is housing instability itself. That is why social housing is critical, not just to provide homes for those who need them, but to create stable communities where people can thrive. Liberal Democrats are actively pushing for 150,000 new social homes per year to be built, which would not only reduce housing instability but ensure that there are enough homes for those who need them.

[James McMurdock (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Reform)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman raising the point about stability, and I absolutely agree. In the vast majority of cases, where good people are contributing to society and making the most of their situation, stability goes a long way. But we also have to consider the point about a deterrent being necessary, because we cannot have the good people of this world being held to ransom by the bad. There have to be consequences for the bad, even if we do not necessarily like those consequences. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Gideon Amos]

We do need to have a clear and effective deterrent. If we do not have properly working police forces and community policing, we will not get that. How we would fund that is something I will return to in my closing remarks.

Everyone deserves decent accommodation. We must provide that, alongside a new generation of rent-to-own housing—so that people have a stake in the houses they live in, because they will ultimately own them—and more key worker accommodation. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) mentioned the experience in New York, where key worker accommodation for police officers and other community professionals in social housing areas had a massive impact. But that depended on resources being put into the police and public services on a big scale to make it work, and that would be needed here in the UK as well. Together, those things can create the stable, mixed communities that are the antidote to antisocial behaviour.

Sadly, the sell-off of council housing over decades of different Conservative Administrations has left too many estates only for those with the most problems, and with fewer and fewer public services to support the families and communities who need them. If we add to that divisive rhetoric pitting one struggling family against another, in an argument about who deserves the home the most, and we have a race to the bottom for the community concerned.

Instead, we should increase the pitiful level of social housing, inject proper community policing, invest in public services and let landlords use their legal powers strongly and appropriately, including through acceptable behaviour contracts, which were pioneered right back in 2003 in Somerset, Islington and other council areas. Together, those measures will prove the most effective way to tackle antisocial behaviour.

Above all, we need to bring back proper community policing, after its total erosion under recent Conservative Governments, and have more bobbies on the beat. Our manifesto would fund and deliver that by investing in acceptable behaviour contracts; making youth diversion schemes a statutory duty, so that every part of the country has pre-charged diversion schemes for young people; freeing up existing officers’ time by creating an online crime agency; drawing up a national recruitment and retention strategy to tackle the shortage of detectives; and abolishing police and crime commissioners, instead investing the savings in frontline policing, including in tougher action on antisocial behaviour.

[Andrew Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman has talked a lot about what we do about antisocial behaviour after we have discovered that it is taking place, and there is an awful lot of emphasis on what the police can do, but does he agree that it is better to deal with antisocial behaviour before it occurs? It is better to deal with underlying addiction issues, and it is better for social housing providers to put resources into tenancy sustainability, so that new tenants understand the behaviour expected of them before problems occur.

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. So many entrenched problems in families and communities need the support of public services and investment in them. If we systematically take away policing, social services support, and local authority support and housing officers, as we have seen with the shrinking of local government over recent years, it is hardly surprising that we get an increase in social problems—we are not investing early on to deal with them. Thank you, Ms McVey, for allowing me to contribute to this important debate.

10:25

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate, because all of us have experienced distressing constituency cases, which are a real problem for our communities. I agree with his description of the issue: it can cause mayhem and misery throughout our local communities.

I also agree that social housing should be a privilege, not a right, and that those houses should be kept in good order. When canvassing in our patch, we have all gone to areas with social housing and seen overgrown gardens with litter and furniture in them. That cannot be right for the people in those houses, and particularly the children, but also for the neighbours. It is simply not right.

It is good to see that we seem to be in violent agreement on both sides of the Chamber on the three-strikes policy, which I will talk about in a second. That seems to be a maximum, not a minimum. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) argued for a two-strikes policy, and the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) argued for a one-strike policy. I am encouraged by that, because it is fair to say that everyone in the debate so far—I am interested to hear what the Minister will say—has said that we need to do more.

[Richard Tice]

Competition is a good thing. It may be that the Minister wants “no strikes and you’re out”.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That might be a bit tricky—people do deserve to live in a house as long as they demonstrate good behaviour.

My predecessor as shadow Secretary of State—now the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch)—has said:

“Those who break the law, make neighbours’ lives a misery, or treat the UK as a hotel they’re just passing through, should not be given subsidised housing…The public wants to know that only decent and hardworking people who have contributed to this country are given social housing.”

I agree with that point.

The Minister is a very decent chap, and I am really interested to listen to what he will say, but let us contrast those comments with what the current Secretary of State, the Deputy Prime Minister, has said. She has confirmed Labour’s plans to ditch proposals from the Conservative Government to take away social housing from criminals, including those with a history of antisocial behaviour. The Deputy Prime Minister also binned the Conservatives’ commitment to prioritise social housing for those with local and British connections. I am very disappointed by that approach, and we need to revisit it. I very much hope the Minister will do that, based on what has been said in this debate. That is all despite the Prime Minister pledging a new clampdown on criminal and violent disorder.

I would like to pick up on what my friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), said in his remarks. I totally agree with many of the points he made, but particularly on right to buy. I grew up back in the‘70s in a little town in North Yorkshire with large council estates. I used to deliver milk there as a young man, and those council estates were not in the best order. Some of the behaviours were not the best, and nor was the condition of some of the houses, because people did not look after them. One of the benefits of right to buy, as well as giving individuals the benefit of right to buy, was that the individuals who bought those homes also improved them significantly. With double glazing, extensions and smart gardens, the quality of those estates increased dramatically. It is therefore a real concern that the Government have decided to cut back and water down that policy and to make it more difficult for people renting social houses to buy them. That cannot be right, particularly when the Deputy Prime Minister herself—this is her policy—has benefited from those very opportunities. It is rank hypocrisy, and it cannot be right.

[Gideon Amos]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the Government are going to provide for the selling off of council houses, they should invest in replacing them, so that we do not have a massive loss of council housing in this country as we have had over the last few decades?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have increased the amount of affordable housing significantly since 2010; there are more than half a million new affordable homes. I do not think he knows that there is a limit on how much money we have. The more social housing we provide, the more expensive that will be. He set out lots of plans that would be very expensive and would take the tax rates in this country through the roof. If that is what people want to vote for, that is what they should vote for, but that is not what I believe. There are finite resources, and we must use them very carefully.

We set out plans to give preference to local residents and to armed forces veterans, but, crucially, to disqualify those with unspent antisocial behaviour convictions and those guilty of other offences. I do not quite agree with the hon. Member for Ashfield that his calls—presumably, both as a member of our party and while in his current party—fell on deaf ears. People may argue that it was not enough, but much work was done while we were in government.

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. He talks about my history of being in a different party. If I were still in the Conservative party, I would be sat on those empty Conservative Benches today showing that I care about this important issue.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I know that the hon. Gentleman would be. He has always stood up for his constituents and, indeed, for mine and for those of every Member of this House. I always admired that, and I know that he will continue to do it.

In the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, we gave more powers to social landlords and to victims. We have all met victims at our surgeries and been to see the situations that they live in, but now they can demand that the agencies ensure that their problems are dealt with more effectively by bringing those agencies together. We also gave social landlords more power to evict offenders—the people who are guilty of this kind of abuse—and we added resources of £160 million.

Legislation is nothing without implementation, and we need the right policing resources, as a number of Members referred to. I must pick up on the point made by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), about policing numbers. I agree that we should have more police on our streets, and we have record numbers today, but he cannot simply walk away from some of the choices made by his party and my party post-2010, when police numbers were cut. Looking back now, that was the wrong thing to do, but he cannot walk away from that. Police numbers dipped and then grew again under subsequent Conservative Governments. They now stand at a 50-year record, which is probably a record in anybody’s lifetime.

I will pick up on the point about the three strikes policy, which formed the basis of the speech by the hon. Member for Ashfield. He thinks that it should be three strikes, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness said that it should be two strikes, and the hon. Member for Mansfield, in a fantastic speech, which was most unexpected—he is welcome to join us on the Conservative Benches any time he wants—said that it should be one strike.

The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness made the point that benefits are a privilege, not a right, and that people should have to search for a job and behave well, for example, to get those benefits. We introduced the claimant commitment to do exactly that, so we have taken action in this area, which was of course extremely controversial. We have had to stand up time and again in debates to defend our sanctions policy, because we do not think it is right that people can simply leave the labour market and not try to find work. Again, action was taken there.

The hon. Member for Ashfield talked about where people would live if they were kicked out of these houses, which is a controversial point, of course. That made me think about my mum, who was a social worker who rehabilitated offenders. When people came out of jail, she would try to find them a job and a house. Eventually, she convinced landladies to put up those people, who were trying to get the second chance that most of us would like to ensure that people have. She then built a purpose-built hostel for them, but she had a very clear rule: no drink or drugs while they were in the hostel or one of the bedrooms provided by the landladies. The Probation Service said, “You can’t do this because these people have very difficult lives.” The hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) pointed that out, and I agree that these people have very complex lives. Nevertheless, my mum always stuck to the line that if the person did not abide by the rule, they could not be in the landladies’ guest houses or the hostel. It was “one strike and you’re out”—as simple as that. Everybody knew the rule. It was tough love, but it worked. She got many people back on the straight and narrow because she was very straight down the line about it. I am sure that there were no more resources then than there are today. Resources will always be tight, so we have to show tough love to people in that situation and say what the rules will be.

I am keen to hear what the Minister is going to do about this issue. He is a very decent man, but I do not believe that he is going to show the tough love that we need. I fear that he—well, not him personally, but his Government—will be too weak, and I think that in 2030, when possibly his ministerial career has ended and a new Minister has taken his place, he will look back in anger at the fact that he did not do more.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I gently remind the Minister to leave a couple of minutes for Lee Anderson to wind up.

10:37

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. Christmas may be over, but I have been visited by the ghost of Christmas future, who has shown me what my life might look like in 2030. I have to say that I would be amazed if I am still a Minister in 2030, but it would be a privilege to have had a long career serving my country. I would love that.

I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this debate. I am in this Chamber a lot, as are a lot of other hon. Members here, and my favourite debates are not the ones in which individuals bring up very interesting issues that they are interested in— I have done that myself with things that I have a long, enduring interest in—but those that are really rooted in the lives of our constituents. This is one of those.

Colleagues of different political persuasions from different parts of the UK have the same challenge, and we get a lot of correspondence about it in our mailbags. More importantly, people in our communities deal with it every day. They do the decent thing—they go to work, work hard and bring their kids up—and they do not want much other than to be able to get on with a quiet life, but they have to go home to disturbance, noise, aggression, smell or whatever it is. It is so unfair and unjust that they have to live their lives that way. It is right that the Government and the Parliament of the day believe that this issue is important and that we have a role in changing it.

Antisocial behaviour is not merely a nuisance but has devastating personal consequences. It corrodes people’s freedom, makes them not want to leave the house, damages their mental health and ultimately undermines their sense of home. That is why tackling antisocial behaviour is an important priority for this Government through our safer streets mission. We have committed on the record to put thousands of neighbourhood police and police community support officers into local communities so that residents have a named officer to turn to when things go wrong.

Hon. Members have talked about the existing powers, which we think need to be augmented through respect orders. We need tough sanctions and proper penalties. Crucially—this is a significant gap at the moment—we need serious and growing penalties for those who persistently offend.

The hon. Member for Ashfield said that social housing is a gem, and I agree. The bedrock of my community is good, decent homes where people can grow up, go to work, thrive and live their lives. It makes it doubly painful when a small number of individuals who have this gem—this thing that many others on the waiting list would be desperate to secure—choose to perpetrate antisocial behaviour and make their neighbours’ lives a misery. It is a double insult. I will address his three strikes point a little later, but I will give a clear response on that.

The hon. Member also talked about the important relationship between central Government, local government, the providers and the police. This is an all-sector approach to try to tackle these individuals and to assemble the right powers, whether through tenancies, the effectiveness of the courts, or providers themselves doing their jobs. Those are points that I will cover.

Any debate that starts with Clement Attlee is a good debate. If we look around the country we can see the impact of his Labour Government and subsequent Labour Governments. Whether it is social housing, our national health service or the minimum wage, we built the basic standards that make people’s lives better and help them thrive. This Government will govern in that spirit, and I look forward to the support of the hon. Members for Ashfield and for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice).

[Lee Anderson]

The Minister makes a good point. He speaks passionately about Clement Attlee. What would Clement Attlee think of the state of our welfare state system and social housing today?

[Alex Norris]

I could talk all day about Clement Attlee. His policies and politics were rooted in organising in the east end of London. We often forget this, but—well, the hon. Gentleman is no stranger to internal Labour party dynamics. Clement Attlee was a man of exceptional privilege, but he chose to go to the places where life was hardest. He looked at the living conditions of individuals in the east end of London and non-judgmentally sought to change them. He understood that some people had substance abuse issues—they manifested perhaps a little differently compared with today, but it is the same principle—and others had mental health or physical health issues. There was domestic abuse. We are talking about the 1930s, but it is not so different nearly 100 years on. He sought to change those things, but he never sought to divide people into worthy and unworthy people. He would never write people off.

There is an important conversation at the nub of this debate: what is too much? Where is the line? What is tough love? What is an effective way of changing things? The hon. Gentleman talked about not caring where those who are evicted go. I do care, and I will address that point in a little while. There is a balance.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The Minister touched on the point about people being unworthy. Can I make the point that my mum would have made? It was not the person who was unworthy as an individual; it was just that they were unworthy of living in a social house, or in her hostel. We have to have tough love to create an incentive for people to behave properly.

[Alex Norris]

I totally accept that point. The challenge will be, as the hon. Gentleman will know from his leadership in his business career and his senior status in the previous Government, that every individual reacts differently to different circumstances. Like many colleagues, I like sport. No one needs to shout at me about the mistakes I have made. I know the mistakes. I carry them and think about them all the time. I need an arm around my shoulder. Other people need shouting at. It is about finding the model to make a change, if change is the thing we want, which I think it is for most of us. But people like me, who advocate change and perhaps take a longer lens on it than Conservative Members, cannot lose sight of the fact that in that moment, the people living next door are living in misery. That is why we have to have a line and I will talk about where that might fall.

The shadow Secretary of State should not be surprised by the quality of the contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm); if he hears him speak on other issues, he will see that the quality is there. With both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Ashfield here, I had to check whether this was 2024 or 2014—had we got the old band back together? There is a lot of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire here. We have all known each other for a very long time. I associate myself with the comments that my hon. Friend made about Nottinghamshire police and how important it is that we have good policing and we give the police the tools and resources to do that well in our community.

The thing that I took from both my hon. Friend’s contribution and that of the hon. Member for Ashfield is just how frustrating the process is. Having sat for 13 years on the local authority and in this place, I know about sitting there yet again saying, “Well, have you done any diary sheets?”, the burden of proof constantly being on those who are doing the decent thing, and the seemingly ever-higher mountain to climb to get some degree of justice. Again, that is something I will return to shortly.

I was pleased, as always, to hear the contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). As he said, in Northern Ireland policing is a reserved matter, but the issues are similar. I suspect that people in Bulwell, in my constituency, and Newtownards, in his, are not that different. They want decent treatment, and the vast majority of people in both his community and mine are decent people who do the right thing. That is why it is all the more frustrating when individuals do not. I particularly took his point about reputation; people sometimes talk my community down, and that angers me, because my community is chock full of brilliant people who, whether by being great parents, by being great friends, or by contributing and volunteering, make the world a better place every day. That is why it angers me that a small number of people choose to cause a big amount of disruption.

The hon. Member mentioned legislation. Some colleagues have said that we need legislation; others have said we do not. I will set out the case for why we do. Given that the Renters’ Rights Bill is back next Tuesday for its Report stage, this is a good moment—an amendment window—for colleagues to bring forward ideas, and there are also the stages in the other place. Clearly there is a broad interest in this issue, and there could be a lot of very good contributions.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) set out, the rebirth of social housing is at the core of what this Government intend to do. We think that having a social house can be a foundation on which people build their lives. That makes it all the more important that we have appropriate checks and balances for those who do not behave properly in social housing. I will address his point about policing shortly, because without police, it does not matter what laws or rules we have; we simply will not be able to enforce them.

The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness talked about the broken windows theory, which is interesting and important, but I might challenge it slightly. It is not as simple as saying, “We don’t want any broken windows round here.” It is saying that when we have broken windows, we fix them: if there is one broken window, a second window is more likely to be broken, because people think, “Hey, you break windows round here.” It is about having the resourcing to do that.

The hon. Member also talked about a visible police presence, which is very important to this new Government. There is a trade-off here—as he says, these things need to be paid for. Balancing that is the challenge for the Government of the day, and it will be the challenge for Opposition parties.

[James McMurdock]

As I understand it, in my local area Essex police has the highest number of police officers in history. But if I speak to residents on the street, I often get exactly the same response: they never see their police officers, or they do not recognise those numbers as fact. Does the Minister agree that we should look at how we use our resources?

[Alex Norris]

I totally agree with that, and I have that conversation with my constituents. I was the shadow Policing Minister before the election, and I saw the Policing Minister and Home Secretary at the time, both of whom I hold in high regard, tearing their hair out over this question. As the hon. Gentleman says, we have employed more police officers than ever before; we have cut them and then we have added them back. Why are people not happier? The reality is that the funding mechanism squeezed out civilian staff, so that we now have 10,000 fewer police officers in frontline roles. There have never been more police officers—6,000 in this case—sat behind desks, doing things that they were not trained for and that their skills are wasted on. We have to change that, and getting 13,000 more police and police community support officers is part of our neighbourhood policing guarantee.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I take the Minister back to the broken windows point. Broken window policing was not just about fixing the windows. He is right to say that that was part of it, because people not caring creates the opportunity for more crime, but it was also about arresting people for low-level crimes and antisocial behaviour. That is an effective and important part of that policy.

[Alex Norris]

I totally agree with that. To continue the New York example, I think of Red Hook and the courts there: the idea was that they would not just nick people for low-level crimes, but get them through court very quickly and ensure that there were sanctions, as a proper deterrent. Sadly, we are very long way from that. One of my biggest challenges with constituents is that they fear there is no point in staying in the game with the courts system, because they are already getting hearing dates for 2026. That is a real challenge at the root of justice in this country.

The issue starts with social housing providers. We would always want any issues to be nipped in the bud. If someone has done something that they should not have—had a loud party or left a bicycle in the way—then the necessary interaction should be quite an easy one, and there should be a resolution and no recurrence. That reduces antisocial behaviour. We want to see providers do that and they ought to do that.

Similarly, it is right that, when preventive measures fail, landlords can move decisively and quickly to tackle tenants who persistently abuse their tenancies. There are a range of powers already on the statute book, including eviction, but again, as we know from colleagues, that process does not feel like it always works. We have had conversations with social landlords. Of course, we would emphasise that they can apply to a court to remove tenants who carry out antisocial behaviour, but the process can be very difficult. I will talk shortly about how that might be made better.

It starts at allocation. There is a little bit of conversation about who gets access to social housing. Local authorities, including my own, can and do deprioritise tenants who have a history of bad behaviour. The majority—we believe it is about 75%—of local authorities undertake antisocial behaviour or other criminal behaviour-type tests ahead of allocating a social home. I suspect that colleagues may be interested in checking with their local authority whether they are in the three quarters or the quarter, because that is the front door to ensuring that those who have behaved badly in the past do not get access and the opportunity to do it again.

When it comes to eviction, there are powers at the moment—the Housing Act 1985 and the Housing Act 1988—but it is difficult. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness suggested that there should perhaps not be more legislation, but our plan is for more legislation in this space. Through the Renters Rights’ Bill, we will enable housing association landlords to make a claim to a court for repossession immediately in the most serious cases, rather than having to provide a notice period, with all the harm that can happen in those cases.

We will also amend the matters that judges must consider when deciding whether to award possession under the discretionary ground. This is very important—to give judges particular regard to whether tenants have engaged with efforts to resolve their behaviour and the impact on other tenants. Often, as we know from our casework, they simply do not answer letters or let the housing patch manager in. That will be a factor in the future, which is very welcome.

On the point about not being interested where people go, I am interested in that—not least because, as the crow flies, Kirkby to Bulwell is about eight or nine miles. One way or the other, either people being booted out of houses in my constituency end up in that of the hon. Member for Ashfield, or vice versa. That is why we should take an interest. If we can help people to resolve mental health issues, we should do that. If we can help people to address substance abuse issues, we should do that. We cannot pretend that, if we evict them from their housing, they suddenly will not be a problem elsewhere. I do not think that is the case, which is why we must take an interest and want to reduce reoffending and improve and promote rehabilitation.

My particular issue with the three strikes point is the rigidity. I would be very clear with my local authority that, if someone set their neighbour’s car on fire or attacked them, or was the organiser and perpetrator of a drugs network from their social house, one strike should be plenty. I would also say that, in a case where perhaps a lone parent is doing the best they can do, and they have a child who is clearly struggling and showing bad behaviours, I would try to solve that problem before thinking that shifting them out of their house would help rather than hinder.

The three strikes system is not flexible enough, and I fear it is at risk of being weaponised. We will have situations where we see both neighbours in the constituency surgery. If there is a hard and fast rule, and someone knows they only have to get three complaints found against their neighbour and they are out, it might promote that type of activity.

[Lee Anderson]

The Minister is being very generous with his time. He talked about a situation in which somebody might torch somebody’s car, where that is a serious enough offence to lose their tenancy. This has actually happened in Ashfield, all over my constituency. We even had a case where we had a house fire by a nuisance tenant, who still was not evicted. It does not work.

[Alex Norris]

That is why we are making changes within the Renters’ Rights Bill. In those cases, the neighbours must tear their hair out and wonder what has to happen for the right thing to be done.

I am conscious of the time remaining, but I wanted to mention our approach to antisocial behaviour and policing more generally, because we must have neighbourhood police back on the street. We have lost neighbourhood policing in this country. The shadow Minister talked about the importance of tackling low-level crime. We have essentially decriminalised retail crime in this country. We have seen an explosion in it, with all that misery. We must have the proper policing resource to get into that space.

That is why the Prime Minister announced on 5 December, through our plan for change, our zero-tolerance approach to antisocial behaviour and, critically, our 13,000 more police and police community support officers. They are named contacts, working on antisocial behaviour action plans with local communities and using new tools, such as the respect orders, to ensure that individuals doing the wrong thing are tackled about their behaviour. There is a straight line across that.

After 13 years of talking to people about problems with their neighbours, my first question—I really cross my fingers behind my back—is whether their neighbour is a private or a social housing tenant. It is much easier with a social housing tenant, because there tend to be behaviour contracts and a legislative framework. If I have to chase a private landlord who might not live in Nottingham—I cannot believe anyone would not, but if not, or if they lived in Derby, for example—or even in Britain, that becomes really hard. We need broader tools that go beyond the ones with which we could work with social housing providers. That will be in our crime and policing Bill in this Session.

To conclude, I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield for securing this important debate and all hon. Members for their contributions to it. We are alive to the issue, and that is why we are acting through the Renters Rights’ Bill and have the policing and crime Bill to come. We are interested in hearing people’s ideas. We will always engage with them properly. I have given a sense today of the direction in which we are going, and I look forward to working with colleagues in the future.

10:56

[Lee Anderson]

I thank everyone for turning up to the debate. What have we learned in this Chamber? We have learned that the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) should be the housing spokesman for Reform UK. That is probably the main thing. There are plenty of seats over here on our Benches.

I have learned, actually, that I have been far too soft on this issue. I am astounded. I first debated it in 2015, as a councillor on Ashfield district council, and I said pretty much the same as what I have said today, but I got booed out of the chamber by the Labour group. It is incredible. They disagreed with everything I said. How things have changed over the over the past 10 years or so.

I am disappointed with the attendance in this Chamber today, because this problem touches every single constituency in the United Kingdom. Everyone, every constituency, has a council estate; every constituency has this problem; and every single MP in this House has a lot of casework on this issue. I have the greatest respect for the shadow Minister, and he knows that, but I look at the Conservative Benches behind him and no one has turned up to contribute; I look at the Government Benches and, yes, two Members have turned up, and they made reasonable contributions—but we have a better turnout on our Benches. The point of this place is to change things, and to make people’s lives better, easier and safer. If we cannot do that in this Parliament, what is the point of us being here?

I will hold my hands up and apologise for the three strikes policy—far too liberal. I would rather go with the dog-whistle politics of the hon. Member for Mansfield: “one strike and you’re out”.

Before I finish, I will just say this to the Minister: the policy is a deterrent. When I say that I do not care where those people live, what I am saying is that, if we have a deterrent where they know they will lose their tenancy, their home, a place to sleep, they will stop that behaviour straight away. I hope, moving forward, that the Government will act on this and make the lives of people on these council estates in Ashfield and all around the country much better.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour.

Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I will call Deirdre Costigan to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered decarbonising homes and heat batteries.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. My constituents in Ealing Southall regularly speak to me about the cost of heating their homes. Gas bills have risen astronomically over the past few years, and in freezing weather like this, people are often afraid to turn up their heating in case they are hit with a massive bill. Indeed, research by the House of Commons Library confirms that the annual increase in gas bills in October 2022 was the largest ever recorded, based on records going back to 1970.

How did this happen, and what can we do to reduce people’s bills? There is one reason why bills have increased to such a degree: we have become almost completely dependent on Russian gas—on gas internationally, in fact. When Russia, a huge gas supplier, invaded Ukraine, it disrupted global gas supplies. Prices shot up across the world. As a country, we have put all our eggs in one basket. Some 23 million homes have gas boilers, and 85% of us depend on gas to heat our homes, so we had no option but to pay higher prices. It is a basic mistake that anyone can see if they think about it. For years we lived off cheap gas, until we were addicted to it. Then, when supplies were disrupted, we were left at the mercy of higher prices.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a strong point, and I thank her for secured this really important debate. I represent a very rural area where homes have depended on oil-fired heating systems off grid. There is a growing awareness about the transition to renewable alternatives. However, for some, this shift is seen as more of a threat than an opportunity—I have lots of casework on the matter—so engaging consumers has to be a priority. Heat pumps are the lowest-carbon heating solution and should therefore reward homes with lower energy costs. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government should make rebalancing gas and electricity tariffs a priority, to encourage more consumers to upgrade to heat pumps?

[Deirdre Costigan]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention; I will come to that point later in my speech. I know that the Government are giving this much consideration.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for her contribution; she is making a name for herself in the House on this issue. Does she agree that if we are to reach our targets, we must assist homeowners, particularly those who are older? Does she feel that the Government should provide financial assistance so that we can achieve her goals?

[Deirdre Costigan]

I thank the hon. Member for his support for Backbench Business in this place, which is very much appreciated by all Members. I certainly agree on the need for financial support; I will touch on that point later. I expect the Minister will too, as there has been a significant move forward over the past six months.

As I have explained, we have become addicted to gas over a number of years, which is why my constituents in Ealing Southall are consistently paying higher energy prices and struggling to heat their homes. We should have started work years ago on breaking our addiction to gas by investing in our own renewable energy and upgrading our homes to use that energy, but the previous Government never had the bravery to take action at the scale that is needed. Instead, they stopped us producing cheap British-made energy by blocking the building of onshore wind farms and by cutting funding for solar panels.

The previous Government also stopped us upgrading our homes to protect them from the rising cost of gas. They slashed grants for loft and cavity wall insulation and scrapped the zero-carbon homes standard for new homes. As a result, more than 1 million new homes have been built with lower energy efficiency standards, and people are paying higher bills than they should. We continue to have the leakiest homes in Europe, with just 12,000 homes insulated last year, compared with up to 2.5 million a year under the last Labour Government.

The Carbon Trust estimates that those decisions by the Conservative Government have added at least £3 billion to UK gas bills. That is why my constituents are paying through the nose to keep warm today. What can we do about that? Thankfully, the new Government are already taking action to wean us off gas. We have set up Great British Energy, ended the block on onshore wind farms and kick-started plans to become a world leader in floating offshore wind. These are the brave steps needed to ensure that by 2030 we become fully energy self-sufficient and that 95% of the power we generate is clean energy, ending our reliance on gas and on decisions taken in Moscow.

When it comes to weaning our home heating systems off gas, the recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step towards the new Government’s warm homes plan. As a start, 300,000 homes will benefit from upgrades next year, with grants for heat pumps and support for renters and low-income households.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate; it is incredibly disappointing that not a single Conservative MP has turned up to listen. Does my hon. Friend agree that our transition away from fossil fuel heating must include domestic network ground source heat pumps at a much broader scale, including in social housing? Heat pumps are essential to the transition. The largest producer of ground source heat pumps, Kensa, is in my constituency and is ready, willing and able to support that transition.

[Deirdre Costigan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am well aware of the company he mentions and will talk about it later in my remarks. It is a great example to build on.

We need to wean our home heating systems off gas, in the same way that we need to wean the country off gas when it comes to renewable energy. The recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step in the warm homes plan. Heat pumps, which will benefit from some of that money, are a great way to wean us off gas. They use electricity rather than gas, so they can be fed from home-grown energy from our wind and solar farms.

Just 1% of UK homes use a heat pump, compared with 60% in Norway. That is a real indictment of the previous Government’s inaction. It is fantastic that this Government are systematically removing barriers to heat pumps. We have increased funding for the boiler upgrade scheme by £30 million this year and will be doubling it from April. We are removing the need for other home upgrades before households can get that funding, and we are changing planning requirements and the 1 metre rule so that heat pumps are easier to install.

[Sarah Dyke]

Like many residents of rural areas on an off-grid oil heating system, my constituent Nicholas in Sparkford desperately wants to change to a heat pump, but it would cost him £19,000 to transition. The cost is preventing so many people in rural areas from decarbonising their home. I appreciate that the Government are taking steps to help, but in rural areas the cost is simply too high. What can the Government do to incentivise people who live in rural areas to decarbonise their home?

[Deirdre Costigan]

As I have laid out, the Government have already taken steps to increase the funding to transition to heat pumps. I am sure the Minister will have more to say on rural communities and the particular barriers they face.

Although heat pumps are extremely important in the move to wean us off gas, they do not work for every home. An estimated 20% of homes are unsuitable for heat pumps. We need to do more to break down the reasons why people can be reluctant to choose them. Air source heat pumps need outdoor space. Many of my Ealing Southall constituents live in small terraced homes or flats and do not have much outdoor space, so a heat pump is not a viable or attractive option. Many people have repurposed the space that used to house their hot water tank.

That is where innovative British firms such as Kensa in Cornwall and Tepeo in Reading come in. Both companies use heat batteries, using the same science that is behind hand-warmer packs, to store thermal energy until it is needed. Tepeo’s zero emission boiler, ZEB, uses a heat battery that automatically buys energy at cheaper times of day and releases it when required, reducing energy bills. Users do not need an outside pump; they just need a box about the size of a gas boiler. Because of their small size and their ability to plug and play without needing to do replumbing, heat batteries are a good solution for heating homes in built-up urban environments like London, including parts of Ealing Southall.

Kensa uses shared ground source heat loops that are connected to whole streets or blocks of flats. The energy is connected from the ground, is produced in networked heat pumps in each of the linked houses or flats and is then stored in Kensa’s Sunamp heat batteries. No outdoor space is needed, and it replaces the need for a hot water tank.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, may I remind Members that interventions should be concise and should not be speeches?

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. I was lucky recently to visit Kensa’s air source heat pumps in Sutton Dwellings in Chelsea. I have also visited Tepeo’s factory; it is great to see the chief executive officer in the Public Gallery today. Does my hon. Friend agree that for heat batteries to enjoy the same penetration of the market as heat pumps, it is important that they benefit from VAT relief and the same levels of subsidy so that we can decarbonise our heating?

[Deirdre Costigan]

I absolutely agree, and I will come on to exactly those points. Kensa’s approach also uses ground source heat technology, aligned with heat batteries—a cheap and efficient way of rolling out heat pumps at scale. My hon. Friend mentions a visit he made; another example is that Kensa has replaced direct electric heaters with shared ground loops alongside heat batteries in more than 270 flats across three tower blocks in Thurrock. Residents’ bills have reduced by more than 60%, which is a huge saving. Both those technologies can wean us off gas. They are examples of the kind of British manufacturing and innovation that we need to support to create good-quality jobs. However, barriers remain, and I hope that the Minister will consider ways of addressing them.

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

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for securing this important debate. My constituency has one of the highest levels of off-gas-grid properties in the UK, with over a third of my constituents dependent on heating oil to keep their homes warm. Does the hon. Member agree that it is vital that the Government bring forward plans to help off-grid homes to decarbonise not only to help the environment, but to help to bring their bills down?

[Deirdre Costigan]

I am sure that the Minister will have more to say on that when she responds.

Heat batteries in the UK currently face a significant disadvantage compared with heat pumps as they are not eligible for a grant under the boiler upgrade scheme. I know the Minister is continuing to look at how she can maximise the benefits of the scheme and I hope she will also look at whether new technologies such as heat batteries can also be supported.

Unlike heat pumps, heat batteries are not on the list of energy-saving materials that qualify for VAT reductions, so extending VAT relief to heat batteries would help to heat the 20% of homes currently missing out. I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to ask him to consider reducing VAT for heat batteries, and I hope the Minister might work with him on that.

There are barriers to installing networked ground source heat pumps that use heat batteries, including planning considerations and the need to adopt a street-by-street approach that can upgrade hundreds of homes in one go. The Minister has already committed to changing planning rules for air source heat pumps. I hope that she will consider whether changes also need to be made for networked ground source pumps and that she will include networked heat pumps allied with heat batteries in the forthcoming low-carbon flexibility road map she is working on.

To give certainty to British businesses investing in innovative technologies such as heat batteries, we need to ensure that there are consistent heating requirements for new homes being built. The Minister will shortly be bringing forward the new future homes standard to end the scandal of gas boilers still being installed in new homes. I hope the standard will include heat batteries and other emerging technologies.

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

I thank the hon. Member for giving way; she has been very generous and has brought a genuinely important issue to the House. She mentioned the future homes standard. According to a calculation I carried out, if every new home built since 2015, when the Conservatives cancelled the zero-carbon homes programme, had solar panels on the roof, we would have saved around 30 MW of energy—enough to obviate the need for an entire gas-fired power station. As a complement to what she is arguing for, I hope that she would support solar panels on every new house. My constituents in Taunton and Wellington cannot understand why that is not already a regulation.

[Deirdre Costigan]

We do not have solar panels feeding into our energy system to that much greater degree because of the last Government; it is as simple as that.

I will continue with the changes that I would like the Minister to consider. Lastly, I would like her to think about heat pumps and heat batteries and the way they both currently use electricity. Electricity can make them more expensive than gas boilers, which is one of the big barriers to consumers. It sounds strange, but because of the way the market works, the price of electricity depends on the price of gas. It is surely unfair that a levy is paid on the electricity used by heat batteries, but those levies are not paid back when and if they feed back into the grid.

We need to look at the electricity market to see if there are ways of splitting off the price of cheaper renewable energy from the price of gas to reflect the true value of energy storage. I hope to hear more from the Minister on that point, as part of the review on the electricity market that she has committed to undertake.

Every family and business in the country has paid the price of Britain’s dependence on foreign gas markets. Retrofitting homes with the help of heat batteries is just one of the range of actions we need to take to bring down bills and keep Britain’s leaky homes warm. In just six months, the Government have already made huge advances in increasing our energy security, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister on her plans to harness new technologies to protect the cost of heating our homes from decisions made in other countries.

11:20

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)]

I thank everyone for their insightful contributions, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan), who I know works hard for her constituents, for bringing this issue to our attention.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point to the inheritance that we are grappling with. The reality is that for too many people, energy is simply unaffordable. That is a reality that the last Government were willing to accept; it is not one that we think is tenable or that we are willing to accept. Every voice, every piece of new technology and every benefit must be considered as we try to reduce our reliance on gas and make our way forwards towards clean power by 2030, so I thank my hon. Friend for her research and work on heat batteries.

Heating our homes via low-carbon means is key to our efforts to tackle not just emissions but fuel poverty and the high cost of living that is biting across the country. As we enter the colder months of 2025, we are acutely aware of the financial pressures that families are under when heating their homes, which is why it is critical that we continue to move quickly towards cheaper, cleaner and more secure methods of heating homes for everyone across the country.

The Government were elected on an energy promise: to deliver warmer homes with lower energy bills for families across the country. Decent homes are the foundation of decent lives, and our warm homes plan is driven by the simple principle that every household deserves the security of a home that they can afford to heat.

[Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)]

I welcome the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) on this important topic. The warm homes plan currently being rolled out by the Government is particularly welcome for those of us in Cornwall with poor energy-efficient homes. Can the Minister outline the steps that she is taking to accelerate the roll-out, so that as many households as possible, particularly those with vulnerable elderly people and young people—who have access to the worst-insulated homes—can feel the immediate benefits?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I will go on to outline the steps that we are taking, because we recognise that the plan is critical to dealing with the challenges across the country.

I want to emphasise why we got here; my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall made that point very well. Let us remember that Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine exposed our country to our egregious over-reliance on international gas markets. When prices rocketed, the British people suffered. That is why we have made our strategy to reduce reliance on gas a central plank of this Government, and we can do that in two ways.

First, we want to reduce reliance on gas within the electricity system. One of the Prime Minister’s key missions is to make Britain a clean energy superpower. We have taken immediate action by lifting the ban on onshore wind within our first 72 hours in government, setting up the new mission control at the heart of Government, and setting up Great British Energy—a publicly owned company that will invest in clean home-grown energy.

Secondly, we want to reduce our reliance on natural gas for directly heating our homes, which is why this debate is so important. Over 80% of UK homes currently use gas, which is one of the highest proportions in the world. Cleaner heating is therefore a huge part of Britain’s path to energy independence. The good news is that if we get this right—there is a lot we need to do to get it right—it is also a route for us to deliver cheaper energy for people’s homes.

Although other technologies such as heat batteries might have a role to play—I will say more about that technology specifically in a second—we already know that heat pumps can be an effective and affordable way of moving forward. We know that heat pumps are three times more efficient than traditional gas boilers, and because they run on electricity, people can achieve lower bills by integrating them with smart tariffs. To the point made by the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), we understand that we need to do more work to make sure that it is cost-effective for people who make the choice to have clean heat. Thinking about the balance between gas prices and electricity prices is a key part of how we try to do that.

Heat pump uptake is increasing. Figures for the boiler upgrade scheme show that the number of applications and redemptions in October 2024 was the highest of any month since the scheme began. Critically for hon. Members who raised key questions about rural communities and homes that are off grid, we think that heat pumps are a viable option in rural communities. Actually, 54% of BUS grants went to homes in rural communities, so consumers agree with us.

We now need to make it as easy and viable as possible for people to go on this journey. That is why we are announcing and putting in place a raft of measures to help us to accelerate the pace of our warm homes plan. We have removed the outdated 1-metre rule, giving households more flexibility to install heat pumps. We are almost doubling the boiler upgrade scheme budget for next year to £295 million.

We are looking at further ways in which we can make the up-front cost of installing a heat pump much cheaper, drawing on some of the real innovation in the market, such as Kensa, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall mentioned. We are supporting the supply chain by introducing a reformed clean heat market mechanism on 1 April this year. We are investing more than £5 million in Ideal Heating as the first award from our heat pump investment accelerator competition, and we are doing the critical job of training installers through our heat training grant.

Let me come to heat batteries. We recognise that heat pumps will be the solution for many households and we need to make sure that they are as easy and affordable as possible for those households to install, but we also recognise that for some households they will not be the right solution. We also know that the landscape is changing massively, with innovation and new technology in train. That is why I can confirm that the Government are keeping several alternative electric heating technologies under close review as the supporting evidence develops. For us, this is about taking a technology-agnostic view on the market, pairing the most suitable technology with the home.

We recognise that heat batteries are a promising alternative electric heating technology. That is why we have launched the homes for net zero project, which is aiming to monitor the performance of up to 50 heat batteries in existing homes. We are expecting the results of that later this year. The key thing for us as we make the decision is whether it is a good deal for consumers. Is it efficient, is it cost-effective, and does it deliver the right outcomes—the outcomes that we need to see in people’s homes? As we build that evidence base and we build our confidence that it is the right proposition for consumers, we will look to review the policy framework, including subsidies, as we move forward.

Let me come to the warm homes plan. The Government are committed to being bold and ambitious to deliver the progress that we know is so badly needed on this agenda. When we were elected, we were clear that we needed to get straight back to work with the warm homes plan. In September, we announced plans that would lift more than 1 million households out of fuel poverty, by consulting on the minimum energy efficiency standards for all rented homes.

We also announced new schemes to help, in particular, low-income households—homeowners and private renters. This is through our warm homes local grant and our warm homes social housing fund, which closed for applications last November. We have confirmed £1 billion from the national wealth fund, Barclays UK corporate bank and Lloyds Banking Group to support housing associations to provide warmer, more energy-efficient homes.

In November, we went further. Alongside the policies that I have talked about, we confirmed initial funding for our warm homes plan, which means that next year up to 300,000 homes will benefit from upgrades, backed by £3.2 billion of investment. In December, we worked with housing colleagues to launch a major consultation on energy performance certificate reforms, which aims to deliver fundamental improvements so that the system better supports both consumers and our wider ambitions.

Let me conclude by saying that this Government understand the urgency of the situation, so we are moving at pace. That means that we are open-minded and collaborative. We are willing to work with anyone who will help us to drive the transition at the pace and scale that we need. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall can see that that is absolutely at the heart of the approach that we are taking. I look forward to working with her, with industry colleagues and with other Members across the House to think about the innovation and the steps that we need to take to make progress on this agenda, so that in the end we do the thing that we were elected to do, which is to ensure that we are delivering on the energy promise that we committed—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

11:30

Sitting suspended.

Scotland: Transport Links

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck in the Chair]

14:30

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered transport links between Scotland and the rest of the UK.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck, for the first time. I congratulate you on your position.

I am pleased to have secured this debate to highlight the significance and importance of improving transport links between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. My constituency sits in the very south of Scotland, right next to England. That is one of the reasons why I was such a passionate campaigner for remaining in the Union in the 2014 independence referendum, and why I continue to believe firmly in Scotland’s place within the UK.

In the Scottish Borders, many of my constituents have family just a few miles away in England, and most have friends just over the border. People often head to England for days out and to socialise. Some travel south every day to work; others come north to do the same. Others regularly go south for medical treatment, especially since the SNP wrecked Scotland’s NHS.

Our lives are interconnected, so our transport network must be appropriately connected too. People’s everyday lives depend on good, safe, reliable and affordable transport across the Borders and down to England. Today, I want to talk about the railway and road connections between Scotland and the rest of the UK. I will raise some of the key routes, the challenges to improve them and the opportunities that are available if we do so.

The Borders railway has undoubtedly been a great success story since it was restored between Edinburgh and Tweedbank. For many years, I have been working hard with local campaigners to see it extended to Hawick and Newcastleton, and on to Carlisle. I have been doing everything I can to keep making the positive case for the extension.

I firmly believe that the extension of the Borders railway would be a game changer for our local area. In the general election campaign last year, I pledged to work hard to deliver the extension that we all want to see. I will keep my promise to local people by spending the next parliamentary term focused on advancing that project. I am seeking to bring together a cross-party consensus about the importance of the extension. I will work constructively with the Scottish Government where possible, and I intend to have open dialogue with the new Labour Government on what we can do to achieve that project together.

This does not need to be a party political issue. It can be something on which we work together in the interests not only of the Borders but of the south of Scotland and the north of England too. Indeed, the previous United Kingdom Conservative Government worked constructively with the Scottish Government, and in March 2021 agreed to jointly invest £10 million for a study to look at the feasibility of extending the railway to Hawick and Newcastleton, and on to Carlisle.

Unfortunately, I have to say with real regret that it appears that the Labour Government simply do not grasp the importance of extending the Borders railway and are not willing to do what is right not only for the people of the Borders but for commuters and people travelling between Scotland and England. I have not been encouraged by the early signs from the new Government regarding the Borders railway extension.

After writing to seek assurances about Labour’s commitment to the project, I received a response from the Minister of State for Rail, Lord Peter Hendy, who said that Labour will “review” the previous transport commitments and “assess” this proposal. He was not able to comment on the next steps for the scheme. I find that response very poor, considering the importance to our economy and our public transport network of the extension of the Borders railway to the wider area. Better rail services would be a fantastic boost to people across the Scottish Borders.

The Borders railway extension could unlock economic potential, create thousands of jobs, improve social mobility and transform the local rail network, yet despite the previous Conservative Government’s commitment to provide funding for a feasibility study, the new UK Labour Government have refused to give the same commitment. Many local people have told me that they now feel that the Labour Government are betraying the people of the Borders by putting the feasibility study on hold.

At the very least, it is worth progressing the feasibility study so that we can establish the most effective and efficient way to proceed. It is crucial that the feasibility study goes ahead so that a proper assessment of the railway can be undertaken. I will continue to work with the Campaign for Borders Rail to further that project.

I will also talk about other train services from Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the importance of that station to the Scottish Borders and south-east Scotland. There are proposals by the rail industry and Network Rail to change the frequency and journey times from Berwick-upon-Tweed to London. Although some routes from Berwick going north are set to be improved, the number of trains going south to London will fall substantially. The proposed changes to the timetable will mean that there will be just 11 trains on weekdays, down from 15, and only eight on weekends, down from 12. That means that at least 25% fewer trains will go from Berwick to London, which will not help people travelling south for work and will not allow people to get around the country easily.

I raised my concerns with the rail industry, and particularly with London North Eastern Railway, as recently as this morning, but I am afraid the response has been extremely disappointing. The industry believes that the changes will be positive because there will be faster and more frequent services from Newcastle and Edinburgh. That will undoubtedly improve connectivity for passengers in those cities, but I fear that rail travellers from small town UK and the rural communities that such stations serve will yet again be left behind.

Moving on from the railways, I also want to raise the importance of roads to rural areas and the wider economy.

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

Before the hon. Member moves on, when it comes to Scotland and northern England transport links, does he have a view on the practice of Avanti, which runs the west coast route from London Euston to Glasgow? Whenever there is any kind of problem on the line north of Preston, whether it be in north Lancashire, Cumbria or the south of Scotland, Avanti’s habit is to stop all trains at Preston, so everywhere between Preston and Glasgow, be it Oxenholme or Motherwell, has no service. Does he think that Avanti is in breach of at least the principle of its contract in failing to serve north Lancashire, Cumbria and Scotland?

[John Lamont]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising that point. I will not comment on the legality of whether Avanti has breached its contract, but I think he is making the point that there is an issue, or at least a perception, that train companies do not think that customers and passengers north of Manchester or north of Birmingham are as important as those in the south. We need to remember, however, that the communities in the northern part of the UK and in Scotland, and the passengers travelling on those services, are in many cases much more dependent on those services because there are so few alternative services and options if there is disruption on the trains, so he makes a very important point.

As I said, I will move on from the railways and talk a bit about the importance of roads to rural areas and the wider economy. More than 60% of visitors to Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom arrived by car in 2023, showing how vital our roads are to tourism and the Scottish economy. Fixing the roads should be high on the agenda of both this Labour Government and the SNP Government in Holyrood.

For many years, however, the SNP has failed to invest in local roads. The state of the roads in the Scottish Borders, sadly, has declined substantially on the nationalists’ watch. The dire state of our roads is putting public safety at risk and increasing the cost of driving as more cars need to be repaired after hitting potholes. Although it always tries to deflect blame, it is on the SNP to step up and give councils the cash they need to fix our roads. Councils across Scotland cannot fix their roads because the SNP Government keep cutting their funding.

Unfortunately it looks as though Labour is following a very similar approach to the SNP. Last year, we heard the devastating news that Labour has decided to scrap plans to dual the A1 in Northumberland, after many years of campaigning by me, other MPs and many local people and businesses who rely on that vital road and are desperate to see it improved. This road connects the Scottish Borders to England. It is vital for our economy, and it supports jobs and helps to promote trade. That is yet another terrible decision in Labour’s Budget that will have damaging consequences for workers, families and businesses across the Borders.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is doing a fantastic job of representing his constituents. How would he fund that project—the Labour Government have said that the money is not there just now—or the feasibility study of extending the Borders railway to Carlisle? Where will the funding come from for those projects?

[John Lamont]

The funding for the Borders railways feasibility study is part of a legally binding agreement: the Borderlands growth deal between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government. That money was allocated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), who is sitting behind me, when he was the Secretary of State for Scotland. The money has been allocated within UK Government budgets for that feasibility study. The Scottish Government committed to that money on the back of the UK Government’s commitment, and similarly the UK Government committed to it on the back of the Scottish Government’s commitment. The money is undoubtedly there; it just needs to be unlocked. That is my frustration, and the frustration of my local authority, the Scottish Borders council.

In relation to the A1 dualling, there is a cross-party campaign to get that road improved. That is why, in response to the Labour Government’s decision to scrap that dualling, the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), described it as deeply disappointing, I think—he shares my concern and we have the same view on this.

We need to see investment in infrastructure so that our constituents in rural areas, such as the Borders or North Northumberland, can benefit from the same type of investment in transport as the constituents of the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) enjoy in Edinburgh. Labour Members have a metropolitan outlook in terms of ensuring that only cities get good transport, but they should not forget the rural communities, such as those in the Borders. I suspect, looking at the representation on the Labour Benches, that we will get a very skewed central-belt view of transport and connectivity.

I fear that the Labour Government’s previous decisions give us no hope that other essential roads will see the improvements that they need, such as the A68, which runs from Darlington up to near Edinburgh, or the A7, which stretches from Carlisle to Edinburgh. Those roads barely seem to register on either Labour’s or the SNP’s list of priorities. I will keep campaigning for better roads across the Borders, despite Labour and the SNP refusing to make the improvements that motorists need. We need to see much more ambition from the Government here at Westminster, and at Holyrood, to advance Scotland’s infrastructure.

Railways, roads and other transport routes between Scotland and England are vital, not just for people to get around, but to maintain and enhance the connections between our people; to allow families to visit each other and go on holidays across the UK; to help aspirational business owners to engage with customers and clients in other parts of the country; and to allow people to easily work and socialise wherever they live in Scotland or the rest of the UK. Beyond the direct and immediate impact on people, better transport routes will improve our economy, raise productivity, and help to contribute more to tax revenues and improve public services.

At a time when we desperately need to raise levels of economic growth, investing in infrastructure is an ideal way to do that. Better transport routes would also help to protect our environment by helping us to reach net zero faster by encouraging more people to use public transport and by reducing emissions. There are a whole host of benefits that could be achieved by improving transport links across our United Kingdom. That is what we should aspire to: a more connected country where people can travel freely between Scotland and the rest of the UK for work, to visit family, or to spend time with friends, wherever they are on these islands.

14:43

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck, as you are from South Shields—I have some family there too and it is a wonderful place. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for securing today’s important debate; he spoke eloquently about transport in his constituency. I gently remind him, as he mentioned net zero, that it was the Conservative Government who had an offshore wind allocation round that secured no bids when we desperately need clean, cheap and fixed-price electricity. I also gently remind him that, last time I checked, many of these transport links were under the supervision of the Conservative Government from 2010 to 2019, with some art and part assistance from another party in the early years.

Improving connectivity between Glasgow and the rest of the UK is a topic that is deeply important to my constituents and one that I have been working hard on since I was elected in July. Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city, and as we head into its 850th anniversary celebrations this year, we have much to celebrate: a vibrant city with so much economic and cultural potential. Improving connectivity in Glasgow and England is crucial to realising that potential; a high-quality inter-city service attracts investment and talent. It is critical for people in our vibrant creative, scientific, cultural and energy sectors; for people coming to Glasgow to work; for people coming to enjoy our city’s brilliant cultural, sporting and night-time economy; and for people visiting friends and family.

I will first deal with links to cities in the east served by the east coast main line. Previously, Glasgow had an excellent direct train service heading to the east of England, connecting it with cities such as Newcastle, Durham and York. In 2010, there were 10 direct trains running on the service, run by both LNER and CrossCountry; now there is only one service per day. Under the Tory regime, nine out of 10 services have been cut—yet another blow to getting economic growth into Glasgow.

I got in touch with CrossCountry to ask about the severe reductions to its service and to have a chat about increasing the frequency of that service. I am disappointed and a little surprised that I have yet to receive a reply, and I trust I will receive one soon. I did, however, meet the chief executive of LNER to discuss the decision made back in April to scrap the last remaining service connecting Glasgow and the north-east that it operates. I was clear that I was in full favour of any attempt to revive this service, and I would be keen to engage with the Minister on this matter.

I am aware that Lumo has made an application to run a service, extending from Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street. I am keen to hear more about that proposal, as it fundamentally demonstrates that there is untapped demand for direct travel from Glasgow to the north-east of England and Yorkshire. I am interested in anything that increases connectivity between the north and north-east of England, and Glasgow.

With nine out of 10 direct train services cut over the last few years, we need improvements. The Conservatives’ record of connectivity for Glasgow is, I am afraid, nothing short of abysmal. May I say to hon. Members from Scotland that it is not just a question for Glasgow? It affects people across the west coast of Scotland, including those in the countryside, who rely on those services.

Let us talk briefly about connectivity to the north-west, the midlands and London, which is also very important for Glasgow. For many years, Avanti West Coast has operated that service, and it has—to be charitable—left a lot to be desired. Even the last Conservative Government accepted that the performance was appalling. Their response to that appalling service has always puzzled me somewhat; in autumn 2023, they awarded Avanti West Coast a nine-year extension. Avanti’s response was to cut the services in the run up to Christmas—I thought it was only good children who got presents at Christmas, but there we are.

Problems persist. Between July and September 2024, only 41% of Avanti services were deemed to be on time. Reliability is crucial for such an important service, and currently it is not acceptable. Our Labour Government have inherited an absolute mess of a transport system, after years of neglect and poor policymaking. The Government are absolutely committed to boosting economic growth in all areas of the UK, including Glasgow and Scotland, and that is something I am 100% proud to support. In order to achieve this, we must be ambitious in our plans to improve transport.

It is essential that Glasgow is not left behind due to poor transport links with the major cities in England. It will take time; 14 years of Tory failure have left our transport system in a mess. I am reassured that the Government are committed to working hard to get our railways back on track. I fully support those efforts, which will take time to yield results, but we must stick with them.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. As hon. Members can see, lots of Members want to speak in this debate. Could you please stick to an informal four-minute time limit, so that everybody gets in?

14:49

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate.

I was a teenage newspaper reporter when I was first confronted with the horrific reality of a collision between a car and an articulated lorry. A senior policeman told me that there had been four fatalities when a lorry and car crashed on the A75, just outside my home town of Stranraer in what is now my Dumfries and Galloway constituency. The policeman added, “I know there’s four dead only because I can see four right feet.” Forty years later, that same A75 continues to exact an awful toll, for the total traffic volumes it carries are much bigger and the artics larger too. Tragically, there have been two more fatalities recently, when cars and lorries collided on the A75 in September and November.

The A75 is gloriously titled “the Euro route”, but we must set aside any notions of a multi-laned ribbon of shining asphalt. It is largely two lanes and filled with dangerous bends, blind dips and adverse camber, and grinds through villages that should have been bypassed decades ago. The A75 even has a light-controlled cattle crossing, despite the fact that it services the key port of Cairnryan and carries perhaps—estimates vary—as much as 60% of goods into and out of Northern Ireland.

Transport is devolved to the Scottish Government, so why on earth are we here, in this place, discussing this road? It will be news to the Minister, but the previous Conservative Administration undertook a review of UK connectivity and identified the A75 as being of national significance. Yes, it is the key traffic artery running through Dumfries and Galloway but it is also the critical link between Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. It is screaming out for improvements, yet the road is treated with supreme indifference by the Scottish Government. They complained that the UK Government even looking at the A75 was a “power grab”, and alleged that we were trampling on devolution by launching a connectivity review. Officials were ordered not to co-operate with that review, which was led by Sir Peter Hendy, now Lord Hendy. That meant that he had to “drive” the full length of the A75, inch by painful inch, using only Google Street View.

Since my election I have been trying to find out what is happening with money that the last Conservative Government earmarked for improvements to the A75. I have established that the money has not been swallowed up by the questionable fiscal black hole that the Chancellor blames for all ills, but with the Department for Transport here convinced that the issue sits in Edinburgh and Edinburgh inscrutable at best, we have an impasse.

The First Minister of Scotland, no doubt motivated by looming Holyrood parliamentary elections, has deigned to visit the A75 to see for himself how overwhelmed it truly is. Labour boasts about a reset of relations with the Scottish Government yet, sadly, the Secretary of State for Scotland was unable to take up my suggestion that, given the supposed love-in between Dover House and Bute House, he should share a car with First Minister John Swinney on that visit. Mr Swinney has said that he now understands the depth of feeling about the A75—empty words that leave those on both sides of the North channel frustrated by the state of this vital cross-border road.

Will the Minister give my constituents an update on where the UK taxpayers’ money for the A75 has gone? Will she press the UK Department for Transport to accept that it has a stake in seeing a rolling programme of improvements on the A75, on both safety and economic grounds? The current mode of this Government is to devolve and forget, to throw a block grant up north to Edinburgh and then wash their hands of the matter. That is not what devolution is about. The A75 is a classic example of where the UK Government ought to act in the best interests of the people of Britain and not allow devolution to be an excuse for inaction—livelihoods, and indeed lives, are truly at risk.

14:54

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for securing this important debate, not least because it provides an opportunity for me to talk about the challenges facing my constituency of Bathgate and Linlithgow. Although this debate is focused on transport links between Scotland and the rest of the UK, it would be remiss to ignore the challenges facing smaller rural communities—and, yes, we do have them in the central belt—that rely on local transport links for people to make their way to Edinburgh or Glasgow for onward travel to elsewhere in the UK.

A prime example of the challenges is Winchburgh, one of the fastest growing villages in Scotland, which will soon be a town. However, the residents cannot even get a train to Edinburgh, never mind across the border to England. Many families moved there in the full expectation of regular and reliable transport, but there has been no such ambition from the Scottish Government. Since 2012, there has been a question over how a station will be funded, after Transport Scotland prevented West Lothian council from making delivery of the station a condition of planning consent. Changes have already been made on the main line Glasgow-Edinburgh timetable for a stop in Winchburgh, so the train could stop there—but there is no station to stop at. That means people have to take almost an hour on the bus or they jump into their cars to get there.

Although there has been recent progress, it has been far too slow. Scottish Government Ministers must prioritise that station and ensure its delivery. I take my hat off to the villagers who have campaigned tirelessly for years to keep this issue in the public spotlight. It must be a thorn in their sides to watch the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Fiona Hyslop—their constituency MSP—open stations and train lines across the country while they continue to fight for a station in Winchburgh.

Now we hear of another challenge facing railway users: ScotRail’s plans to reduce ticket office hours at 54 stations, including Linlithgow. The proposals raise serious concerns, particularly around safety and accessibility for passengers. Many women have expressed a preference for well-staffed stations, where they feel safer. The reduction in hours, particularly in the evening, risks exacerbating safety concerns. In addition, the proposed cuts undermine efforts to ensure accessibility for disabled passengers, many of whom rely on assistance provided by station staff.

On top of that, there are rising rail fares, with a recent hike of 8.7%. That continues to make public transport less accessible and affordable for many. While railways face all those challenges, local communities are further impacted by significant reductions in bus services—of 44% since the SNP took over in 2007. Buses are often treated as the poor relation to trains when it comes to investment from the Scottish Government, but they are a vital way to keep local communities connected, linking people to train services and airports. This lack of joined-up, strategic thinking by the Scottish Government is having a significant impact.

This is all set against the backdrop of the climate crisis, where we aim for people to make a shift from their cars to public transport. That cannot happen if the infrastructure and services are not there for them to make that choice in the first place. We must look at other parts of the UK where things are working well, like the Bee Network in Manchester. Let us work together and use best practice to ensure that the whole UK can remain connected in an affordable and flexible way.

14:58

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on obtaining time for this timely and important debate. I was particularly impressed by the way he brought together so many people across the party divides with his comments on Edinburgh.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about road and rail services; he will forgive me if I take a different focus. Anybody leaving Orkney on the 6.30 am ferry would be lucky to get to London much before quarter to 10 at night. Anybody driving along the still un-dualled A9 from Inverness to Perth would be lucky to arrive much before 8.30 pm. For us, the most important links between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, and indeed the rest of the world, are airlinks. The codeshare operated between Loganair and British Airways is enormously important for business travel and the visitor economy.

Tourists come to Orkney and Shetland from across the world. Curiously, few of them seem to have heard of Loganair, but they have all heard of British Airways, so when they go on the British Airways website to book a ticket that will take them from anywhere in the world to Heathrow and on through Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Inverness into Orkney and Shetland, that is enormously important for us. That code share works better sometimes than others, but it is always a very important service.

The reliance on Heathrow, however, can be something of a mixed blessing for air passengers going from anywhere in Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom and onward. Heathrow is a massively busy airport—a plane lands there every 45 seconds—so it does not take an awful lot, whether that be weather, some technological breakdown or whatever unforeseen event, for disruption to happen. When it happens, the consequences are always felt most acutely by the short-haul domestic services—in Britain, that is now in effect Scotland, because few short-haul services go through Heathrow to anywhere else in the world.

That situation causes constant anxiety and irritation among passengers going from Scotland to elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The feeling is always that we are harder done by than everyone else. I can understand how that happens, but my recent discussions with British Airways have given me some insight into it. Arrangements in place between the airlines using Heathrow should spread the pain, so to speak, but in essence, because British Airways is such a dominant performer in Heathrow, the other airlines are frankly able to ignore the agreements that are in place. As a consequence, British Airways services—those coming from Scotland, in particular—are left to bear the brunt.

British Airways is therefore the one that gets the criticism, but is not necessarily the one at fault. It tells me that this is something that the Civil Aviation Authority, Heathrow airport, the airlines operating at Heathrow and the Department for Transport could fix between them. My ask of the Minister when she sums up is to make it clear whether she will act as the interlocutor, the spokesperson for Scotland’s air passengers in dealing with those bodies—in particular the Department for Transport—to ensure that we are not always the ones who are left behind.

15:02

[Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate.

Connectivity across these islands is vital for our economic growth and prosperity. We are an island nation, and our economy is export and service-led. Those facts reinforce the vital economic importance of excellent connectivity within Scotland, with the wider UK, and beyond. Of course technology and the covid pandemic have changed some working patterns and made online and virtual business interaction commonplace, but a recent WPI Economics report made it clear that businesses continue to rely on good physical connectivity to cement relationships, to enter new markets, to conduct supply chain due diligence and to share knowledge. That is why it is so disappointing that the record of the SNP Scottish Government on transport—both intra-Scotland connectivity and connectivity with the rest of the UK and beyond—is so poor.

To take rail to begin with, the latest Network Rail report shows that 70 million passenger journeys are made annually on Scotland’s railways. Of those trips, a total of 9.2 million were made to and from England and Wales. However, what waits for travellers from the rest of the UK when they arrive in Scotland? Unfortunately, they are frequently greeted with a shambolic and declining transport system. Nationalising ScotRail should have been the opportunity to put passengers first. Many of my Livingston constituents use the train every day to get to and from Edinburgh for work, and they require a reliable and affordable service. However, in August, the SNP scrapped a pilot that had removed peak rail fares, despite the scheme increasing rail journeys by 6.8%. It was an SNP Scottish Government policy that had worked, but then they scrapped it.

At last month’s Budget in Holyrood, the SNP committed to reducing spending on rail services by £80 million, a profoundly regressive move. Also last month, it confirmed that it is delaying the target date to decarbonise rail from 2035 to 2045, confirming that Scotland’s long-suffering rail passengers will have to wait an extra decade for the modern rail services that they were promised. An affordable, reliable rail service can unlock huge environmental and economic benefits, but Scots are again paying the price for the SNP’s financial and transport mismanagement.

Another area I want to turn to is aviation. As our island is an export and service-based economy, aviation links are vital. The UK has huge built-in advantages as a services exporter on a global scale and a location where key economic sectors benefit from international connections. However, the record of the Scottish Government here is very unsatisfactory. Our airports continue to struggle against the indifference, and perhaps even hostility, of this SNP Government. Glasgow airport, which once connected Scotland with North America, has no link, and apparently there is no desire, drive or ideas from the Scottish Government to assist in bringing that back.

Of course, there are understandable and justifiable concerns about the impact of aviation on climate change. The answer, however, is not to neglect our aviation sector but to engage enthusiastically with it to improve technology, to invest in sustainable aviation and to help the modernisation of airspace. Sustainable aviation has huge possible economic and environmental benefits, not least to Grangemouth and the wider economy of Scotland. I am delighted to see that the UK Labour Government have at least recognised the potential of sustainable aviation fuel as a source of clean energy and green jobs in Scotland, as well as across the UK, and have pledged to promote it—if only the Scottish Government had the same foresight, energy and ambition. As we have heard today, on rail, on buses, on roads and in the air, the SNP Scottish Government continue to let down the Livingston constituency and Scotland as well.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. To ensure that all hon. Members get in and we have the Front-Bench contributions, we are going to need to impose a three-minute time limit.

15:06

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I wish you all the best in your new role as Chair in your first Westminster Hall debate—I am sure there will be plenty more of them. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for setting the scene. I wish the new Minister well in her role. Equally, I wish the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), well in the role that he plays, just to keep the record okay—he always reminds me of these things.

First, I want to give a bit of history. Scotland and Northern Ireland were once joined by a path hewn by giants, or so the legend says, and giants we remain—giants of industry and giants of culture, and we have the ability and the facility to do even better and to be more. I have always said that this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is always better together, and today we will prove that to be the case. I fully support the efforts for the A75 and the A77, but I want to focus on the ferry links, because they are vital. The ferry links are an issue: from the beginning of December, the operators have highlighted difficulties during these winter storms, beginning with Storm Bert, and the effect they have had upon the business, trade and tourism links between Scotland and Northern Ireland. Those links are an intricate part of the UK that are ferry dependent and we need to secure them.

Stena Line was in contact with me regarding issues that must be addressed to continue an operational and effective transport route within the UK. A mechanical issue with the Superfast VII ferry on the Belfast-Cairnryan route during Storm Bert emphasised the critical need for flexibility in managing workforce and operational changes within the ferry sector. Had that happened in the Black Friday or pre-Christmas period, there would have been absolute chaos.

That underscores the necessity of solutions such as the ferry worker concession, and I ask the Minister specifically to ensure that operators such as Stena Line can swiftly deploy vessels and staff to maintain resilience and continuity in the face of inevitable future disruptions. For example, during previous staffing challenges faced by P&O, Stena Line was able to deploy the Nordica on the Belfast-Cairnryan route. Formalising a process between the Government and the ferry operators to enable similar measures in future emergencies would be highly beneficial.

The ferry routes across the Irish sea are a natural, vital national infrastructure that ensure trade, tourism and essential services flow. If the routes were not able to operate in the future because we did not have some of the necessary qualified seafarers, it would mean empty shelves and would affect the economy, including the delivery of medical supplies, and I believe that my Scottish brethren and sisters would not wish to see that happen.

Scotland is a vital cog in the operation of the UK machine and we must ensure that it is affordably and reliably accessible. That can be done only with infrastructure and investment in the ports by land and sea, and I encourage the Government to foster that connectivity and to put the funding in place. We are stronger together and achieve more together, and the Northern Ireland-Scotland link is a vital part of that strength.

15:09

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate on an issue that goes to the heart of the economic and environmental goals of the Government.

I represent Edinburgh city centre and have Waverley station at the heart of my constituency, so I will focus on the railway links between Edinburgh and the rest of the UK, because Waverley is our gateway to the rest of the UK. Are hon. Members aware that Waverley is the only railway station in the world named after a novel? I am sure that the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk will find that very metropolitan, but we like it.

Edinburgh is the economic powerhouse of Scotland and I would argue that it is central to our economic development. We have world-class universities, globally significant biotech and informatics, the energy transition on our doorstep, a legal and financial sector, and of course the cultural sector—all brilliant and economically critical, but none incubated in Edinburgh alone; all dependent on our transport and infrastructure links with the rest of Scotland and the rest of the UK, especially London.

We do all those things through Waverley. It has 21 million entries and exits a year, and there are 60 trains a day to London. We receive 1.9 million overnight visits to Edinburgh from outside Scotland. Yes, that includes tourism, but—critically—it also includes business visits. The transport infrastructure is critical to our city’s labour market.

I will give two more data points. Since the pandemic, for the first time, more journeys between Edinburgh and London were made by rail than by anything else—57% of the total. Similarly, the percentage of people working from home has increased from 12% before the pandemic to 30% now.

May I ask whether the House is familiar with the concept of WILLIEs? That is not unparliamentary language, but a new acronym in Edinburgh for “Work in London, live in Edinburgh”. We are seeing that with new capacities to work from home, with new rail travel, and it is of benefit to both cities. It contributes to economic dynamism; for couples with two professional careers, it allows both to thrive; it gives employers access to a bigger labour market and it relies on effective national infrastructure. I ask the Minister to recognise the importance of that change.

Finally, I want to draw attention to the development of the new Lumo service. Lumo has expanded capacity as an open access operator, accessing tracks through the regulator. However, I note that the Transport Secretary is reviewing the role of the regulator in managing open access. Will the Minister commit to the Scotland Office’s liaising with the Department for Transport to ensure that we take account of the developments on the London-Edinburgh line?

15:12

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate.

As the SNP’s transport spokesperson in Westminster, cross-border connectivity issues are high on my agenda. A lot has been said about the strategic trunk roads—the A74(M), the A1, the various border routes, the A68, the A7 and suchlike—and about the vital investment that our road network requires. Colleagues in the Scottish Government are very much aware of the pressures on the core roads network, and of the work required to maintain and upgrade it.

The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk referred to the Scottish Government’s alleged failure to invest in trunk roads. It is a statement of fact that the capital provided to the Scottish Government was among the worst settlements ever made under the previous Government, which was of course a Government of his party.

[Dr Arthur]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with some knowledge on this subject, but he will know that the Scottish Government have wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on ferries, about which there are major questions. Would he rather that money had been spent on the trunk roads he referred to?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I accept the point about ferries, and I would rather they had arrived on time and that the overspend did not exist, but we can compare that with High Speed 2, which is billions of pounds overspent, and the benefit to Scotland has diminished to near zero. There are other examples, including the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, which was signed off by a Labour Government and was massively overspent. It was not the MSPs who supervised or had oversight of that, so there are examples from across all parties of issues with infrastructure projects. The important thing is obviously to learn from them and stop them happening again, which I fully support.

Looking to the south-west of Scotland, I stayed in Galloway for a couple of years and I know very well what the A75 is like. It is a vital link to Northern Ireland, through the port of Cairnryan, and there is ongoing work there. I welcome the cross-party work on that and hope it can continue, with design improvements to the road. I very much support that, and I know that colleagues in the Scottish Government do as well.

There has been a lot of work and discussion between the Scottish Government and the UK Government on rail issues. I very much welcome the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024, which we fully support. Rail was already in public ownership in Scotland but, in fairness, that legislation has enabled us to ensure that that will continue—public ownership was the operator of last resort, so there was no surety about that, but now there is. There is a lot of mutual interest in getting this right, so will the Minister give an assurance that there will be strong engagement with the Scottish Government as the legislation develops? I hope that much of that can be addressed prior to publication.

Finally, it is vital that we retain the protected slots at the key hub airports, which are critical to our onward connections to the rest of the world. Also, to pre-empt a question of mine that has been selected for tomorrow, and to use this opportunity to give a bit more context, EGNOS, the European geostationary navigation overlay system, is very technical—

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order.

15:17

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Congratulations on your appointment, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I am sure you will do the job with elegance for many years to come.

It has already been said, has it not? My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) made the point that some of us have to use roads to get to airports to fly here. He mentioned the disgrace of the A9. I was in Holyrood when Alex Salmond promised the dualling of the A9, and when he promised the dualling of the A96. The response to that one is hollow laughter—there are still traffic lights at the railway bridge at Oyne. These people are simply not competent to run the transport of Scotland.

But here is the point: just like my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland does, we need flights to make up for the lack of proper transport on the ground. Right now, we have one flight in and out of Wick airport, run by Eastern Airways—which is better than none, I admit, but we had to fight to get the public service obligation for that. If we are to ensure the economic regeneration of the far north of Caithness, as Dounreay, which was the dynamo of the economy of the farms, runs down and is decommissioned, we will have to encourage other industries to come in. I am sure the Government will do laudable work on that front, but if we do not have the flights in and out of Wick airport, it will not help very much.

Although the Aberdeen flight to Wick is welcome, we need flights to Edinburgh and Bristol and to wherever we can get them. That will make all the difference, so I conclude with a simple plea: please can we get more flights in and out of Wick airport? We need them desperately.

15:19

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mrs Lewell-Buck.

I want to focus my remarks on the A75. As has already been alluded to, it is a vital artery for Northern Ireland, because through it and from it pass most of our incoming and outgoing goods. It is a road on which the HGV traffic is so heavy that, for many, it is a torture to drive its 95 miles. The last figures I saw indicated that, surprisingly, 20% of all vehicles on the A75 are HGVs. Considering that only 1.3% of all registered vehicles are HGVs, that demonstrates just how oversubscribed the A75 is and therefore how inadequate its infrastructure is for that sort of traffic. We have had promises of upgrades for years, and some upgrades have happened, but there are key pinch points at Crocketford and Springholm that are in desperate need of improvement.

Things have even got worse in the last month because, with the closure of the Holyhead ferry terminal, the increase in traffic volume on the A75 is phenomenal. It is costing business by reason of the delays. It is also costing lives, as the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) said, which is a more important issue. It is many years since I heard promises from Alex Salmond and others about the dualling of the A75. It needs to be delivered.

I support the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway in pressing the Government on the answer on the Union connectivity review promise of money—I think the initial tranche was £8 million—to pursue some of these issues. Is that £8 million still available? Has it been reduced? Has it been increased because of the cancellation of HS2? Where is it? The fundamental question is not what will be promised, but what will be delivered. We have waited far too long. I ask this new Government to show that they are a United Kingdom Government by addressing this road, which is a key link: it links one part of this United Kingdom to the rest, and onwards. Let us get the A75 sorted out at last, please.

15:21

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

It is a real privilege to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I will keep it brief because we are constrained by time.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) because he made so many of the points that are relevant to the A75. The A75 is a complete and utter failure by the SNP. In 2001, the SNP declared that it was the most important strategic road in Scotland. In the more than 20 years since then, virtually nothing other than essential improvements for road safety have taken place. In 2016, Humza Yousaf and John Swinney came to Dumfries for a transport summit to tell us how much they were going to do and what was going to happen. A few weeks ago, John Swinney came back after eight years of nothing happening to tell us that he was now hearing that people were concerned about it.

Let us, on a united basis, I hope, including even our SNP colleagues, send a clear message to John Swinney that we must get on with upgrading the A75 for the people of Dumfries and Galloway, for my constituents and for people who have to drive between, for example, Collin and Carrutherstown on what is virtually a cart track—people would not recognise it as a trunk road or an A road. The UK Government have a key role because the A75 is a strategic route, as has been identified, and we need to hear what they intend to do about the UK connectivity fund.

On rail, I was a strong advocate in the previous Parliament of TransPennine being stripped of its franchise, because the service it provided through Lockerbie from Glasgow and from Edinburgh was totally and utterly inadequate. If I had been the UK Transport Secretary, I would have taken off Avanti as well, because the service it has provided is not good enough. But the problem at the heart of that issue, which I hope the Minister will address, is the issue between the Department for Transport and the Scottish Government and who is ultimately responsible for issues that affect cross-border services. That needs to be sorted.

Finally, my constituent Denis Male, an 80-year-old councillor for Langholm, would not forgive me if I did not say to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), who has been such a strong advocate for the Borders rail link—I congratulate him on securing this debate—that the link should go through Langholm. Denis has argued that case for many years and would not want me to miss this opportunity to make that point.

15:24

[Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)]

If only we had a road with the quality of the A75—I dream of such a road.

The A82 going up Loch Lomond has to be one of the worst roads in Britain. Lorries and buses cannot pass each other, and that is the main trunk road up to the west. CalMac ferries are a complete disaster story, as we all know. I bet nobody can guess how long it takes to travel the 145 miles from Mallaig to Glasgow. Five hours and 20 minutes, with an average speed of less than 30 miles an hour. High Speed 2? We dream of some of that money. The main road from Inverness to Skye is single-track with lay-bys. It is an absolute scandal in every possible way.

I would like to put forward a motion that Transport Scotland is closed down and that the Scottish Government are not fit to run Transport Scotland.

15:25

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to speak on your first occasion as Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck; I hope you have enjoyed it.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for securing this debate. The variation of complaints we have heard shows how serious the issue is, and I sympathise. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), because I sympathise: I have spent much of my life travelling up and down the A82, and it has not got better in the five decades that I have been doing it. In fact, it has got worse in so many ways.

I will say it quietly: I represent Edinburgh, and we are lucky because the airport in my constituency of Edinburgh West is the busiest in Scotland. Our railway station, Haymarket, is one of Scotland’s busiest, and next door we have Waverley. We have the ability to travel west, north and south in Scotland, and down both coasts—east and west—to London. If only it were so for the rest of Scotland. Elsewhere does not share our easy access, and we desperately need investment.

One of the frustrating things about investment is that the benefits are usually long term and not immediate, but we have only to look at the Borders rail link to see how important and invaluable it can be. Just last month, figures showed that the number of people using the Borders railway increased by more than 30% at some stations between 2023 and 2024. Many of them were coming north, but ultimately they were heading south. It would be much better for them to be able to go directly south to Carlisle, but unfortunately the Government have put on hold the £10 million feasibility study into extending that route because of their capital investment review.

The Borders are not alone. The Government believe that putting a halt on infrastructure projects is part of the answer to dealing with the black hole that they never tire of telling us they inherited, and that they use as an excuse for all manner of things. I think they are being short-sighted. It is clear that our infrastructure needs investment. Our trunk roads are lamentable and our railways are little better. Of all the routes, Avanti’s London-Scotland west coast direct route has the highest percentage of trains arriving at their destination between 30 minutes and two hours late. LNER’s Scottish routes are also its worst performing, and the TransPennine Express routes between Manchester and Glasgow and Edinburgh had the worst punctuality and most cancellations in the most recent performance period.

The Liberal Democrats want to see a new railway agency—a public body that would help to join up the industry from track to train, put commuters first, hold train companies to account and bring in wholesale reform of the broken fare system for all of the United Kingdom. We should invest in research and development to make the UK the world leader in zero-carbon flights, and ensure that more domestic flights use alternative fuels. That is particularly important for communities across the highlands and islands, where, as pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), air travel is a lifeline for people and businesses—although generally only as far as Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that is not good enough.

Edinburgh airport is a major employer in my constituency and supports millions of pounds of investment into Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland through business, tourism and hospitality. It has made substantial progress in reducing its carbon emissions. It is continuing to work on increasing the use of sustainable aviation fuel, which benefits passengers flying across Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That is part of the reason I believe that this is a timely debate.

The Union connectivity review showed that there is a desire to travel more within the United Kingdom. Good transport links are a vital part of people’s ability to maintain connections with family and friends and to get to work without being incredibly frustrated. By delivering infrastructure that works, we can deliver for so many the opportunity of a better quality of life. Infrastructure underpins almost everything about our day-to-day lives, but when talking about investing in cross-border infrastructure specifically, we need to remember that while it benefits the economy and contributes to reducing the impact of climate change, it also represents something more for all of us: the development and the cementing of our Union.

Every UK Government, particularly this one, have a responsibility to every corner of the United Kingdom. People’s worlds might be getting smaller, but it is our job in this place to mitigate that. We know that more is achieved when we work together. Would it not help if we had better and more accessible transport links for all of Scotland to all of the rest of the United Kingdom?

15:31

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I join hon. and right hon. colleagues in congratulating you on your appointment. I hope you have enjoyed your first foray into Scottish politics this afternoon, and I look forward to seeing you back in this Chamber on many an occasion as we continue the various debates. Indeed, this is the second time in two days I have found myself here debating issues pertaining to Scotland, although in my view that is still not enough.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate. Cross-border connectivity is an issue he has championed as an MSP, as a Back-Bench MP and indeed as a Minister in the previous Government, and he continues that laudable work now. I am pleased that so many colleagues from across Scotland and Northern Ireland have come to the Chamber this afternoon to discuss this important issue.

As I said, I and others here, including the Minister, found ourselves in this Chamber yesterday afternoon discussing the impact of the UK Government’s Budget on Scotland. To save Members from looking the debate up in Hansard or watching it on Parliament Live—I do recommend it; some stellar speeches were delivered—I will give a brief synopsis. For farmers, family firms, oil and gas workers, the Scotch whisky industry and the Scottish economy in general, the Budget was not good, but despite the best efforts of the Labour party and the SNP to undermine confidence, deter investment, stymie ambition and entrepreneurship and punish success, the fact is that across the UK and especially in Scotland, we need growth, investment and new jobs.

For all those things, good connectivity to our biggest market by far—the rest of the UK—is key. It is integral to economic growth and business, but also to leisure, education and even health. Fundamentally, good transport links unlock opportunity across Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is precisely why the Conservative Government launched the Union connectivity review. Despite the lack of co-operation from the Scottish Government, we made several critical commitments, including, as some have mentioned already, to supporting enhancements to the A75 between Gretna and Stranraer to improve the main artery linking south-west Scotland and Northern Ireland, recognising the vital importance of east-west connectivity within the United Kingdom; to funding for dualling the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham, a vital road route between England and Scotland; and to funding for Network Rail to look at options for boosting capacity and improving services more broadly between England and Scotland.

In other important areas, we delivered improved transport connectivity, with major projects taking big strides forward. We were delivering long-awaited upgrades to the A1 coastal route between Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh, reducing congestion for the communities of Ashington, Felton, Alnwick and Amble. However, as has been said time and again today, away from cross-border routes, responsibility for our roads lies with the Scottish Government. Companies and individuals seeking to export fish landed at Peterhead, for example, or on Orkney and Shetland, are reliant on increasingly dangerous roads to get it to the border and then into Europe, as a result of the SNP’s failure to deliver on its promises.

It has been almost two decades since we first heard the SNP make promises to improve some of Scotland’s most dangerous roads, yet those promises remain undelivered and, frankly, broken. The SNP promised to fully dual the A96—a road close to my heart, connecting Aberdeen and Inverness—the A90 and the A9 between the central belt and Inverness, but not one of them has been. Of course, we now know that the SNP’s promise to dual the A96 to Inverness by 2030 has been shelved completely, letting down people across the north-east of Scotland once again—and let us not even begin discussing the Laurencekirk junction in my constituency or, just further north, improvements at Toll of Birness on the road between Aberdeen, Fraserburgh and Peterhead.

While we are rightly talking today about cross-border connectivity, let us not forget those who are reliant on the SNP to ensure they can get their goods and themselves to the border. Air travel, which Members have raised this afternoon, is similarly critical for not just business but remote settlements. We protected socially and economically vital domestic routes through public service obligations, and indeed we reformed how the PSOs operated to include routes that operate to and from different regions of the UK, rather than just into London. However, one route into London we did back was from Dundee: in 2021, we provided up to £2.5 million to fund direct flights between Dundee and London for a further two years, keeping a critical route running and ensuring that people at both ends of the UK could keep connected.

We cut the reduced rate of air passenger duty for domestic flights to just £6.50 and consulted on reform to airport landing slot allocations, including proposals to ringfence some slots for domestic flights, which, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said, is so important. I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on the Government’s position on that and whether they intend to issue a response to the consultation on ringfencing those slots for domestic flights.

When it comes to rail, we committed over £1 billion for east coast main line upgrades, including a programme to replace Victorian infrastructure with digital signalling, which provides drivers with continuous real-time information. That was designed to boost train performance and cut delays. It is hard to overstate the importance of the east coast main line. A third of the nation’s population, who together produce more than 40% of the UK’s GDP, live within 20 minutes of an east coast main line station.

The dreadful decision of this Government to hike air passenger duty will mean that people who do not live within a few hours of London on a main rail line such as the east coast main line—for example, those living and working in and around Aberdeen—will face higher fares and fewer options for travel. It punishes those who live outside the central belt and flies in the face of better connectivity around the United Kingdom, which brings us back to the woeful record of the SNP Government in Holyrood.

I have taken the long train journey from Aberdeen to London on many occasions, and the time it takes to reach Edinburgh is striking. Almost a third of the travel time to London from Aberdeen is taken up just reaching Scotland’s capital. The SNP promised yet again in 2016 £200 million to cut journey times between Aberdeen and the central belt by 2026. Almost 10 years on, not even 10% of that money has been spent. As with roads, people who rely on infrastructure for which the SNP is responsible to get to the border are failed by the Scottish Government.

[Jim Shannon]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman plans to mention ferries, but if not, perhaps he could.

[Andrew Bowie]

Of course, ferries are increasingly important. I did not want to embarrass the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) by dwelling too much on ferries, because that is something on which the Scottish Government have such an embarrassing record. The ferry links between our islands and the mainland—be they the links with Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles or across to Northern Ireland—are vital to the economic success of our country, linking communities and providing essential routes for health, leisure and tourism and to export the goods that are produced in those communities.

The way that those communities, especially in the Western Isles, have been let down by SNP ineptitude to deliver new ferries on those routes has been embarrassing. The sight of windows being painted on the side of a ferry just so that it can be launched in a PR stunt by the former First Minister will go down in history as one of the most embarrassing moments for the Scottish Government in recent times. Frankly, they owe an apology to those communities who have been so let down by their failure to invest properly in the future. It is not only the Western Isles; other communities rely on ferry connectivity, and it is essential that they get the funding they deserve.

We do not only have questions to ask of the Scottish Government, whose record on transport is dismal. We also have questions for the UK Labour Government about their own record, the decisions that have been taken and their future plans.

[Graham Leadbitter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Bowie]

I would be delighted to give way to my SNP friend.

[Graham Leadbitter]

I just wanted to ask the hon. Gentleman to put on the record that he was part of the Government for a significant period of the past 14 years of austerity, during which there were significant reductions in overall capital expenditure. Does he think that helped or hindered investment in strategic capital transport projects?

[Andrew Bowie]

I think what most hindered investment in strategic transport projects was the ineptitude of the Scottish Government. Colleagues and I have already gone through the SNP’s litany of broken promises to communities across Scotland, be that on the A96, the A9, the A90, the work on the A75, the new ferries to the Western Isles or the protection of air routes across Scotland. It is quite rich for a Scottish National party Member to talk about under-investment in transport when his party’s own record is so woeful in that regard; it might be one of the reasons that he and his colleagues number only nine Members of Parliament, compared with the large number that the SNP had in the previous Parliament.

Let me move on from talking about the SNP and focus on the UK Labour Government, because we also have plans for them.

[John Grady]

As my dear friends tussle, I want to make a minor point. The Conservative Government were in power for 14 years until July, and the SNP Government have been in power in Holyrood for about 18 years. It is quite remarkable for the hon. Member to criticise a Government who have been in power for just six months and have been clearing up a mess left by the Tories. Might I gently ask him to bear in mind those different periods as he proceeds?

[Andrew Bowie]

I had not got around to criticising the Labour Government—if hon. Members give me time, I will get there—but I gently point out that this concocted mess that the Labour party likes to trot out is as nothing compared with the economic situation that we had to deal with when we came into government, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, in 2010, which led to so many of the tough decisions that we took between 2010 and 2015. It is as a direct result of decisions taken in the recent Budget that we have seen growth falling, confidence slipping, investment drying up and, today, gilt yields rising to their highest level in more than 20 years. That is on the Labour party’s watch and has nothing to do with the Conservatives. We left it with the highest growth in the G7, inflation down to 2% and investment at record levels. I am proud of our record in government. I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to stand there at the end of his time on the governing party’s Benches and say just the same.

As I said, we have questions for the UK Labour Government. We are yet to see a convincing reason for the cancellation of the last Government’s plans to dual the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham, so will the Minister lay out the reasons? There are also questions about what rail nationalisation will mean for the upgrade projects currently under way, which would benefit Union-wide connectivity. Should we expect fare rises, like we have seen with ScotRail, for services to England after rail is nationalised by Labour? On the Borders railway, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk asked, could the Minister update us on where we are with the Tweedbank to Carlisle corridor? Why was the feasibility study abandoned? On air passenger duty, what do the Government say to those people living in Scotland, further away from the border, who rely on air links to get to cities south of the border for business and leisure?

On transport more broadly, the Government’s record so far gives us cause for concern, and makes us sceptical that Union connectivity is a priority for Ministers or is likely to improve over this Parliament. The Prime Minister himself said that Labour-run Wales should be “a blueprint” for what a UK Labour Government could achieve. That is terrifying. We all know what that really means; we have seen the imposition of blanket 20 mph speed limits and the cancellation of major road building projects, and Labour has cast doubt on its plans to electrify the north Wales main line. So what does Labour-run Wales mean for the rest of the United Kingdom?

[Dr Arthur]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly as I think he was reaching some kind of crescendo. He mentioned the 20 mph limits in Wales. Does he welcome the reduction in accidents that that scheme has resulted in?

[Andrew Bowie]

Of course we would welcome a reduction in accidents, but I have yet to see any evidence that that is a direct result of blanket 20 mph limits. Actually, by the way, I do not think the Labour party in Wales is still in favour of those; I believe that the new First Minister abandoned the blanket 20 mph policy. It is certainly something that would be greatly worrying were it rolled out across Scotland.

Good connectivity and good transport connections are essential. The responsibility for connecting communities and creating opportunities within Scotland lies with the SNP. Our internal market is vital to the economic success of Scotland and the wider United Kingdom. Connections from Scotland to England, and indeed across Great Britain and Northern Ireland, are integral to making the economic progress that we need, and that is the responsibility of the British Labour Government. Now is the time for action, not words. Scotland’s economy and communities desperately need that.

15:45

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Kirsty McNeill)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck, and I welcome you to your place. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), my predecessor as Scotland Office Minister, on securing the debate.

I begin where the hon. Gentleman began, and commend him for his tireless commitment to his constituents, including his work on the Borderlands inclusive growth deal. I am sure he will have been pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor confirmed at the Budget that funding will be provided to continue all city and growth deals in Scotland, including the Borderlands inclusive growth deal. We have also approved the final two growth deals, including one that has expanded to ensure that all 12 areas of Scotland can benefit. Indeed, I am delighted to say that it is because of the decisions this Government have taken that we have been able to confirm our commitment to invest nearly £1.4 billion in important local projects across Scotland over the next 10 years. That is positive news for all Borderlands partners and for the wide range of projects in the growth deal, including £65 million for initiatives in Scotland.

None the less, I know that the hon. Gentleman is anxious about another matter. Despite these ambitious commitments, I am cognisant of the uncertainty that remains around the future of the Borders railway feasibility study. We have been clear about the challenging financial circumstances we have inherited and the need to plan differently for infrastructure. Although the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) may be tired of hearing this, that is the unfortunate reality that we have to continue to address by taking difficult decisions to fix the foundations of our economy. My ministerial colleagues at the Department for Transport are continuing to consider the proposals developed as part of the deal and hope to be able to communicate their decision on the UK Government’s commitment to the project shortly.

The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk and other Members asked about the dualling of the A1, and I was asked to explain the Government’s decision. The answer behind that decision is very simple: the previous UK Administration made an unfunded and unaffordable commitment to dual the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham, and as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made clear, if we cannot afford it, we cannot do it. The decision is simple: it is because of the unfunded nature of the commitment.

My hon. Friends the Members for Livingston (Gregor Poynton), for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) and for Glasgow East (John Grady) have all made eloquent advocacy on behalf of rail passengers who are subject to poor rail performance. I want to reassure them that the Department for Transport will continue to hold all operators to account for their performance through a range of measures, including key performance indicators. The Government simply will not tolerate poor performance and will continue to hold operators to account, regardless of ownership.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) asked whether I will champion Scotland’s air passengers, and I will do so. The Scotland Office stands ready to advance the interests of all Scotland’s communities.

[Chris Murray]

I absolutely recognise the importance of air travel to more rural parts of the country, but it is a fact that a journey between Edinburgh and London by electric train, such as those operated by Lumo, produces 95% less carbon emissions than the equivalent flight. Other countries take decisions to disincentivise domestic air travel where rail routes are available. Does the Minister recognise the imperative of the climate emergency, which we must bring to bear when we are talking about whether the Government should incentivise rail travel over flights?

[Kirsty McNeill]

Very much so, and the integrated transport strategy, which I will come to shortly, is indeed designed to ensure that we are delivering growth, delivering on our climate ambitions and delivering for communities facing a cost of living emergency.

The hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) took the inexplicable decision to put himself up as the spokesperson for the Scottish Government on transport. His account of the ferries amounted to, “Yes, it would have been better, were it not a complete shambles”—I am sure we can all agree on that. Indeed, it would have been, but the facts are these: the Ferguson ferry saga has continued, with repeated delays to the Glen Sannox and warnings that the Glen Rosa may not be delivered now until late 2025. Let us never tire of saying that the total cost of the two ferries is expected to be nearly £400 million. They will be delivered seven years late and at four times the original budget. Of course, that is not the only place where the SNP is failing so badly. Under the SNP’s Government, Scotland’s bus network has been dismantled route by route, day by day. Fares have risen, passenger numbers have plummeted and the number of bus routes went down by 44% between 2006-07 and 2023-24—a loss of nearly 1,400 routes for our communities.

We should be clear that wider questions of transport are devolved, and responsibility for transport matters sits largely with that Scottish Government. Despite the Scottish Government’s failures, the UK Government are committed to resetting our relationship with them when we are able to do so, to deliver for the people of Scotland. We have already made significant progress to that end, and in that context I recognise the role Transport Scotland plays in keeping Scotland connected with the rest of the United Kingdom. As an Executive agency of the Scottish Government, the UK Government naturally recognise its independence, but we none the less stand ready to support its delivery for the people of Scotland, where appropriate. The UK Government respect the devolution settlement and are firmly committed to working with the Scottish Government to deliver shared transport priorities and ensure that the economic benefits of improved connectivity are shared across the UK.

The UK Government are also committed to our growth mission to improve the prosperity of the country and the living standards of working people. That is why the Chancellor has pledged to drive sustainable economic growth, and a strong transport network serving communities across the UK will be key to that.

[David Mundell]

I welcome much of what the Minister has said—that of a non-political nature, anyway—but can she tell us the Government’s approach to the Union connectivity review, which was focused on ensuring that we have a network across the United Kingdom and on bringing it together?

[Kirsty McNeill]

I am delighted to do so, and the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), asked me about that too. We are delivering on the recommendations made by the Union connectivity review, which was conducted by my noble Friend Lord Hendy. The review highlighted the need for strategic transport connectivity improvements across the UK and made recommendations to support improved connectivity to, from and via Scotland.

I have been asked by a number of hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper), who spoke very movingly about accidents on the A75, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister), for an update on our plans on the A75 and connectivity to Northern Ireland, and I am delighted to provide it. The Hendy review recommended upgrading the key A75 link to improve freight and passenger connectivity with Northern Ireland, so I am pleased to say that the Chancellor has confirmed funding for this financial year and for next for Transport Scotland to continue development work on upgrading the A75. Transport Scotland has completed initial work to scope out possible options for the realignment of the A75 around the settlements of Springholm and Crocketford.

[Jim Shannon]

I asked some specific questions, so apologies for reiterating this—it is to do with Stena Line, ferries, food, medicine, deliveries, continuity and connection. We do not have roads, and we cannot drive across the Irish sea—unless we find a new James Bond car—so we depend on ferries to get our goods across. I am sorry to ask again, but if the Minister does not mind, I really need that answer. If she cannot give it to me now, I am happy for it to be sent by letter.

[Kirsty McNeill]

My understanding is that those ferries are operated commercially, but I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman and colleagues from the Department for Transport.

[Jim Shannon]

It is important infrastructure and needs an upgrade.

[Kirsty McNeill]

As I said, I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman and colleagues from the Department for Transport to follow up on that. Furthermore, I am pleased to say that the Scottish Government have confirmed their commitment to the feasibility study on the A75 changes to progress that work. That is our reset in action.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan) helpfully anchored this debate to what it is all about. Of course, it is about growth and the maintenance of the Union, but transport is also fundamentally about people. It is about women, disabled people, and families living with the cost of living emergency. That is why, when families are so up against it, it remains inexplicable that it is cheaper under the SNP Government to fly from Edinburgh to London than it is to go from Edinburgh to Glasgow on a ScotRail peak fare.

That is why this Government have already fulfilled one of our key manifesto commitments and passed the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 to bring railways back into public ownership—we are committed to functioning railways. The Act will stop the taxpayer footing the bill for more than £100 million each year in fees to private operators, which provides no benefit whatsoever to passengers or to the taxpayer. It will also ensure that ScotRail is kept in public hands permanently, pave the way for the creation of Great British Railways and end the fragmentation of the franchising system, which will improve our railway network and strengthen connectivity to and from Scotland, including via the vital west coast and east coast main lines.

The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine asked a number of questions on air passenger duty, which I am delighted to answer. As he will know, we are trying to support a fairer and sustainable tax system, and taxation on the aviation sector must be put on a sustainable footing. That is why we are consulting on a proposal to extend the scope of the higher rate of air passenger duty to all private jets, including business jets. That is driven primarily by the Government’s commitment to ensuring that operators of and passengers on such jets contribute fairly to the public finances. As he will well know, air passenger duty rates have fallen behind inflation, and private jets are relatively undertaxed, so in 2026-27 the Government will adjust all air passenger duty rates to help to correct for below-inflation uprating in recent years.

Because this Government are committed to supporting working people, we have frozen fuel duty and extended the temporary 5p cut for one year. That will benefit an estimated 3.2 million people in Scotland, supporting hard-working families and businesses and saving the average car driver £59 in 2025-26. I am sure I do not need to remind colleagues that the cost of living remains high, so these measures are vital to support working people across the UK.

As I mentioned earlier, none of these decisions can be taken piecemeal: they must form part of a coherent and ambitious plan. That is why this UK Government is mission-led, with long-term objectives that will deliver our plan for change and spread prosperity across the UK.

I once again congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk on securing the debate and thank all hon. Members for their contributions. I am sure colleagues across the House will agree that it is essential that we continue to do all we can to strengthen our transport network, ensuring that communities in Scotland and across the UK remain connected and play their rightful role at the heart of this Government’s ambitious agenda.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Before I call the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) to wind up, I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for their kind words. It is indeed a pleasure to be in the Chair.

15:55

[John Lamont]

If I may say so on behalf of all Members, you have done a spectacular job as Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I am grateful to all hon. and right hon. Members for contributing to the debate. We have Members here from across Scotland and also from Ulster, and I am grateful for the important points they made about the connections between their part of the world, Scotland and the rest of the UK. I am also grateful to the Minister for her response, and I look forward to hearing from her further on the Borders railway. On the feasibility study, we have heard about the importance of transport links not just to our respective constituencies, but in linking to all parts of the United Kingdom. They have a strategic and symbolic importance in preserving our Union.

There is a shared frustration among hon. Members across the House—perhaps with the exception of one hon. Member—about the failures of the Scottish Government and the SNP in terms of their responsibility to deliver good transport links for our constituents. There is certainly a shared frustration on the Opposition Benches with some of the decisions that the new UK Labour Government have made in funding projects into Scotland. As we heard earlier, the A1 improvements have been a bit of a disappointment for my constituents and those in North Northumberland, so we hope the UK Government will continue with the commitments made by the previous Government on investment in our transport network in Scotland, despite the devolved responsibilities of the Scottish Government.

I conclude by responding to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) and his helpful description of the name of Waverley station. I fully admit to being a daft laddie from the Borders countryside, but I was fully aware of the origins of the name of Waverley station. It was named after the Waverley route, which was the railway line that went from Edinburgh down through the Borders to Carlisle, so I am very familiar with that. Of course, that was named after the novels written by Sir Walter Scott, who is a fine son of the Borders. I think that is a good place to conclude the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered transport links between Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Children and Young People with Cancer

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of welfare for children and young people with cancer.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck, and to discuss an issue that is important to me. As a society we are aware of the cost that cancer has on our lives: it deprives us of a future with our loved ones; it leaves us tormented with constant hospital visits; it forces an anxiety on us about what will happen next; and it causes us relentless emotional, physical and mental pain. It is a pain that does not go away, even when the cancer does.

I regret, however, that society fails to understand the literal costs of having cancer not just to us as individuals but to children, young people and their families. Lest we forget the cruel reality of cancer for young patients, which is often different from that of adults, the cancers that they experience are often faster-growing, less common, have unique emotional and mental health impacts, and have significant long-term treatment effects. The support that they require is therefore quite distinct, and has specific financial implications that make it especially hard.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for all his efforts on cancer issues in the short time that he has been in this place. He has been assiduous, focused and very much to the fore on the issue, and we thank him for that. In relation to the welfare of children and young people with cancer, is he aware that 71% of families impacted by cancer in young people are struggling to meet travel costs? That is the case in Northern Ireland, but I understand that it is also the case on the mainland. With one in 10 people missing appointments because they have not got the finances to go to them—and the impact that has on the NHS—does the hon. Gentleman agree that now is the time for Government to step up and ensure that the finance to travel for young people with cancer is made available?

[Clive Jones]

The hon. Member is absolutely right that there are huge costs, especially for children when they have to face cancer, and for the parents of children, because they have to take time off work to look after the children. There is not always the necessary support. Research from Young Lives vs Cancer highlights that on average, a cancer diagnosis for children and young people delivers £700 of additional costs every month for a patient and their family. Those additional costs come alongside significantly falling household income, with an average drop of over £6,000 a year; for at least one in three, that drop is over £10,000 a year.

Cancer does not have the decency to allow people to consider the implications of what happens next, but instead forces people to immediately start spending more. For example, it adds £250 extra a month on travel to hospital, £144 extra on food, often due to specialist requirements and extra hygiene caution, and £68 extra on energy to ensure that the home is always warm and clean, due to young cancer patients being immunocompromised. Those examples and many more all take place from day one.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I thank the hon. Member for bringing this matter to the House today. Many people will know my own personal story, and that my husband has cancer. One thing we have found on this journey is the number of young people who are currently in hospital beds across Northern Ireland and every other part of the UK. Many of those children, whenever they undergo treatment, will become neutropenic, which involves, as the hon. Member just mentioned, the issue of hygiene, cleanliness, food and everything else. There are numerous charities across Northern Ireland such as Powered by Poppy, inspired by Poppy Ogle who sadly passed away from cancer, and there is Adam’s Army, which operates close to my constituency in Lagan Valley. Families go out of their way to provide services because the state will not step up, and that situation cannot continue. Does the hon. Member agree that cancer is the worst thing that can ever come across a family’s door? Yet whenever the state does not step in, it makes an awful situation a million times worse.

[Clive Jones]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. She is absolutely right: cancer is the worst thing that can ever cross a family’s doorstep. It affects every family, every person, very differently. Financially we need something called Hugh’s law, which I will talk about later. That could give a family £700 every month from diagnosis. At the moment people have to wait at least three months, then fill in the forms and wait another three or four months. But Hugh’s law, for not an awful lot of money, could change all that very quickly. I will come on to that.

I hope I have made it clear that the costs are overwhelming; and yet the existing support from the Government is woefully lacking. I would go as far as to say it is downright cruel. Disability benefits are vital for children and young people with cancer because of the costs associated with diagnosis. They come in the form of personal independence payments, disability living allowance and, subsequently, carer’s allowance. Despite those benefits’ being so crucial and the effects of cancer being so immediate, children and young people face a three-month qualifying period before they can claim PIP or DLA. I would just like to repeat that: children and young people are subject to a three-month qualifying period, which for most is from the point of diagnosis, before they can access support.

The very purpose of welfare or social security is to deliver support for the most vulnerable. Young cancer patients go through some of the toughest, unimaginable pain—pain that even I, as a cancer survivor, could not contemplate. They do it with perseverance, with diligence, and somehow they do it with hope.

Tragically, some families lose their child to cancer. To be told at the start of that journey through hell that patients and families need to wait three months before applying for vitally needed funds is simply inexplicable. The evidence shows that the costs are immediate, and yet patients and families are deprived of support that they urgently need from day one. Can the Minister please clarify why it is necessary to have a three-month qualifying period? Can he explicitly put it on the record whether he thinks that that is appropriate in the case of children and young people with cancer? Alternatively, could he please publish the advice from civil servants that are insisting on the three-month qualifying period?

The argument has to be made that the impact of a condition needs to be evidenced for three months before DLA or PIP can be provided to avoid benefit fraud, but it is very clearly established that children and young people with cancer will be significantly impacted by their cancer from the start, even before it is diagnosed. Surely a confirmed medical diagnosis is enough. The Minister may claim that someone with cancer might have been impacted by the condition before their diagnosis was given and therefore their qualifying period will have begun prior to diagnosis. However, experts make it clear that until the diagnosis is given, it is almost impossible for children and young people to know that they have a serious condition that qualifies them for benefits and to evidence the impact. The diagnosis is key. That is simply the reality.

In the experience of charities that I have talked to, children and young people who apply for disability benefits are nearly always successful. Very, very few are rejected at the point of initial application or subsequent appeal. However, I recognise that it may be concluded that that is anecdotal. Therefore it would be incredibly helpful if the Minister could confirm that the majority of children and young people with cancer are successful in their applications for PIP and DLA and that very few, if any, are rejected for benefits. If he could provide the precise statistics, I would be very grateful.

Research also shows that once the three-month qualifying period has concluded, there are significant delays in applications’ being processed after they are submitted. This period currently sits at up to 20 weeks. The qualifying period and these additional delays are leaving children and young people without benefits support for several months. For the application processing, the benefits can be backdated, but only to the point of application rather than diagnosis. That leaves people missing out on benefits support for the first three months of their illness. Based on data from Young Lives vs Cancer, it concludes that children and young people with cancer and their families will have incurred additional costs of on average £2,100 before they can even apply for any benefit.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to speak and for securing this important debate. That issue of up-front costs and the costs to some of these children and their families has been underpinned by research by the organisations that he has mentioned. Just 12% of families say that their costs are covered by the current scheme. As children’s cancer therapy gets more specialised, with those families often being forced to travel further and further, there is a big concern about that. It is happening in my constituency, where some families are forced to miss appointments or delay the start of treatment because they cannot afford the costs. Those delayed and missed appointments are actually costing the NHS a lot of money at the moment. While we try to establish new arrangements for travel funding, there are opportunities for savings, by stopping those missed appointments, that could be put back into the pockets of those young children.

[Clive Jones]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: we could save the NHS a lot of money, because a lot of appointments will be cancelled because people are getting used to the fact that their child has cancer, and that they have to make alternative arrangements in order to take them to the hospital where they will be treated. If they were able to get a payment straightaway, that would save the NHS money in the long term. The money that it might cost to make those payments could be recouped further down the line, so the hon. Member is absolutely right.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing today’s debate. He mentioned the impact of investing early and of people being able to qualify for payments from day one. Does he agree with me and with Teach Cancer a Lesson, a charity set up by one of my Hazel Grove constituents in Mellor, about the impact of ensuring that education continues when children have a cancer diagnosis? Teach Cancer a Lesson talks about making sure that local authorities have a responsibility to review the education provision for a child on day one, or within 28 days of a cancer diagnosis. Does my hon. Friend agree that the same principle applies—that it costs far less in the long term, in educational terms, if that review is done early, rather than waiting and waiting and allowing a child’s education to suffer?

[Clive Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If a child can try to have a normal life, which includes still going to school, seeing their friends and being educated, that will help them and their family to cope with their treatment. Schools and local authorities should work hard to ensure a normal life for that child very quickly.

One family supported by Young Lives vs Cancer received their first DLA payment only in January, after their child was diagnosed in July. In another case, a delay of four months from the start of a DLA application meant that a young cancer patient’s mother was left with no financial support, because her statutory sick pay ended before the DLA started. How the Government expect people to manage with those extra costs is beyond me.

This is the very worst form of bureaucratic inflexibility, and it leads to some people not applying for benefits because they see a system stacked against them, quite apart from the burden of applying during the most disruptive time of their lives. People are not going to prioritise form filling when they or their child needs radiotherapy. The process takes so long that sometimes children and young people have either finished their treatment or, most concerningly, passed away before the benefits have been awarded. A child being treated in Leicester sadly died before a DLA decision was made, leaving their family to go through the challenging conversation of wanting the claim form still to be reviewed because the family were owed a back payment. That is unacceptable.

The Minister responded to a parliamentary question by arguing that those nearing the end of life can apply for special rules. However, this simply does not work very well, because situations can change quickly and some who are not terminally ill can rapidly deteriorate. Some may still receive potentially curative treatment even if the risk of death is high, or some may wish not to know their prognosis. The Minister needs to urgently assess the benefits of changing to a medical evidence-based eligibility for these patients.

There is a precedent for medical evidence being used to expedite access to benefits. The existing special rules process for those with terminal illness definitions means that they do not need to meet the three-month qualifying period with medical evidence. That principle should be applied to all children and young people with cancer, to facilitate immediate access to benefits.

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The Royal Marsden, which is a world-class facility for treating cancer patients, is in my borough of Sutton. One of the things that struck me when I went there was how much energy goes into trying to make the whole experience for the family and the child going through cancer as comfortable as possible. It was not just about the clinical treatment that that child received, but about having play spaces and comfort areas, and doing everything possible to make that really tough experience a manageable one. Does my hon. Friend agree that the state should seek to do the same, by reducing bureaucratic hurdles, such as those he described, to ensure that that terrible time for the family goes as comfortably as possible?

[Clive Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should be doing everything, especially in the first few weeks, days and months of a diagnosis, to make it as comfortable for a child as possible. Adults who get cancer have a circle of friends around them and can cope with it. I have no idea what it is like for a child, but I can imagine that it is very difficult, so having a play area and things they are familiar with using must make that experience much easier.

I want to ask the Minister if, as per the principles of the existing special rules process, he will consider using medical diagnosis to allow children and young people with cancer to apply for benefits as soon as their diagnosis is confirmed. Does he also recognise that the special rules process in its current form is flawed? One young person treated in London was awarded DLA only a few weeks before they sadly died, despite using the special rules process, which should have expedited their benefits. The stress placed on their family was significant.

I pay tribute to the campaign of Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis to establish Hugh’s law, in the name of their six-year-old son, who tragically died from a rare form of cancer. Their story is heartbreaking, but is unfortunately a common reality for parents who are forced into darkness. At one of the lowest moments in their life, with the Government looking away from them, support is a struggle to access, rather than a guarantee. I personally endorse the objectives of Hugh’s law: for financial aid to be granted to the parents of chronically sick children from day one and for the removal of the three-month qualifying period, which Young Lives vs Cancer has also called for. Its research is right that, for a very small cost, the Government could transform the lives of thousands by delivering parents a limited-time, non-means-tested benefit to cope as their lives completely change.

I met Ceri on Monday to discuss her campaign, and I attended the Hugh’s law event today on the Terrace pavilion. Hearing directly about people’s lived experience and from experts at that event reinforced why we urgently need change. Does the Minister support Ceri and Frances’s campaign for Hugh’s law? If not, will he explain why?

PIP and DLA are not the only benefits to be severely delayed by a system that does not work. Carers can apply for carers’ allowance and other associated carer support only once PIP and DLA have been approved for the young cancer patient they are caring for. That means that carers may be caring for many months before they can apply for carers’ benefits and get what they are entitled to.

I could continue. There exists a loophole in universal credit whereby young people who are at university when they are diagnosed with cancer and then defer their course, with the aim of restarting it when they finish treatment, are not entitled to student finance because they are not actively attending university. However, they not entitled to universal credit either because they are still classed as “in education”. Students should not be forced to totally drop out and start university from the beginning. To state the obvious, a cancer diagnosis is not their fault, and forcing them to disrupt their lives even further is completely pointless. Will the Minister look at the broader welfare support system in relation to children and young people with cancer, in co-operation with expert charities, to close other loopholes and ensure that the full package of support meets their needs?

There are too many points to raise in just one debate, but I would like to conclude on a slightly more optimistic note, following the confirmation from the Department of Health and Social Care that the children and young people cancer taskforce will be launched this year, and that it will seek to identify ways to improve the experience and outcomes for children and young people with cancer. Although I await the specifics of the relaunch of the taskforce, the principles are of good intention. I know that the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) has been an incredible champion of this project. Will the Minister work with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the children and young people cancer taskforce looks at psychosocial support, which is something I could not address in my speech, along with welfare. Will he also make representations to the Health Minister to ensure that this new body links appropriately with the long-term cancer strategy for England?

16:25

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

Like everybody else, I am delighted to find you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Lewell-Buck

I welcome this debate, as well as the speech that the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) made and the consistent attention he has paid to this issue since he was elected last year. I also welcome what all the others who have spoken in this debate have said. There is a lot that I would like to say in response, but unfortunately I have only four or five minutes in which to say it. I will have to cut my remarks rather short, so I might need to write to the hon. Gentleman with some of my responses, rather than putting them on the record now. However, I am glad that he has drawn attention to the fact that the Secretary of State has said he is reinstating that taskforce in our 10-year plan for the NHS, within which he has made it clear that he wants a separate cancer plan. It will be very helpful for the children and young people cancer taskforce to focus on identifying ways to include outcomes for this particular group of patients.

The debate has focused on the contribution of the social security system in supporting families of children and young people with cancer through the disability living allowance for children aged under 16 and the personal independence payment for those who are 16 or above. Those benefits are available if a child or young person’s condition or illness is long term and gives rise to care, daily living or mobility needs. The benefits contribute to the extra costs arising as a result of a disability or health condition. I will not claim that the support meets all the costs, as that would be incorrect, but they are a contribution—that is intention behind them.

The assessment for those benefits is based on the needs of the individual rather than on the condition, and many with cancer are eligible. The highest level of benefits can mean an extra £9,500 a year tax-free—the order of magnitude that the hon. Gentleman refers to. The benefit is usually paid to the parent of the child, and so can help with overall family finances, as they see fit. We are currently supporting about 3,000 children under 16 and 2,000 young people between 16 and 24 with cancer, with an average award of around £155 per week.

[Clive Jones]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I will give way, but I will not have very much time.

[Clive Jones]

I apologise for leaving the Minister with only a few minutes. I have no idea what he is going to say, but I would like him to make some comment about Hugh’s law, and whether or not he supports it, because it would make a huge difference to every single family.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am not able to announce a big change this afternoon along the lines that the hon. Gentleman has suggested, but I do want to comment—and would have done, if I had had a little longer—on the qualifying period. I have met the campaigners with their MP, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff). They make a compelling and vivid case about their own experience, as well as the financial and emotional difficulties that they suffered as a result.

The qualifying period is there to distinguish between a short-term and long-term condition. It is not about fraud, as the hon. Member for Wokingham suggested might be the case; it is there to make that distinction, and it is quite an important part of the eligibility process for benefits. I am not able to announce a big change in that. Of course, we will keep these things under review. I have met the campaigners, and we will certainly listen to representations that come forward—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Playgrounds

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of playgrounds by local authorities.

Thank you for the opportunity to lead this important Westminster Hall debate on the future of playgrounds under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. Fixing our public services and securing our unity as a country are serious issues to consider and serious goals to pursue. We need to be on the side of working people. We also need to be on the side of playing children: we need to be as serious about the play of children as we are about the work of adults. If anyone listening is in doubt, that is because our country has trivialised play for too long. I am astonished that there has only ever been one national play strategy, which was launched 17 years ago. I am also astonished that this is the first debate on the subject in eight years and—at an hour—the longest for 17 years.

Is it any wonder that people feel pushed out by politics and disaffected by democracy, when playgrounds are so ignored that they have been left to fall to pieces, with large pieces of equipment missing, and largely exclude children with special educational needs and disabilities? Is it any wonder that our playgrounds are rotting, when our Parliament barely discusses them and when the last Government to invest in them—a Labour Government—did so 17 years ago, only for their £235 million programme to be cut three years later by the coalition Government?

Why does it matter so much for this new Labour Government to help children to play? Let me tell hon. Members, in the words of my constituents. I launched a survey before Christmas, once this debate was confirmed; we had sought the debate following a roundtable with local parents. I am pleased to see a constituent who attended that roundtable, Anne-Marie Burr, here today. Anne-Marie helped to launch the Our Spaces BCP Facebook group, which brings parents together to campaign for better play equipment.

My survey has received 642 responses, and I thank everyone who has shared their views. I have read every response and every comment on Facebook and Instagram. It is time to take the Minister on a tour of beautiful Bournemouth and of my constituents’ viewpoints.

First, the main thing that parents tell me they want from playgrounds for their children is a place to grow, to experiment, to push themselves, to learn alongside others and to be free from a screen-obsessed childhood. Niamh from Springbourne says it well:

“Creativity is built in these free spaces where kids create their games and realities.”

Niamh’s daughter was obsessed with the monkey bars. I can relate. They have built capabilities that Niamh knows only a playground could have built. For Skye in Pokesdown, playgrounds

“give children a safe place to play and explore.”

For Natalie in Southbourne,

“unstructured free play helps children develop in many ways, including their cognitive development”.

Charlotte, also in Southbourne, agrees:

“Playgrounds are essential for child development”.

Playgrounds provide critical space for imaginative play, in the view of Chloe in Springbourne, Susie, Milo and Lillie-May in Southbourne, Louise and Kelly in East Southbourne, Christine, Lucy and Amy in Queen’s Park, Angela in Muscliff and Verity in Tuckton. Mark in Littledown talks about the joy that his young children feel when they play and when they develop as they play. He says that

“they love to go to the park. It’s a good thing for them to do. It develops them both physically and in terms of engaging with other children”.

Thomas in Southbourne sees the same joy in his children’s play:

“Good playground equipment helps children to develop physical skills like bounce and grip, but most of all, they are fun!”

My second point is that in a cost of living crisis, playgrounds give families places to spend time at no cost. Joanne in Muscliff is right to say that they provide free activity; that point is echoed by Nicole in Moordown, Louise in Charminster, Laura in Springbourne, Sarah in Iford, Victoria in Muscliff, Victoria in Pokesdown and Candice in Tuckton.

The third point that residents have raised is that playgrounds are vital outdoor spaces for parents and families who do not have space at home. Stephanie in Littledown and Iford says it well:

“For some children they do not have access to outside space at home and therefore playgrounds are vital for the health of this group of children.”

Kimberly in Muscliff agrees that playgrounds provide

“a place to go and meet others…lots of children don’t have access to a garden or the kind of equipment that is in a playground.”

Rachel in Muscliff says it brilliantly:

“We need safe outdoor spaces for our children to be able to enjoy. It also helps with reducing isolation.”

When the world of children is constantly shrinking, that is even more important.

My fourth point is that sadly some politicians tell children to get outside more, but it is not fair to criticise them for spending time on their screens, enjoying play in the only way they know how. It is usually the same politicians who have forced them, through policies and funding cuts, to shrink their world to their home or—even worse—to the smartphone in their hand. When playgrounds are being locked up or sold off and when parents lack safe outdoor spaces, where is left for children to go? As Alice in Boscombe says:

“How can we keep our kids away from screens when playgrounds are broken, unattractive, a lot of times unkept and dirty?”

What will the consequence be?

Parents know that few of the social skills that children need as adults will be acquired through the scrolling of bottomless social media feeds. Anyone who has seen a two-year-old master the touch-and-swipe interface of a smartphone knows that we risk more and more children at younger and younger ages spending more and more hours scrolling through bottomless feeds. Parents are concerned. Helen in Southbourne says that

“with the rise of screen time in the younger generation, we as adults must provide exciting, enjoyable and affordable alternatives.”

Sian in Springbourne says that we need playgrounds

“so children aren’t stuck behind screens all day.”

Young brains are being rewired. We want children to be children, because that is a good thing in its own right, but we must keep it in mind that the growing number of children hooked on social media today may become a growing number of patients of mental health services and economically inactive adults, contributing less in tax to the Treasury while increasing demand on already strained publicly funded services. Just as our predecessors in Parliament passed legislation more than a century ago to protect children against work-based childhoods, we can pass a safer phones Bill to make smartphones less addictive for children.

My fifth point is that playgrounds are important places for children with special educational needs and for their carers. Our lack of play spaces shrinks the world of children, but it particularly shrinks it for those with special educational needs and disabilities. Terrie from Springbourne told me:

“After my autistic daughter’s school were unable to meet her needs, I ended up home educating her. The local park is a place where she can socialise, get fresh air and exercise. She genuinely looks forward to our daily park time.”

Kathryn from Boscombe says:

“Aside from children’s physical development, it’s also a place children (and parents) can go when mental health takes a dive. As a mum of children with SEN this is essential to our daily routine!”

Terri from Muscliff says:

“There is barely any accessible play equipment in our local area for children with complex needs. If a child uses a wheelchair, there is nothing that they can do in parks.”

Hon. Members will be pleased to know that I am coming to my sixth and last point. Playgrounds can also help to end the isolation that parents can feel; it is not just children who benefit. Anna from Southbourne says:

“On lower, more exhausted days I’ve had some really special moments of connection with parents I don’t know in playgrounds while our children play.”

For Matthew from Springbourne, playgrounds offer

“a place to meet friends and other parents alike.”

Laura, also from Springbourne, says:

“The social and psychological value of play parks as part of the fabric of a healthy community should not be underestimated. As a parent to my young daughter, the park was often the only place I might interact with other adults/parents on a given day, and it was a nexus for exchanging local information and support.”

Most heartbreakingly, Mary from Queen’s Park says

“Playgrounds can be a lifeline for mothers who are in distress. I have met mothers who are escaping domestic abuse, poor housing, depression, loneliness or just need a change”.

In an age of isolation, polarisation and insecurity, society can be reinvigorated in the playgrounds of our country. Democracy is made in the playgrounds and given new life among the monkey bars, swings and slides and between strangers on benches. Parents may have their children as the unifying feature at first, but over time all kinds of conversations bubble up on that bench that would not otherwise have happened. This Parliament can only be as strong as our playgrounds.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making excellent progress; I love the six points that he has given us. I am happy to say that my constituency has a number of historic parks such as Alexandra Park and Platt Fields Park. However, as he points out, a third of British young people have no access to any nearby playgrounds. Surely that is not acceptable. Does he agree that we need to increase access to nature and green spaces to give children and young people better and stronger emotional and physical wellbeing?

[Tom Hayes]

I could not agree more. My hon. Friend is a champion for play in his area. In Bournemouth East, contact with a play area is at 35%, which is a significant problem, and I know that it is worse around the country.

I ask the Minister to help. First, as we have an hour for this debate, I invite him to meet Eugene Minogue of Play England, who is here today, with visiting Bournemouth residents, such as Anne-Marie, and with me to take the matter further.

Secondly, this is unfinished business for Labour. Ed Balls and Andy Burnham—whatever happened to them?—published the first national play strategy for England 17 years ago. Much of the strategy stands up today, but my view and that of important leaders in the sector is that it could be dusted off. The Minister could be the new Andy Burnham. He could be the new Ed Balls: he could help people to “Strictly Keep Playing”. The Minister and the Treasury may be reassured to know that a strategy does not necessarily require significant additional funding. All we need is changes to policy to better spend the money already in the system.

Thirdly—I am eager to discuss this point at greater length—the Government could implement play sufficiency legislation for English children to achieve equality with Welsh and Scottish children. A perfect opportunity to do so exists through the planning and infrastructure Bill; that was in Play England’s general election manifesto. The Government could give playgrounds the same status as sports facilities by extending Sport England’s remit to play areas so that consideration of playgrounds becomes a statutory duty, as with sports facilities. Following this Government’s welcome change to paragraph 104 in chapter 8 of the national planning policy framework, which provides protection for formal play spaces, I would love to work with the Minister to bring that into meaningful practice.

I urge the Government to mandate local authorities to map play facilities and their current state and quality. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council has done so voluntarily, not because it was mandated. I commend BCP council for agreeing to the Plan for Play strategy—and I am not doing so purely because the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), is the last leader of the council and will respond to the debate.

I commend local councillors across Bournemouth East, particularly Sharon Carr-Brown, who has been advocating for play areas in her ward of Queen’s Park and Charminster. Indeed, it reflects the advocacy of Sharon and her co-councillor for the ward to be focused on. We will see a £75,000 grant funding bid this week; if successful, that will be flexibly spent in the ward. Some good news for Cyril Gardens is that it is about to see the replacement of a long-broken toddler swing, which just goes to show that when you campaign you can get things done.

In 1999, Tony Blair said:

“If we are in politics for one thing it is to make sure that all children are given the best chance in life.”

In 2024, the Prime Minister said that

“arguably nothing says more about the state of a nation than the wellbeing of its children.”

We have had such consistency over so many decades. Now is the opportunity for this Government to finish the business of the last Labour Government. I want to support this Government as they support Bournemouth children and families to improve their wellbeing. We can do no better than to start with a long-overdue, once-in-a-generation improvement of playgrounds.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak. I will call the first Front Bencher at about 5.10 pm.

16:43

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is an absolute pleasure to speak in this debate; I will restrict myself to the time limit to ensure that others can speak. I commend the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for taking the opportunity to set the scene so well.

If we ask any councillor in any borough of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland about playground provision, they will say that one of the biggest issues they face—after dog fouling, of course—is not simply securing funding for play parks, but upkeep and the need for better provision of disabled access equipment. It happens all the time. I commend those in my constituency; I used to be a councillor for 26 years before I became an Assembly Member and then came to this place, so I understand where the responsibility lies.

I also understand that community power can sometimes make a difference. My council, Ards and North Down borough council, was going to close the play park in Kircubbin, but community power made the difference. The community campaigned heavily and in the end it won, justifiably.

The council’s play strategy states:

“It is recognised that the ability to play should be available to all regardless of age, gender and ability. The delivery of fixed and non-fixed play provision should ensure that all needs are catered for. As a minimum, 30% of equipment in fixed play areas should be classified as ‘inclusive’”—

so everyone can use it—

“and there should be a reasonable balance of play equipment suitable for younger children 3-6 years and 7-12 years old.”

That is much easier said than done, of course. Although it is great that councils have their own play strategies, the piecemeal approach means a postcode lottery. The point that I put to the Minister, from a Northern Ireland perspective, is that we do not need a postcode lottery; we need strategy, policy and regulation across all council areas.

According to 97% of teachers, outdoor play is critical for children to reach their full potential. I have six grandchildren. The biggest girl is 15 and plays in the local football team. The sport and outdoor activity of my six grandchildren, aged from 15 right down to two, is so important. It boosts social skills and gives children the opportunity to let off steam. Given the recent worrying news that some 70,000 children in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are suffering as a result of inadequate mental health support, adventurous, outdoor play is more important than ever. For those with autism, who are educationally challenged, with ADHD, dyslexia or other educational issues, it is really important.

Does the Minister have any plans to deliver funding to councils to enable them to meet their obligations, to ensure that children in every area of the United Kingdom where he has responsibility to have the opportunity to meet other children, learn new skills and push themselves into new experiences, and to mention this in the discussions that he has regularly with his Northern Ireland counterparts? I believe that is imperative and that we must prioritise it.

I want to make one quick point. All Christmases are special, but this one was even better for my wife and I. My younger son, his wife, their four-year-old and two-year-old are staying with us, and the wee two-year-old boy smiles all the time. There would not a day when he smiles at me—even when I may not feel like smiling—that it fails to give me a lift. The laughter of children is priceless but there is a price to be paid to achieve it, and we must be prepared to stand over it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I must now impose a four-minute limit. I call Leigh Ingham.

16:47

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this debate on an important issue. Every child deserves the opportunity to play, not only for their health but to foster a sense of connection within their local community. That includes children with special educational needs and disabilities. Ensuring that our playgrounds are sufficient and inclusive is not simply a matter of infrastructure; it is a matter of fairness and compassion.

I am concerned that there are not enough accessible parks, and that those that are accessible are not similarly so for neurodiverse children. To truly cater for SEND children, both with physical disabilities and neurodiversity, playground design must go beyond a sticking-plaster approach. We need well thought out, fit-for-purpose equipment that prioritises sensory play and safety. That includes sensory equipment items that are both functional and inviting, and spaces that are designed to reduce overstimulation.

In my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages, I have been working with some SEND campaigners, who are parents themselves: Becky, Shannon and Jess. I pay tribute to their hard work. They are particularly concerned for the safety of neurodiverse children in playgrounds. When a neurodiverse child is overstimulated, they sometimes want to run, and parents are finding themselves having to resort to harnesses to keep their children safe. The campaigners believe that high, sturdy metal fences, much like those in Victoria Park in my constituency, are essential for children who sometimes run. They are similar to those seen around old Victorian parks in many of our constituencies. These fences provide security for parents and carers, reducing the need for uncomfortable measures like harnesses.

The emotional toll of exclusion is profound. Parents of neurodiverse children often describe feeling ostracised when playgrounds fail to accommodate their children’s needs. Without adequate sensory equipment or secure calming spaces, neurodiverse children may struggle to engage, leading to further isolation for the child and the family. Parents have told me that they have received comments and judgments from friends and family for using harnesses with their children. Alongside parents in my constituency, I have recently engaged with Newlife, a charity for disabled children. It provides equipment and resources to parents of children with disabilities, and its people told me about the exhaustion of parents who turn to them with their experiences.

Playgrounds are not just play areas for exercise and fun but social hubs for children and parents. Many parents love that moment to sit, have a chat with other parents and let their children have fun. Caring for a child with special needs can already be exhausting and isolating, and it is not just children with special educational needs and disabilities who deserve community; it is their parents as well. More accessible playgrounds would open the world up to these families, and it is imperative that we give them access to that opportunity.

16:50

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) on securing this important debate. This issue matters personally to me as a mother of three children—two boys and a girl. I have watched each of them grow through unstructured play. Indeed, we chose to live near a park because I recognise the importance of parks and outdoor play. I want to ensure that every child across the country, and future generations of children, have the same opportunities to play as my children have had. As the former chair of a charity that ran the local recreation ground, I know the importance of spaces like playgrounds as hubs for the community.

As policymakers, we often focus on the physical education of our children, but playgrounds are about so much more than exercise. They are where children learn to navigate risk, build relationships and develop the resilience that will serve them for life. However, according to the 2024 green space index, 2.3 million children in Britain under the age of nine, which is nearly one third, live more than a 10-minute walk from their nearest playground. That is a stark indicator of a growing play crisis in our country.

Playgrounds are vital spaces where children explore their world and themselves. Through play, they develop social skills, creativity and cognitive abilities. They learn to assess and embrace risk, make decisions and form friendships. Playgrounds are incubators for resilience, teaching children the skills to thrive in a challenging world. As a former scout leader who led teams on hikes up mountains, I have seen how giving children the chance to push themselves through outdoor physical challenges really builds their self-esteem. They climb up a mountain and are scared at the top, but then they realise how successful they have been in their achievement and how brilliant the experience has been. Playgrounds offer the chance for young people to challenge themselves—to climb higher, to swing faster and to jump that little bit further.

Despite the clear benefits of playgrounds for our youth, local authority budgets for playgrounds have declined drastically, with a 14% fall in annual park funding in England between 2009 and 2020. Nearly 800 playgrounds have been lost since 2013 and some councils now warn that they may need to remove or repurpose play areas simply to save money. It is shocking that, compared with the 1970s, children now spend 50% less time in unstructured outdoor play, and the 2020 British children’s play survey revealed that children aged five to 11 spend just over three hours a day playing, mostly at home or in the garden rather than in nature and community spaces. During this period of playground decline, social media and smartphones have become increasingly pervasive, replacing active play, exploration and in-person socialising with passive scrolling, socialising through their phones and being less physically active.

I was a physical trainer for over 15 years and I am passionate about encouraging everyone to be more active. As a parent, I volunteered at my local primary school to support it in setting up its running club, and I saw at first hand the positive impact that physical activity has on young people. They were excited to be outside and loved focusing their energy on something other than the stress of homework. When they returned to class, they then felt calm and able to focus, which is also a benefit for teachers.

The public health implications of the decline in safe public spaces to play are profound. Over half of children fail to meet the recommended daily activity levels and 37% of 10 and 11-year-olds in England are now overweight or obese. The mental health impact is equally concerning, with nearly one in five children having a probable mental health condition. The reduction in access to unstructured outdoor play, alongside the rise in children’s access to the digital world, has reshaped childhood, leading to isolation and inactivity.

Every child has the right to play—to feel energised and free—yet the opportunities for that freedom are shrinking. Without urgent action, generations of children will grow up deprived of the spaces that are so essential for their development and wellbeing. I urge this Government to prioritise access to play spaces in planning and funding decisions. Decades of under-investment and poor planning must be reversed. Play is not just a part of childhood; it is the foundation for healthy, happy and resilient adults.

16:54

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this important debate.

Playgrounds are not just nice things to have. They are vital spaces where children grow, learn and thrive. In densely populated urban constituencies, like Ealing Southall in London, they are often a precious escape from overcrowded homes. But 14 years of Conservative Government have seen playgrounds and public spaces suffer under successive cuts. With councils starved of funding, playgrounds became a luxury that they could barely afford. Budgets for parks were slashed by more than £350 million and the last Labour Government’s multimillion-pound playground programme was cancelled. That led to crumbling playgrounds that were starved of cash, with councils often having to remove equipment that they could not afford to repair, and a 15% drop in the number of adventure playgrounds since 2017. The results have been devastating: there are fewer public playgrounds, and that harms children’s physical and mental health, stifling their potential before it has a chance to bloom.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I completely agree that the lack of funding for local authority playgrounds over the last 14 years has been catastrophic. In my constituency, we have had to rely on central Government funding to renovate playgrounds, in particular Haden Hill Park, next to Old Hill cricket ground. It is fantastic that we have been able to secure that funding through the towns fund—thank you, Minister—but we need to ensure that local authorities are focusing on this. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not acceptable that, in the current environment, we sometimes rely on central Government funding to support playgrounds?

[Deirdre Costigan]

I absolutely agree that we need fair funding for local councils and for playgrounds.

Access to play is a fundamental human right. It is written down in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. There should be no argument about it, so it is heartening that the new Labour Government has immediately shown its commitment to play as a human right that cannot be denied to our children. Our changes—in some ways radical—to the national planning policy framework will, for the first time, insist that playgrounds are a consideration in all new developments. It will force developers to provide them, if we can back this up with legislation. In these changes, the Government have demonstrated a renewed commitment to a child’s right to play and their right to be supported through development. I hope this can be followed by a new national play strategy for England—the first since the last Labour Government.

Research shows that many playgrounds fail to meet the needs of girls. In one study, 68% of girls said that there was nothing for them to do in the playground. Developers often tick the box by putting in a climbing frame but many girls prefer playground equipment that is social and collaborative: space to chat to their friends—swings are one example. Our future playgrounds must be inclusive, offering facilities for all children, and I hope that will be included in the Minister’s plans.

Despite years of funding cuts, Labour-run councils like Ealing, which covers my constituency of Ealing Southall, are leading the charge to transform playgrounds and put children at the heart of local plans. Ealing council has already committed £2 million to renovate a staggering 22 playgrounds across the borough, including Ravenor Park, Spikes Bridge Park, Southall Park and Lammas Park in west Ealing. Ealing has worked with developers, including the developer of the Green Quarter in Southall, to ensure that developer-built playgrounds are publicly accessible. All new projects in Ealing are being assessed to ensure a minimum of 50% inclusive play, and that refurbishments consider the Make Space for Girls guidance.

In my former role as deputy leader of Ealing council, I championed “play on the way”, where play features like stepping stones on the grass build-outs at the corner of a street, and a hopscotch marked on the pavement, can even weave play into a child’s walk home from school.

What councils need most is secure funding from central Government, so this year’s 3.5% real-terms increase in council funding—that is £69 billion for councils—is a hugely welcome first step. I know we will hear more on this in the upcoming spending review. We need to ensure that councils like Ealing can sustain and expand playgrounds, especially in urban areas, where green and outdoor spaces are more limited. Playgrounds are not just for children; they are investments in the fabric of our society and in our future generations. To continue to achieve this Labour Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child, we need to keep pushing forward with our radical plans for play. It is time to reverse the damage of the past and create spaces that truly reflect the vibrant, equitable future that we want for our children.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I now need to put a three-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches.

16:59

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck, and I thank the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this debate on the important yet overlooked area of playgrounds. Many Members have articulated the advantages of playgrounds, including in relation to mental health, the fact that people live in a concrete jungle and physical activity. However, in an era in which screens dominate our children’s attention and social media replaces face-to-face interaction, playgrounds are more critical than ever. I will focus today on two overlooked benefits that they provide: tackling obesity and building community cohesion.

First, let us consider the role of playgrounds in combating the epidemic of childhood obesity. The Government have laid out two vital objectives in their preventive agenda: halving the gap in healthy life expectancy, and creating the healthiest generation of children ever. Playgrounds directly contribute to the achievement of those goals through their activity. Healthy food is served in many such places, including fruit, vegetables and hot meals. For some children I know, those meals may be the only nutritious food that they receive daily. In communities where food insecurity is high, playgrounds are not just a place for fun; they are, without exaggeration, a lifeline. They ensure that children can play and thrive, fuelled by the nourishment they desperately need. Without these spaces, our fight against obesity and related diseases would become even harder.

Secondly, and my constituency of Leicester South has borne this out, adventure playgrounds foster something more intangible, and that is community cohesion. Children from all walks of life unite while they are playing, breaking down race, class and culture. Playgrounds remind us of our shared humanity in a world that is increasingly divided by polarisation and conflict. As children play, they create bonds. As the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) mentioned, the United Nations convention on the rights of the child recognises that in article 31, which declares that play is a critical human right. Unfortunately, that right is under threat. The number of adventure playgrounds has fallen from 253 in 1980 to just 126 in 2021. Worse still, many of these playgrounds operate only for limited hours and lack resources, which means that children and the play workers do not create any meaningful bonds.

Closer to home, I must raise the plight of two incredible adventure playgrounds in Leicester South: St Andrews and Highfields, where I played as a child. Both are on the verge of shutting down, despite being in areas where provision for young children is already scarce. In particular, Highfields has been a pillar of its community for over half a century, but it still lacks secure tenureship. The loss of those playgrounds would tear the fabric of the communities that they serve, so will the Minister please meet me to see whether we can save them?

17:02

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) on securing this debate. Playgrounds are a vital part of local community infrastructure, and free access to outside play space locally is something that all children should have the opportunity to enjoy. However, for disabled children and their families, this access is often not forthcoming, and I will briefly speak about that today.

As part of its Let’s Play Fair campaign, Scope carried out polling on playground accessibility. It found that one in 10 disabled children have minimal or no access to their local playground. Furthermore, one in seven people said that could not enjoy playgrounds as a family, because siblings were unable to play together. Half the parents of disabled children said that there were some accessibility problems with their local playground.

My oldest child is disabled. On many occasions, we have visited playgrounds that are unsafe for her due to her disability. Sometimes we can make things work; however, there are times when we just cannot. Structures are built in such a way that my husband and I cannot support her on them safely while also supervising her sister, and there are no accessible alternatives to things such as swings, which is her absolute favourite activity. She gets extremely upset that she cannot play—that she cannot take part—and who can blame her? Why is my child being told that she is not good enough to play and that my family are not welcome in this shared public space? The feeling that a community asset is not for you and your family cuts deep. I know that my daughter will face challenges throughout her life, but being able to play—to be a child—should not be one of them.

I would like to address some of the misgivings about accessible playgrounds. They do not necessarily need to cost more than non-accessible playgrounds. Retrofitting is expensive, but there is no reason why disabled children and their families are not being consulted about what they would need to make their new playground accessible. Indeed, there is even an argument that local authorities and other public bodies would be failing in their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 by not doing so.

Accessible playgrounds are not exclusively for disabled children. Good accessible playgrounds are inclusive playgrounds. Excellent playgrounds allow access for disabled children while maintaining and providing challenge for non-disabled children. The adventure castle at Hylands Estate in Chelmsford, the renovated playground at Wat Tyler Park in Basildon and, closer to home, Elm Road open space, or the Manor, in my patch provide accessible play equipment in a way that allows access for disabled and non-disabled children to play together. But these examples are few and far between, so I ask the Minister to encourage all those who provide playgrounds to bake accessibility into them, talk to children and their parents and finally make play spaces somewhere that all children and their families can enjoy.

17:06

[Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) on securing this debate, and what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. Playgrounds are a vital resource, providing local communities with free and accessible activity space for children. Not only do playgrounds support children’s mental and physical development, but they reduce loneliness by creating hubs for families to meet and socialise. Local families choose to put down their roots in Ilford South, thanks in large part to our excellent schools and fantastic parks. Almost a third of my constituents are children, so it is critical that they and their families have access to outdoor space and playgrounds.

When I served as leader of Redbridge council, I led a multimillion-pound investment programme into our playgrounds, delivering accessible equipment for local families to use. We knew that playgrounds and play spaces were as important for the physical and mental wellbeing of children and families as local libraries, as well as serving as a leveller for all social groups to be together, regardless of background or socioeconomic status.

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

I thank the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this debate; I have two children under three, so I am delighted to come and contribute. Does the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) agree that an extra benefit of investment in playgrounds is that they bring footfall into our town centres and nearby shops and cafés, thereby benefiting the local economy, too? I have one such example in Brecon at the King George V playing field, which I hope will help to regenerate our town centre.

[Jas Athwal]

I absolutely agree, and footfall is much needed in this day and age. Thanks to the investment, not only can families enjoy a free day out right on their doorstep, but local businesses benefit.

It is important that local authorities are empowered to fund play space for children and provide low-cost or free activities and space for families to gather. Giving access to play is vital for children and families, but that is simply not reflected, or even recognised, in the legislation that is being put forward, in which, shockingly, bats and newts are mentioned more than children. By enshrining protections for children’s access to play in law, we can actively support children’s development and ensure that children living in areas with less funding are not disproportionately impacted.

Introducing play sufficiency legislation is not simply about supporting children and families; it would also mark a significant step in improving equality and mental and physical health, and it would bring England in step with Scotland. While the country starts to recover from the unprecedented cost of living crisis, while fighting a decline in public health and an obesity epidemic, free and affordable play spaces, which promote physical activity, can and must play a critical role.

17:09

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), on securing this debate, which has appropriately fallen on the day we are debating the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Although we know that many of a child’s social, developmental and exercise needs are met through their learning environment and school, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of outdoor equipped play space. Trips to the park after school help children form strong bonds to help their resilience, but they also give parents important time outside school and home, and the chance to make good friends for life. I can attest to that with my friend Nicki, who I met 20 years ago when our daughters Molly and Becca got to know each other on the swings at Springdale park—a park, incidentally, that has fantastic inclusive play, as it was constructed very close to the local children’s hospice, and there was consultation with the hospice on what it would need.

In a 2019 Mumsnet survey, one in four parents said that a lack of outdoor play had contributed to their children’s mental health issues. That is before covid saw them locked up, and councils’ financial crisis saw the gates stay locked when councils simply did not have the money to fix the equipment. Lib Dems believe that playgrounds play a vital role in community engagement, child development and physical and mental health for children, young people and their families. We welcome the Play England amendment to the national planning policy framework, which will protect play and lead all developers to fulfil their responsibilities.

Residents in Wimborne in my Mid Dorset and North Poole constituency have real concerns—I have raised them before with the Minister, which he will remember—about promised play areas in their developments that turn out to just be a bench, a Tellytubby hill and a dog bin. The residents then have to pay extra to maintain the non-play area.

As the hon. Member for Bournemouth East said, the last major play investment project was under the last Labour Government, called Playbuilder. Unfortunately, as fantastic as that equipment was, it is now failing. In 2023, The Guardian reported that the average budgets for parks had fallen in real terms by more than a third. In BCP, as has already been referenced, a plan for play has been developed, with a vision to provide high-quality, accessible, safe and inclusive play. I completely accept the hon. Member’s criticism of the equipment in Bournemouth. I just say that the previous Conservative-led Bournemouth council did not bother to insure its play equipment, which meant that every time there was an act of vandalism, the community would have to pay to fix it. That cannot be allowed. As a result, the new Lib Dem-led council is now using £3.9 million of the strategic community infrastructure fund to address this.

In my ward, we had a playground that was taken out in the 1980s, which the community worked together to re-imagine. Colin and Caroline put two years’ work in, and more than £100,000 was raised from the community with help from the council, but it should not come down to that. Parishes and neighbourhood forums are able to do their bit, but until this is made a statutory requirement, it is impossible for councils that have statutory requirements for social services and housing to put this as a priority.

Liberal Democrats would love to see the Government work with councils on sustainable settlements that allow them to invest not just in the basics, but in activities to build happy lives for everyone. Every community needs play, and I agree with the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) about considering girls and incidental play as well, especially when families have no gardens and limited access to nature, and the only safe place left is the park. If we want happy, healthy children to become resilient, problem-solving and active adults, we need to act now. I welcome the Minister becoming the next Andy Burnham, and would love to see a Playbuilder 2, but this time, could we please have equipment that is fully inclusive for children with disabilities and neurodivergence, and of all ages and genders? It should also be sustainable and not a one-off, so that the equipment does not have to be locked up again in 10 years’ time.

17:13

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) on securing this debate. His speech this afternoon has shown Members in the House that his half of Bournemouth are very lucky to have him. He is lucky to have them too, and I know that he works very hard for his constituents, considering that he has been a friend for a number of years.

Playgrounds are essential to the physical and mental wellbeing of our children. They are places where children exercise, build social connections and foster creativity, yet the provision of playgrounds by local authorities remains uneven across the country, with concerning disparities that demand our attention. According to the Fields in Trust group’s green space index, an alarming 2.3 million children in Britain under the age of nine—31% of the total—live more than a 10-minute walk from their nearest playground. Even more troubling is the fact that 40% of councils report that over a third of children face that challenge, with some areas seeing the figure rise as high as 65%.

That disparity reflects the struggles that local authorities face in maintaining playgrounds. Budget constraints mean that some councils have been forced to remove or repurpose play areas, depriving communities of vital green spaces. Regional variations further highlight the inequality. For example, children in Scotland enjoy access to nearly five times more public playgrounds than their peers in London. Welsh children have access to more than twice as many playgrounds as those in London.

The previous Government recognised the importance of improving access to quality green spaces, with initiatives such as the £9 million levelling up parks fund and an additional £30 million of investment focused on improving facilities for young families. The funding aimed to enhance green spaces in deprived areas, support tree planting and improve play areas, with up to £85,000 available per area. The measures were complemented by nearly £60 billion of funding for local authorities in 2024-25, which was a 9.4% increase compared with the year before, with most of the funding left un-ringfenced to promote local choice.

The Conservative party firmly believes in empowering local authorities to make decisions to best suit their communities, but central Government must also ensure that councils are equipped with sufficient resources to deliver essential services such as playgrounds. The revised national planning policy framework provides an opportunity: as hon. Members have outlined, play spaces will now be included, which I welcome, but that needs to be enforceable under the NPPF. As outlined by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), we often find that developers promise things to local people, but local authorities cannot take the enforcement action necessary to ensure that those facilities are built. I have found that within my own constituency, which has seen excessive development. I look to the Minister to enforce that action through the NPPF, and through regulatory statutory instruments if need be, so that local councils have the power to ensure that those services are provided.

Unfortunately, challenges persist. The Local Government Association has estimated that the employer national insurance contribution hike will cost councils £1.77 billion, yet only £515 million of new funding has been provided to support the increase. The shortfall puts further strain on local budgets, making it even harder to maintain and improve local playgrounds. I hope the Minister knows that I often try not to be too political, but the decision in the last Budget to scrap the charitable status of private schools means that facilities provided for local children in local areas by private schools may be taken out of service. That will affect all kinds of children who are entitled to use the many playgrounds that private schools provide.

To wind up, the provision of playgrounds is about more than just swings and slides; it is about investing in our future, fostering healthier communities and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive. I say to the Minister that we are willing to work together to protect and enhance these vital spaces, recognising their role in creating a fairer and healthier society.

17:18

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for the first time, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I know that you are always fair, but I know that you can be hard as well, if need be—hopefully I will not stretch the Chair’s patience today.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this debate and for the way in which he has led it. He took us on a beautiful tour of Bournemouth, but I most enjoyed the way that he brought the views of his constituents into the room and on to the record—to get 640 responses to anything is quite something. It shows the amount of energy and interest in Bournemouth, but clearly, judging from the contributions of colleagues, that energy and interest is replicated across the country.

Playgrounds are a vital part of our social infrastructure. As we have heard, they contribute to the health and development of our children and young people across the nation. Importantly for us as a Government, they also build on our mission of opportunities for all by ensuring that everyone has the best start in life.

I pay special tribute to the parents who my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East referred to, and I commend them for the insights that they gave to him and that he has been able to give to us. I also recognise Councillors Millie Earl, Sandra Moore and Andy Hadley, and Rebecca Whelan-Edmonds and Barbara Uphoff, for their work on a play strategy in Bournemouth —there is clearly something very special going on in the area—and Councillor Sharon Carr-Brown for her work to improve the quality of play in her ward and beyond.

I also thank Eugene Minogue and Play England for its work, including the support it has given to Bournemouth and to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East. He asked me some specific questions, which I will come to later, but I will first pick up on a couple of the themes that were echoed by other hon. Members.

First, it is important to start with the principle that unstructured, free play is important in child development. Fun in general is important—it is not all about development; children have to be able to enjoy themselves and we need to make sure that the spaces are there. We have a strong, able and technically evolved competitor for our children’s education: screen time is part of this conversation. The answer in such circumstances is never to smash the machines; we cannot unlearn the technology, so we have to compete. If the alternative is compelling, our offer must be compelling. I will make a couple more points on that later. At a time when the cost of living challenges mean that parents are making difficult choices, those offers have to be there and they have to be accessible.

My hon. Friend and a number of other hon. Members said that this is also about social justice. For many in my community, the Bulwell Forest is their garden. They do not have the garden of their own, so that is their play area, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) said. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) said, play and parks should be a great leveller and accessible to all—just walk up and pitch in. Too often, however, that is not the case for children with a disability, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) said, nor is it for neurodiverse children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) said. Whatever plans we bring forward, we have to weave in accessibility. We need to seek to tackle those inequalities.

I will make a few points on where we are as a Government and address the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East. The early years of childhood are crucial for the healthy development of our children, and physical activity is at the root of that, but as the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) said, we face a real challenge around childhood obesity. Over 2 million children in this country do not do 60 minutes of physical activity each day—that problem is coming down the line for us. I will of course meet with the hon. Gentleman to talk about the adventure playgrounds in his community.

We know that this is a social justice issue, as I said, because the levels of activities are lowest among the poorest children, children from ethnic minority backgrounds and girls. Factors such as poverty, lack of access to safe green spaces and poor local natural resources contribute to this inequality. We also know that parents are increasingly concerned about the welfare of their children and about antisocial behaviour, which plays into the Government’s crime mission. We have to make sure that we have community policing to give reassurance.

The lack of physical activity among children needs to change, and active play is one of the key ways that we can make that change and get children exercising, stretching their minds and, as the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) said, building skills, problem solving and building resilience—all of those come through active play. Whether it is at adventure playgrounds, sports facilities or park playgrounds, or in the natural environment, all those things need to be present and accessible for our children.

We have a lot of parks and green spaces in this country —27,000 of them. They are much-loved local assets and can provide opportunities for free. As has been said, that reflects the cost of living. The great thing is that our children are telling us the answer. As so often in politics, if we stop talking for long enough, generally people will tell us the answer. The 2024 children’s people and nature survey for England tells us that the single most important factor for encouraging children to go outside is access to playgrounds. We tear our hair out about why our children are not out more often, which comes up in debates, as hon. Members have said, but the answer is there ready for us—access to playgrounds.

Local authorities are at the root of this. Five in every six of our urban parks are managed by local authorities. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about community power. The local authority’s connection to local communities is about empowering them; I have no desire, as the Minister, to make granular decisions about play parks in Stoke, Stockport, Bournemouth, Thurrock, Ealing or wherever. I have very strong views about Nottingham, but my role as Minister is to get the powers and the resources to those communities to shape things for themselves.

The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell talked about some of the pressure that councils have been under in recent years. There is no doubt that playgrounds have been seen as a discretionary, non-statutory service. As a result, we have seen the decline that she talked about. I am very proud that the recent Budget had the best settlement for local government, with significant resources being made available. That will start to see some of those important services being built back.

I am passionate about, and could speak all day on, the Green Flag award scheme, and I thank super-judge Chris Worman for the work that he is doing. That is a really good way of ensuring that we have quality offerings, of which we have over 2,000 in the UK. In the Department we have novated the parks working group to build on that work, and Chris is playing a big part in that. I am going to ask that group to expand to ensure that play parks and playgrounds are part of that conversation, so that we are tackling some of the inequalities and the accessibility issues.

I will address the specific asks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East. First, I would be delighted to meet Eugene Minogue from Play England to discuss the issue. I am very keen to meet my hon. Friend’s constituents, and having had the aural tour of Bournemouth, I am keen to have the physical one. With regard to the 2008 play strategy, I am going to deftly sidestep any historical comparisons to individual politicians and say that as part of our opportunities Government mission, we are working with sector experts around play provision and will build on what has been done in the past. I steal liberally from what has been done before—often there is not much that is genuinely new—so we will building on that strategy and making significant reference to it in our work, while making it fit for the modern day.

We are going to take a similar approach with regard to play sufficiency legislation. I want to follow the evidence with the experts in communities, and I want to understand more about Scotland and Wales, because there is clearly a distinction and difference there, and about where the law could augment that. I would not want to run ahead of that work. My officials are working with those in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to look further into sports fields, and I will keep my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East updated.

On mapping play facilities, we want to get the burden on local authorities right so that we do not put too much on them. We are looking at other ways of doing it, however, because it is an important goal. One of the biggest driving factors beyond quality is distance. My community is a former mining community, so we have lots of country parks and people think that we are well provided for, but the gates are never on our side, which is a cause of great frustration. It is therefore about ensuring that we know what the distances are, as well as being about access. There is a significant correlation between mental health across the population and the distance to green and open spaces.

Rather than asking local authorities to map play facilities, last August the Office for National Statistics produced work on access to green space for the first time, and we are committed to further refining that work to ensure that it is doing the job. Similarly, the Green Flag award scheme provides a map of where the highest-quality facilities are. We are keen to get that mapping right, and to ensure that we understand that equity piece and which communities may need greater support.

I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East will need some time to wind up. I look forward to meeting him and his constituents, and I look forward to working with hon. Members in the spirit referred to by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), and by other hon. Members throughout the debate.

17:28

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) and for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam), my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jen Craft) and for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick), who is no longer here—if I have mispronounced the name of his constituency, I apologise—and everyone else who has spoken in the debate. I thank the Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokespeople, the hon. Members for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), and the Minister for their comments.

In bringing forward the debate, I wanted to ensure that the people of Bournemouth East were heard. As the Minister said, the fact that 642 local residents responded to the survey shows that there is an enormous appetite for something better when it comes to play. I want to communicate to the people of Bournemouth East that their priority will be my priority and, clearly, from what we have heard from the Minister, the Government’s priority. If we do not invest in our children by investing in play, we are sending entirely the wrong signals. After all, all our children, all over our country, deserve nothing less than the very best childhood.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the provision of playgrounds by local authorities.

17:29

Sitting adjourned.