Westminster Hall

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 12 March 2025

[Sir Jeremy Wright in the Chair]

Use of Stop and Search

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

14:04

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the use of stop and search.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I called for this debate today because I am greatly concerned about the increasing prevalence of knife crime in our society, and it is rather apt, given that the Crime and Policing Bill had its Second Reading just this week. In the year ending September 2024, knife-enabled crime increased by 12% on the previous year. As a west midlands MP, regrettably, I am no stranger to the devastating impact of knife crime in the region on families and communities. I feel that stop and search, as backed up by evidence, can play a very important role in tackling knife crime, and that is why I have called this debate today.

Let me start by talking about the impact of knife crime. The West Midlands police area recorded the highest rate of knife crime offences in England and Wales in 2023. Sadly, we are experiencing worse levels of knife crime than London, which is under the stewardship of Sadiq Khan. In 2023, offences involving a blade totalled 180 per 100,000 of the population, up from 167 in 2022. The figure for the London Met police force area was 165. That gives a sense of the scale of the problem in the West Midlands.

Since being elected in 2019, which seems an age away now, the realities of the knife crime epidemic in the West Midlands have regrettably been all too clear for me. In 2019, there was the tragic case of Jack Donoghue, who was punched, kicked and stabbed in the chest in a four-on-one attack near Popworld in Solihull. In October last year, 17-year-old Reuben Higgins was stabbed on Station Road in Marston Green, near Solihull. Reuben’s family said in a statement following his tragic death:

“Reuben was a loving son, grandson, brother, nephew and cousin who will be dearly missed”.

On a recent edition of “BBC Politics Midlands”, I discussed the horrifying death of James Brindley, who was killed in 2017 in Aldridge, not too far from where I was brought up. I was touched by his father’s sincere hope that the lives of many young people could still be changed, so that they did not feel the need to carry knives.

Just last week, the friends and family of 12-year-old schoolboy Leo Ross put him to rest. Mourners gathered at Christ church in Yardley Wood to say their final farewells to Leo, who was described by Christ Church of England academy as a “lovely and bright” pupil. Given the advice I have received, I will be very careful in what I say, because it is a live investigation, but on 21 January this year, Leo was stabbed in the stomach while walking home from school. Not only was a promising young boy’s life cut far too short, but a whole community is left grieving. Leo’s family will never get over the tragic loss of their son. His friends will have an unfillable void in their lives, and I can only imagine how worried they and their parents will be every time the school bell rings and it is time to go home. The simple act of walking home from school unaccompanied is a huge part of a young person’s life as they grow up and become independent, but now, for many in the area, it may take a bit longer to have the confidence to go out on their own.

Devastating and shocking events such as these underline the importance and necessity of stopping young people getting hold of, carrying and using weapons on our streets. Although I will focus much of my speech on the importance of using stop and search, I want to put on record my view that tackling violent knife crime encompasses more than just the use of stop and search. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) outlined in the debate on the Crime and Policing Bill on Monday, we also need to tackle the issue of people, especially young boys, being sucked into gangs in the first place.

I urge everyone with an interest in this issue to read the Centre for Social Justice’s report “Lost Boys”, which was published last week. It is an excellent report that highlights the issues that drive young boys—who overwhelmingly make up the victims of knife crime—to end up in criminal gangs. Although I will use my time today to advocate in favour of stop and search, I do not dismiss for a second anyone who thinks we need to take preventive action, too. My case is that they must go hand in hand. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said on Monday, in many cases the knife is very much the last act.

My constituents in Meriden and Solihull East are very proud of our brave police officers who work 24 hours, seven days a week to keep us safe. I want to put on the record my personal thanks to our police officers who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. I pay tribute to the chief constable, Craig Guildford, who has a great reputation in tackling some of the most violent crimes; I hope he will have that impact in the West Midlands area, too. The police work in difficult circumstances, and policing today is very different from how it was just a few decades ago. That is why I want our police forces to have everything they need, and stop and search is absolutely necessary for them to do their job effectively, without fear of being reprimanded for just doing their job.

Let me be unequivocal: stop and search saves lives. There is a very strong consensus among police chiefs that it is an important tool for disrupting crime and taking weapons off our streets quickly. We can see that in London, without a doubt. It is unquestionable that there is a correlation between the Mayor’s decision to allow stop and search to drop by 44% over two years and the fact that, since he took office, knife crime offences in London have increased by 38%. Stop and search allows the police to pre-empt dangerous situations and offers an effective and credible deterrent to violent criminals who might think about carrying a dangerous weapon. Critically, stop and search not only protects the public, but might actually stop a potential perpetrator from crossing the Rubicon and taking part in illegal activity. Very simply, we need stop and search, and the law must make sure that the police are unafraid to use it.

The case for stop and search is backed up by research from the Oxford journal of policing, which found that stop and search can cut the number of attempted murders by 50% or more. I do not believe we can have sensitivities around this issue. Stop and search undoubtedly has a huge role to play in cutting crime and ultimately saving lives. I proudly back the police and want them to have the appropriate powers, because every single life lost to violent crime is a tragedy. Every time a violent crime could have been prevented but was not is a shameful failure. It is a failure of national Government, of all parties of all ilks, of local government and regional government. Too often we say in the House “never again”, and yet it happens again and again. So I want to call for more stop and search powers so that we can make real and meaningful change.

While there continues to be a knife crime epidemic we cannot be sensitive about the powers that we give the police to keep us safe. The work of Professor Lawrence Sherman, former chief scientific officer for the Metropolitan police, is an interesting point. Mr Sherman is very supportive of the use of stop and search, and suggests that we should focus on areas that are deemed to be high risk. He argues that the effective use of stop and search requires it to be legitimate and supported by local people. To that end, he suggests that targeted stop and search in high risk areas is necessary and has the scope to be effective. Crucially, he argues that although using data and bias might be controversial, the need to protect people should come first.

In addition, Sherman, working with Alex R Piquero and the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing, conducted 15 years of research in London, which demonstrated how effective stop and search really can be. Their paper, “Stop, Search and Knife Injuries in London”, concluded that

“increased SSEs”—

stop and search encounters—

“can significantly reduce knife-related injuries and homicides in public places”.

It is clearly backed up by the science and the data. Alongside strong academic evidence suggesting that stop and search is effective, His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary also strongly advocates its usage. The report is thought-provoking and points out that little academic research has been conducted on one of the most crucial benefits of stop and search: deterrence. That is a really important point. It is likely that someone considering carrying a deadly weapon or drugs might think twice if there is a credible chance that they will get stopped and searched.

In August 2022, under the guidance of the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), the previous Government empowered more than 8,000 police officers to authorise enhanced stop and search powers. It came after a smaller pilot contributed to nearly 7,000 arrests for offensive weapons and 900 arrests for firearms following a stop and search. The evidence is abundantly clear that it is effective at taking weapons off our streets, which will help to bring down violent crime. Stop and search is also overwhelmingly backed by the public.

In November 2022, Crest Advisory found that stop and search has a high level of support across all ethnic groups, and it found that a total of 86% of adult respondents supported the police’s right to stop and search someone if they were suspected of having a weapon on them. Of those, 77% of black adults supported the police’s having the right to stop and search to find weapons, and 71% to find class A drugs. Stop and search is a very useful and important mechanism that can be used to cut crime and keep us safe. One other statistic that I would like to share at this stage is that black people are four times more likely to be murdered as a result of knife crime. That might be some of the reason why there was so much support for stop and search among ethnic minority groups.

However, these powers can only work if we have a clear police presence on our streets. Under the previous Conservative Government, I was proud that we achieved our manifesto commitment to recruit 20,000 new police officers. That allowed crime in the West Midlands to come down by 10% and led to reduced wait times after 999 calls. The new Government have a target to recruit more police officers, but I feel their numbers fall short when we properly assess their plans, because only 3,000 of them will be new officers—most of the 13,000 are either reassigned or redeployed, or are part-time volunteers or police community support officers with no powers of arrest. Perhaps the Minister may comment on that.

In Meriden and Solihull East, my constituents remain concerned that their local police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster, has failed to commit to keeping Solihull police station open, and failed to have a front desk at Chelmsley Wood police station, which I have been campaigning for. The public will have greater confidence in the police force if there is a visible presence. That does not just mean police officers; there has to be infrastructure, such as police stations, that is clearly visible to warn criminals that they will be caught.

It is clear that stop and search is an essential tool in law enforcement, but we cannot underestimate the centrality of prevention, as I touched on earlier. That is why the estates strategy in the West Midlands is important. Perhaps the Minister might be able to comment on that, or write to me with further details.

If an individual knows that the police can stop and search them, it becomes a powerful deterrent, which may prevent some from carrying a knife. When in government, the Conservatives recognised that prevention and early interventions are as important as enforcement. That is why, between 2019 and 2024, we funded initiatives known as violence reduction units in areas across England and Wales that were most affected by serious violence.

[Jonathan Hinder (Pendle and Clitheroe) (Lab)]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the last Conservative Government, but does he agree that there was a slightly confused and mixed message from the 14 years of Conservative Government? We had a large portion of it where the former Prime Minister—then Home Secretary—was trying to reduce the amount of stop and search, and then, much like with the officer numbers, in 2019 there seemed to be a very sharp about-turn and an encouragement to do more. Does he agree that that was a confusing message for police officers, like myself, who were serving at the time?

[Saqib Bhatti]

I am pleased to hear from the hon. Gentleman, and I wish him all the best in all his previous and future service. However, I do not agree that there were mixed messages. We were very clear in 2019 that we would increase the police force, and we hit that manifesto target. I think the confusion comes now with the new targets put forward by the Labour Government, and the lack of clarity on whether there will actually be 13,000 new officers.

I was speaking about the violence reduction units, which reached over 271,000 people in their fourth year alone and, in combination with additional visible policing patrols, prevented an estimated 3,200 hospital admissions for violent injury. Stop and search is a vital tool, but by cutting the sale and distribution of knives, we can further keep knife crime down. That is why I was proud that between 2019 and 2024, more than 138,000 weapons had been removed from Britain’s streets, with almost half seized in stop and search.

On Monday, on Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill, I listened to powerful speeches from Members across the House. I agreed when the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), argued that it was vital to have stop-and-search powers—as I had also previously said. However, stop and search numbers are currently down due to, in my view, misplaced concerns about community tensions. As the Bill progresses through Parliament, I deem it essential that the Government get police forces to use stop and search more. That means that legislation should be amended to make stop and search easier. In particular, what steps is the Minister taking to amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—specifically, code A—to make it easier for police officers to use stop and search?

As outlined by police chiefs and academics, stop and search is an important tool in the fight against violent crime. But I fear that police are not using this power to its fullest extent because of fears of being sued, disciplined or called racist. I am afraid that, given the horrific impact of knife crime, we cannot be sensitive about this. That is why I join the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, in calls to amend PACE guidelines to make it easier for the police to use these vital powers.

In addition, just before the election, in May 2024, the Conservatives gave the Home Office a £4 million boost to fight knife crime, with £3.5 million put into research and development for new technologies, which can detect knives carried from a distance. I think the following point was addressed on Second Reading, but could the Minister reaffirm? It has been indicated that this technology is nearly ready to be used and rolled out in its entirety. It has the potential to greatly improve the police’s detection powers, which will help to keep knives off our streets and protect vulnerable people. To that end, what steps has the Minister been taking to harness new technologies in the fight against knife crime? This is not party political; it is an issue that affects us all. I am happy to work with and support the Minister on a cross-party basis, because I want knives off the street.

As I outlined at the start, the West Midlands is experiencing a higher rate of knife crime per 100,000 of the population than London. I hope this debate will put pressure on our PCC in the West Midlands, Simon Foster, who is presiding over a catastrophic escalation in knife crime in the region. My offer of support also goes to him, because the issue is too important. The knife crime epidemic in London and the West Midlands is a deep cause for concern, but in some areas knife crime is coming down and there may be lessons to learn. I pay tribute to the PCC for Leicestershire, Rupert Matthews, who has helped drive down knife crime by 8%; the PCC for Staffordshire, Ben Adams, who has seen knife crime fall by 10%; the PCC for Kent, Matthew Scott, who has seen it fall by 16%; and the PCC for Warwickshire, Philip Seccombe, who has seen it fall by 18%.

Everyone in this House has a duty to keep our constituents safe. Since being elected in 2019 I have seen plenty of tragic reminders that, despite all the good work of our police, killings by knife crime are still happening on the streets of Britain. That is why I believe that stop and search must be used responsibly to help fight crime and prevent tragic deaths on our streets.

09:46

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for setting the scene so well. I recall that the hon. Member has had a debate on this issue in Parliament previously; it is important to revisit the subject and comment on it.

I am a supporter of stop and search as a way to ensure public safety and reduce crime. Our streets must be a safe place for everyone, which is the thrust of what stop and search tries to achieve. Over the past few years we have witnessed some horrific incidents of crime and violence, so it is important to discuss and raise these matters. As I often do, I will bring a Northern Ireland perspective to the debate, by speaking about what we are doing in Northern Ireland in relation to stop and search. We have a different aspect, in that we have had a terrorist campaign for some 30-plus years. That is thankfully much reduced and a peace settlement is place that both communities seem to have bought into. None the less, the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s policy is to continue stop and search.

Stop and search is used to prioritise public safety throughout the UK and, in this case, Northern Ireland. Most recent statistics from the PSNI highlight that between the start of January and the end of December 2024, the PSNI conducted 19,288 stop-and-search operations—a 24% decrease compared with 2023. In 2023, there had been a 6% increase on the year before. There have been ups and downs and disparities, but the PSNI sees stop and search as a clear, consistent enforcement measure that reduces crime and the threat of violence on the street, while addressing what law-abiding citizens want to see in their country. I commend the PSNI for that, and am glad to report that crime levels in my Strangford constituency are down. That might be inconsistent with the trend elsewhere, but it is welcome that the police are very active and, alongside the community and elected representatives, are able to reduce crime noticeably.

There is a history of conflict in Northern Ireland, which everyone will recall and be aware of, so there are still concerns about terrorism, even though its level is much reduced, and about its impact on crime and modern society. Even beyond potential terrorism, stop and search has been used to address several crimes, including drug use and trafficking, gun violence, gang activity and carrying violent weapons. We have to remember this about Northern Ireland: although the paramilitaries may not be fighting a “cause” as such, from either side of the community, and some have walked away from their past, others have just changed their affiliation and become criminal gangs, which the PSNI has to take on to reduce what they are doing in communities and on the streets.

Conducting stop and search is supposed to remain a positive attribute in society. In my opinion—from experience in my constituency and further afield in Northern Ireland—it works, provided it is done sensitively. We have seen more than 10,000 arrests for illegal drug possession and use, so there is proof that it is a worthy method. Is it successful? It is. Does it reduce crime? It does. These things are factually and evidentially true.

However, there need to be assurances that different communities across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland do not feel threatened. It must be emphasised that the scheme is not out to single out certain groups or people. This is not about skin colour or ethnicity. It is about crime and those who break the law, irrespective of who or what they are in the community. Confidence in policing is crucial and we must ensure that the disproportionate use of stop and search does not undermine the need and necessity for good policing.

There is crime everywhere. It is a fact. But the job of the PSNI in Northern Ireland, and the job of the police across the United Kingdom, is to stop it. That is what the normal person in society wants to see. Some areas are worse than others when it comes to crime, and particular crimes are more prevalent in some areas. However, the intent remains the same. There is good cause, I believe, to use stop-and-search powers transparently, to preserve individuals’ rights and equally to maintain and improve public safety.

At the beginning of my remarks I should have welcomed the Minister to her place, as I always do. I look forward to her contribution. I know that she has responsibility for England and not Northern Ireland, but I also know she is keen to work alongside all the other regions in the United Kingdom to improve things for everyone. She sits here at Westminster because that is what she was elected for; I sit for Northern Ireland, including Strangford. The policing improvements that can happen here through her work and her Department’s work will benefit us all.

I also look forward to the contribution from the Conservative spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), and from the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart). Everyone’s contribution enlightens this debate and targets agreement on the need to have active stop and search, respecting the human rights of everyone in this country. I look to the Minister to respond with a commitment to ensure that Northern Ireland and all the devolved nations here on the mainland are able to improve conviction rates through the efficient and proper use of stop and search. If it is done the right way, it is the right thing to do.

09:53

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

It is always a relief to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) on securing this debate, which comes at a crucial time as we discuss the new Government’s Crime and Policing Bill. When we legislate to give the police more powers, it is important that we properly assess the powers they currently have and how they are already being used.

Police stop and search is an issue of serious importance for my constituents. The reason is twofold. First, my constituency of Clapham and Brixton Hill has a high proportion of young black and ethnic minority men, who we know are disproportionately targeted for random stop and search. Secondly, and unfortunately, my constituency experiences high levels of gang violence, drug dealing and antisocial behaviour more generally, which creates serious issues for the area. My remarks today will address those two points.

First, on the disproportionate use of police stop and search on black, Asian and ethnic minority communities, the evidence is clear. According to the latest Government data, in the year ending 31 March 2023, some 529,474 stop and searches were conducted in England and Wales, equating to 8.9 stop and searches per 1,000 individuals. However, when the figures are disaggregated by ethnicity, we see that black people were subject to 24.5 stop and searches per 1,000 people, Asian people 8.5 stop and searches per 1,000 people and white people 5.9 stop and searches per 1,000 people. That means that black people are over four times more likely to be stopped and searched.

Report after report reveals the severe problem of institutional racism in the Metropolitan police. The overuse of stop and search to target black and ethnic minority communities is stark evidence of that. It has resulted in entire communities feeling unfairly targeted, over-policed and alienated from law enforcement, and this does not serve anybody. Black and ethnic minority people are no more likely to commit crimes than their white counterparts. I repeat that: black and ethnic minority people are no more likely to commit crimes than their white counterparts. They are also no more likely to be in possession of illegal substances or objects than their white counterparts. Yet they are more likely to be stopped and searched, and it is for this reason they are more likely to appear in criminal statistics.

The disproportionate use of stop and search has a severe impact on community trust in the police, which is at an all-time low, particularly in boroughs like Lambeth, which already has the lowest trust in policing across London, according to the Mayor of London’s most recent data. Many people simply do not believe officers will treat them fairly, because the reality is that they do not, and that lack of confidence makes community policing far less effective. This is not just a question of numbers: it is about lived experiences. It is about young black men being stopped multiple times a week for no good reason. It is about people feeling criminalised simply as they walk down the street and go about their business. It is about communities feeling that the police are there not to protect them but to harass them.

Policing by consent is a fundamental principle of British policing. The relationship between the police and the public should be built on trust, respect and co-operation. Random, unjustified stop and searches undermine that principle entirely. That is why I have been steadfast in calling for the abolition of section 60 stop-and-search powers. To be clear—I want to be absolutely clear on this—intelligence-based stop and search can be, has been and will continue to be a useful tool to tackle crime.

[Jonathan Hinder]

On disproportionality, the UK figures are really quite misleading, because they take into account huge swathes of the country that are almost overwhelmingly white and where no stop and search is done. The fact is that black people disproportionately live in the cities and that is where stop and search is being done, and they happen to live in areas such as my hon. Friend’s constituency, where a lot of stop and search is being done. I urge some caution when we look at the disproportionality figures, to ensure that we do not mislead people and undermine confidence in the police in these ethnic minority communities by suggesting that all police use these powers inappropriately. In my experience, that is not the case with the vast majority of officers; the vast majority of stop and searches are conducted appropriately.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution, but the figures are absolutely clear. Although I get what he says about the proportion of black people across the country, I am talking about lived experiences. I am talking about the experiences of people who live in my constituency and in other parts of the country who feel like they are being targeted. This is not just about the numbers: it is about what is happening to people on a daily basis.

The reality of the situation is that people need the police. We have heard in the debate already that black people can in some cases, in relation to particular crimes, be disproportionately the victims of crime. For that reason, we need to be able to work with the police in our communities, but it is difficult to do that if people feel like they are being harassed by them. The reason why I point to intelligence-led policing is that if police are able to work with the people in their communities and they are able to trust the police, they can often be the ones to provide the intelligence that helps to prevent other crimes. But if they feel like they are being impacted by stops and searches, they see the police as an enemy. I want them to see the police for who they are meant to be—the people who keep them safe.

The second point I want to raise is about increased gang crime, drug dealing and overall antisocial behaviour in Clapham and Brixton Hill. As I have said, effective, intelligence-led stop and search could help to clamp down on that, but its inconsistent application is undermining police efforts. In areas such as Brixton, known drug dealers and criminals are often not targeted with stop and search, while young black men with no criminal records are repeatedly stopped. This selective approach raises concerns about policing priorities, and about whether the police are focused on reducing crime or on maintaining control over certain communities.

When I raise the issue of known offenders not being searched, I am often told that the police do not currently have the powers to intervene. I find that incomprehensible. It cannot be true: the police arguably have more powers now than they have had in a very long time, so I cannot begin to imagine what more powers they could possibly need to carry out their work. Things may need to be done to increase their confidence, but they certainly do not need more powers.

Rather than creating new police powers, which is the current trend, we ought to look at how the police are using the powers they have and how they can use them more effectively. If people are going to trust the police, there has to be genuine transparency and accountability around their powers, and that has include stop and search. Stop and search has to be evidence-led, and to tackle crime the police have to work with the communities they serve.

10:01

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to be in this debate and to have you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) on securing a debate on this important topic.

The hon. Gentleman powerfully laid out some utterly tragic cases, and made the point, rightly, that far too many young people are losing their lives to knife crime. I strongly agree with him on the need to support our police as they tackle and prevent crime, and I particularly agree with his point about the importance of preventing crime. He said there is not one simple answer to how we do that, and I very much agree. However, many of my remarks will mirror those of the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy).

The foundation of the policing model in this country is trust. The police are a vital part of our community, and trust is built and protected by using approaches and tactics that both show results and apply fairly to us all. Any successful policing model must strike the right balance between individual freedoms and keeping our communities safe, and any discussion of stop-and-search tactics is really a discussion of where we think that balance sits.

For too many, stop and search is not a policing tactic that builds trust. Trust is undoubtedly the foundation of any effective policing model, and without it, communities can disengage, co-operation can dwindle and crime prevention can suffer. Today, too many communities who should feel protected by the police are instead made to feel like targets. According to Home Office stats, which the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill mentioned, in the UK black people are around four times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. When it comes to suspicionless stop and search under section 60, the figure is even higher.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for an end to the disproportionate use of stop and search, and that includes abolishing suspicionless stop-and-search powers. The evidence is clear: the surge in the use of section 60 stop and search between 2016 and 2020 coincided with a drastic decline in arrest rates. Polling from the Criminal Justice Alliance found that three quarters of black, Asian and minority ethnic young people believe that their communities are unfairly targeted by stop and search.

We want all members of our community to engage with policing efforts to keep our neighbourhoods safe, but that is made difficult if people do not trust the police to act fairly. We must not forget that these are not just statistics; we are talking about the everyday lives of people in our local communities. We need a police force that serves and protects, not one that alienates and discriminates. That is why the Lib Dems are fighting to ensure that stop and search is always used fairly, proportionately and only when there is a genuine suspicion of wrongdoing. That is how trust is built.

However, this debate is not just about what we must stop; it is also about what we must start and what we must do more of. The new Labour Government have a unique chance to consider exactly that. As I outlined on Monday in the Second Reading debate on the Crime and Policing Bill, we will support the Government in any efforts they make to return to proper, visible neighbourhood policing.

Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home and walking down their own streets, yet under the previous Conservative Government that was far from the reality. Our police forces remain overstretched, under resourced and unable to focus on the crimes that affect people the most. The record speaks for itself: every day 6,000 cases or so are closed without a suspect being identified, and only 6% of reported crimes result in a suspect being charged. In a move that defies logic, the last Government slashed the number of police community support officers by more than 4,500 since 2015. Those PCSOs were the backbone of community policing. They were familiar, trusted faces in our neighbourhoods—building relationships, offering support and preventing crime.

This new Government have an opportunity to do much more than tinker around the edges of policing, and we will push them to commit to restoring proper community policing, which is a model that has been abandoned for too long. The use of stop and search disproportionately can divide our police from our communities, whereas proper neighbourhood policing builds the trust and co-operation that our police force so desperately needs. Our communities deserve better, and the Lib Dems will continue to fight for a fairer, more effective approach to policing—one that prioritises neighbourhood policing and community trust. That is how we make our communities safer and build trust: by building a policing system that works for everyone.

10:06

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

First and foremost, I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives so tragically to knife crime. Every life lost as a consequence of knife crime is a tragedy. As Members from all parties acknowledged during Monday’s debate on the Crime and Policing Bill, we owe it to the victims and their families to support police forces by ensuring that robust measures are in place to stop those crimes. Incidents of knife crime reiterate our responsibility to our constituents. We must support the police, and provide them with the powers and resources to intervene and take those horrendous weapons off the streets.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for securing this debate, and for rightly highlighting the need to remove offensive weapons from our streets if we are to save lives. He is right that we cannot have sensitivities around the issue; we must ensure that the police have the ability to stop and search any individuals they believe pose a danger. We must ensure that they have the power and the freedom to achieve that, if we want them to effectively protect the public.

As a number of Members have highlighted, stop and search remains a critical tool for the police in stopping crime. One figure alone underlines its necessity: the number of weapons being found. The data released covering the period until March 2024 showed that 16,066 stop and searches resulted in an offensive weapon or firearm being found. That statistic alone is sufficient to justify the use of stop and search.

In London, stop and search has taken 400 knives a month off the streets in the past. We have consistently seen a significant number of weapon seizures in London—seizures that would not have happened without stop and search. Over the past four years, 17,500 weapons were seized as a result of stop and search, including at least 3,500 in 2024. However, the issue is not confined to London. In 2023-24, in the west midlands there were over 6,000 resultant arrests, while Greater Manchester reported 5,620 resultant arrests.

Rightly, we focus on the impact that stop and search can have in apprehending those who carry dangerous weapons. However, I appreciate that weapons are not always the most common reasons for stop and searches. That should not undermine the need for the police to stop individuals when they have reasonable grounds to suspect that they are carrying illegal drugs or stolen property. Both of those activities are illegal, and the police should be able to intervene to prevent them. Drug offences remain a flagrant breach of the law, undermining our communities.

Members will be aware that PACE code A sets out stringent criteria regarding stop and search. It is appropriate that the extensive guidance in its 39 pages ensure that it is conducted properly. However, historically a number of officers have raised concerns that stop and search numbers are down due to misplaced concerns about community tension. I echo the words of the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and encourage the Government to ensure that police forces use stop and search more. Where appropriate they should amend legislation, including PACE code A, to make its use easier for officers. We cannot be in a situation where officers have significant concerns about intervening.

Moving forward, we should all be able to agree on the need to improve the effectiveness of stop and search. In the past, police forces have had to make changes to ensure that it is used more effectively. We should always strive to make searches more efficient and increase the number of positive outcomes. Research suggests that when police communicate effectively with the public, the stop and search process can become significantly smoother. Although there may be occasions when attempts to communicate are met with undesirable outcomes, such as hostility, that does not mean that fewer searches should be carried out, but rather that we should conduct them even more effectively.

It was welcome to hear the Minister speak, on Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill, about the Home Office’s continued work with industry partners to develop systems capable of detecting concealed knives from a distance. The shadow Home Secretary was correct to allocate funding to such projects in his former role, to ensure that we develop the necessary resources. Phase 1 of that Innovate UK project is expected to be completed by the end of May, resulting in the first prototype systems, so it would be interesting to hear whether the Minister believes that the work produced by the Innovate projects can help the police act more effectively in this area.

It will be essential to integrate technology with the available stop and search powers. In parts of London we have already seen how effective that technology can be. For example, deployments of facial recognition technology in London across January and February this year recorded a maximum false alert rate of just 0.008% in a single deployment. That demonstrates how we can enhance police effectiveness with technology and how crucial it will be to use these tools alongside stop and search to strengthen policing capabilities. Police forces, including the Met, have worked with a range of stakeholders to develop a stop and search charter. Communication from Met officers clearly highlights their strong support for stop and search.

I think that everyone in this debate would welcome attempts to build trust in the system, particularly by fostering an open dialogue with local communities. However, that must be balanced with ensuring that police forces, such as the Met, retain the freedom to operate effectively. Across the country, other forces have implemented similar measures. Will the Minister commit to monitoring the impact of community involvement to ensure that police forces are not unduly influenced by a vocal minority opposed to stop and search and instead listen to the broader community, whose main concern is reducing crime?

Like other hon. Members, I want stop and search to be applied as extensively as necessary. Given the prevalence of knife crime, we must recognise that an increase in the use of stop and search can have serious benefits. However, such an increase is contingent on the availability of police officers. The funding pressures facing police forces in the coming financial year amount to approximately £118 million more than the funding increase they are set to receive. As the National Police Chiefs’ Council has warned, that funding gap will

“inevitably lead to cuts across forces”.

The 43 police forces of England and Wales may have to cut as many as 1,800 officers to make up for the shortfall. It would be valuable to hear whether the Minister believes that funding gap will impact the police’s ability to conduct essential activities such as stop and search.

Everyone who has participated in this debate has recognised the need to make our communities safer. We believe that stop and search plays a vital role in enabling the police to take the action necessary to achieve that. I hope that the Government will commit to ensuring that stop and search remains a key tool in the fight against crime.

10:13

[The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you this morning, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for securing this important debate, and for an eloquent speech setting out his concerns about the issues of knife crime and stop and search. I want to remember, as the hon. Gentleman did, the young people who he referred to—the victims of knife crime in the West Midlands. Jack Donoghue, Reuben Higgins, James Brindley and Leo Ross were all victims of knife crime, and all our thoughts and prayers will be with their friends and family.

I also acknowledge, just as the hon. Gentleman did, the work of the police. They work tirelessly, day in and day out, to keep us all safe. And I pay tribute to West Midlands police, Chief Constable Craig Guildford and the police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster. I was also just reflecting on the fact that in the West Midlands, the figures for knife-enabled robbery are declining, so the data is going the right way in the West Midlands on that particular issue, which is worth flagging.

I am very grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed to this wide- ranging and very thoughtful debate on this important topic. Of course it is always helpful to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the experience in Northern Ireland. He is absolutely right that, as the Policing Minister, I am very keen that we learn from the different nations and countries and regions about what is working. We all want to see a reduction in the crime that blights parts of our communities, so I welcome his insights from Northern Ireland.

As ever, my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) spoke thoughtfully and with great eloquence about the knotty problems around stop and search, its disproportionate use on certain communities and the lived experience of individuals. I will make some comments about that in a moment, but first I note the interventions by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder). Again, it was very helpful to hear his perspective as a former police officer; his experience adds to the richness of the debate that we can have in this place.

As I said, I will talk about stop and search, but I will also make some comments about knife crime in a moment. Stop and search is a complex issue and, as we have heard, often a divisive issue as well. It is a vital tool for tackling crime, but it must be used fairly and effectively. Getting that balance right is key to this Government’s mission to make our streets safer and restore confidence in the police.

I will just refer to two points made by the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East. The first one was about officer confidence. It is absolutely essential that the police have the confidence of the communities they serve, but of course it is also essential that officers have the confidence they need to do the vital and often extremely difficult job of keeping us all safe. Every police officer should have the confidence to use stop-and-search powers where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that someone is carrying weapons, drugs or other illicit items.

Chief constables and other police leaders play a critical role in ensuring that officers have that confidence. We have been discussing how important it is that police officers understand PACE code A and use it properly. Of course the College of Policing also provides detailed and authorised professional practice on stop and search, to ensure that police officers have both knowledge and confidence.

In the majority of forces across England and Wales, the total number of searches conducted has risen for the last two years in a row; that is not the case in the Metropolitan police area, but in the majority of areas the number is going up. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), asked me about knife detection technology, as did the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East. I agree with the shadow Minister that technology has an important part to play; I know that the former Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), is very passionate about this issue and talks about it a lot.

As I said on Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill, the Home Office is working with industry partners to develop systems that are specifically designed to detect knives concealed on a person at a distance. Phase one of that work is expected to be delivered by the end of May, resulting in the first prototype systems, so I hope I will be able to talk more about that technology after May.

I will just say again why we think stop and search is so important. In the year to March 2024, stop and search led to over 16,000 offensive weapons being taken off our streets. There were more than 75,000 arrests following a stop and search for a range of offences, including weapons possession and intent to supply drugs. In short, stop and search helps police to save lives and tackle crime. When officers have reasonable grounds, they should, as I have said, feel confident using these powers.

Policing sector leaders, including Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary Sir Andy Cooke and the Independent Office for Police Conduct, are all clear that stop and search is an important part of the police toolkit. Public opinion agrees: recent research shows that a majority of people, across all ethnic groups, support the use of stop and search, and a majority of young people also agree that the police should have stop-and-search powers. However, policing sector leaders stress that, if done badly, stop and search undermines trust in the police and can damage their relationships with the communities they serve, which in turn can lead to less co-operation and compliance and ultimately make it harder for the police to keep people safe.

Turning to the issue of fairness, stop-and-search powers have long been seen to affect some communities disproportionately, with stark ethnic disparities in their use, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill mentioned. This Government cautiously welcome the fact that disparities in the use of stop and search have fallen in recent years. Five years ago, black people were over nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, but that has fallen to 3.7 times more likely in the most recent data. That number is still far too high, which is why the Government backs the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s police race action plan. Earlier this month, I met the NPCC team leading the work on that action plan, along with the independent scrutiny and chair of the oversight board.

The plan aims to foster anti-racist culture, values and behaviours in policing that will inform all operational policing practices, improving experiences and outcomes for black people. On stop and search in particular, the plan commits chief constables to identifying and addressing stop-and-search disparities, particularly on drug searches and the searches of children. I will work with police leaders to ensure that the aims of the plan are adopted and embedded in all forces. The Government are also introducing a requirement for police forces to collect data on the ethnicity of people stopped by police under section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1998, which will help to address concerns about potential disparities in the use of traffic stops.

I turn now to section 60 “without suspicion” searches. Where serious violence has occurred, or where intelligence suggests that it may occur, a senior police officer may authorise police to use stop and search without reasonable suspicion. These authorisations, known as section 60 authorisations, are limited to a particular area for a particular period of time, usually no longer than 24 hours. The powers are used exceptionally and are rightly subject to strict constraints, but these searches are contentious within communities, and it is concerning that rates of ethnic disproportionality for section 60 searches are particularly high. The Home Office is introducing new data collection on section 60 that will come into effect from April, including on the authorisation decisions and the locations authorised. That will help improve transparency and accountability for the use of this power.

His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services has made a range of recommendations on section 60 for police forces and agencies, and the public will expect to see the policing sector respond comprehensively to those recommendations. Looking at the effectiveness of stop and search, we know that it works best when it is used in a targeted and intelligence-led way against active offenders and when officers have strong grounds for suspicion. This point is supported in recent work by the highly respected Youth Endowment Fund.

I will move on to knife crime. We should not lose sight of the fact that, while stop and search is one part of how we address the problems around knife crime, enforcement is only one part of the overall approach. We need to tackle knife crime in many different ways and prevention remains the most effective mechanism for tackling crime, which is why this Government have made a commitment to halving knife crime. Within that effort, investing in vulnerable young people is a key priority. The Young Futures programme aims to intervene earlier, ensuring that vulnerable children are identified and offered support in a much more systematic way. It will also create more opportunities for young people in their communities through the provision, for example, of open access mental health support, mentoring and careers support.

We are also bringing in new and stronger laws to crack down on the sale of dangerous knives. These measures will help to deter potential perpetrators—young people—and make our streets safer. It is also worth referring back to a manifesto commitment that this Government made to ensure that every young person found in possession of a knife is referred to a youth offending team and given a mandatory plan to prevent reoffending.

To the questions raised about neighbourhood policing, part of making our streets safer is seeing that visible police presence, which, sadly, has reduced over recent years in our neighbourhoods, town centres and villages. That is why we are putting 13,000 uniformed officers back on to our streets. A question was asked about the allocation of that 13,000. The 13,000 is over the course of this Parliament. The Government have doubled the amount of money going into neighbourhood policing from next month to £200 million. We initially identified £100 million in the provisional police settlement, but we have doubled that to £200 million. We are in discussions with police forces to make sure that the allocations work for the individual police forces; they are coming forward with the workforce mix that they believe will work best for them in the communities that they serve. That announcement will be made shortly.

[Matt Vickers]

In terms of the big concerns around redeployment in that space, does the Minister think there is any risk that the redeployment of police officers from response policing could affect the response times when people dial 999?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Of course we want to see all parts of policing properly staffed and funded. That is why there is more than £1 billion going into the policing settlement for the coming year, over and above what was in the 2024-25 Budget. This Government are committed to making sure we have officers in our neighbourhoods and communities. Equally, response is something that PCCs and chief constables will be very mindful of, but it is clear that policing can walk and talk at the same time. We are saying that neighbourhood policing needs to be built up again after the decimation that we have seen, but that does not mean that other parts of policing will not be business as usual. Policing will be able to deal with that.

There was mention of the Metropolitan police and their stop-and-search charter; I think that was raised by the shadow Minister. I welcome that charter, with its emphasis on respect, training, supervision and oversight. I look forward to seeing how its delivery plan progresses, and what impact it has on the work of building public trust that my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill referred to.

On violence reduction, we recognise the valuable work and significant progress made by violence reduction units, which were set up under the previous Government to understand what is going on with serious violence. The police funding settlement for next year includes £49.7 million for the continuation of their work to prevent serious violence, delivered through their VRU programmes. The VRUs bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area and facilitate the sharing of data across organisational boundaries to build a shared understanding of the root causes of violence locally. In response to those programmes, VRUs are delivering a range of early interventions, doing preventive work to divert young people in particular away from a life of crime. That work includes mentoring, trusted adult programmes, intensive behavioural therapies and sports-based diversionary activities, which are all really positive.

We want the Young Futures programme to build on the work of the VRUs to improve how we identify, reach and support young people at risk of being drawn into violence. That is why we will be asking them to play a leading role in the establishment of the Young Futures prevention partnerships programme, which builds on the existing partnership networks and their considerable experience and expertise to test and develop a model before moving to national roll-out.

It is also worth mentioning the coalition to tackle knife crime. We have an ambitious target of halving knife crime over the next 10 years, but we will not be able to achieve that in isolation; we need to work together with those who share our vision for safer communities. That is why the Prime Minister launched the coalition to tackle knife crime in September, bringing together campaign groups, community leaders, the families of those who have tragically lost their lives to knife crime—James Brindley’s family are involved with the coalition—and young people who have been impacted, united in their mission to save lives. From the west midlands, we have Pooja Kanda, Lynne Baird and, as I said, Mark Brindley as members of the coalition. Having the lived experience of young people is critical to the coalition, and we are keen to ensure that they have a platform to share their views, ideas and solutions to make Britain a safer place for the next generation.

I also want to mention serious violence reduction orders, because they are pertinent to the west midlands. Four police forces, including West Midlands police, are currently piloting serious violence reduction orders, as part of a two-year pilot that began in April 2023 and is due to finish in April this year. These are court orders that can be placed on adults upon conviction of a knife or offensive weapons offence, and they provide police with the power to automatically stop and search individuals convicted of knife offences, with the aim of deterring habitual knife-carrying behaviour. The pilot is being robustly and independently evaluated in terms of its effectiveness in tackling knife crime, as well as any disproportionality in its use, and I look forward to seeing the results.

Finally, I want to talk about gangs, which a number of Members referred to. It is crucial that we tackle the gang culture that lures children and young people into crime and runs county lines through violence and exploitation. As we committed to do in our manifesto, we are introducing a new offence of criminal exploitation of children in the Crime and Policing Bill. That new criminal offence is necessary to increase convictions of exploiters, deter gangs from enlisting children and improve identification of victims.

Alongside the new offence, we are creating a new regime for child criminal exploitation prevention orders, to prevent exploitative conduct committed by adults against children from occurring or reoccurring. We all know that county lines are the most violent model of drug supply and the most harmful form of child criminal exploitation. Through the county lines programme, we will continue to target exploitative drug-dealing gangs and break the model of organised crime groups behind the trade.

We know that through stop and search, police may come into contact with children who they suspect are victims of criminal exploitation, and it is vital that police take an appropriate safeguarding approach to potential victims and ensure they receive appropriate support. We are providing specialist support for children and young people to escape county lines and child criminal exploitation, and we will be delivering on our manifesto commitment to roll out further support through the Young Futures programme.

I repeat my thanks to the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East for securing the debate, and to all Members who have participated. This is a sensitive issue, and I am grateful for the constructive and insightful nature of the discussion today. The Government’s position is clear: stop and search is an important tool, but it must be used fairly and effectively. Getting that balance right is key, and I am keen to carry on working with the police to achieve the best outcomes we can.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

With a little more than the usual two minutes, I call Saqib Bhatti to wind up the debate.

09:30

[Saqib Bhatti]

Thank you for calling me, Sir Jeremy; you will be pleased to know that I do not have a 26-minute winding-up speech. I thank all Members across Westminster Hall for their contributions. I thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), for the challenge he set, and the Policing Minister for the constructive way in which she engaged in the debate.

I absolutely accept the stats that the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) set out. Although the suspect-adjusted disparity stats still show that black men are more likely to get searched, it is much more targeted, but no stats are perfect. It is really important that communities have trust in policing, and I am conscious of a narrative being built up that might undermine police officers in those communities.

I suspect this debate will rage on. I will continue to work with the shadow Minister, and I offer to work with the Minister to change the guidance to make the lives of police officers easier. I want the Minister to succeed, because her success means saving lives, and it means that when we say, “Never again”, it really does mean never again.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the use of stop and search.

10:35

Sitting suspended.

Community Theatre

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

09:37

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I will call Lisa Smart to move the motion, and 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.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for community theatre.

It is a pleasure to present this debate with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. Community theatres across the country empower young people and enable them to find and amplify their voices. It is also wonderful fun to be part of the audience. I will make the case for community theatres to be treated as an asset that saves money for our communities. I will also make the case for community theatres to be able to access capital funding to keep the show on the road and, because of the important role that local councils play in supporting community theatre, I shall make the case for sustainable funding for local government.

In my constituency, the Forum theatre in Romiley provides enriching opportunities to many young people from different backgrounds, including those who would otherwise not naturally feel able to get involved in the arts, as well as those with physical or learning disabilities. I have had the great pleasure of attending a whole range of performances at the theatre. The standard of production is extraordinarily high. It is especially uplifting to see the progression of young people moving from the chorus to a leading role, and then, for a few, to the country’s top drama schools.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. I am very fortunate to have the Web theatre in Newtownards, which gives people the opportunities that she referred to. Does she agree that community theatre binds people together? And yet, with the escalation of costs, it is getting harder for theatres to keep the lights on. Does she further agree that arts funding has been put on the back burner for far too long and that it is now time to change that position, so that the community theatre space can be at the forefront of the regeneration and rejuvenation that she clearly wants?

[Lisa Smart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I obviously agree with him about the important role that community theatres play in our communities, and I will comment on the importance of clarity on longer-term funding. As he rightly says, theatres face increasing costs. When energy bills go up and it costs us more to heat our homes, they go up significantly more for theatres. I will come on to the capital spending that is needed and how we are putting at risk some of the community cohesion work that theatres can do.

The Forum theatre in my constituency faces an uncertain future because it has reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in the roof. It was forced to close while temporary repairs were made, and it was repaired with a temporary lifespan of five years. After a phenomenal campaign by the local community and local councillors pushed the local council to provide funding, the theatre is thankfully back open and back at the heart of the Romiley community.

Last April, the estimates for the cost of the work to fully remove the RAAC panels at the Forum and deliver a permanent fix was forecast to be up to £2 million. The work involves removing the current roof coverings, removing each of the RAAC panels individually and disposing of them, and then creating a new roof structure and making it watertight. Although the work will disrupt activities at the theatre, it is crucial to securing the long-term future of a beloved community asset.

The Forum theatre is owned by Stockport council. We all know there is a crisis in local government funding, and local councils across the country, including my Stockport council, have to deal with severe budgetary constraints. Simply put, Stockport council does not have the funds for the necessary building renovations at the Forum theatre to permanently remove the RAAC. Any money invested in local councils to support our cultural landmarks is undoubtedly well spent and will pay dividends.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that had previous Conservative Governments valued community theatres such as Clair Hall and the Martlets Hall in Mid Sussex, my constituents would still be enjoying all the benefits that arts and social spaces provide, and our council would not face the invidious choice between non-viable community spaces and entirely commercially led offers that simply cannot put the performing arts front and centre while staying financially afloat?

[Lisa Smart]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the perilous state of local government finances, the knock-on impact on assets and services provided by councils, and how councils can support important work in our communities. It is quite difficult to measure the impact of bringing people together. I feel that we look at the arts as a cost rather than as an asset and a way to reduce costs in other areas. I will come to those points later.

The Forum serves as a hub for more than 30 local organisations: dance schools, community groups, bands, comedians and schools use the space. They rely heavily on the Forum for their events, because it is an affordable space compared with going into town and paying the price for city centre venues. Its usage is a testament to its importance and significance. The level of activity not only enriches the cultural life of my constituents, and more widely, but it stimulates the local economy. A study by the Society of London Theatre shows that for every pound spent on a theatre ticket, £1.40 is spent in the local economy. That boost is vital for the many independent shops, cafés and wine bars in Romiley, which benefit from the theatre’s bustling schedule.

At the centre of those statistics are the real lives of those in my community who benefit from the Forum. The theatre brings together children and young people from different backgrounds, from those who are more affluent to those who currently live in the care of the local authority. At the theatre, they grow together with shared passions.

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

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. The Forum theatre in her constituency sounds like a venue that I should put on my to-visit list, because she is making such a great pitch for it. I am very lucky in my constituency to have the Rep theatre, the Mitchell arts centre, the work by Restoke at Fenton town hall and the Dipping House, which is a community venue running high-profile performances. Those venues bring opportunities for local people not only to engage in the arts, but to hear their stories reflected back in the stories of our community played out on stage. Does she agree that such stories are often overlooked by national production companies? If we do away with community theatres, we end up losing our history to what is commercially viable nationally.

[Lisa Smart]

I strongly agree. I remember growing up, with this accent, and really welcoming it when somebody sounded like me on the BBC or in a theatre production. It matters to all of us to see and hear ourselves and to hear our stories being told. Community and local theatre plays a hugely important role in that.

Community theatre also plays an important role in saving money from the public purse. We have so many young people on a waiting list for assessment and treatment by child and adolescent mental health services. They might be out of mainstream school and struggling as they live with a mental health condition. Participating in the life of a theatre, whether in a production or at the front or back of house, can make people feel they belong. It can help them to find their voice and support them, thereby reducing the cost to the state in other areas. It also offers invaluable educational opportunities.

At the Forum, local schools benefit from theatre experience days, when students can learn about career opportunities in the creative industries, which can be life changing. I am thinking about David, who discovered his passion for lighting and sound design during a school visit. When he left school, he became the theatre’s first apprentice, allowing him to master his passion over a two-year programme.

The charity that operates the theatre, NK Theatre Arts, also ensures that financial hardship does not prevent participation. The theatre vowed never to turn down a potential member due to financial difficulties. Recently, a long-time member of a much-loved drama class stopped attending, because her family was experiencing a tough time financially, and they decided they could no longer afford it. The theatre team pushed through and insisted that the member continue and only pay what she could.

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

My hon. Friend’s passion for her local theatre is clear to see. She mentioned the form of ownership, a charity in that case. In Carshalton, we have the CryerArts centre, a local theatre owned and operated by the local community, by a company specifically set up for that purpose. Does she agree that that kind of ownership structure should be encouraged by the Government and supported as much as possible?

[Lisa Smart]

I strongly agree that assets that are owned and run by the community are a powerful way of empowering that community to deliver what it needs. The Forum theatre is owned by the council but run by NK Theatre Arts, and I will come to some of the challenges that that funding model presents, but I think that communities being involved in improving themselves brings about the best for them.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

As my hon. Friend knows, I am a keen supporter of the arts, especially community theatres. Will she join me in congratulating Chichester Community Development Trust, which has managed to secure national lottery funding to redevelop part of the former hospital at Graylingwell and create a community hub that will be used as a rehearsal space for creatives and community theatres in the Chichester area? Does she also agree that sustainable funding, once the creative hub is up and running, will be key to ensuring that it is there for future generations?

[Lisa Smart]

I will certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating the team in her constituency. Having participated in some bids for lottery funding, I know it is not always an easy process, so they have done very well to be successful. Community hubs are also so much more than just a rehearsal space. They bring light, laughter and so much warmth to a community, so I absolutely agree with her.

All hon. Members will know that theatres are facing higher running costs. If we think about the impact of higher energy bills on households, the cost of heating a very large, high-ceilinged space is even greater. Energy bills are increasing, and rises in wages and national insurance for staff mean that there is less and less money available to spend on improving things around the theatre. I spoke to people from NK Theatre Arts and they summarised my point perfectly:

“Although it’s great to put on a brilliant show, it isn’t really about the shows and the events. It is all about the social benefits it brings to the children, young people and adults, and all of our partners who use The Forum Theatre, but it needs investment.”

That investment would be its lifeline.

I appeal to the Minister and the Government to take action to support councils to maintain and renovate cultural buildings such as community theatres. The previous Government provided schools and colleges with the funding that they needed, more or less, to permanently remove the RAAC. Considering the hugely important service that our cultural buildings provide and the amount they save the broader public purse, it makes sense for the Government to provide similar funding to remove RAAC from community theatres across the UK.

Romiley Forum is, of course, not the only theatre in Hazel Grove. We also boast the Carver in Marple, which, while relying solely on volunteers, has been entertaining my community since 1906, and is where I have enjoyed the unforgettable Marple gang show. I should not forget Romiley Little Theatre, which is another charity that has been part of Stockport’s cultural landscape for over 70 years.

Without our community theatres, the immensely valuable services that organisations such as NK Theatre Arts provide to young people would not be able to exist. The workshops and experiences offered by the theatre company not only provide accessible ways to get involved in the arts, but help keep young people off the streets and involved in their local communities. Any funding for community theatre would be an investment in our young people. We would be investing in our local communities and in the UK’s proud and storied cultural heritage, providing opportunities for the many extraordinarily talented young people in our constituencies who may not otherwise be able to get involved with their passions.

I ask the Government to support community theatre and treat them as assets that bring money into our communities while saving money from the public purse, whether we are talking about CAMHS for young people living with anxiety, or day centres or other activities for those with learning disabilities. I also ask the Government to make funding available for capital repairs for theatres like the Forum in Romiley, as the Department for Education did for schools and colleges, to give a secure future to these vital community assets. Although I am aware that this might not be in the Minister’s gift alone, I also ask for local government to be given clarity over its long-term funding, so that we do not lose the local connection to the arts that so many of us cherish.

11:14

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)]

It is very good, Sir Jeremy, to have you in the Chair, not least because you know a thing or two about the Department, having played a role there for a while. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) on securing not only the debate but quite a large audience for it—certainly bigger than many audiences that I have seen in Westminster Hall.

The hon. Member is right to refer to the Forum theatre, which reopened after £300,000 of investment. She was a bit modest because, as a councillor, she was one of the leading figures who campaigned to get it reopened—perhaps that played a part in her getting elected to this place. I see that she is smiling. It is not quite a Mona Lisa smile; it is more of a “Yes, I did, and thank you very much, Minister, for mentioning it” smile.

I gather that the Forum theatre reopened with “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”, which I think was for just one night only. The young lad playing the lead had effectively grown up in that theatre and learned his craft there. That is yet another aspect of community theatre, namely that young people become engaged in the arts through it. Sometimes, they are young people who would not necessarily be interested in other academic subjects in school, but who see that the creative industries are a career choice or option for them, and they have a moment of extraordinary bravura on stage. Alternatively, somebody might work backstage and decide that that will not be the career for them, but none the less gains a degree of confidence and a sense of working as part of a team. People learn how to take a cue or prompt a cue, and so on.

All those elements are part of growing up as a young person and those skills are essential life skills for nearly every work environment, which is why the creative industries are so important. That is true when there is a massive production of “Matilda” by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which ends up becoming a worldwide success, or “War Horse” by the National Theatre, or “Les Mis”, which was originally an RSC production. That is also true, however, when we are talking about much smaller venues where the subsidy is a key aspect of managing to keep the whole thing going.

Incidentally, I should say that Dan Gillespie Sells, who is a friend of mine, wrote the music for “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”. As I will say more about later, theatre is not just about buildings; it is also about having the writers and the musicians coming into the pipeline, so that we have shows in the future that people really want to see.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I thank the Crowthorne Musical Players for putting on a fantastic production of “The SpongeBob Musical” in the South Hill Park theatre in my constituency last week, which I enjoyed. Seeing young people on stage and the confidence that they were able to exude filled me with such hope for the future. Can the Minister expand further on the benefits for our young people of being involved in the theatre and the creative industries?

[Chris Bryant]

I am not sure whether that was really a question or an advert. It would seem that all the world’s a stage, and all the MPs merely players. It is good that everybody appreciates the cultural institutions in their constituencies and that we all try our best to support them when we can.

The Park & Dare is the theatre in my patch with a beautiful 19th-century building. One of the most exciting nights that I have ever had was seeing Joan Armatrading perform there. When a performer of global standing comes to a local community theatre, that is really important. I think Paul Young is playing at the Forum theatre in a few weeks’ time; the audience then will no doubt be living in the “Love of the Common People”.

We have all used the term “community theatre” in the debate, but it does not really exist. According to the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre, roughly 50% of the 1,100 theatres in the UK are community theatres, so we are talking about 500 or so of them. All those theatres are on a spectrum, however, that ranges from the tiny venue that seats only 100 people and is entirely run by the community on an almost-voluntary basis to much bigger venues, such as Nottingham Playhouse, that are run by the local authority but are still very much part of the local community.

Actually, I would argue that no theatre is really a theatre unless it is a community theatre, even many of the big theatres that we see in London’s west end, which are such an enormous attraction for people around the world. Incidentally, if anybody in the United States of America is watching this debate, the productions in our west end theatres are much better value than Broadway theatres, and their productions are of much better quality too.

Whatever kind of theatre we are talking about, in the words of Peter Brook, every theatre is in essence an “empty space”, and it is only when somebody walks across it that it becomes a theatre. To do that, however, it has to have a story to tell, it has to have people to tell that story and it has to have an audience. All of that is what turns a theatre into a community. The theatre industry in the UK generates something like £2.39 billion in gross added value, employs 205,000 workers and has a turnover of £4.4 billion a year. We already support it in many of the ways that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove has asked us to support it, so I am quite pleased that she asked those questions rather than more difficult ones.

The higher rate of theatre tax relief that comes into force on 1 April is a significant investment in the theatre industry across the whole UK. It will be set at 40% for non-touring productions and 45% for touring productions and ones that involve music. Arts Council England is going through the next round of looking at its national portfolio investment programme, which will provide something like £100 million a year to 195 theatres across the UK.

People might think that a lot of that is going to the big theatres, which might not qualify as a community theatre, but that is stuff and nonsense—sorry, that is the name of a theatre in Dorset. The Stuff and Nonsense theatre is one of Arts Council England’s national portfolio organisations, as are the Nottingham Playhouse, Z-arts in Manchester, the Little Bulb theatre in Mendip and Scratchworks theatre in Exeter. Interestingly enough, the programme does not just fund theatre buildings; it also funds the Writing Squad in Stockport, which is bringing on new writing talent in the north of England, because that is absolutely essential to making sure that there are new plays coming along.

I love J. B. Priestley, and one day I will tell the embarrassing story of when I was in a production of “Time and the Conways” many years ago, but we cannot endlessly put on the classics. Much as many of the classics are really important—I have seen productions of “Richard II”, “Edward II” and “Hamlet” in the last few weeks—we none the less need live, modern stories that reflect people’s lived experiences.

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

On the point of funding, Leatherhead theatre is a grade II listed building leased by a small local charity. It faces ongoing maintenance challenges, but its ownership model makes covering those costs extremely difficult. The £85 million creative foundations fund is welcome, but past experience suggests that not owning the building or having a long-term lease could preclude access to such funding. Would the Minister look into ensuring that funding is accessible to all community theatres regardless of ownership to ensure that they continue enriching our communities?

[Chris Bryant]

I like the way that the hon. Lady casually dismisses the £85 million of capital investment—it took quite a lot of work to secure that money. One of the first things that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and I were lobbied about when we came into government last July was the state of many of the cultural institutions—theatres, museums, galleries and so on—that have been run by local authorities and are in dire capital need. Many of the organisations that we are talking about will be covered by that. If she wants to write to me about the specifics of that case, I will look into it. We had to decide where our priorities should lie. There are other avenues that other organisations can go down, but we wanted to make sure that there was a solid amount of money available in a single year: £85 million for capital projects in 2025-26 for the kind of theatres that many of us will be talking about that are, or have been, local authority-run.

The other intervention that the Department is engaged in is the Theatres Trust, which provides a great deal of unbiased advice to a variety of different theatres about their funding mechanism, their legal structures, their governance and what they can do about energy costs—a whole series of different things. I am very grateful to the Theatres Trust team, who play an important role in making sure that the whole sector works.

It is clearly easy for us to celebrate the big shows that I have already mentioned in the west end, such as Tom Hiddleston in “Much Ado About Nothing”. Those productions get lots of coverage and are very successful commercially, but we cannot have a successful commercial UK theatre industry without a successful subsidised UK theatre industry. We need that whole mix. An actress such as Glenda Jackson, who ended up winning two Oscars and was nominated for two more, and who was a great star of stage and screen making her way partly in theatre and partly in the movies, started in rep in Hoylake and West Kirby. We must remember that it is that whole mix, even in the changing environment of modern theatre, which has very few repertory theatres in the classic sense, that we really have to sustain.

I have already referred to the £85 million creative foundations fund, but I should also refer, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove rightly did, to local government. The new plan for neighbourhoods that is being developed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is precisely designed to look at how we can make sure our local neighbourhoods flourish. A key aspect of that must be the creative industries and our cultural institutions. People take so much pride in having a local theatre, a local music venue or whatever else it may be. We lose those organisations at our peril, although there are enormous challenges.

[Alison Bennett]

My concern is that, in west Sussex, we are on the fast track for local government reorganisation, and without a quick resolution to how we fund social care, many of the community theatres, which are council-owned assets, are at risk of being sold off. Would the Minister press the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on that point?

[Chris Bryant]

I have already had those conversations with the Ministry; it is obviously not simple when we are talking about local government reorganisation. I used to be a councillor in Hackney, so I know the pressures that are always on local government, but those pressures have been so intense for the last 14 years, with an ageing population taking up a much greater proportion of funding through social care, and looking after children in care, as well as very diminished budgets. Local authorities have really struggled to do what they are required to do, let alone what they are allowed to do, such as providing culture and leisure facilities.

One of the problems has been that local authorities have tended to have annual settlements rather than three-year settlements, and I hope that more of the latter will make a dramatic difference to how local authorities can plan for big and medium-sized projects in the cultural sphere. However, I will always make the case to any local councillor who walks through the door that simply cutting funding for the local theatre or leisure centre is an own goal. I tell them that they would then struggle to provide other services, lose pride in their local place, deprive people of career opportunities and make it more difficult to grow the local economy. We know that for every £1 spent on a theatre ticket or a live performance ticket, people are likely to spend several more on other things in the local community.

[Gareth Snell]

The other point that the Minister is making is that community theatres tend to solve the problems that drive the demand in those acute and expensive services in the first place, by giving people a social outlet.

[Chris Bryant]

That is a very good point. As I have regularly said, youth services have suffered tremendously in the last 14 years. If we can get the whole congregation of cultural, youth and leisure services to work together in the local community, it can radically affect people’s life chances and life choices.

My final point is that community theatre is not just about buildings. It is terribly easy to become obsessed about buildings, but my concern is whether we are getting the young actors we need from every type of background, not from only one background. That depends on making sure that every single school provides a proper creative education.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

That brings the curtain down on this debate. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have participated, both in leading roles and walk-on parts.

Question put and agreed to.

11:30

Sitting suspended.

Housing Development Planning: Water Companies

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck in the Chair]

14:30

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of water companies in new housing development planning.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. It is something of a cliché for a Liberal Democrat to be talking about sewage, but today I am breaking the mould and talking not about sewage in seas, lakes and rivers but about sewage in people’s homes and gardens. Buying a home in the UK is not easy. People spend years and years saving penny after penny, and when they finally sign on the dotted line and complete the purchase, they are relieved and delighted. They are not expecting to be forced to become an expert in complex regulations relating to drainage and the planning process. Most of all, they are not expecting raw sewage to start backing up through the manhole covers in their garden, the drains or, in the worst-case scenario, their downstairs loo, but unfortunately, that is what some of my constituents have had to deal with when buying or living near newly built houses in North Shropshire. I think the whole House should be asking itself how any water company, developer, conveyancer or local authority could think that this situation is acceptable.

During my time as MP for North Shropshire, there have been multiple incidents in which constituents have been put in this troubling position by the sewerage network failing, and I am quite angry about the lack of progress in dealing with the issue. Just two weeks ago, I attended a meeting with residents of a village in my constituency that has seen a relatively large amount of development in recent years; their village is low-lying and on a gentle slope. Severn Trent, the water company, has adopted the drainage system from the new developments, so this is not a case of a dodgy developer failing to build suitable infrastructure, but it is an old, medieval village and unfortunately the existing combined sewer infrastructure is inadequate to deal with prolonged rainfall and the additional homes connected to it.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. Speaking of medieval villages, I met residents of a little village called Mudford in my constituency last week. Two new housing applications have recently been approved for up to 1,000 homes just upstream on the River Yeo. Mudford already suffers from extreme flooding and relies on inadequate and fragile sewerage systems that already overflow regularly during heavy rain. Worryingly, the developers plan to use the same system despite clear environmental risks. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that water companies must be fully involved in the planning system, to ensure that water infrastructure can handle the demand and prevent future flooding and spills of sewage?

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend describes a situation that I think we are all familiar with. I agree with her about the role of water companies and will go on to talk about that point at some length in my speech, so I thank her for that intervention.

When there is heavy rain, the residents I met struggle with surface water flooding and, unfortunately, with sewage backing up into homes and gardens, which we all agree is pretty horrible. Further homes in the area are in the planning process, so the residents are extremely concerned. Each year, their situation gets worse. An elderly resident told me that sometimes, when it has been raining heavily, she has to ask her neighbours not to use their bathroom, because sewage will flood into her garden if they do. That is not a position that any homeowner should be put in, so we need to ask ourselves how we have allowed this to happen in the first place.

We are acutely aware of the need to build more homes, and we support the Government in their mission to build more homes, but it is essential that the infrastructure for both new and existing residents keeps pace with development. Astonishingly, water companies are not statutory consultees when a housing development goes through the planning process. That means that there is no statutory safeguard for home buyers that the company responsible for dealing with their foul waste has ensured or confirmed that its existing sewers will cope; nor is there any statutory safeguard for existing residents against a new development bringing some unpleasant surprises.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate. River Mole River Watch, a local citizen scientists’ charity, has found that smaller pumping stations near new housing developments are seeing a sharp rise in storm overflows. More homes mean more sewage, as she has eloquently explained, and if the infrastructure cannot cope, raw sewage ends up in the River Mole. Does she agree that water companies must be statutory consultees in the planning process, so that sewage infrastructure is upgraded at the same time as building takes place? Otherwise, the problem will only get worse.

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Water companies have certain powers to object to developments that exacerbate existing capacity problems, but they are very much constrained by duties under the Water Industry Act 1991, which obliges them to accept domestic flows from new developments. Moreover, developers have an automatic right to connect to the existing network for domestic flows, which limits the ability of the water companies to object solely on the basis of network capacity. They can apply for Grampian conditions—planning conditions attached to a decision notice that prevent the start of the development until off-site works have been completed on land not controlled by the applicant. Developers can do that through the planning authority, but only if there is already a scheme promoted and a date for the improvements to be delivered has been set, so Grampian conditions are rarely used.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) tabled an amendment in Committee to the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which would have provided some of those safeguards by making water companies statutory consultees and ensuring that water infrastructure requirements were considered.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She mentions the amendment we pushed in the Bill Committee, which was not accepted by the Government. It is indeed vital that water companies are statutory consultees throughout the process, but we should bear in mind that there is an incentive for water companies to say that there is no problem: the additional buildings mean more water bills and more income for the water company. If the company concedes that there is a problem, it may have to respond by making improvements to the infrastructure, costing it money. Do we not need better regulation? Ofwat and the Environment Agency need to be put together into a single, new clean water authority, so that we enforce clean water standards on the water companies that are currently running rings around our regulators.

[Helen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has campaigned endlessly and consistently on that point and I entirely agree with him. I was concerned when both the Government and the Conservatives voted against his amendment in Committee. Perhaps in their winding-up speeches, they will explain the rationale to my constituents, who are faced with the reality of putting cling film over their toilet every time there is a big storm.

The current requirements, all of which allow consultation, have been inadequate in the example I have given, and indeed in many others. The local plan process requires local authorities to consult the water companies on infrastructure requirements. That should be a positive step; it is how future infrastructure should be determined, with plans made by both the local authority and the water company. However, many councils fail to develop local plans. Shropshire’s Conservative council has just had to withdraw an inadequate plan, having failed to satisfy the requirements of the planning inspectors, leaving the county open to a planning free-for-all in which it is unnecessary to consult water companies. I therefore urge the Minister to ensure that in the review announced at the beginning of this week, water companies are added to the list of statutory consultees. I urge him also to tighten up the rules to prevent such a fiasco from emerging again, when after years of work and of taxpayers’ money being spent on a local plan, it is not fit for purpose and the whole process has to be started again. That is unacceptable for my residents, who are paying their council tax.

Another development 10 miles to the north has had similar issues, but in that case, in addition to concerns about the capacity of the pumping station and existing surface water flooding problems, Severn Trent has refused to adopt the drainage network, citing as its reason that the sewers were not built to the standard agreed under the section 104 arrangement in place. The developer, which I should say disputed that there were defects in the system, requested that Severn Trent return its section 104 bond, and it did. All of that was done without the residents’ knowledge. They only found out nearly three years later, following repeated complaints to the water company, which is tanking sewage away from the village on a weekly basis.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

On the section 106 moneys being returned to the developer, this week I had a meeting with Southern Water and then a meeting with a significant regional house builder in the south-east. A very similar situation was presented to me, wherein Southern Water had not actually managed to carry out the £2 million of improvements to the sewerage network that were required as part of the section 106 agreement. Does she agree that in such a situation it is incredibly hard for politicians and councils to make the case to residents that development is justified, when time and again they are let down by the development system?

[Helen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Residents are genuinely concerned about the impact on their village or town when the rules clearly are not allowing for additional infrastructure to be built. It is reasonable for them to expect that infrastructure to be built. We would see far less nimbyism if people had confidence that the infrastructure will be there when new houses are built.

The point I am trying to make is that the section 104 process is not fit for purpose. It is ridiculous to require a financial bond. The point of that bond is to deal with exactly the situation where the sewerage network has been inadequately built and needs to be adopted. The bond is there to ensure that the water company brings that sewerage system up to standard, so that it can be adopted.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

My hon. Friend has just said that a lot of sewerage is unadopted. Say it was built in the 1800s by public subscription and nobody has adopted it since. That allows water companies to shrug and say, “Search me, guv’” when there is a problem. Does she think that the Government should by statute or law require that all of these unadopted watercourses be adopted by a water company or the Environment Agency, so that when there is a problem there is someone we can point to and say, “This is your problem to solve”?

[Helen Morgan]

The problem of historical sewers is particularly difficult, because there is no immediate developer to put on the hook. We certainly need a mechanism for dealing with historical sewers. It is a complicated problem, because we certainly do not want sewage from inadequate systems to start going into the main system, and it is difficult to say the taxpayer should to have to pay for something that happened a long time ago. Nevertheless, we need a mechanism to deal with historical sewers; there is no doubt about that.

The homeowners in The Pines in Higher Heath are in a situation where the developer has refused to rectify the issues and Severn Trent has washed its hands of the matter by returning the bond. They have nowhere else to go. One resident told me:

“The whole system has failed us, from start to finish…we have layers upon layers of Water, Building, Planning, Council Regulations, Controlling Authorities and processes and procedures, all designed to protect the public and the environment. Yet, a pre-existing local drainage problem, a planning process and building supervision and approval all failed to pick up and address it, and then allowed ‘defective’ drains to be built, then a Developer and a Utility company agree among themselves to terminate the S104 and totally wash their hands of us/the people who pay the taxes that fund the system that is supposed to protect us/the people.”

We see there the root of the problem. People who rely on the regulatory system to protect them in their homes are being hopelessly let down by a system that provides no protection when the worst happens and push comes to shove. Clearly, the section 104 process is not fit for purpose. The conveyancing process, when solicitors are involved, never seems to detect this type of situation either. I have sympathy for the people affected. When the section 104 agreement and bond have been put in place, and people have found that through their search, they should be able to have reasonable confidence that the sewerage network will be completed as planned.

I have raised many times the situation of people living in The Brambles in Whitchurch, so I will not go into all the details again. People bought houses in that development, but the developer was a rogue developer, who collapsed the company as soon as the final house was occupied. The sewage pumping system was inadequate, and another property was illegally connected to it. Fourteen households had to spend £1 million between them to fix that situation. Those householders were the people left holding the management company when everything crashed down around them, and they were liable to fix that situation. That was totally unacceptable, as well.

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. I have a couple of questions. In North Bedfordshire, the pace of housing growth is about two and a half to three times what it is nationally, and we also have two major watercourses—the River Ouse and the River Ivel. The issue with the way that section 106 moneys go with new housing developments is that it is always about the incremental impact on the network, but the problem is that the overall structure needs financial support. The hon. Lady has been thinking about making water companies statutory consultees. Does she think that that could help with a more comprehensive understanding of the impact across a network of any major development? Secondly, does she think that it could change the system to have greater demand for an escrow of funds by developers for the long-term issues she mentioned, rather than leaving those to individual householders?

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, particularly about holding funds in escrow, which is a sensible suggestion. I am reluctant to let water companies off the hook, because they have made enormous profits, and they have been able to predict the growth in housing and changes in the weather, but they have done nothing to invest in the existing infrastructure. Let us not feel too sorry for them, but there clearly needs to be a long-term plan in place for overall infrastructure in an area. I agree that that needs to be taken into consideration in the planning process.

Local planning authorities have discretionary powers to try to prevent the situations I have described. They could stop occupation of the final properties on the development until the defective sewerage has been remediated. There are various conditions they could put in place up front to prevent these situations, but in practice that is not happening.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

In my constituency, South West Water promised residents in the Chapelfields development in the village of St Mabyn that sewage treatment would be put in place, only for families to move in and find raw sewage being collected in tankers, with no proper connections and frequent sewage back-ups, which is similar to what my hon. Friend has described. Does she agree that water companies must be held properly accountable to ensure that infrastructure is in place before homes are built, not years later when the damage is already done?

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is where we are going with having them as statutory consultees in the process. It is no good the water companies saying, “You cannot build those houses.” They need to be able to say, “We have this plan to improve the infrastructure. You can build those houses when we have done it.” It is probably also quite critical that they are able to say, “We are doing it fairly quickly.”

I will come back to section 104 for a second. One problem is that council planning departments are hollowed out. They have neither the human nor financial resources to get involved in expensive planning enforcement action, or to ensure that every person has been thought about and invited to consult on a planning application. They need to be required to do that, because the idea that cash-strapped councils will go above and beyond is currently unlikely; many are desperately just trying to stave off a section 104 situation.

We have planning legislation coming, which is welcome. I implore the Government to address section 104 agreements and the bonds that secure them, because at the moment they are not the iron-clad guarantees they should be. We need to ensure that drainage systems are built to an appropriate standard and adopted, so that people can have confidence that, when they buy a home, they will not have to deal with a raw sewage problem for years and be unable to sell their house in many instances.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

The hon. Lady makes an eloquent and moving case about the impact of inadequate sewerage systems on residents moving into new properties. Does she agree that there is also a need for a stronger regulatory system for the supply of fresh water? In my constituency we have a water management zone, which prevents new businesses, such as a brewer I spoke to recently, from expanding. At some times of the year, there is too much water, and at other times, there is too little. Does the hon. Lady agree that more effort needs to be put into strategies to manage the supply of fresh water, as well as the issues she raises?

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Shropshire is quite wet, so we do not often find ourselves talking about a lack of water; it would have to be an extreme summer before we found ourselves in that situation. He makes a good point that the country increasingly sees very dry periods and then extreme rainfall in winter. We need a water system fit for the future to deal with that and with localised capacity issues in the freshwater network.

Finally, I call on the Government to implement the recommendations of the report published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2023 on schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The schedule would provide a framework for the approval and adoption of drainage systems; a sustainable urban drainage systems approving body, or a SAB; and national standards on the design, construction, operation and maintenance of sustainable urban drainage systems, which also have a lovely acronym—SUDS. Critically, it makes the right to connect surface water run-off to public sewers conditional on the drainage system being approved before any construction work can start. Currently, that is not a statutory requirement, but those things are often built as part of the planning process. That means that when a development happens in an area that has previously been, say, fields, the water must drain off at the same rate as it would have done had the area still been a field. That is a clever way of managing surface water, and it seems odd that the previous Government, and indeed the current Government, have not yet adopted schedule 3. That would be an important start in protecting new and existing residents from the nightmare of both surface water and foul water flooding.

In conclusion, the current planning-led approach is clearly not fit for purpose. Numerous colleagues have turned up today to tell similar stories of residents dealing with raw sewage in their homes, which is just not acceptable. The planning process is failing to protect residents of both new and existing homes, opening the risk of surface water and foul water flooding. Most of us cannot imagine how awful untreated sewage in the home must be, but a failed planning system is making it a reality for far too many people. I urge the Minister to make water companies a statutory consultee in planning, to implement schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act and to tighten the rules around section 104 so that rogue developers cannot get away with building illegal connections to the sewers.

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

I remind Members that if they wish to be called to speak, they should bob. I ask Members to try to keep their contributions to around four minutes so that everybody who has put in to speak can get in.

14:51

[Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing the debate; we are all impatient for change and proper accountability from water companies, so it is an important one.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on an issue that directly impacts communities such as mine in Weston-super-Mare. Irresponsible water companies, failing regulation, red tape and suffocated local planning departments have created a perfect storm when it comes to developing the infrastructure and services that we need to deliver for our communities. For too long, our local communities have been underserved by a “computer says no”—or, in this case, a “red tape says no”—approach to planning. It is astounding how many cases I have seen as an MP of sensible, well-thought-out, environmentally based planning applications, that are clearly in the public benefit and that could be easily actioned, being held up by needless and inexplicable bureaucracy.

When I speak to people in Weston, it is clear that although new housing developments bring much-needed growth, that is not without concerns about water infrastructure—not to mention roads, health, offices and retail infrastructure—failing to keep pace. However, the hand-wringing has to stop, and I am genuinely impressed by the ambition the Government have shown in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to deliver for our people, who are sick of delay after delay and of a “Britain cannot get projects moving” mentality.

These things are not just constraints in an inbox to be managed, but genuine concerns that affect people’s daily lives. Residents feel frustrated by rapid developments proceeding without the necessary improvements to essential services such as water supply, drainage and—this is really important in my constituency—rhyne maintenance, which is such a fundamental part of flood prevention.

My constituents are frustrated that water companies do not currently have a formal role in the planning process, so I really am supportive of changing that. The Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 is the first part of the transformation of the English water system, not the sum total of the Government’s ambitions—I am sure the Minister will talk about that later. I am proud that the Government have acted on these issues, and I was able to play an active role in the passage of the Act, which strengthens accountability.

Locally, we have seen the consequences of generations of poor management. Weston’s main beach, as well as Sand Bay and Uphill, are all now classified as having poor bathing water quality. The issues the hon. Member for North Shropshire talked about in her constituency—the flooding and sewage—come to coastal constituencies all around the country. These issues are really interlinked.

The people of Weston and North Shropshire have always deserved so much better. With our water and planning and infrastructure reforms, we are turning the tide on a broken system that has left far too many with a seemingly inevitable decline in opportunities, living standards and water quality. This issue is about getting the balance right, delivering the homes and services we need, while ensuring that our infrastructure keeps pace. I know that the Government are committed to that, and I will continue to work with all concerned to make sure that communities such as Weston-super-Mare are not left behind by an outdated attitude to red tape and bureaucracy, but also by inaction on critical infrastructure such as our water.

14:30

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing today’s important and timely debate on an issue that is critical for my constituents in Chichester and for people up and down the country.

The challenges facing our water infrastructure are well documented, and waste water treatment works across the country have been operating well beyond their capacity for years, with serious consequences. During the general election, I knocked on the door of a lady in my constituency called Alison, who I had not seen in many years. She is a wheelchair user, and she told me how delighted she was to have been moved to a new social home. She had lived there happily for two and a half years until a new development was built in the field just next door. Suddenly her toilets no longer flushed, and she had no access to her wet room. When she spoke to her water company about sewage rising up in her toilet, it recommended that she go to the local pub to use its facilities. That is totally unacceptable for Alison and for every single constituent facing such situations.

When our systems become overwhelmed, storm overflows and sewage spills pollute our rivers, harbours and coastline—failures that are visible nationwide. Water companies have a duty not only to provide clean water, but to manage waste water safely and effectively. Yet the system has been failing for many years. In my constituency alone, there were 990 recorded sewage spills last year, which lasted over 17,000 hours.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I slightly regret asking my hon Friend to give way at this particular moment, because she has just mentioned 17,000 hours of sewage. As a result of a recent freedom of information request related to my constituency, Thames Water had to reveal to me that it has released sewage into Surrey Heath’s rivers for 543 hours since the general election on 4 July. That is a slightly more modest number than the 17,000 hours my hon Friend’s constituents have faced, but it is none the less hugely significant, given that we have only four sewage outlets in the whole of my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want new housing built—which we do—then water companies, which we are often very hard on, need to be treated as strategic partners in development, and forced through tougher regulation to deliver the rapidly growing communities we want for all of our residents?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are tough on water companies—and so we should be. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire said, they have made large profits and they have a duty to make sure that every single constituent in this country has access to clean and safe water and that it is disposed of appropriately. But I absolutely agree that they should also be included as a strategic partner, and I will come on to that.

Those failures harm our environment, endanger public health and threaten local economies, particularly tourism, which relies on clean water and a thriving natural landscape. In the Government’s plan for change, they set out an ambitious proposal to build 1.5 million homes in England and accelerate planning decisions. While there is no doubt that new homes are needed, they must be accompanied by the appropriate infrastructure to support them. Water companies have a duty to maintain, improve and extend their water supply networks to account for future water needs, but they are currently excluded from the planning process by not being listed as a statutory consultee.

That omission means that, when a development is proposed for a site where there is no capacity, water companies lack the opportunity to formally object or to insist on necessary infrastructure improvements before the permission is granted. The issue is compounded by how capacity in our waste water treatment plants is measured. Instead of assessing the real-world resilience of our waste water infrastructure, capacity is gauged by measuring dry spells over a 12-month period. That means that a company’s capacity can change year on year, depending on the weather. With an ever-changing climate, that is not an accurate measure of the capacity that a site can cope with. It is not a realistic reflection of demand on new developments.

If they were statutory consultees, water companies could highlight those inefficiencies at an earlier stage, ensuring that essential upgrades are planned and delivered before new developments are approved. In Chichester, we are currently dealing with the absence of a proactive water management system; a lack of capacity at a specific waste water treatment works in Apuldram is delaying the regeneration that the city centre so desperately needs.

To address these challenges, we must adopt a more proactive and consistent approach to waste water management. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire mentioned, sustainable drainage systems—otherwise known as SUDS—are a key element of this. I am pleased that Chichester district council has included SUDS as part of its local plan, which is currently being consulted on, but they should not be applied on an authority-by-authority basis; we should have legislation making SUDS the standard across the country.

15:01

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing this important debate. This is an issue on which I hope we can find cross-party consensus and bring about the meaningful and effective change that we and our constituents badly want to see in the water industry.

I start with a case study from my constituency that illustrates the problematic nature of how the current planning framework operates in relation to water companies. Cranbrook is a rapidly growing new town in east Devon: the 2021 census recorded just 6,700 people, but the local council is proposing to grow the town to 8,000 homes, which will accommodate around 20,000 people. During the planning phase for the town, our local water company, South West Water, promised a dedicated sewage pumping station to treat waste locally and prevent the overloading of existing infrastructure.

However, South West Water has since scrapped the proposed pumping station, and instead redirects Cranbrook’s waste six miles away to the Countess Wear sewage treatment works in Exeter. Countess Wear is already under pressure and suffers regular sewage spills into our beautiful River Exe. It does not take big brains to work out that, at Cranbrook’s projected growth rates, the current plan is unsustainable at best and dangerous at worst. If local politicians and pressure groups had known at the time that South West Water would not make good on its promise or be held accountable, I should imagine that objections to the town being built would have been louder and more persistent.

As we all know, this Labour Government have committed to building 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament, yet they have not adequately explained how they will ensure that infrastructure will keep pace with development. With multiple proposals for new housing in my constituency, as well as proposals for a new town—in addition to Cranbrook—I fear that the same avoidable mistake will happen to my home twice. For the record, I am not against house building, but I am against house building that is delivered without the corresponding infrastructure.

The issue of water infrastructure planning has long been overlooked, yet it is crucial to ensuring that new housing developments do not lead to avoidable environmental and public health disasters. As we have heard, water companies are not statutory consultees in the planning process. Their role is limited to local plan development, meaning that they often engage far too late, once planning applications are well under way. This lack of early involvement leads to delays, unco-ordinated infrastructure and, ultimately, a failure of accountability when things go wrong.

To offset that flaw in planning law, local councils are resorting to other mechanisms to force compliant behaviour from water companies. We have heard about Grampian conditions, which are designed to prevent development from proceeding until certain infrastructure requirements are met. However, they do not force water companies to deliver the necessary infrastructure. If a water company delays investment, a development can be stalled indefinitely —or, worse, proceed without proper infrastructure, leading to sewage overflows and environmental damage.

We have heard about section 106 agreements, which are legally binding and require developers to fund infrastructure projects. However, water companies are not legally required to use these funds for local improvements, meaning that money intended for vital infrastructure could be diverted elsewhere.

[Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)]

Water companies have a responsibility to the community they are in and the developments that they play a part in. I am keen to hear from the Minister what the Government’s reforms will do to encourage water companies to be front and centre on plan-making and infrastructure building.

[David Reed]

I too want to hear from the Minister what plans he has to make sure that infrastructure keeps pace with development.

The community infrastructure levy is another funding mechanism, but CIL revenue is stretched across multiple infrastructure needs, and not all funds go towards water and the sewerage system. The local plans allow local councils such as mine, East Devon district council, to set policies to ensure sustainable development. However, the policies depend on voluntary co-operation from water companies and developers. If a water company refuses to engage early, the council lacks the full picture when making planning decisions. Developers can also challenge infrastructure requirements if they increase costs, which leads to weak enforcement.

Given these issues, I argue, as other Members have, that water companies must become statutory consultees in planning applications. That would mean that developments could not proceed unless water companies confirm that infrastructure is in place to support them. The case of Cranbrook in my home area demonstrates the consequences of failing to integrate water infrastructure planning with house building. If we do nothing, we will see similar issues arise across the country, with more communities left to suffer the consequences of inadequate water and sewerage systems.

15:06

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

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this debate on both housing and sewerage. These matters are clearly important to the 13 Liberal Democrat MPs who have been present in the debate, but they are frankly important to all 72 of us. I am pleased to follow my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed)—I do regard him as a friend on this issue, because we share the same sea, which has been dogged by sewage pollution from the same water company. We co-operate very well on this issue.

I recognise what my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire talks about regarding sewage backed up in people’s homes; at a surgery six weeks ago in the village of Feniton, I had people come to see me who showed me photos of sewage in the leat or stream at the end of their garden. It was very visible; the toilet paper and condoms give us a pretty good idea that it is not naturally occurring sewage. They told a story of neighbours having to knock on the doors of people in their street to ask that flushes are not pulled and baths are not emptied at a time of heavy rain, for fear that the sewage will back up into people’s private homes.

Water companies and Ministers, when seeking to excuse the volume of sewage that is spilled, have told us for a while that it is a simple choice between either having sewage backing up into people’s homes or its being emptied into our rivers and seas. The purpose of this debate is to show that it is not a straightforward, binary choice. There are other options. We heard this week that the Government are removing Sport England, the Theatres Trust and the Gardens Trust as statutory consultees on planning. I am hoping to hear that they are doing that to make way for water companies.

To again use the example of Feniton, the village has been subject to flooding over a very long period, a fact well recognised by both councils and the water company. East Devon district council has spent £6 million of taxpayers’ money to introduce a flood alleviation scheme to the village. That spending would not have been necessary had there been good advice at the outset from water companies when planners were proposing to build in that area. In Acland Park in Feniton, residents have been left to try to get their sewer adopted by the water company themselves because the developer has gone bust; again, had the water company been consulted at the planning stage, that might not have come about.

We have heard about water companies objecting to being statutory consultees. That is not my experience. I met the chief executive of South West Water in recent months—I have been a thorn in the side of South West Water; if we are having a competition this afternoon about the volume of sewage spilled, I think I can win it, with over half a million hours of sewage spills in 2023 in the south-west region, though I confess that is not the figure for my constituency alone. The south-west region is dogged by sewage spills, and there was an 83% increase in spills from 2022 to 2023.

The chief exec of South West Water asked me to lobby the Government to have water companies as a statutory consultee. I say that not because I am being lobbied, but because it is in the interests of the residents I represent. I would be curious to know whether the Minister, too, has been asked to make water companies statutory consultees.

15:11

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing the debate. As I said to her beforehand, it has been a while since we were in Westminster Hall together; now we have renewed that acquaintance once again.

Housing development in Northern Ireland is a completely different ballgame, as the Minister will know—he has not answered my queries about that, because it is not his responsibility. The system is very different, but this debate gives us an opportunity to participate. I welcome this Labour Government’s commitment to 1.5 million houses, which will potentially regenerate the economy and create jobs and development. It gives people opportunity, and it is the right thing to do, but we need enough skilled workmen to be able to do that job.

To give a local perspective from Northern Ireland, water infrastructure for new housing developments there is managed by Northern Ireland Water, which is a Government body. Some people might say, “At least that way, you only deal with one person and it all gets done.” Our system is quite simple. My office deals with numerous issues each week that are under the responsibility of NI Water and I am glad to have a good working relationship with it. We do complain now and again, and we find that its reaction to our complaints is positive, and it does its best to deal with them. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) referred to the half a million hours of sewage spills in the south-west region—it gives me goose pimples just to think about that.

In addition to NI Water, we have dozens of fantastic developers looking to expand and enhance the property scene across Northern Ireland, and they will have to work closely with Northern Ireland Water on decent infrastructure, which is critical to departure. In many cases, network reinforcement and new infrastructure is needed, which can be very costly but is necessary for new and improved housing developments.

Another pivotal issue over the last couple of years has been flooding. We used to always talk about 100-year floods, but they now happen about every two to three years and have become the norm rather than the exception. The hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) referred to looking to the future and what the stats suggest needs to be done.

I have dealt with many flooding issues in my constituency, and it is important that this issue is taken into consideration in terms of water supply and drainage in new housing developments. Developers must comply with many environmental regulations from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, including those relating to water pollution and sustainable drainage. I am old enough to remember a time, not too far back, where the sewerage system and the storm drain water all went into the same system. That is not the case today—nor should it be, because the capacity is not there to take it all—but it did happen in the past.

We need to ensure good communication and good working relationships with Government and non-governmental agencies, from planning to environmental and from water companies to developers. Northern Ireland Water and water companies are obligated to supply water connections to all residential properties, but there has to be good engagement. Northern Ireland Water has good capacity and a good relationship with elected representatives. Developers have the working relationship with Northern Ireland Water that they need to make it work. On the occasions when the sewerage system is unable to take a development of, say, 100 houses, the developer must take it upon himself or herself to provide for those 100 houses a system whereby the sewage can be taken away, either by lorry or whatever.

The Minister perhaps cannot answer this point, but some of the things we do in Northern Ireland, including having Northern Ireland Water as a governmental body, may just be the answer. I am not a socialist, by the way —just for the record—but some things are just right. It does not matter whether it is a socialist policy or another policy; if it is right, it is right. I gently suggest to all Members in this Chamber that maybe all the water companies need to have a new boss.

15:16

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing this important debate.

It was deeply disappointing to hear this week about the bodies being removed as statutory consultees. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord). Although it is deeply regrettable that we are taking away rights from organisations like Sport England, I hope that will make space for the water companies. We have been calling for them to be statutory consultees for a long time.

Although water companies have a statutory duty to connect all new homes to the sewerage system, it seems quite ridiculous that, apart from us, nobody seems able to speak up in our communities to say that there is no capacity left in the system. If water companies are not allowed to say no, how can we make sure that there is enough space?

I have been working with the local water company, Wessex Water, and a fantastic campaigner, Bill Burridge, to deal with a problem in the village of Merley. The community was built predominantly in the ’70s and ’80s, and the sewerage system is already at bursting point—literally. Most of the homes were built at a time when the surface water was allowed to go into the sewerage system. As a result, whenever it rains a brown sludge washes across the Stour Valley way, which is a well-used leisure route, and directly into the nature park and the River Stour, exactly where the local rowing club trains and the Wimborne angling club fishes. It is beyond ridiculous—you can see the two side by side.

Six hundred new homes are about to be built at the location, between the existing homes and the river, which will increase the capacity the community needs by 25%. Although some section 106 obligations are in place, there appears to be little enforcement. When we told the people at the sewerage company that some of the houses were already occupied, they said, “Oh, we will get a project team down there to see whether things need to be upgraded.” It really was laughable. If the Government are serious about getting homes occupied, the water companies need to be required to act before the homes are ready to go, so that we do not end up with situations in which homes are waiting for connections and for sewerage systems to be upgraded.

There is another problem that affects not only people moving into new homes but the people already living there. As water companies are being forced to repair the sewers and reduce the spills, the surface water that has been flowing through the systems, often for decades, is now backing up in people’s gardens. The houses were built long ago, the concrete has been laid and there is absolutely nowhere for all this excess water to go. There is water from the ground and water from the surface. Homes in Broadstone, including in the Springdale area, are finding their gardens unusable, and houses slightly further down the hill are using sandbags to prevent the water from flooding into their homes and gardens, despite the fact they are around 5 miles from the nearest river. The water companies say it is not their problem because they are fixing their drains and sewers, and the councils say it is not their problem because it is not public land. Whose responsibility is it? Homeowners cannot be suddenly faced with gardens that are underwater.

Like the homes my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire mentioned, homes in Broadstone have seen sewage bubbling up, sometimes in their living rooms. The only reason the water companies have given us is that they are the oldest homes in the area and are closer to the water treatment plant, and therefore when all the new homes are connected they have to face the consequences of inadequate systems. The water companies have absolutely no answer. Individual homeowners are expected to put up with it, and the only new investment is where the new homes are. What is the Minister doing to ensure that the water companies and developers are providing for the homes that are already in communities?

15:20

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate.

For too long, our rivers, streams and seas have been treated as a dumping ground for sewage. Water companies have failed to maintain and invest in the infrastructure necessary to protect our natural environment. This has a devastating effect on local residents, businesses and tourists, who rely on clean water and unspoiled landscapes.

It is clear that the current system is failing and that urgent action is required, which is why we must make water companies statutory consultees in the planning process for all new housing developments. Currently, water companies are not required to be consulted when new housing projects are proposed; it is merely best practice. That is a glaring omission, considering the fact that the waste water and sewage from new developments will inevitably place further strain on an already struggling system.

The consequences of failure can be seen across the country, including in my West Dorset constituency, where sewage pollution has reached crisis levels. In 2023 alone, West Dorset experienced more than 4,100 sewage spills from storm overflows. Of the 500,000 hours that my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) said the south-west has suffered, our beaches and rivers suffered 45,000 hours of sewage discharge from the existing degraded sewerage and water system, tarnishing the landscape that makes my region so special. The River Lim, which flows into Lyme Regis, was declared ecologically dead due to the severe pollution it has suffered. We are aware of that only thanks to the efforts of the citizen scientists of the River Lim Action group. This state of affairs is simply unacceptable.

West Dorset is part of the Poole catchment area, where an excess of nitrogen has had a disastrous effect, leading to significant reductions in biodiversity. Without proper infrastructure, any new homes built in the catchment area will only add to the pollution burden. We must ensure that the impact of the waste water from new developments is properly managed. The Governments’ nutrient mitigation scheme is a step in the right direction, but it cannot be the only answer. Water companies must be consulted from the outset to ensure that sustainable infrastructure is in place before new homes are built. Without that, we risk compounding an already dire situation.

The Minister issued a written statement on 10 March 2025 about the reform of the statutory consultee system. That provides an opportunity to review the role of water companies in the planning system. If the Government are serious about tackling the sewage crisis, they must seize the opportunity to ensure that water companies are statutory consultees, without delay.

This is not just about the environment; it is also about our local economy. Tourism is a vital industry for West Dorset. Visitors come to enjoy our beautiful beaches and waterways. It is unacceptable that residents and tourists must check pollution alerts before they can swim. If we do not act now, the economic consequences for my area will be severe, and local businesses and communities will bear the brunt.

We need real accountability and meaningful change. Making water companies statutory consultees will help to ensure that new housing developments do not further damage an already failing system. It will bring transparency to the planning process and force water companies to take responsibility for the new infrastructure planning that is essential for our environment, for our economy and for public health.

15:24

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is truly a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I join colleagues in commending my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing time to discuss this vital issue, which I feel is a symptom of a wider malaise in our planning system, as I shall explain.

First, regrettably, I have to add my local examples of the problem to the many others we have heard. In Didcot, during the early stages of building Great Western Park in 2014, there were major sewage issues—so much so that tankers had to be brought in to deal with the sewage created by the new homes. Before long, temporary tanks were installed. Simply not enough capacity was delivered in the local system before the significant housing growth. As colleagues have said, this was accompanied by all the usual extremely circular and tedious arguments about whose fault it all was and where responsibility for sorting it out lay. I am sure that all Members can agree that our local residents are not particularly interested in whose fault it was: they just want these things sorted out—now, and for the future.

In the new street and houses of Anderson Place in the village of East Hanney, the pump station and sewerage system were not constructed to a standard acceptable to Thames Water for adoption, even though the approved plans listed the infrastructure as “proposed adoptable”. On the Childrey Park estate in the village of East Challow, the council has been unable to adopt the drainage and residents are currently in a state of limbo. A section 104 application was submitted, but everyone is unsure whether that means the infrastructure has been adopted. Thames Water says that adoptions are not a short process and that it has a high standard of inspection before it adopts, so it cannot commit to a timescale.

Meanwhile, local planning enforcement is, as we have heard elsewhere in the debate, struggling with how to deal with sewerage systems that are not fit for adoption by water companies. Developments are being built with drainage and sewerage systems that the water company refuses to adopt and that, in any case, are not capable of being adopted without expensive remedial work.

The Liberal Democrats want to ensure that all new development is accompanied by the necessary infrastructure to support it. Given the missed opportunity of the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, I call on the Government to ensure that provision is made in upcoming legislation to ensure that providers of essential infrastructure are held to account. We will continue to challenge water companies to stop sewage spills, but also hold developers to account so that infrastructure for good water management is built with new developments. This all reflects a wider problem with our planning system. We certainly need houses, but central Government enthusiasm for housing targets is not generally matched with as much passion for ensuring and measuring the improvement of infrastructure and key public services alongside them.

I approach my final point with some trepidation. I have already established something of a reputation as a geek among my hon. Friends, but I will take the risk and continue. I will confess to being a fan of the 2015 computer game “Cities: Skylines”. If the Minister has not yet had the pleasure of playing that game, perhaps he could request it as an early Christmas gift. The game is all about the planning and building of cities, and it teaches us much about effective planning. Insufficient sewage and waste water capacity leads to fewer people moving in, as well as reduced tax revenues. The game elegantly demonstrates how a “predict and provide” approach is far better than reactive chaos. I hope the Minister will tell us how the Government plan to move the real world in that direction.

15:28

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this debate and on her tireless work in North Shropshire, which I have seen for myself.

This is a particularly timely debate, with the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill having had its First Reading earlier this week. As Liberal Democrats, we want to see more housing built. In particular, we urge the Government to set a target of 150,000 homes for social rent per year. We also need a new generation of rent-to-own housing for a generation for whom the housing ladder has risen out of reach. However, as the Government push for their 1.5 million homes target, the way to get Britain building is to deliver the infrastructure —the GPs, schools, bus routes, water and sustainable drainage—that communities want to see. The best way to do that is to ensure that local people are at the heart of decisions about how their towns, villages and neighbourhoods should take shape and develop.

Water infrastructure is one of the most challenging things to get right, not least because of the dire state of the existing infrastructure after years of under-investment, as private companies siphoned off funds, often to overseas shareholders and in bonuses, under the previous Conservative Government. Those outflows of money are thrown into even sharper relief by the increasingly unpredictable rainfall and weather patterns that are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of climate change. Fixing this issue is therefore important not just for new homebuyers, but for everyone in communities up and down the country who increasingly face the risk of the disastrous consequences we have heard about.

Many of my Taunton and Wellington constituents know about the risks only too well. In Ruishton, for example, children are frequently unable to reach their local secondary school due to flooding on Lipe Lane, the only road from the village that leads to it. Ruishton is now facing a lot more development that could make things worse. Young people in Creech St Michael face the same problem. Meanwhile, at Hook Bridge in Stoke St Gregory, the River Tone is surging across the floodplain.

[Dan Aldridge]

One of the things that the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and mine share is that we are quite close to floodplains. The rhyne management has been a real problem. That goes back to the austerity cuts of the coalition Government, and we still have not got back from that. That is a real problem for many coastal communities, and it should unite us in getting back to a position where rhyne management allows housing to be delivered sustainably.

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we need more investment in this area, which is why the Liberal Democrat manifesto was the only manifesto to identify the additional funding that the Environment Agency needed for flood defence work, and that Natural England needed. He mentioned the floodplain; much like the other villages that I mentioned, a large part of my constituency is in the floodplain. When the river surges across that floodplain, it far too often carries sewage from the sewage works with it, right across a vast area, in ways that are totally unacceptable. Nobody should have to deal with that raw sewage coming into their home and garden.

My hon. Friends the Members for North Shropshire and for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) are absolutely right that schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 needs to be commenced. The schedule would require the approval of drainage and would require sustainable drainage systems—SUDS—to be provided in all but the most exceptional cases. It would also establish a proper authority for the regulations to ensure they are properly designed and maintained. It is not right that the burden of poorly constructed drainage systems should fall on individuals, who have saved for years to get their first home, because of inadequate regulation and safeguards.

Alongside schedule 3, we should have proper planning enforcement—too often the Cinderella service of planning, as my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) mentioned. In fact, planning departments recover nothing like the full costs of planning services from applicants, due to the cap that central Government has placed on them for decades. Council tax payers are therefore subsidising those developers. My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, was absolutely right in November 2023 to introduce a Bill to remove that cap on planning fees. We were delighted to see in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill published this week that that campaign for full cost recovery has finally won the day; it looks as though it has, in any event.

Without the proper enforcement of sustainable drainage, there is a real risk that the drive to increase housing numbers will exacerbate this problem. Having worked with Sir Michael Pitt in a past life, I looked up last night his report on the 2007 floods and exactly what happened to his 2008 recommendation that schedule 3 should then be commenced. By 2014, the Government had consulted on the necessary guidance and were on track for completion of commencement before 2015. I am sad to say that, in 2015, the trail goes very cold. We had to wait until 2023, when the Conservative Government said in their document, “The Review for implementation of Schedule 3 to The Flood and Water Management Act 2010” that they had instead decided to rely simply on policy. In fact, the 2023 Government review concluded that their approach was—using technical language—“not working”. It went on, in yet more technical language, to say that,

“non-statutory technical standards for sustainable drainage systems should be made statutory: as the”

current

“ambiguity makes the role of the planning authority very difficult. The review also found that in general there were no specific checking regimes in place to ensure that SuDS had been constructed as agreed, leaving concerns about unsatisfactory standards of design and construction, and…difficulties of ensuring proper maintenance once the developer has left the site.”

If only they had followed the advice of the Pitt review and commenced schedule 3 back in 2015, many of the people we have heard about would not have had the same problems.

In the past, there was a body of law to control drainage into traditional sewers—in the words of the Public Health Act 1936,

“communicating with a public sewer—

but relatively new SUDS do not have the same body of regulation. There is therefore no longer any reason why schedule 3 should not be commenced as soon as possible, if not immediately. It should not take another flood to make that happen. Having water companies as statutory consultees is also an excellent suggestion, as hon. Members from across the country have pointed out, and I am not sure why it cannot be enacted.

In conclusion, it is time to implement the recommendations of the 2008 Pitt review, of the Government’s consultation on the response in 2014, and of the 2023 DEFRA review that I quoted, and time to finally implement schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, before communicating with a public sewer becomes something that our constituents are forced to do in an all too upfront and personal way in their own homes and gardens.

15:35

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on her speech on issues that all hon. Members in this House can share concerns about. As MPs, we often get the same casework, and there are issues in my constituency similar to those in hers. This debate is particularly timely. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on some charming revisionism of his party’s record in government. I will tackle comments made by some of the contributors in this debate and then make some general remarks about this Government’s current policy.

The hon. Member for North Shropshire highlighted the genuine hell of her constituents who live in homes that were built many years ago and which are now surrounded by a housing development that has not been properly connected to sewer or drainage systems. That is a particular issue in old villages. In Botley, in my constituency, around 3,000 houses have been built in the Botley-Curbridge corridor. In sections of the Boorley Green development we have a housing estate that cannot be used because the developers did not put in adequate infrastructure. Those houses cannot be sold because backed-up sewage is coming out of the drainage systems. I understand the frustration that the hon. Lady has faced, as a Member of Parliament, in trying to go to the right organisation, and through the right channels of communication, to get those things sorted. I have gone through that and know how challenging it is.

This is genuinely not a criticism of the hon. Lady, but her remarks—and many of the contributions this afternoon —targeted water companies for not doing enough. I agree with those remarks, but there are examples, in my constituency and across the country, where water companies have tried in vain to sound the alert about their frustrations regarding building infrastructure, or to convey their concern about a development. For example, water companies have made it very clear that they are very worried that they have not been listened to in the planning process in connection with One Horton Heath, a large-scale development in my old constituency of Eastleigh, which borders my new constituency. Their concerns about the land that the development is being built on, and where it is to be situated, and their descriptions of the infrastructure that they want provided, have not been heard.

The hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) is a local hero in my constituency because she has a history of speaking on issues such as this, although I hope she does not become too much of a hero in the northern villages of my constituency. She will know that our constituencies are sharing infrastructure investment from Southern Water and Portsmouth Water in the water for life scheme. Like her, I have serious concerns about transparency, and some of the plans going forward. She was absolutely right to mention some of the infrastructure that will be built to try and deal with the overall issue that the hon. Member for North Shropshire described, but I remain concerned that this is a lot of money for a short-term project with Southern Water—a company that has shown that, quite frankly, it could not run a bath properly. I deeply share her concern to ensure that it manages the project properly. I hope we can work together to ensure that that project is fully looked at.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed) mentioned a large-scale development in the village of Cranbrook, which is being expanded, where South West Water has not made good on the promise that it made. He made an interesting point about the 1.5 million homes; he is clear that the Government need to be clearer on reform. As we go through the parliamentary stages of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill—the Minister will be delighted that I will be sitting opposite him for many months to come unless the leader says otherwise—I am hoping that the Government will make that reform clearer. My hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East will know that many people have challenged whether the 1.5 million homes are achievable.

As a party, we have always made it clear that home ownership should be made a reality for many hard-working families, and we do generally support the 1.5 million new homes. However, I must stress an essential caveat: the new homes must be the right homes and be delivered in the right places, as I have said to the Minister. Development must be sensitive to local needs, sustainable in its approach, and guided by the voices of the communities that it serves—including water services. This is important in rural communities, where water supply concerns pose significant challenges. Water demand in rural areas fluctuates due to climate change, tourism, and agricultural needs. Despite that, the Government’s new housing targets fail to account for those systemic pressures, leading to a dramatic increase in required housing numbers—106% in New Forest, 199% in North Yorkshire and a staggering 487% in Westmorland and Furness.

Rural voices must be heard, particularly in discussions surrounding water infrastructure and the continued lack of a statutory footing for water companies. To mitigate these challenges, early collaboration between strategic policy-making authorities and water companies is essential. I know the Minister will agree. Last December, the updated national planning policy framework acknowledged this need, continuing the previous Government’s commitment to aligning water infrastructure with development. While water companies are not statutory consultees, and we agree that they should be in the later stages of the process, good practice dictates that their involvement in the planning process should be encouraged from the outset.

Simply put, we cannot afford to ignore the critical role of sustainable water management in housing development. That is why the last Government implemented the “Plan for Water”, focusing on reducing demand, halving leakage rates, developing new infrastructure and ensuring drought resilience. We set clear, legally binding targets, including a 20% reduction in public water supply usage by 2038 and significant cuts to leakage rates. The previous Government’s record is clear. In 2010, only 7% of storm overflows were monitored; under our leadership, we ensured that 100% are now monitored. We fast-tracked £180 million of investment to prevent over 8,000 sewage spills and secured £60 billion from water companies over the next 25 years for the largest infrastructure upgrade in history. However, the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 does not adequately address the root causes of water pollution. Environmental groups like River Action have criticised the Bill, arguing that “one-off actions” will not resolve systemic pollution issues. The truth is simple: the current system does not ensure that water demand and environmental protection are balanced. There is no real oversight, no accountability, and no sense of urgency to fix the problem.

We also face a major disconnect between planning and water management. Water companies create water resource management plans to project future demand, but these plans do not always account for real-time pressures from new housing developments. Similarly, drainage and wastewater management plans are meant to assess waste water capacity, yet they lack the detail needed to align with local planning. What is worse—as has been outlined by the hon. Member for North Shropshire and many other Liberal Democrat colleagues—water companies are not statutory consultees in the late stages of the planning process when detailed applications go before local authorities. That means that local councils approve new developments without properly assessing whether there is enough water supply or sewage treatment capacity. Under the law, water companies are forced to connect new developments, even when they know they lack the resources to do so sustainably.

Only the Secretary of State can make changes to the list of statutory consultees through secondary legislation. During the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, the Government at the time committed to consulting on whether water companies should become statutory consultees on individual planning applications, and if so, how this could be facilitated. Will the Minister outline where we are with that review and whether the evidence is still with his Department? He may not be able to tell us this afternoon, in which case he may write to me and concerned parties. It may be that Members have to propose amendments in the forthcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill to see that these changes are necessary for water companies.

We call on the Government to publish the review of the statutory consultee system, which I have just mentioned, and look to include the views of water companies on supply and treatment capacity before local authorities grant planning permission. That would enable water companies to input into the planning process effectively and better align investment plans with local development needs.

To conclude, the stakes are clear. We need a housing policy that is ambitious but also realistic. We also need more water infrastructure that is sustainable and resilient. Most importantly, however, we need a Government who listen to local communities, rather than a Government who impose top-down and unachievable targets and remove statutory consultees from the national planning policy framework and other systems. I urge the Government to build upon the solid foundation laid by their predecessors —as they would expect me to say—to deliver on the “Plan for Water” and to ensure that home ownership remains within reach for hard-working families without compromising the integrity of our national resources.

15:44

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important and informative debate, and on not only clearly articulating a number of legitimate concerns about the role of water companies in planning for new residential development but eloquently outlining the plight of her constituents in the cases that she mentioned. In addition, I thank the other hon. Members who have participated in the debate and shared valuable insights and experiences from their own constituencies.

I know and appreciate the various concerns that have been raised about the issue, and I also recognise the strength of feeling. I hope that in my remarks I will convey both that the Government have already acted in numerous respects and that we are alive to the need to do more to address the fact that in many parts of the country the system is clearly not delivering the outcomes that we want to see.

A number of distinct issues were raised during the debate and I will seek to address as many of them as possible in the time that I have available. As ever, if I overlook any specific issues that hon. Members raised, I would be more than happy to find time to discuss them outside the Chamber, and to speak more widely to the group of hon. Members who are here today and others who have concerns about this issue.

I will start by talking about the principle of sustainable development, as set out in paragraph 7 of the national planning policy framework, which states:

“The purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, including the provision of homes, commercial development and supporting infrastructure in a sustainable manner.”

The framework goes on to state:

“Planning policies and decisions should play an active role in guiding development towards sustainable solutions”.

It also says that sustainable development should be pursued both through the preparation and implementation of local development plans, and the application of policies in the framework. In short, the Government are clear that housing must come with appropriate infrastructure, including appropriate water infrastructure.

A number of Members mentioned sustainable drainage systems, including the hon. Member for North Shropshire. Hon. Members will know that the revised NPPF that we published on 12 December last year makes it clear that developments of all sizes should use sustainable drainage techniques when the development could have drainage impacts and should have appropriate maintenance arrangements in place. These are important changes to the NPPF that will mean that sustainable drainage technologies are taken up more widely in new development. We continue to explore whether more needs to be done, either through planning policy or by commencing schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, and a decision on the best way forward will be made in the coming months.

On a related matter, I appreciate that there are some instances of existing sewers not being able to cope adequately with new developments; we have heard a number of pretty troubling examples of that this afternoon. To avoid that issue, the planning practice guidance sets out that good design and mitigation measures should be secured during development, both through site-specific and non-site-specific policies on water infrastructure. For example, it suggests using planning conditions and obligations to ensure that development is phased and not occupied until the necessary waterworks have been completed. I would be very interested to hear from hon. Members who said that some local authorities are not using those conditions and obligations as to why that might be the case. However, I will give further thought to the issue in light of the various examples that have been referred to today.

The hon. Member for North Shropshire and other hon. Members rightly mentioned the role of local plans in delivering sustainable development. Planning is principally a local activity and the Government are clear that the plan-led approach is, and must remain, the cornerstone of the planning system. We are determined to progress towards universal local plan coverage. As the Deputy Prime Minister and I have repeatedly made clear, we will not hesitate to use the full range of ministerial intervention powers at our disposal to that end.

A key function of local development plans is to guide development to the most suitable and sustainable locations and to ensure that the associated infrastructure requirements are addressed. As hon. Members are aware, water companies are under a statutory duty to provide new water and sewerage connections to residential properties, as well as planning to meet the needs of growth as part of water resource management plans, and drainage and wastewater management plans. The water resources planning guidance published by the Government set out how those companies should forecast demand for water based on existing customers and planned levels of household and non-household growth, with the number of planned developments being based on published local plans, but I note the comments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), about how the operation of that system might be improved.

Effective co-operation early in the plan-making process is essential to ensuring not only that housing and infrastructure need is appropriately planned for, but that they are aligned with each other. The national planning policy framework makes it clear that local planning authorities should collaborate with each other and with other public bodies, including infrastructure providers, to identify relevant strategic matters to be addressed, including providing for sustainable water supplies. I have heard and noted the concerns of hon. Members that, despite the Government’s very clear expectations in this regard, such collaboration is not always evident and I will reflect on the implications of that for national planning policy.

We are very clear that the statutory consultee system is not operating effectively. We have been told as much not only by house builders, but by local planning authorities from across the country. Hon. Members will be aware that the Chancellor and the Deputy Prime Minister have imposed a moratorium on new statutory consultees. I also draw the House’s attention to my written statement on Monday setting out how the Government intend to reform the statutory consultee system to ensure it operates effectively, including consulting on limiting the scope of statcons to where advice is strictly necessary and removing entirely a limited number of them.

I have heard the calls made today—organised calls, I might infer—from Lib Dem Members to add water companies to the list of statutory consultees. I gently say to hon. Members that I do not think this is the panacea that they imply it is. Indeed, I think that doing so would risk allowing water companies to argue against the delivery of new homes, rather than focusing on their responsibility to ensure the appropriate infrastructure is in place at the outset. That is why it is important that, although water companies are not statutory consultees on individual planning applications, statute requires that they are consulted in the preparation of local plans. That is because strategic issues such as water capacity are best dealt with at a strategic level through the plan-making process, rather than through individual planning applications.

Ensuring that we take a strategic spatial planning approach to the management of water, including tackling pollution and managing pressures on the water environment at a catchment, regional and national scale, is a core objective of the ongoing independent review into the regulatory system of the water sector, launched in October 2024 by the UK and Welsh Governments. As I hope hon. Members are aware, the commission is expected to report by the second quarter of next year and I know hon. Members will engage with it.

The Government are acutely aware that the sustainable supply of water in some areas—for example, Cambridge and north Sussex—is an immediate constraint on growth and we are tackling that in various ways. For example, in those instances, we work closely with local authorities, regulators and water companies to find creative solutions to unlock growth and address environmental pressures. Our work in Cambridge to address water scarcity, for example, has already helped to unlock applications for over 9,000 homes and 500,000 square metres of commercial space, and similar initiatives are possible in other areas.

The hon. Member for North Shropshire and a few other hon. Members drew our attention specifically to section 104 agreements outlined in the Water Industry Act 1991. Developers and water companies can enter into these voluntary agreements, which, where they work, ensure that newly constructed sewers, first, are built to an appropriate standard and, secondly, become the responsibility of the local water company for maintenance once they are operational, but I have heard and note the critiques that have been made. If hon. Members will indulge me by putting to me in writing some of the cases that have been specified this afternoon, I would like to look into the matter further to see whether the system needs improvement in various ways.

As I have the time, I will speak briefly about two other issues: first, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Alongside targeted local interventions, the Government are taking steps to ensure that we can more quickly and effectively upgrade major economic infrastructure across the whole country, including water supplies. In last year’s Budget, the Government confirmed their commitment to delivering a new 10-year infrastructure strategy, providing more certainty and stability for the supply chain and helping to unlock private investment by setting out the Government’s vision, objectives and priorities for infrastructure over the next decade.

Additionally, hon. Members will know that yesterday we introduced our flagship Planning and Infrastructure Bill. One of the Bill’s five overarching objectives is to deliver a faster and more certain consenting process for critical infrastructure, including vital water infrastructure, through streamlining consultation requirements for nationally significant infrastructure projects, ensuring that national policy statements are kept up to date—hon. Members will know that some of them date back to 2012—and reducing opportunities for judicial review. I encourage and welcome the engagement of hon. Members from across the House as that legislation progresses.

[David Reed]

I hear the points that the Minister has made. Will he confirm that his Department is not going to make water companies statutory consultees in the planning process?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I cannot be clearer than I was in my written statement: the Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister have imposed a moratorium on new statutory consultees. We do not think that the system is operating effectively—as I said, local authorities and house builders are telling us as much. Water companies have a statutory role in the local planning consultation process, and they can provide their view on any application: not being a statutory consultee does not prevent them from doing so.

I want briefly to comment on water quality and pollution. Beyond the provision of water infrastructure, we are facing challenges in maintaining the quality of our water because of ever-increasing pressures from pollution, climate change and unsustainable practices. This Government are prioritising water quality as a key element of our environmental and public health agenda. Significant steps are being taken to address pollution, enhance infrastructure, and ensure clean and sustainable water sources for future generations. For example, as part of our efforts to create a plan-led system that is underpinned by a genuinely accessible and understandable policy framework, we intend to consult on and produce a set of national policies for decision making later this year. It will include policies on topics such as pollution, plan making, healthy and safe communities, and the delivery of homes, and how all of that interlinks. Further details will be announced in due course.

The Government are also working with farmers to reduce agricultural pollution. The Environment Act 2021, introduced by the previous Government, set a legally binding target to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment contribution from agriculture by at least 40% by 2038. That is why, alongside developing a new statutory plan to restore nature and meet these targets, we are enforcing key regulations, such as the farming rules for water, and have carried out thousands of inspections through the Environment Agency.

I underline that the Government expect sustainable development to be pursued both through the effective preparation and implementation of local plans and through the application of relevant national planning policy. As a Government, we have already taken, and will continue to take, steps to ensure that new housing developments have adequate water and waste water infrastructure as a matter of course. I have heard the concerns of the hon. Member for North Shropshire and other hon. Members about what more may be required to ensure that that is the case, and I assure all those who have participated in the debate that their concerns will be at the forefront of my mind as we continue to progress our planning reform agenda.

15:57

[Helen Morgan]

I thank everyone who contributed to the debate. It was good to see cross-party agreement on some of the issues that our residents face, such as the lack of capacity in local drainage systems when houses are built and the lack of appropriate planning conditions in some of these localised incidents.

I also thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), the Minister and the Lib Dem spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), for their thoughtful contributions. They were all excellent. I particularly thank the Minister for not ruling out the adoption of schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act.

I understand the Minister’s point that water companies being statutory consultees would pose a risk to getting planning applications through the process, but I ask him to consider the fact that the local planning system does not work either. Many councils do not have a local plan. They do not have the planning officers, and cannot afford them, to develop good local plans. We have to find a way to address that problem.

Finally, I will write to the Minister on the specific issues that I have had in relation to section 104 agreements. I would be grateful for a meeting with him to go through them in detail.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the role of water companies in new housing development planning.

Kashmir: Human Rights and Peace

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

Dr Andrew Murrison in the Chair

16:00

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for human rights and peace in Kashmir.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. In south Asia, the long, drawn-out dispute of the state of Jammu and Kashmir remains a hanging fireball between two hostile nuclear neighbours: India and Pakistan. It has brought human misery in the form of wars and human rights violations, and it continues to threaten regional and global peace.

Last week, I spoke in the Westminster Hall debate on Kashmir and made it clear that the international community has been failing Kashmiris for the past 77 years, by not implementing the plebiscite determined by United Nations Security Council resolution 47 in 1948. Instead, for the past 77 years, we have seen the Indian Government take advantage of that failure by subjecting Kashmiris to unlawful killings, torture and multiple human rights violations.

More than half of my Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley constituents are of south Asian heritage, and the treatment of Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir has worried them for many years. As a born Kashmiri myself, seeing the level of atrocities, brutality and oppression in Indian-occupied Kashmir is devastating. It is also distressing that the international community, along with the United Nations, is not taking matters into its own hands and pushing to make the plebiscite happen and be a reality for many Kashmiris who have been suffering for over seven decades.

Last Saturday marked International Women’s Day. It would be remiss of us if, at a time when women’s rights and freedoms are celebrated, we do not speak of the cruelty and gendered violence that Kashmiri women are facing in Indian-occupied Kashmir every day. Kashmiri women have been subjected to constant sexism and objectification by the Bharatiya Janata party-led Government, with their bodies used as sexual and political tools to cast fear and intimidation.

According to Kashmir Media Service’s research section, between January 1989 and October 2023, more than 11,000 women were subjected to sexual violence. They have suffered through a lifetime of humiliation, rape and domestic violence, causing them non-stop distress and lifelong trauma. A form of repression being used against women in Indian-occupied Kashmir is enforced disappearances. Women are by far the biggest victims of this conflict and are being forgotten and deserted by the international community. The fact that the UK Government, along with other United Nations member states, have not implemented resolution 47 means that those women are living in a society where they are unable to remarry and are forced to suffer in silence, with no hope of justice.

The revocation of articles 370 and 35A in August 2019 by Modi and his BJP-led Government completely stripped Indian-occupied Kashmir of its special status and any form of autonomy, when the right to self-determination is what Kashmiris have been fighting for tooth and nail for many years. The Indian Government claimed that that move would help to stabilise the situation in the area. Instead, they imposed a lockdown, leading to mass protests, more arrests and further militarisation.

In July last year, Human Rights Watch stated that the Indian Government had still not restored freedom of speech and association since the revocation of article 370 in Kashmir. Nearly six years on, Kashmiris are still being forcibly silenced, and Indian forces continue to carry out repressive policies, including arbitrary detention, making the situation in the area as volatile as ever.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. What he says is absolutely right, and I am reminded of Proverbs 31:9:

“Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy.”

The hon. Gentleman is doing exactly that—well done.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, we cannot ignore human rights, but we also cannot ignore the religious persecution against, for example, Ahmadiyya Muslims, which restricts their right to even exist. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must also stand in solidarity against destroying freedom of religious belief? The right to love your God and worship your God as you so wish is part of who we are.

[Tahir Ali]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman that any persecution or atrocities, whether on humanitarian or religious grounds, are not acceptable, and the international community should be taking them seriously.

In a clear human rights violation, Modi and his Government imposed a total media blackout in the area, leading to a complete lack of international media coverage. Journalists in Indian-occupied Kashmir are being harassed, and it has been reported that surveillance by the authorities has become more common. An Amnesty International report states:

“Thousands of activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and political figures found themselves imprisoned”

under anti-terror laws.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does he agree that the detention of human rights activists, such as Khurram Parvez, is particularly egregious? That individual has been detained without trial for several years and has always fought for the rights of others. Perhaps my hon. Friend can persuade the Minister to inquire after his wellbeing.

[Tahir Ali]

Khurram Parvez is not the only political prisoner; Yasin Malik and many others are in that situation. I am sure that the Minister will respond accordingly to that.

Journalists who work abroad have been stopped from flying out of the country, and others have had their passports impounded without reason—a blatant interference with the right to mobility. Local media has been stripped of its editorial independence. It is heavily dependent on Government advertising and suffused with opinions and news reports tailored to pro-Government narratives.

As I said in last week’s debate, if Modi and his Government have nothing to hide, and if everything happening in the area is completely democratic, why are they not allowing international observers and human rights organisations in and out of Indian-occupied Kashmir? It is because they know that, if they do, the lies that they have been spinning to the international community will begin to unravel. Since 2019, Modi’s BJP-led Government have cut internet, mobile and telephone lines, which has been an obvious attempt to cut the area off from the outside world, and vice versa.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very passionate case for the rights of Kashmiris. He is absolutely right to mention the revocation of articles 370 and 35A. Does he agree that that was in direct contravention of international law and a clear attempt by the right-wing Modi Government to quash the Kashmiris’ struggle? And is he as concerned as I am at the lack of international condemnation?

[Tahir Ali]

My hon. Friend and I are on the same page when it comes to Kashmir and the struggle for Kashmiris. The violation of international humanitarian law should not fall on deaf ears from the international community.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for securing today’s debate. I want to raise a specific issue about internet communications, which has been raised with me by my constituents and is of great concern to many people. Does he agree that although it is important that India and Pakistan agree a way forward and solve the issues in Kashmir, the needs and views of local people in Kashmir need to be taken into account?

[Tahir Ali]

Absolutely; my hon. Friend’s point is bang on. The outcome of the plebiscite has to be one where the Kashmiri people decide. It is their future and they are entitled to decide that.

The Indian Government seem to think that they are above international law, as is evident from their horrific treatment of Kashmiris. Kashmiris have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, emotional distress and having their voices taken away from them. The question now is what more must they go through before the international community starts to pay attention to them?

This Government must now take steps to right the wrongs against the Kashmiri people. Notwithstanding the more than 25 United Nations resolutions calling for a solution of the dispute, India is reluctant to grant Kashmiris the right to self-determination. Kashmiris are not begging for freedom, nor will they beg. It is a birthright that will eventually be achieved. Let me be clear that this is not a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan alone. The international community needs to take responsibility.

United Nations resolution 47 not being implemented is the unfinished business of this Government, given that the resolution was determined when the United Kingdom was under a Labour Government. It was a Labour Government then and it must be a Labour Government now who help the Kashmiri people in their fight against injustice. This Labour Government must not roll out the red carpet for Modi, as the previous Government did. The UK Government must push for the long overdue plebiscite and hold India accountable for its actions against the Kashmiri people.

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

The hon. Member is making some very important points, which were also raised last week. As he said, this is not just a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan; by virtue of the origination of the problem, in which Lord Mountbatten was instrumental, Britain has an important role to play. Is he therefore concerned about what the Minister said last week about this being a matter that should be left with Pakistan and India to resolve themselves?

[Tahir Ali]

I am on the record in stating my dissatisfaction, not only as a born Kashmiri but for the Kashmiris seeking justice, with the view that this is a matter for India and Pakistan alone. Successive Governments have taken that view. It is not a view I subscribe to, and I do not believe it is a view that the current Government should subscribe to.

The world cannot afford to ignore Kashmiris any longer, because it is a matter of humanity and justice. The goal for Kashmiris has always been to self-govern and gain the right to self-determination. That right is not a privilege, but a fundamental human right and the United Kingdom must do everything in its power to help Kashmiris towards that. This is an issue of international significance on which the UK should take a leading role, given its historical involvement in the current situation.

Those rights are further secured and protected by the 1948 universal declaration of human rights. The right to self-determination embodies the basic rights of people to make decisions about their destiny. We have an international obligation to support peace and the equal and just treatment of all humans. What happens or is condoned in Kashmir has both regional and global ramifications. It is thus vital that we take sincere steps right now to act in good conscience.

16:13

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley (Tahir Ali) for securing this debate. I am also grateful for the contributions of other hon. Members and will try to respond to the points raised.

I note that my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), who has responsibility for the Indo-Pacific, spoke about human rights in Indian-administered Kashmir in a Westminster Hall debate on 5 March. I appreciate the importance and complexity of the issues relating to Kashmir and the strength of feeling about it in the House.

As the House is aware, India and Pakistan are important friends of the UK. We have strong and deep bilateral relationships with both. We encourage them to engage in dialogue and to find lasting political solutions to maintain regional stability. The Government’s position is that it is for India and Pakistan to find a lasting political resolution for Kashmir, taking into account the wishes of Kashmiri people. It is not for the UK to prescribe a solution or act as a mediator.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley spoke movingly about human rights in Kashmir. We recognise that there are human rights concerns in both India-administered Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The UK Government encourage all states to ensure that their domestic laws are in line with international standards. Our position is clear: any allegation of human rights abuses is deeply concerning, and it must be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently.

[Debbie Abrahams]

There are various conflicts across the world at the moment and conflicts always require mediators to end them. Given our history with the continent, can the Minister explain why the Government think that the UK does not have a role as a mediator?

[Mr Falconer]

As my hon. Friend knows well, this is an area of the world in which we have long been engaged. It is the position of this Government, as it has been of many previous Governments, that for this issue to be resolved sustainably it will require an agreed compromise between the two countries. That remains our position.

[Imran Hussain]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Falconer]

I will make a little bit of progress, and then I will.

It is vital to ensure effective and constructive dialogue with the communities affected. We raise our concerns, where we have them, with the Governments of India and Pakistan. The UK Government are monitoring the situation. I understand that several restrictions put in place in Indian-administered Kashmir have been lifted. We are clear on the importance of human rights being respected, and we continue to call for all remaining restrictions imposed since the constitutional changes in August 2019 to be lifted as soon as possible and for any remaining political detainees to be released.

[Imran Hussain]

I welcome the fact that the Government are calling for the human rights abuses, which have escalated since 2019 after the illegal revocation of articles 370 and 35A, to be ended. Will the Minister clarify one point? While he uses the line used by successive Governments that this is a matter for India and Pakistan, will he at least confirm that we support the Security Council resolutions that very clearly restate the birthright of the Kashmiris to self-determination through a free and fair plebiscite?

[Mr Falconer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important question. It is our long-standing position that for India and Pakistan to find a lasting political resolution on Kashmir, the wishes of the Kashmiri people do need to be taken into account. I do not want to go beyond the existing position that I have set out.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) asked why the UK Government are not doing more to bring about peace. Could the United Kingdom Government be the mediator or the honest broker here, bring parties together, suggest ideas for solutions and find an honest way forward? That might be what we all seek.

[Mr Falconer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question; I know of his long-standing commitment to peacemaking and mediation. We continue to judge that it is not for the UK to prescribe a solution or act as a mediator.

Returning to the subject of human rights, I want to address the important issues relating to the role of journalists. The UK Government are aware of reports of the detention of a number of journalists in Indian-administered Kashmir. We are clear on the importance of human rights being respected, and we continue to call for any remaining restrictions on journalists to be lifted as soon as possible and for any remaining political detainees to be released.

I now turn to the specific cases raised by my hon. Friends. I am aware that in May 2022, Yasin Malik, an Indian national, was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of funding terrorism. I am aware that he has been in custody ever since. Although it is not for us to comment on an independent judicial process in another country, we encourage all states to ensure that their domestic laws adhere to international standards for free and fair trials, and that they respect international obligations in their treatment of detainees.

[Ayoub Khan]

rose—

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Falconer]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), then to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi)

[Ayoub Khan]

It is precisely the language being used by the Minister that undermines the position of Britain on the global platform. Our position is that, on the one hand, we champion human rights and criticise any violation of international law, but on the other hand, we are very selective when it comes to applying sanctions. We are very reluctant to impose sanctions on a global economic power such as India. We say things like, “This is a matter for India and Pakistan.” We reach out to them and invite them to negotiate, but we do not actually uphold international law. Does the Minister agree that that is at the core of why Britain is being undermined internationally?

[Mr Falconer]

I do not accept that our position on Kashmir undermines the commitment to international law that this Government have sought to evince in all our actions. In relation to the allegations that have been referenced in this debate and the many other reports from both Pakistani-administered Kashmir and Indian-administered Kashmir, we expect international law to be upheld and we continue to hold our principled position on these questions.

[Imran Hussain]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Falconer]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden first.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the Minister for giving way. He said that there was a trial process for Yasin Malik in India, but if one looks into that case and how the trial was conducted, it is quite clear that no proper due process or law was followed. For example, he was actually in a prison cell at the time his so-called trial was taking place. He was not able to communicate with, or even see, those sitting in judgment on him. It is not just me saying this; these are documented facts. It is quite clear that the process Mr Malik went through was actually not a trial at all. In the light of that, should we not be asking the Indian Government about their process in relation to Mr Yasin Malik?

[Mr Falconer]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her long commitment to these issues. We do encourage all states to ensure that their domestic laws adhere to international standards on free and fair trials, and that that is seen through fully.

[Imran Hussain]

I am grateful to the Minister for sparing so much of his time. I welcome his making the Government’s position clear that we will call out human rights violations in the region and condemn violations that occur, but will the Minister also confirm that, in line with our policy and our international obligations, no future trade deals in the region will be agreed at the expense of Kashmiris’ human rights? I say this despite the fact that I promote trade deals in the whole region of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, because it has a great deal to offer.

[Mr Falconer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important question. We remain committed to the promotion of universal human rights. When we have concerns, we raise them directly with partner Governments, including at ministerial level. That is undertaken completely separate from any negotiations of trade agreements, but agreeing trade deals is part of building open and trusting relationships with important partners, which then allows for some of those free and frank discussions about human rights to take place.

We welcome reports that some detainees have been released, but we remain concerned by some ongoing detentions. I note that the people of Indian-administered Kashmir have recently used their collective voice through a 64% turnout in the state assembly elections last October in what was happily a largely peaceful electoral process. We also note that the state legislative assembly in Srinagar has now been restored.

I reiterate that India and Pakistan are long-standing and important friends of the United Kingdom. We encourage both to engage in dialogue and find lasting diplomatic solutions to maintain regional stability. The UK Government’s position is clear: any allegations of human rights abuses are deeply concerning and must be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently. In recent years, the UK Government have raised our concerns with the Governments of India and Pakistan.

Question put and agreed to.

16:25

Sitting suspended.

Rural Communities: Government Support

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for rural communities.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I grew up in Edinburgh, went to Sheffield University and then moved for work to London, where I lived on and off for nearly 20 years, before moving to South Devon in 2007. I did not understand rural life before then; it was something that I had never experienced, because I had not lived it.

Over the past 18 years, I have come to realise that the rural-urban divide is one of the deepest divides in our country. I have learned a lot since about the difference between how a rural economy works and how things function in urban spaces. It is vital that at the top, making decisions, there are people who understand rural communities. It would be great to have someone from the rural south-west at the top table, speaking up for a part of the country that is so often forgotten when spending decisions are made.

I will not talk about farming today, even though we have a Minister from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the room—we are all aware of the immense pressure that farmers are under—but focus instead on the wider issues of rural life, which affect everyone from cradle to grave. If the Government want our economy to grow, they must remember that nearly a fifth of the population of the UK live in rural areas —areas where settlements have fewer than 10,000 residents. Let us look at what defines them.

Ten million people in the UK live in rural areas. The more rural the area, the older the average age, and the faster this average age is rising. Some 30% of the population of my constituency of South Devon are 65 or older—against 17% in urban areas. Work-based incomes are lower in rural areas. Net inward migration to rural areas in the UK is higher and growing, except among those aged 17 to 20, who are leaving in search of education and training opportunities.

People in rural areas travel almost twice as far as those in urban areas, but for those who do not own a car, travelling anywhere can be almost impossible. In many places, bus services do not exist, and taxis are prohibitively expensive: it can cost £150 for some of my residents to do a round trip to the nearest hospital. Access to healthcare is a challenge, because community services have been cut, hospitals can be a long way away and hospital transport is disappearing. My constituency does not have a single dentist taking on new NHS patients. Support for new parents in rural locations is thin on the ground.

The proportion of rural premises with access to gigabit-capable broadband was 47% last year, compared with 84% in urban areas, yet connection to high-speed internet is, if anything, more crucial when services are so scarce. Post offices are closing because of low usage, yet they provide an essential service, particularly to older people who do not drive and who need postage and banking services.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady. She is right to mention buses. If I miss a tube in London, another one is along in two minutes; if I miss a bus in Portavogie, I may have to wait half a day to get another one. Eleven banks have closed in my constituency. The alternative of a banking hub is okay, but it takes yonks—years—for it to actually be opened. Does the hon. Lady agree that if a bank closes a branch, it should have an obligation to open a banking hub, in conjunction with other banks?

[Caroline Voaden]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In my constituency we have two banking hubs, which are doing a good job and providing a valued service. In fact, he raises my next point, which was going to be that banks are closing; I will skip that.

Village pubs—often the only third space left where people can meet, socialise and build community—are closing. Opportunities for young people are limited, and worsened by the lack of rural transport.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that many children in rural areas such as mine rely on the school bus? When the previous Government increased the age of participation from 16 to 18, they failed to also increase the age up to which children who live in rural communities get free transport to school, creating costs of up to £1,000 per family per child. Does she agree that that needs to be resolved?

[Caroline Voaden]

My colleagues are doing well at predicting what I am about to say. I have not shared my speech, but my next paragraph goes on to say that I heard from two pupils this morning about how they miss out on all the after-school clubs and activities because they have to be on the school bus and cannot get home later in the day. That directly impacts kids from more disadvantaged backgrounds, and embeds that disadvantage even further. It is something we must resolve.

We all know that there is an affordability crisis in housing, but it is massively exacerbated in areas with a high number of second homes and flats, and with flats and houses used as short-term lets rather than being residential.

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

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. One of the big problems that we have in my very remote constituency is the cost of delivery charges and surcharges. They are a lot higher than one would pay in cities such as Glasgow or Edinburgh. It is the same for the highlands of Scotland as it is for the rural parts of England. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be good if the Government could look at this and try and take it down to a level playing field, so that people are not disadvantaged because of where they live?

[Caroline Voaden]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to the delivery of services and the costs later on.

Higher than average house prices coupled with lower than average wages is a toxic combination. The median full-time salary in South Devon is significantly below the national average, but the average house price—at £337,185 —is significantly above the national average. Newly built homes regularly go on the market for around £1 million. That means the house price to full-time salary ratio in Devon is 10:6, well above the English average of 8:7. Devon as a whole has the highest ratio in the south-west.

On top of all that, we must also look at the issue of deprivation. Deprivation in rural areas tends to be dispersed, which means it is much less well identified. However, south-west England is one of the rural areas where deprivation is more prevalent. In small communities, just one or two very wealthy residents can skew the figures for the whole settlement, meaning pockets of deprivation can be even more hidden. The index of multiple deprivation, used to capture need for core local authority services, is a relative measure of deprivation based on data from 2019. The index is urban centric and it misses small, dispersed rural pockets of acute deprivation. It is simply not specific enough to capture need—especially in social care.

In Devon, most sub-domains are less deprived than the national average. However, Devon is considerably more deprived compared to the national profile, when looking at housing quality and barriers to housing and services. Of the total Devon population, 47% fall into the most-deprived fifth nationally for the indoor environment quality measure. In rural areas, one in four households do not have a mains gas supply, and are more likely to be reliant on oil or solid fuels for domestic heating, which are less efficient and more expensive.

In 2022, the average fuel poverty in rural villages, hamlets and isolated dwellings was nearly three times as high as the average for England as a whole, and 25% of the Devon population were also in the most deprived fifth nationally for the housing services sector, which measures distance from services such as GPs, food shops, post offices and primary schools, along with measures of housing overcrowding and affordability and homelessness. It is not all thatched cottages from the front of chocolate boxes.

The Liberal Democrats are concerned that using deprivation as an indicator of demand for services does not consider local authorities with a higher number of elderly or vulnerable residents, and the additional demands those residents place on our services. Under the previous Government, DEFRA and the then Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities commissioned a piece of work to investigate rural deprivation as part of an update to the English indices of deprivation. It was anticipated to complete this year, so I ask the Minister for an update on when this work will be completed and published.

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

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech about the challenges that her constituents in South Devon are facing. Many of those challenges are similar to those in my own constituency in the Scottish Borders. Does she agree that all decision makers, whether in the Government, the Scottish Government, local authorities or banks, need to do much more rural-proofing of their policymaking process? Before they announce these policies, they need to understand more clearly the impact they will have on those in constituencies such as the hon. Lady’s and my own in the Borders.

[Caroline Voaden]

The hon. Member’s point comes back to what I am saying about having people at the top table who really understand how these economies work, because so often those smaller communities are lost under the larger voice of the big cities.

In peripheral rural and coastal communities, which have higher levels of high occupational risk groups—for example, farmers and vets—social isolation and loneliness is a cause for concern, with higher levels of suicide and self-harm admissions and lower levels of referral to psychological therapies.

Rural isolation is particularly acute for older people who do not drive. With every pub, café or post office that closes, the opportunity to socialise with others, or even just have a conversation, disappears. It is also damaging for younger people; rural living means fewer opportunities for leisure, sport, socialising and part-time work, embedding disadvantage through a lack of opportunity to gain vital employment skills.

That all sets the scene for the challenges of living in and providing services to rural areas, and I am sure that colleagues will elaborate on many of them, such as buses, banks and broadband, but I would like to finish by looking at funding, because that has a real-world impact on rural communities such as mine, and the figures are—quite frankly—shocking.

Under the 2025-26 local government finance settlement, Government-funded spending power in predominantly urban areas will be £573 per head, compared with £407 in predominantly rural areas. Urban councils will get a huge 41% more per head than rural councils. Over 10,000 people, that equates to £1.66 million a year. Council tax per head will, on average, be 20% higher in rural areas than in urban areas. And, now, predominantly urban areas are to receive over seven times more of the proposed £600 million recovery grant than predominantly rural areas.

Last week, the Government announced continued funding for the rural England prosperity fund, with up to £33 million directed to the fund to

“improve local infrastructure and essential services that benefit rural communities and help businesses…to expand, creating jobs and kickstarting the rural economy.”

From 2023 to 2025, that fund was £110 million, so, while £33 million is welcome, it does equate to a 36% cut in annual funding.

We welcome DEFRA’s announcement of up to £5 million to go towards the continuation of important services for rural communities, such as capital funding for the refurbishment and development of much-needed community-owned assets, such as village halls and community centres. I have seen several of these projects in my own patch, with upgraded community centres doing vital work in bringing the community together.

However, the Liberal Democrats are concerned by the Government’s decision to allocate additional funding within the local government finance settlement on a need and demand basis. The new system of allocation will not recognise that the sparse and isolated nature of rural areas drives higher costs for the delivery of essential services, creates challenges in recruitment of staff for key services, and requires local authorities to provide a greater subsidy for the provision of public transport. We know that the challenges of recruitment are having a direct impact on inward investment into rural areas, because companies who want to invest in South Devon are anxious about doing so because they know that workers cannot afford houses in the area, so where will the workforce come from?

Likewise, the Government’s suggestion is that funding previously allocated to rural local authorities under the rural services delivery grant will be repurposed under the need and demand basis that jeopardises rural local authority funding. That is despite the grant providing rural local authorities with £100 million for the roll-out of essential public services, including emergency services and the provision of social care in 2024-25. We therefore urge the Government to provide rural councils with a funding settlement that reflects the impact of the rurality and sparsity of the areas they serve, through the application of the fair funding formula.

There is a lot to unpack here, but I have secured this debate to urge the Government to think about working more across Departments, and to bring people together to really consider the impact of departmental spending decisions, not only on that Department, but on each other. How do Transport decisions affect Education, and, with it, the wider skills agenda? How do the Health decisions that are made impact the economy in a rural area? How does the closure of hospitality businesses affect rural isolation, loneliness and mental health outcomes? I could go on, but will leave it to colleagues to give examples from their constituencies to highlight many of these issues.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. Members will have observed that the debate is oversubscribed, with a long list of people who want to contribute. Therefore, I urge discipline and an indicative limit of two minutes, and if you were not here at the start of the debate, you will not be called. We will start the winding-up speeches from the Front Benchers at eight minutes past 5.

16:44

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, and I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate.

Representing a rural area and having spent a lot of my career working with rural communities and the land, I am keenly aware of the challenges that the communities in my constituency face. When services fail, it is our rural communities that are hit first and hit hardest. Because of their size, small rural schools and doctor’s surgeries are already working with smaller margins than their urban cousins. When budgets have been cut, those cuts have gone straight to the bone. Rural broadband and phone services lag behind, making it more challenging to set up businesses to work from those areas.

I have seen areas where rural bus services have been reduced to almost nothing—when they have not disappeared completely—cutting off communities and massively affecting the lives of elderly and disabled people. The big bus companies have pulled out of many of our rural areas, but I know that those routes can work. Hornsby Travel, a local family company in the Isle of Axholme, is doing amazing work in finding ways to provide vital connections for rural villages. Even roads, the one lifeline to country villages, are falling deeper and deeper into disrepair, as squeezed budgets force local authorities to focus on only the busiest roads.

I recently visited Wroot Travis primary school, which has fewer than 30 pupils. The children had sat down and worked out the one thing that they wanted to speak to me, their MP, about: they wanted a sign outside their school, warning drivers about children crossing the road. I was happy to write to the local council to champion their cause, but I cannot help but feel that a school in a town or city would not even have had to ask; it would have been done automatically. That is such a small thing, but it is symbolic of the way that rural communities have been treated as an afterthought or not even thought of at all.

If that street sign is a symbol of how things have been, I hope that the steps this Government are taking are symbolic of a new relationship with rural communities. The rural England prosperity fund is one such step, helping to support local businesses to establish, grow or diversify and supporting charities and community groups to enrich their areas. Another is the additional funding brought by the rural community assets fund, which will help to preserve and improve cherished local community facilities. Finally, the Action with Communities in Rural England grant will help rural community groups and others to offer social inclusion activities. I am sure that the Minister will talk about many of those measures and more, but I welcome them, and especially their focus on empowering and developing capacity within our rural communities and working with people to give them the tools they need to make their communities flourish.

The knowledge and expertise of generations that have worked and bring great value to our local communities need to be recognised, particularly as we start to meet the challenges that climate change brings. New blue-green engineering will be a huge and vital part—

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Gregory Stafford.

16:47

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on providing the opportunity to discuss the Government’s plans for supporting rural communities with the Minister directly. I take this opportunity to highlight the infrastructure challenges facing my community across Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere, Liphook and the surrounding villages. Those challenges have a significant impact on the daily lives of residents and businesses in our towns. It is crucial that the Government recognise the issues, particularly ongoing gaps in health, broadband, transport, banking and infrastructure. I hope that we can work together across the House to find sustainable solutions that will support my constituents.

At the very heart of our rural villages lies the village pub. Only half an hour or so ago, I spoke in the debate on the Employment Rights Bill—another blow to the pub industry, which will severely impact the hospitality sector. On my pub crawl across my constituency, publicans and landlords pleaded with me to change the Government’s red-tape strangulation of these low-profit, high social value organisations, which are core parts of the community. Perhaps it is because the Government cannot nationalise the pub that they have no understanding of its social impact.

Likewise, banking hubs are essential for my constituency. There is now only one bank and one building society for the whole of my constituency of over 100,000 people. While I welcome the banking hub in Haslemere and the one we will get in Whitehill and Bordon, that is simply not enough for people who need to access cash.

Health infrastructure within the ex-military town of Bordon in my constituency is a real problem. Despite having written to the Secretary of State about that, and especially about the Chase community hospital, on numerous occasions—most recently on 28 January— I still have not had a response from the Department.

On transport infrastructure for rural areas, I hope that the Government continue with the previous Government’s promise to upgrade Hickley’s Corner. I make a plea to the Minister to fund the Wrecclesham bypass in years to come.

I will close there, but I would be grateful if the Minister responded to this: while investment pours into urban areas, rural communities are left behind to battle the infrastructure challenges I have mentioned. Does he share my frustration, and what are the Government going to do about it?

16:49

[Jade Botterill (Ossett and Denby Dale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing the debate.

I am deeply proud to have grown up in and to represent a rural area. Anyone from any of the villages could tell the House how unique their community is; from Scissett’s wassailing to Shelley’s fundraising French Sunday Lunch or the Crigglestone and Durkar Wombles, who help to keep their village tidy, rural villages across my constituency provide rich, distinct communities.

However, their beauty and that community can obscure deep issues, including lack of access to public services, transport and employment opportunities. Following the previous Government’s real-terms cut of £1 billion to NHS dentistry between 2010 and 2014, everyone in the country knows the struggle to access a dentist, but in dental deserts in rural communities, the cuts are felt more deeply. The previous Government allowed the roads across our country to fall into disrepair, but in rural communities, where people are more reliant on cars because public transport is so unreliable, people know the real cost and inconvenience of the pothole crisis—and, although everyone has felt the rise of antisocial behaviour since 2010, only rural communities face the full impact of county lines, livestock theft and fly-tipping.

That is why I am so supportive of the Government’s efforts to support our rural communities. We are delivering a renewed push to expand 5G and broadband coverage by 2030, so that poor connectivity no longer holds rural communities back. We are providing nearly £1.6 billion in funding to finally get to grips with the pothole crisis, supporting parents taking their children to school and people just trying to get to work. When I report potholes I see across the constituency, I now have confidence that they will be filled.

For constituents like so many in Emley, who are tired of waiting hours for buses that are delayed—if they come at all—we are giving communities the power to take back control of their bus services, with our better buses Bill. For all those unable to see an NHS dentist, forced to go private or to live in pain, 700,000 new dental appointments will be delivered, bolstering the flexible commissioning and golden hellos needed to attract dentists in rural areas.

Those are real, concrete commitments to rural communities across our nation—commitments on potholes, bus services, dentists and rural crime. From the city centre to the village hall, I am proud to support the Labour Government in delivering these much-needed changes to our country and its rural communities.

16:52

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing the debate.

My constituency covers nearly 1,100 sq km, which raises some unique challenges for rural services that will be familiar to many hon. Members. The most pressing of those challenges is equal access to local health services, due not just to geography, but to an ageing population; more than a quarter of residents are over 65. My constituents, and many in neighbouring constituencies across Devon and Cornwall, must travel some distance to the remotest acute hospital in mainland England: North Devon district hospital.

That pattern can be seen across the UK: 97% of urban households live within 8 km of a hospital, but only 55% of rural households can say the same. Astonishingly, 98% of the urban population also live within 4 km of an NHS dentist, compared with just 57% of rural residents. Government figures from November suggest that there are 460 more people per dentist in rural areas than in urban areas.

After the removal of the rural services delivery grant, North Devon council highlighted to me the fact that pockets of intense deprivation in the poorest rural and coastal communities can easily be lost in Government statistics for wider areas. According to Government statistics on rural England published last month, when talking about the roll-out of gigabit broadband, Ofcom and DEFRA even use different definitions of “rural” and “urban”, defining rural areas as settlements of under 2,000 or under 10,000 people respectively. By those measures, I have either two urban centres in my constituency, or nine, depending on whose maths I use.

We need a reliable picture of just how isolated some people in rural and coastal communities are and how much support they need. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to ensure that publicly funded support for rural areas is targeted effectively, especially in pockets of deprivation?

16:54

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

Thank you for chairing the debate, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this opportunity to talk about rural areas.

I have led a council that covered a rural area, so this is a topic that I am passionate about. I applaud the Government for the important work that they have started. My hon. Friend the Member for Ossett and Denby Dale (Jade Botterill) mentioned broadband, buses and roads, and we have talked about the rural England prosperity fund, which has been extended, although perhaps not by as much as the hon. Member for South Devon would have liked. Banking hubs have been mentioned. Flooding is a critical issue for our rural areas, and I welcome the Government’s £2.65 billion investment to restore some woeful and underfunded flood defences.

GPs are so important to our communities; I am pleased that the GP contract has been agreed, providing an opportunity to end the 8 am scramble, something that is very important for my constituents. I am also delighted to hear that the 2025-26 contract negotiation for pharmacies is under way. Pharmacies are vital to solving some of the issues that our hospitals and our wider healthcare sector face, so I hope the Government will resolve the pressures on our community pharmacies. A lot of good work is under way.

I want to emphasise that much of the change and growth that we want the Government to deliver will be through rural areas. A mile and half from where I live is the West Burton power station site, where we will see a fusion energy plant—the first in the country and one of the first in the world to be built—in a rural area. National grid connections for solar farms and other important infrastructure are in rural areas. Where will we see our housing growth? Much of it will be in our rural areas.

I have written a letter that sympathises with the position the hon. Member for South Devon outlined on funding for rural councils. I believe the growth we need to see over the next few years will be through rural communities. That is why I encourage the Government to value those communities, to engage with them and to ensure they are at the heart of our vision for the United Kingdom.

16:56

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing the debate. My two main calls for Government support for rural communities are as follows. First, rural communities producing a substantial portion of our nation’s electricity should be paid 5% of revenue for all newly consented renewable energy generated onshore and offshore, as a community benefit. That would be transformational for the income of rural areas.

Secondly, many homes in my constituency and throughout the country are forced to heat their homes with electricity, as they are not connected to mains gas. Electricity costs four times the price of mains gas per kilowatt. The reason is that environmental taxes, which make up a substantial part of electricity bills, are levied far more heavily on electricity than on gas. They should be equalised, because that is an unfair punishment for people whose homes are not connected to mains gas in Britain.

16:58

[Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing the debate and summing up the issues so comprehensively.

I want to talk about transport. Successive Governments have judged transport investment by the number of people using it. Rural areas obviously lose out by that criterion, yet our need for transport is significant. We need cycleways and footpaths because our roads are narrow and unlit. We need regular, reliable and affordable buses, with routes that get us to more places than just the nearest town—we have friends, clubs, GPs, schools and shops in neighbouring villages, and we should not need a car to get there safely.

In my constituency, we have villages with no buses. Other villages do have a bus, but only every two hours, with the last bus at 7 pm and no bus on Sunday. Many of our sixth-form college students have to take two buses and spend two hours travelling each way to college. Four hours’ travel a day does not leave much time and energy for study. Rural communities are beautiful places to live, but we need Government to invest in them; otherwise, they will become places where only those fit and wealthy enough to drive can live, and that is not acceptable.

16:59

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on making an excellent opening speech. Indeed, because it was so excellent and covered most of the issues I would have liked to cover, and because we have very little time, I will home in on three issues.

The first is public transport, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) also addressed. Shropshire has lost 63% of its bus miles since 2015, compared with a national average of 19%. This is the biggest issue for people who live in my constituency, particularly young people who cannot see their friends or access part-time work and, often, further education. Yet the revenue allocation for Shropshire under the bus service improvement plan is only £2.5 million. Public transport is a massive issue for us, and I urge the Minister to consider whether it is possible to reconsider that allocation.

Poor local authority funding has an impact on cultural opportunities for people in rural areas, including activities such as grassroots sport. For example, Greenfields in Market Drayton is a woefully inadequate sports facility for a growing town of more than 10,000 people. Essentially, the council cannot afford to improve the facility. It has great plans, but it does not have any money to implement them because local councils are so badly underfunded.

The cuts to the rural services delivery grant has cost Shropshire £9 million. Shropshire is much bigger than Greater Manchester, with people spread evenly across the county at about one person per hectare, so the cost of delivering services far exceeds the cost in an urban area. Will the Minister examine how we value the cost of services when funding local councils, because we are in danger of leaving rural councils critically underfunded compared with their urban counterparts.

17:01

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

Thank you for calling me to speak, Dr Murrison, and it was lovely to see you last night. [Laughter.] No, no, but it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Obviously, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this vital debate. It is always excellent to see so many of my Liberal Democrat colleagues here in Westminster Hall to support our rural communities.

As the Member of Parliament for the overwhelmingly rural constituency of Tiverton and Minehead, I am incredibly proud to represent such a beautiful part of the world. However, for all our natural beauty, we are not without our problems. On Monday, I met Sir Chris Whitty to discuss how my constituency is at the sharp end of what can only be described as a dentistry crisis, with dental practices closing in droves. My constituency sits within a dental desert.

In 2024, according to the House of Commons Library, the proportion of adults in Tiverton and Minehead who had been seen by a dentist in the previous two years was well below the average in England. In Somerset, the figure was just 32%; in Devon, it was 34.7%; and the average for England was 40.3%. The data for children in my constituency is even more troubling. In Somerset, only 42.3% of children had been seen by a dentist in the previous two years; in Devon, it was 46.6%; and the average across England was 54.4%. The disparity between those figures is appalling.

As many colleagues have mentioned, young people in rural areas such as Tiverton and Minehead are getting a woeful deal. The gaps in sixth-form provision, save for the few places at West Somerset college and Petroc college, are detrimental to the aspirations of students who wish to pursue further education.

Without wishing to sound as if I am asking for the world, there is a lot to be done to improve the lives of people in Tiverton and Minehead. I will not relent in highlighting these issues, because I want to ensure that my constituency, and of course rural communities up and down our country, are not overlooked.

17:03

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this important debate.

My constituency is very easy to point out on a map, mainly because it is on the coast but also because it is big, and it is big because it is rural. We might have relatively large populations in places like Leven and St Andrews, but only 4% of my constituency is built up. It is more rural than people think.

In the short time I have today, I will highlight the importance of connections for rural communities. First, the poor phone signal creates energy problems, because the old-style meters on which most people still rely cannot speak to the system. How can we help people to better manage their energy if they cannot use the systems that are provided?

Poor phone signal also means a reliance on landlines, and Storm Éowyn has taught us all in recent weeks that being without power for days will create challenges as we move to digital by design. In fact, digital by design is particularly unsuitable for rural constituencies. I am sure we have all been to farmers markets and other such locations and seen people waving cash card machines around to try to pick up a signal.

The lack of cash and banking services is a huge issue for many constituencies. Those services are poor, and my constituency has only eight bank branches—that sounds great, but six of them are in St Andrews. If not for the Nationwide building society, we would have no access to cash or face-to-face banking services in my constituency. ATMs are difficult to get to because public transport is hard to access. I understand public transport is devolved in Scotland, but we are in a doom loop of bus services not being used because they do not run at convenient times for people to get to work or services, which end up being cut because people are not using them.

Finally, burgh towns are really important. Cupar is my burgh town, but it is the hub at the centre of a wheel, and that is how communities come together. We need to ensure that we support such areas so that we deliver the services people need. We need to remember that rural areas are different from urban areas.

17:05

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this debate.

Tewkesbury is home to the fastest-growing borough outside London, but almost half of my constituents have the worst 30% of broadband connectivity in the UK. Mobile reception in Bishop’s Cleeve, one of the largest parishes in my constituency, is embarrassing. Those are not the only symptoms of a constituency that has had haphazard housing development without any of the necessary infrastructure to support it. My residents resort to travelling by private vehicles because the public transport infrastructure simply is not there. Some of my villagers walk for miles along dangerous roads, sometimes without pathways, to reach a bus stop. If they miss a bus or suffer a cancellation, they might be waiting for several hours.

I have previously called for investment in on-demand bus services, such as the Gloucestershire Robin. Later this year, the Cotswolds Designer Outlet will open just off the M5 on the A46 in Ashchurch. There has been no road or rail infrastructure to accommodate this development, which is likely to draw hundreds of thousands of very welcome shoppers every year to our beautiful constituency, if they can get here. Ashchurch’s railway station suffers more delays than 90% of stations nationwide. The A46 is already plagued by daily gridlock because thousands of new homes have been built there by developers with the resources to overpower the local authorities.

Those issues could be alleviated if the Department for Transport accepted and supported Gloucestershire county council’s proposal for a new junction 9A on the M5, which would relieve some of the burden from the A46. Our modest Ashchurch station, which also serves Tewkesbury, badly needs investment to accommodate the coming influx of visitors to the constituency.

17:07

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this debate.

South Cotswolds is an area rich in heritage and beauty, but it faces distinct challenges in, for example, public transport and access to NHS services. The cancellation of the 84/85 bus route last year severed connections from Hillesley and Alderley to Yate. I know of a young man who was raised by his grandparents, who could not afford to run him around the place, so he relied on the bus to get to college. His college course offered him a real opportunity to train for a job with decent prospects, allowing him to escape the cycle of poverty. When the bus route was cancelled, he could not get to college and had to drop out of his course.

A second example is an older lady who used the bus to get into Yate to do her weekly shopping. When the bus route went and she could not get into Yate, she lost her freedom and independence. She became isolated and lonely, the health consequences of which are well documented. Those examples demonstrate the false economy of cutting public transport, which leads only to greater reliance on the state and fewer opportunities for individuals.

Access to NHS dental services is a serious problem. I know of a lady in Tetbury who had severe toothache and had to rely on Bonjela until she was able to arrange for transport for treatment. Meanwhile, I am engaged in an ongoing battle with the local integrated care board to ensure continuity of private care provision in Sherston. The ICB has admitted that its toolkit, the algorithm it uses to decide the distribution of resources for primary care, was designed for an urban context, not a rural one. Coupled with the lack of public transport, this is causing real problems.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

17:09

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I also thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this important debate and for her excellent speech.

Rural communities and farming go hand in hand, as farmers are the backbone of our rural economy. Glastonbury and Somerton is home to more than 800 farms, and a quarter of England’s agricultural holdings and a fifth of England’s total farmed area are in the south-west. Agriculture employs over 60,000 people in the region, with many more indirectly affected by the industry. However, since the Budget, the only topic on farmers’ minds is the lack of support from the Government. They tell me that they did not think their plight could get any worse after the last Conservative Government—because that Government “just didn’t care”—but it has.

This Labour Government do not even seem to want to understand the agricultural industry. Yesterday’s announcement, with no notice, to halt the sustainable farming incentive has sent shockwaves through farming circles. It beggars belief that the largest farming trade body, the National Farmers Union, had only 30 minutes’ notice of the announcement. The absence of warning and communication will only further alarm farmers across the country who are feeling anxious, left behind and forgotten.

The sudden closure of an important scheme has left thousands of farmers cut off from funding, and I worry about the impact this will have on nature-friendly farming. The scheme is vital to incentivising farmers to carry out their work for the public good, such as managing flood water and storing slurry safely—this is of extreme importance in Somerset, given the high threat of flooding.

A beef farmer from Wick, near Langport, recently told me that he has “no confidence” in the Environment Agency to protect his and other people’s land from flooding—it is too slow to pump water off fields, which increases the risk of flooding when it next rains.

The closure of the SFI will now make it more difficult for farmers to put flood management measures in place. The scheme had more than 37,000 live, multi-year agreements, and it had the highest demand since it began. The Government have not announced any plans to replace it. This announcement comes at a time when farmers are already losing the vast majority of basic payments this year, and they should rightly be rewarded for good environmental work.

[James Naish]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Dyke]

I will not, because of time. Given that the SFI has now finished, will the Department publish the scheme’s key performance indicators and how they were met? Or will it keep farmers in the dark again?

The Liberal Democrats are deeply disappointed by Labour’s decision to compound the damage done to our farmers by the Conservatives, who left the farming budget with an underspend of hundreds of millions of pounds. Yet again, smaller farmers will be hardest hit, especially hill farmers and those earning significantly less than the minimum wage. We want to see the Chancellor urgently reverse the changes, and we want to see £1 billion a year in support for farmers. We want clarity from the Government about the impact of cutting SFI on farmers’ incomes, nature restoration, food production and rural communities.

17:13

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this important debate, because supporting rural communities has been a persistent challenge across Government. The siloed nature of Government Departments and the false assumption that DEFRA has sole responsibility for rural affairs has sometimes created delay and confusion in delivering the cross-Government support our rural communities need.

The Conservatives recognised this issue when we were in government and took steps to rural-proof the policies of other Departments and to unlock unique funding streams to tackle uniquely rural challenges. The £3 million rural innovation fund, for example, sought to find new answers to problems specific to rural communities, such as connectivity, social isolation and productivity. However, there is much more to be done, such as banking hubs, post office services and the challenges mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), including for areas that have received no hub provision despite having only one bank branch still open. I urge the Minister to ask Treasury colleagues not to wait for that last bank branch to remain before banking hubs can be applied for.

The challenge of higher prices in rural areas coupled with lower income streams has been mentioned, as has the increased overheads for businesses and local services, whether it is GPs or dentists. Those challenges have been exacerbated by the change in employer’s national insurance contributions, which is impacting most of those businesses.

I cannot go any further without mentioning our farming community, which is without doubt the backbone of our rural communities. In many cases, family farming businesses are the core of our rural life and have been for decades, if not centuries. Now, however, we know the damage that Labour’s Budget has caused and the upset and the challenges it has created.

I did not think things could get any worse, but then we had the “cruellest betrayal yet”—not my words, but those of the president of the Country Land and Business Association, who was speaking about last night’s decision to stop the SFI grants. Those grants were promised to our farmers after Labour slashed the delinked payment rates, which is directly impacting many of our farming communities’ cash flows right now in this financial year. I thought that those grants had cross-party support in the House, but it seems not, on the basis of last night’s announcement.

Even though we had a statement, many questions still remain unanswered by the Farming Minister. I hope he will be able to answer questions such as, where is the actual farming budget breakdown for the farmers who were benefiting from SFI applications? Where has the basic payments scheme money that was allocated for the delinked payments gone? When can our farmers expect to see the SFI applications open? Does the Minister realise the absolute challenge and distress that has been caused to many of those who were processing their applications, almost had them ready to go and were about to hit the submit button? They are now sitting in limbo, unsure whether it will be six months or even a year before any confirmation is given?

The debate has focused on many other challenges in our rural communities, whether that is connectivity, transport, health, housing, community cohesion, building, businesses or public services. All those issues are made much more complex and nuanced by the practical challenges of delivering them in a rural community. I hope the Government understand that policies that come out of other Government Departments may work in our city-centre environments, but they often do not work in the countryside.

Funding streams such as the rural services delivery grant, which was worth £110 million, specifically recognised the challenges that rural local councils faced. Yet this Labour Government decided to stop that funding stream, and we have had no indication whatever of what will replace it or when. Cutting vital grants such as the rural services delivery grant does not instil our rural communities with any confidence that this Government will recognise the challenges in our rural communities.

The assault on our farmers has already shaken the faith of millions of people living in our rural communities. Quite rightly, our rural communities, like our farmers, fear that Labour does not understand them and does not care to understand them. I hope the Minister will take on board many of the points that hon. Members have made about the challenges for rural communities.

17:18

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing the debate. The number of speakers shows how much interest there is, and many points have been covered—too many for me to cover in a short time, although I will do my best.

Both Front-Bench spokespeople—the hon. Members for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore)—raised the issue of the SFI, which I addressed in a statement earlier today. I thought the shadow Minister started so well when he talked about the challenge that faces any Government, given the cross-departmental nature of these issues. We are honoured to have a former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), with us, and he will know full well how difficult it is to drive these rural issues from DEFRA. I made a particular pitch to be the rural Minister in Labour’s team in the Commons—which is different from before—and I am absolutely determined that these rural issues get a fair hearing.

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I put on record my apologies, Dr Murrison—I was giving evidence to the covid public inquiry, which I hope colleagues will realise was the reason for my late arrival. I have a quick question for the Minister: could he clarify when he was first told of the Government’s decision to close SFI for new applications?

[Daniel Zeichner]

We made the decision last night, based on many months of following the budgets, but as I explained earlier, the logic of the change to the system is that if there is a fixed amount of budget, I am afraid there comes a point when the system is full.

Members have raised many other issues, but because we have a three-hour Backbench Business debate on farming in the Chamber tomorrow, I will move on and thank the hon. Member for South Devon for bringing this debate forward. I had an opportunity to visit her lovely constituency very early in my tenure as Minister. I thought she gave a very good account, as did many other Members, of the broad range of challenges faced in rural areas.

I am committed to the rural brief. I have done a number of visits in my first few months that have shown me the importance of applying the Government’s missions in rural areas—particularly our aims to grow the economy, develop clean energy and tackle crime. I went to Northumberland to see the excellent work of the national rural crime unit. I spoke to a number of farmers who have sadly had expensive equipment stolen, and I spoke to volunteer crimewatch groups. I have also been to Warwickshire recently to see the positive effect that can be achieved through community shops and community initiatives that ensure that community facilities are in place, such as village halls. I will be doing many more visits around the country and seeing many more of those.

[Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)]

The issue of rural crime has come up a bit less in today’s debate, so I want to make sure that we have some moments to reflect on it, as the Minister has started to. Does he agree that the Government’s approach of having a cross-governmental rural crime strategy—it is the first of its kind—will tackle these issues in meaningful and long-lasting ways for rural communities?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is right. It is long overdue. I have had detailed conversations already with colleagues in the Home Office about how we can take this issue forward, and there will be further announcements in due course. We have been looking at a range of issues that are important to rural areas, but we recognise that there are very specific challenges, a number of which have been touched on today. We also know that direct support through funding programmes is important. That is why we announced last week that up to £33 million will be directed to the rural England prosperity fund and used to help businesses in rural areas to expand. That will create jobs, kick-start the rural economy and help to improve local infrastructure and essential services.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

Many of my constituents suffer some of the worst mobile and broadband coverage in the country. That is a particular concern for vulnerable households, who are no longer able to access copper-wire telephony and are forced to rely on internet protocols. What are the Government doing to make sure that vulnerable households still have access to phones in an emergency?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to raise that important point, which I will come to in a moment.

I was about to mention the £5 million in funding for capital grants for the refurbishment and development of community-owned assets such as village halls and community centres. That funding will also support rural housing enablers, who are very important in bringing forward sites to provide affordable housing. We are also providing further funding for Actions with Communities in Rural England to provide advice and support to rural communities and voluntary groups such as those that I mentioned visiting recently.

I recognise the descriptions from a number of colleagues of the need to travel further to access work, education and training. We fully appreciate that that can be much more costly and time-consuming, leading to the frustrations that have been described. I listened closely to my near-neighbour, the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), when she spoke about local bus services. She will know that the mayor of the combined authority in Cambridgeshire has used powers to move to franchising for bus services. We have set out wider plans for the future in our bus services Bill, which will give local leaders the tools they need to ensure that bus services reflect the needs of the communities they serve.

The digital issue, which the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) has just raised, is central to our view of the future. It was also highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Ossett and Denby Dale (Jade Botterill). Through the shared rural network, which has helped to deliver 4G mobile coverage to 95% of the UK a year ahead of target, we are continuing to deliver 4G connectivity to places where there is the kind of limited coverage that has been described. We know that there are still parts that lag behind, and we will work with the industry to deliver improved coverage to those communities via the shared rural network.

[Mr Angus MacDonald]

I wonder whether the Minister can persuade the Chancellor to leave her constituency of Leeds West and Pudsey and explore the reaches of rural Britain. It strikes me that a lot of these issues are due to funding and the fact that rural Britain is substantially underfunded, compared with urban Britain.

[Daniel Zeichner]

That is a very long-running debate that goes back over decades. I will do all I can to persuade the Chancellor of the needs of rural Britain.

Project Gigabit continues to be rolled out. It is delivering gigabit-capable broadband to many UK premises, many of which are situated in rural communities that are not in the commercial roll-out plans.

Hon. Members touched on housing. Access to genuinely affordable homes is absolutely essential. The current housing shortage is driving up rents, leaving some of the most vulnerable without access to a safe and secure home. We are reforming planning policy, but I will not try to cover that complicated problem in one minute. Last year, the Government ran a consultation on the national planning policy framework. The response to the consultation reflected on the higher costs of housing delivery in rural areas and the fact that we want more affordable housing in those areas as part of our ambition to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation. We will consider how policy can better promote rural affordable housing and wider exception site policies as part of the work we do to introduce those policies later in 2025.

Hon. Members touched on energy costs, which are a huge challenge for rural areas. I am very aware that fuel poverty rates are higher in rural communities. Many homes are off the gas grid and are therefore more susceptible to fuel price fluctuations.

The hon. Member for South Devon asked about the index of rural deprivation report. I am told that it will be published later this year.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am afraid I will not give way. I am very conscious that I will run out of time.

We will need to look at skills and opportunities in rural areas. I was very struck by the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) made about schools. It was all too typical of my experience of the way rural communities often feel they are left out. We are planning to expand our childcare and early years system, drive up standards and modernise the school curriculum. We will boost rural and agricultural skills by reforming the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy. We will also be opening new specialist technical excellence colleges to give rural people a chance to develop the skills they need to empower rural businesses to play a bigger role in the skills revolution.

The health service is a hugely important issue, and I very much agree with the point my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) made about the 8 am scramble. He is absolutely right, and that is just as important in rural areas as anywhere else. His point about dentistry was very well made; it is being addressed, but much more will need to be done.

Demographics show that as people age, many move out of cities to coastal and rural areas. They will need more care, but they increasingly live in places where it is more difficult to provide it, and that needs to be reflected in the way we approach these issues. Integrated care systems will have a role in designing services that meet the needs of local people, but I heard the point about the algorithm; I will go away and look at that. Most importantly, we need to work with clinicians and local communities to ensure that we get those systems right.

Finally, local government is a huge issue that cannot be covered in one minute, I am afraid, but we are making available significant new funding. That includes £1.3 billion in the local government financial settlement for 2025-26, including £600 million to support the most deprived areas, including in shire districts, through the new recovery grant. Alongside that, our commitments can be judged against a guarantee that no local authority will see a reduction in its core spending power in 2025-26, after taking account of any increase in council tax. That will provide protections so that all authorities, including district councils, can sustain their services between years.

I am absolutely determined to drive forward the rural agenda across Government. This debate gives me some confidence that there is support across the House for that endeavour. I am absolutely determined that rural areas will play a key role in delivering the national missions the Government have set out and will share in the benefits they bring.

17:29

[Caroline Voaden]

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I will not name all the speakers who contributed but, unsurprisingly, health, transport, phones, broadband and farming all came up in the debate, as did the pubs of Farnham and Bordon, which we must not forget. I urge the Government—

17:27

Motion lapsed, and sitting adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 10(14)).