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Horticulture Trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland
(4 days, 10 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered horticulture trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. May I say at the outset that I am glad to see the Minister in her place? On a separate issue, I thank her publicly for her endeavours with a constituency query of mine a week ago, on which she went above and beyond the call of duty. Both I and my constituent are extremely grateful to her for doing so.
The horticultural sector encompasses mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, and it supports over 700,000 jobs across the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, the original protocol agreement presented substantial difficulties for horticultural businesses based in GB in supplying Northern Ireland. It has to be said, and I am more than happy to say so, that in the time since then there have been some improvements, but unfortunately those improvements do not get us where we need to be. They simply get us a few steps along what seems as if it will be an exceptionally long road, and we have to try to make it much shorter than it looks like being at the moment.
The problems with which we were originally faced emanated from what I call the fantasy of the so-called hard border—the whole concept of a hard border on the island of Ireland—which just was not going to come about, but was used by the EU, and we ended up with the protocol as a result.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend my hon. Friend. He says there have been some advances or steps forward, but all they are really doing is just picking at the scab, so the scab is still there. Does he not agree that, after the Government have been saying for months that the kinks are being worked out, consumers in Northern Ireland are still finding it impossible to procure seeds for plants that simply pose no risk to the EU, which is absolutely frustrating? With the greatest respect, the Government must negotiate, on our constituents’ behalf, with those who refuse a common-sense approach. If only we all had common sense, it would be a big day, would it not?
Mr Campbell
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and yes, indeed. We have come a small number of steps, but there is an exceptionally long road to reach the finishing line.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
I thank the hon. Member for bringing forward this debate. As he knows, I have raised this in relation to Colemans Garden Centre in my constituency. It has said about one of its suppliers based in Scotland, which got a new contract in Japan, that it is easier for that Scottish supplier to send plants to Japan than to send them 14 miles across the water to Northern Ireland. Richard Fry, the manager of Colemans, has said that when it engaged with that supplier it just came up against a wall of bureaucracy, in having to name everything on a pallet and in the trailer with the trailer’s registration number. The bureaucracy and the paperwork have actually stolen that easier trade.
Mr Campbell
I thank the hon. Member for that. He itemises a problem that is faced on multiple occasions by many of the companies in our constituencies. How that wall, or that restriction, came about was summed up by the then Chief Constable six years ago, who said:
“There are 300 crossing points between our two countries, how on earth are my officers supposed to police that effectively?”
He was of course talking about the security implications, but similarly it applies to the consumer border that exists.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Does the hon. Member agree that the sixfold burden on horticultural trade, encompassing regulatory divergence, sanitary and phytosanitary checks, certification requirements, increased costs and paperwork, is imposing an untenable strain on businesses across Northern Ireland?
Mr Campbell
I do indeed agree with the hon. Member. A year ago, I said:
“Whilst prohibitions have been lifted for 12 types of plants, engagement continues between the UK and EU on a further 9 species, there needs to be further progress.”
The horticultural working group was set up to identify and resolve issues such as this, but it needs to move on these outstanding problems so that a simpler system is in place to enable people of all backgrounds to purchase goods within their own country. For example, large full-scale advertisements in daily broadsheet newspapers for various seeds and plants say at the bottom that they are available throughout most of the United Kingdom—but not all. At the bottom of the adverts in small print there is the wording, “We are also unable to ship seeds or plants to EU countries and Northern Ireland.” That is as a result of the issues that emanated from the protocol.
A local nursery in my constituency works closely with Magilligan prison to reduce reoffending, and with inmates who are coming to the end of their term and are trying to work their way back into society. The local nursery project wrote to me recently to say:
“The project has established a ‘UK and Ireland Sourced and Grown’ accredited native tree nursery within Magilligan Prison, working with inmates to supply native trees to the public, private and voluntary sector. In recent weeks”—
they said almost six months ago, and I checked with them last week and this still pertains now—
“the tree nursery has run into difficulties sourcing saplings from UK suppliers...At present DAERA advise that it is impossible to bring from the UK to Northern Ireland, species on this following list”.
The letter itemises the list, and then goes on to say:
“The current situation threatens the sustainability of the tree nursery within HMP Magilligan with impacts on the future supply of trees from the tree nursery and the associated employment of staff assisting with delivery of the tree nursery (the funding of these roles with Causeway Coast and Glens Heritage Trust relies on income generated), and the rehabilitation of inmates engaged with delivery of tree nursery activities. I wished to bring this situation to your attention, in the hope that in your discussions with the UK Government you can raise the bizarre situation in relation to the bringing of plant saplings from UK suppliers to supply a UK and Irish Sourced and Grown Accredited Tree Nursery in Northern Ireland.”
That letter is from a local nursery that is telling me and others that there is a huge problem, where it is being told that it cannot bring in some saplings, and the outcome of not being able to do that threatens employment and the good work that the nursery and the prison are doing to try and rehabilitate prisoners coming to the end of their sentences.
The Consumer Council in Northern Ireland did research a few months ago looking at the experiences of retailers that do not deliver to Northern Ireland, focusing on online marketplaces. It did a survey of over 1,000 Northern Ireland customers, and 76% of those surveyed stated that they had experienced online marketplaces that do not deliver to Northern Ireland. The second most common product category was garden plants, seeds and horticulture—38% of those surveyed said that they experienced the impossibility of getting plants and seeds delivered.
The ironic thing is this: as an MP from Northern Ireland I am in Westminster today; before the end of the week, I will go to an airport. En route to the airport, if I wanted, I could go to a garden centre and acquire the self-same seeds. I could pay for them at the garden place, put them in my pocket, board the plane and arrive in Belfast, and there would be no checks whatsoever. I can distribute, plant, sow or do whatever I want with those seeds in Northern Ireland, having taken them from the same nursery that will not supply customers in Northern Ireland online or by post. It is no wonder that my local nursery in Magilligan says that this is utterly bizarre, and it needs to be resolved.
The Consumer Council informed us of the situation, and it says that the problem is not getting any better and that improvement is needed. That is why I hope the Minister can respond on the horticultural working group and what progress it has made. It would appear that the progress is quite small, in so far as it has achieved anything.
The Horticultural Trades Association represents 1,200 businesses, the majority of which are small and medium-sized enterprises, and it made a representation to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. My good friend, my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), is present today, and he serves on that Committee. In its evidence, the HTA gave some information and highlighted the problems, including the continuing ban on up to 30 native plants and complete species, and it said that online sales from business to consumer were still not possible in Northern Ireland. The HTA indicated that the new Northern Ireland plant health label represents some marginal progress but still requires compliance with a range of rules, creating additional cost. The diversion of trade and re-orientation of production to the EU is a major problem.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In my constituency, we lost a large number of trees as a result of the storm five or six weeks ago. Mount Stewart had 10,000 trees destroyed, and other people across Strangford and the Ards peninsula, as well as those further afield, had something similar; but garden centres in my constituency tell me they cannot access the trees for replenishment. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is now an even bigger onus on us to ensure that the trees are available?
Mr Campbell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is just further evidence of the ongoing problems. I suppose the problem is that we have potential solutions in the making but they seem interminably long. The establishment of Intertrade UK offers us the prospect of further progress, but it needs to be given adequate support not only to identify the problems, some of which we have identified here today, but to try to provide the solutions. The EU must be persuaded of the miniscule impact. In the grand scheme of things, Northern Ireland is 3% of the population of the United Kingdom, so any thought that this will jeopardise or provide unforeseen problems to the EU internal market is ludicrous.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this morning’s debate. I believe the biggest problem that we face is the fact that Northern Ireland has basically been left outside the UK’s plant health area, which means that NI businesses have to comply with EU rules over British ones. Many native British trees are not available in Northern Ireland, and the Woodland Trust free school packs are not available in Northern Ireland for that very reason. Decade-old trading arrangements have been undermined, and there is bureaucracy. The protocol and the Windsor framework are failing horticultural society, and we need our Government to step up and intervene for this sector, or it will fail.
Mr Campbell
My hon. Friend is right. I will conclude with this important point: this is not a political issue in the Northern Ireland sense of Unionists complaining about the protocol. Plants, seeds and business affect people of every community. This is not a Unionist problem; it is a problem of unfairness to everybody in Northern Ireland who wants to do business—every firm, no matter their background, and every customer, no matter their background or political persuasion. It is a problem that needs to be resolved.
There will not be any checks. I recently raised with the Home Office the issue of electronic travel authorisations in terms of visitors to the Republic coming to Northern Ireland, and the point I made was that there will not be any checks because there cannot be. There are 300 crossing points on a 300-mile land border. There are not going to be any checks for ETAs for travellers, just as there are not going to be any checks in terms of people taking seeds across by plane or by ferry, or a boat from Cairnryan to Larne.
We need to get it resolved. Burying our heads in the sand will not make the problem go away. The problem will not be dealt with by politicos simply complaining about it, which is what we have seen and heard about over the past few years. I have been exceptionally critical of those politicos who complain but do not offer a diligent, effective representation to try to get a resolution. I hope the Minister will be able to contribute and give us some examples and indications of the significant progress that will be made in the next few months.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Fleur Anderson)
It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate and to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber, and for raising the many issues that he talked about in his speech. It was a pleasure to work with him recently to help one of his constituents. When we can do that, it is wonderful to see the results. I also thank all the other hon. Members who raised issues about their constituencies.
The hon. Member for East Londonderry is a strong advocate for businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland, and I acknowledge the work that he has done and continues to do. As he said, we need to be constructive. We need to come together and get solutions. The debate will be significant in achieving that.
The first provisional estimate for farm incomes in Northern Ireland in 2023, published by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, showed that the horticultural sector had an output of £70 million, with the main horticultural export being mushrooms and vegetables, which made up £46 million of that. The total gross output for agriculture in Northern Ireland in 2023 was £2.87 billion. Just two weeks ago, I visited C & L Mushrooms in Newry to learn about its success in exporting to the organic market across the UK, which it does daily. I also picked some mushrooms and learned about that with the Northern Ireland DAERA Minister, Andrew Muir.
There is one fundamental point that we must accept when discussing the matter raised by the hon. Member for East Londonderry. As a result of leaving the European Union, we have two trading entities—the European Union and the United Kingdom—and the ability to have different rules while seeking to ensure the freedom of movement of goods, which is so vital for businesses, jobs and consumers across Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The practical outworkings of that situation are exemplified in the trading of horticultural goods, as the hon. Member has pointed out. It is important that we recognise that the island of Ireland has been treated as one single epidemiological unit for decades, and that is an important part of the negotiations that are happening now.
However, the hon. Member rightly pointed out that challenges exist. The Windsor framework protects the UK internal market, while enabling the EU to be confident that its rules will also be respected. Significantly, the arrangements in the Windsor framework protect trade in agricultural goods between GB and Northern Ireland through the establishment of the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme and the Northern Ireland plant health label, also known as the NIPHL. The framework has ensured that movements of agricultural goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain continue to benefit from unfettered market access.
The Northern Ireland plant health label removes the requirement to obtain burdensome and costly phytosanitary certificates, replacing them with free-of-charge, self-printed labels. Nearly 600 businesses in Great Britain and Northern Ireland have joined the Northern Ireland plant health label scheme since it went live on 1 October 2023. Indeed, the NIPHL has also ensured that seed potatoes can once again move freely between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Since the implementation of the plant health label, more than 1,500 tonnes have been moved, protecting this key industry.
Carla Lockhart
Perhaps the Minister will come and visit one of the largest potato producers in Northern Ireland in my constituency, which still experiences daily problems when getting seed and ware potatoes from Scotland. I have raised this issue in the House and I have issued an invitation to the Secretary of State, but perhaps the Minister would like to take up that invitation to come and hear that her words ring hollow for the businesses in Northern Ireland that still experience difficulties on a daily basis.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the hon. Member for raising that. I would be very pleased to visit and talk about exactly what practical issues still exist. The label scheme should have enabled free movement from business to business, so we need to address the fact that it has not in the case she mentions. The horticultural working group needs to address that as well. I would be pleased to visit and to hear more about the issues that she has already raised in the House.
The framework safeguards horticultural movements—generally—providing a sustainable long-term footing. However, I recognise that improvements need to be made in the areas raised by the hon. Members for Upper Bann and for East Londonderry, and by others. That is the focus of the horticultural working group, and I commend its work. The body is co-chaired by senior officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Cabinet Office, and it draws on support from other officials in those Departments and across Government as the focus of the agenda requires. There are representatives of the Ulster Farmers Union, the National Farmers Union and the Horticultural Trades Association. Business leaders, as well as a small number of other horticultural businesses, also sit on the working group. The group meets regularly to address issues, and I welcome the constructive and honest way in which it approaches its work. I am also very ready to meet any of its members; I met the Ulster Farmers Union last week.
There is guidance and support available to help businesses in Great Britian understand the schemes that can be used for moving goods from GB to Northern Ireland. The horticultural working group membership worked with UK Government officials to revise that guidance, which was published earlier this year. I reassure the House that it is a well-established process through which industry can raise issues and they will be addressed.
In addition, the framework and our improved relationships with our European Union counterparts continue to facilitate the movement of high-risk plants. As the hon. Member for East Londonderry pointed out, there has been progress, but more needs to be made and that is what we need to keep working on.
Through that constructive engagement, we are seeing results. Last month, we lifted the ban on a further two species of plant—silver and downy birch—taking the total to 23. The hon. Member for East Londonderry highlighted how important that is for the tree nursery in his constituency, which is doing such good work rehabilitating prisoners. The hon. Member for Upper Bann pointed out that the Woodland Trust free school packs are not available. I hope the horticultural working group will listen to that. I will point out the issue to its members, and they can work out why it is happening and work on common-sense ways in which we can overcome it.
Active scientific dialogue is taking place on a further six species, including white dogwood and English yew. There is a small list that is being worked through one by one. The UK Government have submitted a further 17 species for scientific assessment, again with areas of focus being led by industry and its priorities. In matters relating to horticulture, as in other sectors, the Government have sought to resolve challenges in constructive and mutually beneficial ways. These are the actions of a responsible Government responding to the concerns of their citizens and abiding by their commitments in international law on the world stage.
There are other ways in which the Government can intervene to protect and support the internal market and the flow of horticultural goods. The hon. Member for East Londonderry wrote to the Secretary of State recently to advise him of a GB-based seller of plants and seeds that was not selling to consumers in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State asked DEFRA officials to meet representatives of that company to provide more information on the schemes available to facilitate GB-NI trade. As a result of that conversation, the company has undertaken to review its current arrangements. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned that there needs to be common sense in this discussion. We need to have businesses exploring solutions with the Government, hopefully enabling us to support each other.
Mr Gregory Campbell
I thank the Minister for her reference to my correspondence with the Secretary of State. Indeed, I was quoting the management of that firm, who say that they are still unable to supply Northern Ireland. Will the Minister indicate when those discussions may terminate? Are they likely to end in the company revising that advert to remove the statement, and supplying to Northern Ireland?
Fleur Anderson
I recognise that it is frustrating that, this long after Brexit, we are still trying to work this out but it is the reality of the situation. I am glad that the hon. Member secured this debate because it adds to the urgency that is clearly needed by businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland. I want to see a solution agreed. The horticulture working group and businesses need to look at ways to work this out. Business-to-business is enabled, but business-to-consumer is hard. That is where the solution is needed.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for responding to this important and timely debate, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell). The Minister knows that we are working through the consequences of a wholly disproportionate approach, in which the EU tries to control what we do within our own internal market. She has two significant opportunities coming up: Lord Murphy’s review and the negotiations between the Paymaster General and the European Union on SPS, and all the rest. Will she take the contents of this debate, and her experience of the frustrations of Northern Irish businesses and ensure that they form part of those processes?
Fleur Anderson
I thank the right hon. Member for raising the SPS veterinary agreement; it is an important part of the picture. Many issues need to be resolved soon, both through the processes that the right hon. Member mentioned and by resetting our relationship with the EU. I met deputy heads of missions from the EU last week to talk about the opportunities in Northern Ireland, the importance of a faithful working through of the Windsor framework, and resolving these issues. Work is absolutely being done to resolve all those issues, and it will be important to reach an SPS veterinary agreement. That will not just support the Government’s mission for economic growth, which is a priority for this Government, but further protect the UK’s internal market. Achieving those goals will not only support the Union but benefit consumers. I acknowledge the strength with which the hon. Member for East Londonderry supports both those aims and common-sense solutions to working through these issues for businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. I reassure him, and the House, that I share his support for and commitment to those aims, and to working this through.
Question put and agreed to.
Nutrition for Growth Summit
(4 days, 10 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Because of our delayed start, the debate may now continue until 4.47 pm. I call David Mundell to move the motion.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Nutrition for Growth Paris Summit 2025.
It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairman- ship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful for the opportunity to propose this motion and to make the case for a strong, ambitious and well-targeted UK commitment at the Nutrition for Growth summit, which takes place in Paris this Thursday and Friday, and which I am pleased to be able to attend alongside my friends the hon. Members for Exeter (Steve Race) and for Worthing West (Dr Cooper).
It is more than three years since we last gathered in Westminster Hall to debate the previous Nutrition for Growth summit, held in Tokyo in December 2021. This debate comes at an important moment for global nutrition, especially in the light of recent decisions in the US and here in the UK about spending on aid and international development. It also comes the week after the publication of the report of the International Development Committee, on which I serve as a member, “The Government’s efforts to achieve SDG2: Zero Hunger”.
We all know that access to good nutrition is foundational to development. It plays a critical role in health, education, gender equality and economic advancement. It is essential to achieving so many of the other sustainable development goals.
For pregnant women, good nutrition in pregnancy leads to healthier mothers, fewer complications in childbirth, less chance of stunting in children and a greater chance of children reaching their educational potential. Proven, cost-effective interventions, such as providing expectant mothers with multiple micronutrient supplements can make the world of difference to a child’s start in life.
For children, good nutrition makes vaccines more effective, reducing the risks of infectious diseases, which can spread rapidly and which do not respect borders. A well-nourished child is 11 times less likely to die from common infectious diseases such as pneumonia than a severely undernourished one.
Good nutrition also reduces the risk of obesity, cancer and other non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which are on the rise in many low and middle-income countries. Without good nutrition, individuals and communities cannot develop to their full potential, economic productivity and development are constrained, and stability and security are undermined.
Studies have shown that combating malnutrition can raise per capita GDP by up to 11%, helping to break the cycle of poverty, inequality and food insecurity. In addition, investments in nutrition are proven to be low cost and high impact, representing one of the highest-value development initiatives. According to the World Bank, for every $1 invested in nutrition, $23 is returned to the local economy. Conversely, malnutrition costs African economies between 3% and 16% of GDP annually. Yet, despite all we know about the importance of good nutrition, malnutrition is still the leading cause of death in children under five, claiming the lives of 2 million children under five every year.
In 2022, an estimated 45 million children under the age of five suffered from wasting, 148 million had stunted growth and 37 million were overweight. In 2023, an estimated 733 million people globally faced hunger. Around 200 million more people face acute food insecurity this year compared with pre-pandemic levels. Conflicts and humanitarian crises, including in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and Gaza, are causing global hunger to soar. Up to 1.9 million people are estimated to be on the brink of famine.
The UK has a long and proud history of global leadership and action on nutrition. The UK was the founder of the Nutrition for Growth summit in 2013, when more than 100 stakeholders pledged more than $4 billion in new nutrition-specific projects, and a further $19 billion in nutrition-sensitive projects. Our excellent civil servants in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office are world-class thought leaders and conveners on innovation regarding malnutrition, and the UK is home to world-leading scientists and researchers who are making strides to advance technologies and nutrient-dense, drought-resistant crops, supporting communities all over the world to have more secure and nutritious diets.
The recent cuts to official development assistance could have devastating impacts on the global hunger and malnutrition crisis. The nutrition budget was disproportionately impacted by the cuts to ODA in 2021; research conducted by Development Initiatives for the FCDO indicated that nutrition spending was cut by more than 60%. The Government must not allow this further reduction in spending to exacerbate the existing global crisis or to damage our reputation globally.
This week’s Nutrition for Growth summit is a real opportunity for the Government to show continued UK leadership and commitment to global nutrition. This Thursday and Friday, the Government of France, led by President Macron, will convene Governments, philanthropists, non-governmental organisations and business leaders at the summit to commit finances and make policy changes that will help to end malnutrition.
It will be the fifth Nutrition for Growth summit since it was launched by the UK in the margins of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. The previous summit in Tokyo mobilised $27 billion through commitments made by 181 stakeholders across 78 countries. Unfortunately, the previous UK Government were not able to make a commitment at the Tokyo summit in 2021, which sparked widespread criticism from partner countries. Thanks, I believe, to the great efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who was then a Minister in the FCDO, that decision was reversed two months later and the UK made a £1.5 billion pledge. We still hope that this year the UK will play its full part in ensuring the summit is a success.
The Paris summit is a crucial opportunity to build on that momentum and a critical step in turning the tide against the scourge of malnutrition. It will also put nutrition at the heart of the sustainable development agenda, recognising that nutrition is foundational to development—as indeed it is to the UK’s wider development aims—and will make the fight against all forms of malnutrition a universal cause. Since 2013, the Nutrition for Growth summit has been a key event for driving greater action towards ending malnutrition, mobilising the international community and placing nutrition higher up the development agenda.
This year, the commitments made will be more important than ever in elevating the fight against malnutrition. The summit’s outcomes will have a lasting impact on the health, development and economic potential of millions of people worldwide, especially women and children. We welcome the fact that the new Minister for International Development will represent the UK at the summit, but I hope the Minister here today will be able to confirm that the UK will demonstrate its commitment to leadership on sustainable development goal 2 by doing everything we can to ensure that the summit is a success. I also hope that he will commit to a strong, ambitious and well-targeted UK pledge at the summit—or, if that requires the spending review to be completed, that that pledge will come after the spending review.
In addition, I hope the Minister can reaffirm the recent commitment to integrating nutrition across all aspects of development at the summit to make meaningful progress in tackling the underlying causes of malnutrition. As the International Development Committee inquiry report recommended, as well as a generous pledge at the summit, I hope the Minister will commit to
“a new reach commitment on nutrition and food security within the next six months”,
which would
“focus efforts and improve accountability.”
The all-party group on nutrition for development, which I co-chair alongside the hon. Member for Exeter, is calling for the UK to invest at least £500 million in nutrition-specific interventions by 2030. I hope the Government can confirm that they will begin this journey by investing £50 million in the child nutrition fund this year. That would give us an opportunity to maximise our investment by leveraging domestic resources and philanthropic funding, with the potential to transform a £50 million contribution into up to £500 million-worth of impact.
Whatever colleagues’ views on the overseas aid budget, I am sure we all agree that taxpayers’ money should be spent as impactfully as possible. Therefore, we must prioritise nutrition and use summits such as the Nutrition for Growth summit to maximise our contribution at a time of restricted finances, and we must co-ordinate our approach with other countries to maximise the impact even further. It is vital that low-cost, high-impact nutrition-specific interventions, such as MMS and ready-to-use therapeutic food, are protected and prioritised. They can pull young children back from the brink of starvation in weeks.
I hope the Minister will set out an ambition to reach at least 50 million children, women and adolescent girls with nutrition-related interventions by 2030, and commit to reporting yearly on how many people are reached with nutrition-specific interventions. I also hope the UK Government will support global accountability efforts by funding the global nutrition report to enhance the nutrition accountability framework, which is a critical tool to ensure that Governments follow through on their Nutrition for Growth commitments. Finally, I hope the Government will ensure that partnerships with local civil society organisations are strengthened, so that they can advocate more effectively for nutrition to their own Governments.
To conclude, let me give just one example of the difference that such commitments can make by speaking about Hanzala. Hanzala struggled with pneumonia and malnutrition before he could even sit up on his own. Born in a remote village in Afghanistan, his mother was unable to access care, with the nearest clinic being more than 40 km away. That was until 2023, when World Vision Afghanistan opened a health centre supported by the FCDO in Hanzala’s village.
Hanzala’s mother rushed him to the clinic, where he was found to weigh just 6.8 kg, well below the 9.2 kg that a healthy 13-month-old boy should weigh. Hanzala was immediately enrolled in the out-patient department for severe acute malnutrition programme, receiving ready-to-use therapeutic food. His mother received nutritional counselling and a sanitation kit to improve their living conditions. I am sure that everyone will be pleased to learn that only four months later Hanzala had made a full recovery and was able to play like any other child—a direct result of decisions made by the UK Government and the support of organisations such as World Vision.
Let us grasp the opportunity that the Nutrition for Growth summit this week affords. Let us continue to wield our convening power as the UK and play a leading role as a key global nutrition partner, driving this agenda and working alongside other donors and high-burden countries to ensure that global nutrition investments are prioritised and deliver maximum impact. I look forward to the rest of the debate and to the Minister’s positive response.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairship for the first time, Ms Jardine.
I thank the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for securing this important debate on the eve of the Nutrition for Growth summit in Paris. His long-standing commitment to improving the lives of the most disadvantaged in the world, particularly those experiencing malnutrition and hunger, is clear to see, both in this debate and through his work in the House. I am proud to work alongside him as his new co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nutrition for development, and to attend the summit with him over the coming days. I will also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor as co-chair of the APPG, Lord Collins of Highbury, who continues to be a passionate champion for nutrition in Government as the Minister for Africa.
As the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ably set out, the summit comes at a critical time for global nutrition and its outcomes will have a lasting impact on the health, cognitive development and economic potential of millions of people. Across the world, 733 million people suffer from hunger and over 2.8 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet. Malnutrition claims the lives of over 2 million children every year, with millions more left with permanent physical and cognitive impairment, and more than 1 billion adolescent girls and women worldwide suffer from undernutrition. It is therefore critical that the summit this week is a successful platform for global action.
A few weeks ago, I visited Paris with the right hon. Member to meet the organisers of the summit, including special envoy and secretary-general of Nutrition for Growth, Brieuc Pont, and some of our counterparts in the French Parliament. They all emphasised the importance of the UK playing a leadership role at the summit and using our considerable convening strength to press for collective action on nutrition and to underscore its importance to global development and stability. I was again struck by the fact that addressing malnutrition must be a collective endeavour. It is not an issue that one country can solve by itself; we must all play our part.
The UK has a proud history on malnutrition and hunger. The last Labour Government’s strategy, “The neglected crisis of undernutrition”, marked the start of a decade of UK leadership on global nutrition, and the UK initiated Nutrition for Growth, convening the first summit in London in 2013. The UK’s first investment at that summit reached over 50 million people with nutrition services between 2015 and 2020. I am pleased that the new Minister for International Development will attend the summit this week, and I hope that the UK, as the founder of Nutrition for Growth, can play a full role, including by making an ambitious financial pledge. The urgency could not be clearer: the growing crisis of global malnutrition is inflicting immense suffering on millions of people, undermining economic development and driving instability, with huge geopolitical implications.
Just before I became a Member of Parliament, I travelled to Kenya with UNICEF, United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, and Action Against Hunger, along with the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), to see the positive impact of interventions to help treat and prevent malnutrition for children and families in hard-to-reach communities hit by severe drought. Seeing how UK development assistance is delivered on the ground had a profound impact on me. In Isiolo county, we visited mobile outreach stations set up by local health workers to deliver emergency nutrition, vaccines and maternal health, as well as education about nutrition. The nurses there told us that since the clinic has been running in the county, they have seen malnutrition rates drop year on year. These interventions work.
We know that access to good nutrition is the foundation on which sustainable development is built. Suffering from malnutrition at an early age will impact a child throughout their life; it will impact their education, economic and health outcomes. The children we met were getting what they needed not only to survive, but to thrive. That is why the all-party parliamentary group on nutrition for development would like to see the UK invest at least £500 million in nutrition-specific interventions by 2030. Those interventions, such as ready-to-use therapeutic food, known as RUTF, vitamin A supplements, support for breastfeeding and prenatal multiple micronutrient supplementation—MMS—are cost-effective, proven and powerful interventions that support women, who have the highest nutritional needs but often eat last and least, and enable them to give their children the best start in life.
MMS, for example, is proven to support the health of both baby and mother and reduce the risk of birth complications. At £3 per pregnancy, it is a low-cost intervention with a high return on investment. The recovery rate of children with severe acute malnutrition who receive a full course of RUTF is over 90%. Given that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger and malnutrition, I wonder whether the Minister might commit to ensuring that at least 90% of nutrition spending is gender-sensitive.
RUTF can also be locally produced and owned. In Nairobi, we visited a factory manufacturing RUTF that was part-funded by UK development assistance. The factory exports RUTF across east Africa, and is now trialling growing its own groundnuts—the primary ingredient of RUTF—in low-income communities in Kenya. That means that Kenya can produce its own nutrition products closer to people, supporting the local economy and creating jobs and livelihoods. These interventions work, provide value for money and build genuine partnerships with Governments. Will the Minister provide an update on the Government’s commitment to nutrition-specific interventions?
One way that could be achieved is through the child nutrition fund, which was developed by UNICEF with support from the UK Government, the Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. The fund has huge potential to create genuine, equitable partnerships with low and middle-income countries. It can also leverage significant additional funding through match-funding initiatives by global philanthropies. That would give the Government the opportunity to maximise their investment with the potential, as the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale said, to transform a £50 million UK contribution into up to £500 million of impact, maximising our contribution and our impact at a time of fiscal constraint.
Critically, the child nutrition fund also provides a means to unlock financial and political commitment from low and middle-income countries, creating a path to transition from dependency on global financing to domestic financing, and an exit strategy for global donors. Will the Minister provide an update on the Government’s commitment to the child nutrition fund?
The Government have demonstrated positive action on global hunger and malnutrition in recent months. The UK was one of the founding members of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, which was launched last November in Rio. The Government have also more than doubled their aid to Sudan and neighbouring countries, where malnutrition rates have soared due to the devastating conflicts and subsequent displacement. The FCDO has recently committed to integrating nutrition across all aspects of its work. These are really encouraging steps.
I will make two final points. First, can the Minister tell us how quickly the Government aim to pivot the ODA budget back to its core purpose? The use of ODA to support the broken asylum application system in the UK clearly needs to end. The Government have committed to that by putting money back into the asylum application processing system and shortening the time that asylum seekers spend in hotels. However, that must be accelerated so that the 0.3% ODA budget is spent on ODA programmes, as expected.
Secondly, will the Minister comment on the ways in which the UK can use its legislative clout to close tax evasion and other financial loopholes that deprive developing countries of tax income? The International Monetary Fund estimates that the tax gap is over $200 billion a year. As one of the global centres of finance, London is still awash with money effectively stolen from developing nations, and channelled and hidden through shell companies. That same status brings London the opportunity to further clamp down on that activity, and with significant ties to overseas dependencies that can facilitate the illicit transfer of cash, the UK Government can use their position to close the tax gap for good.
I hope that we can take this momentum to the Nutrition for Growth summit this week and recommit UK leadership, political will and investment in nutrition. Our leadership will help ensure that vital clinics like the one I saw in Isiolo county are able to continue to deliver life-saving support to the most vulnerable communities, especially their young children and mothers.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. It seems to happen nearly every week now—I wish you continued success in what you do. I thank the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for leading this important debate. He is a very busy man too: last Thursday he spoke in a Westminster Hall debate, yesterday he chaired Westminster Hall, and today he is back at it again. Well done to him. This is a subject on which we are all very pleased to come along and support him.
I am genuinely pleased to see the Minister in his place. I know from all the years that I have known him in the House that his heart lies with this subject, and I do not think we will be disappointed when we hear his responses to our questions. It is always a pleasure to see the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), in her place too.
Combating malnutrition across the world is crucial. We all have a heart for it, and that is why we are here. We are glad to support others in the world like we expect that they would support us back. In some African countries, the situation is hard, and there is more that we can do collectively.
I quickly want to thank—because I think it is important—the churches in my constituency, and churches across this great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In particular, Elim Missions in Newtownards in my constituency of Strangford has a really productive strategy and plan for Zimbabwe and Swaziland. I understand that it has relationship of almost 30 years with them, and it has helped them with education, health, food production, and jobs and training. I commend the work that it does in Swaziland in particular, which is ravaged by HIV and all the complexities associated with that.
Of course, there are many other churches that do likewise: the Presbyterian Church, the Church of Ireland, the Methodist Church, the Baptist churches, and many others. There is a real role for a partnership with some of those church groups, which could be productive for everyone. First of all, we have got the heart of the churches and their congregations—they want to do something, and more often than not it is the congregations’ own money that is poured into that—but what they do sometimes fills a gap where the Government maybe just cannot get there. I often ask for this, but I do it because I think there is a partnership role that can be played. If the Minister does not mind, will he give us his thoughts on that?
UN sustainable development goal 2 is to create a world free from hunger by 2030—quite an ambition, to be fair —including bringing down rates of undernourishment, food insecurity, and childhood stunting and wasting. The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale gave examples of those things, and I know that others will too. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reported that in 2024 the world was still far off track achieving its goals, with progress having stalled since 2020. All of us here today, and those outside of this place watching, would be encouraged if the Minister could tell us what has been done to get us back on track and ensure that we can deliver the goal by 2030. One in 11 people globally, and one in five in Africa, faces undernourishment. There has been some progress on stunting and wasting, but we are still way off the 2030 target.
In 2024, the UK joined the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, and announced some £70 million of funding over 18 months to address food insecurity. The UK is also participating in the new joint UN initiative on the prevention of wasting, which was launched in March 2025—just in the last week or 10 days. According to UNICEF stats, an estimated 5.7 million children in the region require treatment for acute malnutrition, with 1.8 million children experiencing life-threatening malnutrition.
The one time I watch TV is on a Sunday afternoon. More often than not, when I watch westerns—that probably tells us what age I am—the adverts on either side of the films portray child malnutrition and hunger very graphically. We sit in some grandeur, and we are never hungry for food. The sight of young children from across the world in poverty, and of the mothers who do everything they can to feed their child, is a salient reminder of the level of child poverty and what we have to do.
Child poverty is a widespread issue. As I am my party’s health spokesperson, these issues are close to my heart, and they warrant attention and effort to resolve them. It is important to be here and to recognise the good things that the Government do. The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale outlined a number of things that the Government are doing, and I know that the Minister is committed to this. The Government are upholding the 2022 UK commitment to spend £1.5 billion from 2022 to 2030 on nutrition objectives, but there is more that can be done. Perhaps after reflecting on the figures, the Government can look at the impact and assess whether more is available to enable us to reach out and help communities that are under incredible pressure. We need to do more to support the global effort in combating malnutrition. Every father and grandfather would do whatever he could for his child or grandchild. I know the Minister is a compassionate person, and the Government have a duty to reach out and help.
We must do more to strengthen global partnerships with organisations and other Governments to advocate for better nutrition support in other countries. We cannot do it on our own, because our resources are limited, but we can do it with others and make it happen. I look to the Minister for any commitment that the Government can give to support those in extreme poverty, and for an update, if at all possible, on the UK’s contribution to the 2030 targets.
Dr Beccy Cooper (Worthing West) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for organising the debate. So much has been covered already, and I do not want to reiterate or repeat it unnecessarily, but I want to draw attention to some key statistics around the fact that nutrition is a core issue, both for health and for global security. According to the stats from the World Food Programme on global security—they have been cited, but they are worth citing again—a 1% increase in food insecurity leads to a 2% increase in migration. If we think about geopolitical stability and all the issues that we currently talk about, a 2% increase in migration because of a 1% increase in food insecurity makes no sense in the world today. We need to do everything we can to mitigate that.
Similarly, nutrition is a global growth issue. We talk a lot in this country about economic growth, but we all know that we are as much in hock to world economic factors as we are to our own national factors. As the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale has said, according to the World Bank, if we invest $1 in nutrition we get $23 back into the local economy. By any account, with any economist, that is surely a no-brainer.
My interest in this subject arises from the fact that I am a public health consultant. Prior to my days in this place, I worked in an NGO that has already been named, World Vision, along with the Minister. We have been in this field for quite a long time, as have many hon. Members here, and we have heard the same conversations about nutrition come up again and again. We all sit here as human beings, and we all have the same basic level of need. In public health, as in so many other disciplines, there is something called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: if we cannot satisfy our basic human needs, we cannot do anything else. If we and our children are hungry, we cannot achieve any of the things we aspire to for our communities, for the people we live with or for our governance, stability and growth.
We think about those foundational elements in two ways. Acute interventions have been mentioned; my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter has talked about the ready-to-use therapeutic foods and vitamin supplements that can address fundamental critical needs in so many places around the globe, including in our own country. Those malnutrition needs are different, but they are malnutrition needs none the less, and we must implement those acute interventions.
Alongside that is longer-term nutritional stability, which is a global conversation as well as a UK one. How do we make sure that the food we grow on this planet is sustainably grown, has the right levels of nutrition and is distributed equally? Those conversations have gone on for many years. The Nutrition for Growth conference in Paris is another opportunity to bring together people with excellent experience and try to push the conversation forward.
The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale mentioned maternal and child health. The first 1,000 days are critical. In the Health and Social Care Committee, we are looking specifically at the first 1,000 days in this country. Why we should focus only on this country is beyond me, however, because whether someone lives in this country or another country, they need exactly the same things. Humans are humans wherever they live. A global initiative looking at the first 1,000 days, and concentrating on good nutrition for mothers and babies in the early days, will significantly decrease childhood stunting, wasting and developmental delay. In all our communities, we want people to grow, thrive and do well, but those things cannot happen if the basic elements of nutrition are not in place.
As has been said, the UK has been a leader in this space for some years. I appreciate that there has been a cut in overseas development aid, but that does not mean that we cannot still demonstrate leadership in this space. As a responsible partner in the global health initiative—in our global safety, which has as much resonance for people in this country as it does for those in others—we must prioritise the things that will truly make a difference to people’s wellbeing, safety and stability. In the conference that starts tomorrow, I ask respectfully that our Ministers go forward and lead in this space; that they prioritise nutrition for growth in global health and security; and that they continue our proud history of global leadership in this area.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this important debate.
Malnutrition is one of the greatest barriers to health, economic growth and development worldwide. It contributes to nearly half of all child deaths and has long-term consequences for education, economic productivity and global stability. The Nutrition for Growth summit presents a crucial opportunity for world leaders to address these issues and commit to sustainable solutions. The World Bank estimates that annual investment in targeted nutrition interventions must increase from £6.3 billion to £19.3 billion by 2034 to meet global needs.
The UK has long played a leading role in tackling these issues through targeted aid and development programmes, but recent reductions in the official development assistance budget threaten our ability to continue making a meaningful impact. The UK spent nearly £1 billion on bilateral aid for basic nutrition between 2009 and 2023. However, spending has declined sharply in recent years, from £146 million in 2017 to just £24 million in 2023. Similarly, broader nutrition-sensitive aid has fallen from a peak of £2.7 billion in 2016 to £1.2 billion in 2023. These reductions have been steeper than the overall decrease in UK aid spending. Since the shift to 0.5% of gross national income for aid in 2021, total UK aid fell by 21%, while nutrition-specific aid dropped by 61% and nutrition-sensitive aid dropped by 54%. The decision to reduce the UK’s ODA commitment to 0.3% of GNI by 2027 will only decrease our ability to meet this challenge.
Malnutrition does not just affect health outcomes. The UK has been a leader in development because we recognise that investing in nutrition delivers long-term benefits. Every £1 spent on nutrition intervention generates up to £16 in economic returns through increased productivity and reduced healthcare costs. Cuts to UK aid will leave a vacuum that countries such as Russia and China will fill. The Foreign Secretary has previously acknowledged the strategic risk of stepping back from development aid, and the Liberal Democrats have consistently warned that reducing aid weakens our ability to counter malign influences and support fragile states. Rather than cutting aid, the Liberal Democrats call on the Government to reverse the Tory tax cuts for big banks and tax the social media giants that are currently profiting from spreading misinformation and disinformation on behalf of our enemies.
The Nutrition for Growth summit in Paris is a moment to reaffirm the UK’s leadership in global development. We have always stood for a world where every individual has an opportunity to thrive. Liberal values are rooted in the belief that every person has worth, dignity and the right to a healthy life. The Government must ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of the fight against malnutrition, rather than retreating from it.
Abtisam Mohamed (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this important and timely debate. I thank him and my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Steve Race) for their commitment to advocating for investment and focus on global nutrition through their work on the APPG on nutrition for development. It is fantastic to see cross-party support on this vital issue, and I wish them all the best at the Nutrition for Growth summit later this week.
The summit could not have come at a more critical time for global nutrition. Malnutrition rates across the world are soaring, and the most vulnerable, including women and children, are paying the price. For 2025, the World Food Programme predicts that 343 million people will be food insecure in the 74 countries in which the agency is active. The number of food insecure people is 200 million above pre-pandemic levels.
I will focus my remarks on conflict, which Members will not be surprised to hear has been identified as the main driver of food insecurity. Some 65% of people living in acute food insecurity live in fragile or conflict-affected areas, and 14 of the 16 hunger hotspots identified by the World Food Programme are conflict zones, including Gaza, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen.
Hunger and conflict coexist in a deadly cycle. When conflict strikes, civilian populations are often forced to flee their homes, land and livestock-grazing areas, leaving them food insecure and without access to their local markets or agriculture. Women, children and marginalised groups are disproportionately affected, bearing the brunt of violence and its long-term impacts. Malnutrition is a typical outcome in conflict zones, with children most affected by increased mortality and stunted growth. Conflict also disrupts supply chains and infrastructure, including farms and agricultural land, through looting or destruction of food stocks, agricultural assets, food production facilities and other objects of critical infrastructure, leading to long-term food insecurity.
Similarly, where extreme hunger and child deaths fester, so too do anger, instability and violence, with consequences that spread across the world. A world in which billions of people are malnourished produces instability and perpetuates injustice. Chronically poor populations are marginalised or vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Children and young people are particularly exposed to recruitment into armed groups, forced labour, early marriage and other forms of abuse. These crimes create fragile populations and instability. Addressing long-term drivers of fragility, as well as the immediate causes of conflict, is essential for addressing the deadly cycle of conflict and hunger. We know that adherence to international humanitarian law is vital for mitigating and preventing famine-like conditions in conflict, but across the world, respect for international humanitarian law is steadily being eroded, particularly through the deliberate withholding and blocking of food aid.
In its report “Food Insecurity and Armed Conflict and the Use of Siege-like Tactics” the Geneva Academy identified an increase in violations of international humanitarian law regarding the deliberate withholding and blocking of humanitarian aid to induce food insecurity and famine-like conditions. This tactic can be seen repeatedly in Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza and Mali, among many other crises and conflicts.
In Sudan, millions of people living in Darfur, North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Khartoum are at immediate risk of famine. More than half of the country—25.6 million people—are experiencing severe food insecurity. More than one in three children face acute malnutrition, which is above the 20% threshold for a famine confirmation.
This is a man-made crisis, rife with violations of international humanitarian law. Conflict actors have disrupted supply chains and infrastructure, including farms and agricultural land, through the looting and destruction of food stocks, agricultural assets and food production facilities, as well as other elements of infra- structure. Humanitarian operations are at risk of interference from conflict actors either through bureaucratic impediments or through violent attacks, severely hindering the ability of humanitarian actors to deliver lifesaving aid.
I was grateful to hear the Prime Minister name Sudan as a key priority for the UK following the decrease in order, but with such limited resources available, I am concerned that the UK will simply not be able to follow through on its commitments. Will the Minister commit to protecting nutrition spending in conflict-affected areas such as Sudan to ensure that lifesaving food aid gets to those who are at most risk of famine and malnutrition?
I am also concerned that other hunger spots such as Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be forgotten, and the impact there will be devastating. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of the funding cuts on some of these most fragile and conflict-affected countries, where rates of malnutrition are sky high? If they have not conducted such an impact assessment, will the Minister commit to undertaking one?
I finish my remarks by picking up on what the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale said about British science and innovation being at the forefront of efforts to combat global hunger. My constituency of Sheffield Central is home to the world-leading Institute for Sustainable Food, based at Sheffield university. At the institute, scientists are developing drought-resistant crops in growth chambers, which can mimic the conditions brought on by climate change in arid conditions across the world.
With support from the UK Government, these innovations can be shared across the world to support food-insecure communities in some of the world’s toughest climates. Scientists at the institute have also developed the pioneering desert garden, a hydroponic system that enables nutrient-dense foods such as basil and tomatoes to be grown in materials that are available to communities in refugee settings, such as mattresses.
These desert gardens use minimal water and readily available conditions, so they are perfect for supporting vulnerable populations. They have been used in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan to support those who are fleeing war and conflict to fend off malnutrition and maintain a nutrient-rich diet. Moreover, local people have been given responsibility for the projects, increasing their ownership and control, and supporting their livelihoods. I have seen this work at first hand and I am proud that it has been developed in my constituency, but not enough is known about it.
What work is the Minister doing in collaboration with other Departments, such as the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, to promote and champion the British science and expertise that is contributing to the global fight against hunger? Will the Minister explore ways to build on the UK’s existing nutrition policy expertise by partnering with Governments and research institutions to fund research in key areas such as preventing malnutrition and child wasting, adolescent nutrition and the integration of immunisation and nutrition? It makes sense to champion British science, which is at the forefront of efforts to combat global hunger and support innovative solutions.
As Members have said, the upcoming Nutrition for Growth summit is a key moment to address the global scourge of malnutrition, particularly for those who are trapped in conflict and war zones. I urge the Government to take this opportunity with both hands and not to let go the chance to make a strong commitment.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for securing the debate.
The Nutrition for Growth summit is an opportunity for the UK to reaffirm our country’s commitment to eradicating hunger. Since 2012, when we founded and hosted the inaugural Nutrition for Growth summit in London following our hosting of the Olympic games, Britain and British leadership have achieved so much. We helped to raise £17 billion to fight malnutrition and between 2015 and 2020, we surpassed our goal of reaching 50 million people with food assistance and nutrition-relevant programming, saving countless lives. But now we are at an inflection point, and there is a risk that progress on nutrition and the development goals is slipping.
In the UN’s recent report, we were warned that the world is on track to meet just 17% of our 2030 targets. On a further 17%, we have regressed, and nowhere has there been greater regression than on sustainable development goal 2, on zero hunger. Driven by spreading conflict, worsening climate change and the disruption of the pandemic years, the number of those suffering from malnutrition—
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
We have 42 minutes left for this debate. I call Liberal Democrat spokesperson Monica Harding to continue, please.
Monica Harding
It is still a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. As I was saying, driven by spreading conflict, worsening climate change and the disruption of the pandemic years, the number of those suffering from malnutrition has risen by 150 million in five years. At this moment, we have a broader challenge. The Government have chosen not to redouble efforts to fight hunger, but to slash the official development assistance budget to its lowest level this century. We believe that that is a moral and strategic mistake that will exacerbate food insecurity and render all of us here in the UK less safe. Since the Prime Minister’s announcement in February, there has been little clarity about UK development priorities or about what existing promises this Government intend to honour.
The Nutrition Action for Systemic Change report published last year found that the Government were then tracking to meet our nutrition for growth commitment, made following the 2021 summit in Tokyo, of spending £1.5 billion on nutrition objectives between 2022 and 2030. Just one week before the development budget was cut by 40%, the then Minister for Development, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), again affirmed the UK’s commitment to that £1.5 billion figure. Will the Minister today repeat that pledge and assure us that the UK will not renege on the resources promised by multiple Governments to fight hunger?
In addition to worsening levels of hunger, the overall nutrition picture is growing increasingly complex. The so-called triple burden of malnutrition, obesity and vitamin deficiency requires solutions that combat all three issues together. Those solutions must encompass ready-to-use therapeutic food, vitamin A supplementation as well as other nutrients, and health interventions targeting obesity. Will the Minister share the specific steps that the FCDO is taking to ensure that UK nutrition policy addresses all dimensions of that triple burden, including by requiring that the development finance investments made by arm’s length FCDO bodies align with UK nutrition goals?
Nutrition-specific ODA, often delivered in a context of urgent humanitarian need, is indispensable. It is regularly the difference between life and death for some of the world’s poorest. As we speak, the UN World Food Programme is closing offices in Africa. That agency received about half its funding last year from USAID—the United States Agency for International Development— so is now facing acute financial pressures, cutting the delivery of lifesaving RUTF and other supplies.
The impact of USAID’s gutting is already devastating. In the coming year, reduced food assistance could result in as many as 550,000 deaths, according to The New York Times. We Liberal Democrats believe that there is a moral imperative for the UK to act in the face of that looming catastrophe. We believe that filling some of the funding gaps left by the retreat of USAID will require the UK to play a vital convening role, so could the Minister inform us of what conversations the UK is having and leading with partner nations, NGOs and other philanthropic organisations, aimed at catalysing targeted nutrition interventions?
At the same time, we must recognise that highly focused, specific interventions are capable of addressing only about 30% of the most persistent nutritional challenges, such as child stunting and child wasting. Progress on the other 70% requires progress on a wide range of nutrition-sensitive development areas, including maternal health, agricultural productivity, WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene—and climate change, and vice versa. A pregnant mother experiencing malnutrition and unable to access multiple micronutrient supplements is far more likely to give birth to a stunted child. Even vaccines are less effective when delivered to children experiencing malnutrition.
As the International Development Committee argued in its most recent report—as a Committee member, I must declare an interest—nutrition and food security are cross-cutting themes across UK ODA programming, so success requires not only highly targeted interventions, but a strategic approach that integrates nutrition throughout development work. I know that this integration is a priority for the FCDO, and I am pleased that the Minister will be championing a global compact on nutrition integration in Paris. However, according to the NASC’s 2024 report, from 2021 to 2022, the nutrition-sensitive share of the FCDO’s ODA spend actually declined. For humanitarian spending it fell from 27% to 22%, for health spending it fell from 11% to 5%, and for education spending it fell from 4% to just 1%. What concrete steps is the FCDO taking to reverse that trend and to model nutrition integration going forward? Moreover, what accountability mechanisms will be tied to the global compact on nutrition integration such that it changes behaviour and produces results?
There may be no area of development linked as closely to nutrition as conflict. The World Food Programme found that conflict was the key driver of food insecurity last year, and it showed that two thirds of those facing acute food insecurity did so in fragile or conflict-affected locations. Not only do violence, conflict and instability lead to displacement and migration, and create a breeding ground for terrorism that can threaten us here in the UK, but they undermine our professed nutrition objectives. Yet the integrated security fund, which addresses acute national security threats and is partially funded through ODA, is facing significant cuts due to the Government’s decision to slash aid. Will the Minister therefore assure us that the Government’s development cut will not result in cuts to the ODA-funded portion of the ISF?
I am also concerned that the cut will mean a further hollowing out of the UK expert capacity. When the Department for International Development was merged with the Foreign Office in 2020, it was expert teams that gave Britain the know-how on how to lead on areas such as nutrition, which were chronically under-resourced. Our capacity suffered as a result, and I urge the Minister to prioritise protecting the UK’s health and nutrition expertise, embedded in-country and in the FCDO.
I am very pleased that the UK will be represented by a Minister at the Nutrition for Growth summit. I give our envoy all our support and encouragement in convening and corralling support for a compact on nutrition integration, yet it is difficult to lead on global nutrition policy when we are stepping back from funding nutrition. I remain deeply disappointed that no new financial commitments will be announced by the Government to mark the summit.
Nutrition is foundational for development. Investments in nutrition are low cost and high impact, representing one of the highest value development initiatives. We also know how to do it. Indeed, we have achieved remarkable success, halving the proportion of people suffering from undernourishment in developing regions between 1990 and 2015. We have led that, but we are now in retreat. I urge the Government to renew that ambition, because nutrition is foundational. Without it, progress on global health, gender equality and peace building is nearly impossible, and the need for that is greater than ever.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this timely debate. He brings considerable knowledge and experience to it, not least as a long-standing International Development Committee member and as a tremendous advocate for global nutrition. Although the debate has been interrupted by votes, I have enjoyed it and found it incredibly interesting. It is fair to say that Members on both sides of this Chamber have brought considerable knowledge and perspectives, and I thank them for that.
This debate is timely, coming ahead of the Nutrition for Growth summit in Paris later this week. The summit is happening at the end of the UN decade of action on nutrition, and it aims to foster dialogue and action among diverse actors from around the world to put nutrition at the heart of the development agenda. I was pleased to meet the French special envoy on nutrition, Mr Brieuc Pont, when he visited London in December as his country was preparing to host the summit.
As Conservatives, we have very much led global action on nutrition. We convened the first Nutrition for Growth summit in 2013, where 100 stakeholders endorsed the global nutrition for growth compact and where the UK committed £575 million to nutrition-specific programmes and to reaching 50 million people by 2020. The global nutrition report found that we have reached the commitments made in London in 2013 and in Milan in 2017. We went further in 2022, and pledged to spend at least £1.5 billion up to 2030 on nutrition objectives. Those included addressing the nutrition needs of mothers, babies and children, tackling malnutrition in humanitarian emergencies and making sure that nutrition is central to the FCDO’s wider work.
In February, during her time as the Minister for Development, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) reiterated that £1.5 billion commitment. I understand that she was due to attend the summit in Paris this week. Following the appointment of Baroness Chapman as Development Minister, will the Minister confirm today that she will attend the summit? Can this Minister also confirm whether the Government continue to stand by the £1.5 billion by 2030 pledge and what steps are being taken to ensure that nutrition remains embedded into the FDCO’s work? We are led to understand that the UK will not be making a financial pledge at the summit, and that the Government are preparing to make a policy pledge. Can the Minister confirm whether that is still the case?
As well as playing a key role in Nutrition for Growth summits, the previous Conservative Government led many other nutrition-related initiatives. In November 2023, on the same day as publishing the International Development White Paper, we hosted the Global Food Security summit to galvanise action to deal with hunger and malnutrition, including through cutting-edge UK-funded science and technology.
The UK has a key role to play in solving these global challenges, especially through our superb science and technology and research sectors—the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) highlighted some of the work of Sheffield university. That is why the White Paper laid out our commitment to investing in agricultural technology and innovation, to address global challenges such as food security. I ask the Minister what plans there are to mobilise UK science and technology to support international development objectives such as supporting global food security.
I appreciate that we are yet to see the full detail of the changes to ODA, and we have had no clear answers from Ministers about what the priorities will be. Will the Minister confirm what the impact will be on the UK’s overall nutrition spend? If the Government still intend to make a commitment in Paris, it would be useful to have clarity on what changes we can expect. The former Minister, the right hon. Member for Oxford East, said in answer to one of my written questions that the Government were committed to continuing the integration of improved nutrition outcomes alongside successes in other sectors such as health, agriculture and humanitarian. Will the Minister outline what specific measures the FCDO will support in each of these sectors?
Members have been waiting since at least December for the Foreign Secretary to finish considering the international development review by Baroness Shafik. Can the Minister tell us if and when the Department plans to publish the review’s findings and when we can expect the Foreign Secretary’s response? Given the changes to ODA, it is only right that Members are given the opportunity to see the full detail of that review. In addition, has the review informed the wider decisions around ODA, or is it no longer fit for purpose following the changes?
Let me turn now to some country specifics and to some particularly challenging contexts that underscore the importance of this debate. In Sudan the humanitarian crisis is rapidly deteriorating: over 30 million people are in urgent need of assistance, and we see devastating food insecurity. We know that there are challenges getting aid in and distributing it effectively, so what steps are the Government taking to ensure that humanitarian aid can get through to Sudan and to open new routes? What guardrails are in place to ensure that aid reaches those who need it most, including women and girls?
In Ethiopia the World Food Programme identifies that recurrent conflict, drought, disease and inflation continue to drive up humanitarian needs—5.8 million people required food support in 2024. In 2023 we announced a new funding package of £16.6 million to support more than 600,000 people with food supplies and other nutrition. Over half of those people were women and children, and they bore the brunt of the country’s worsening crisis. Between 2015 and 2020, UK nutrition-related interventions reached 5.54 million children under five, women and adolescent girls. What is the latest assessment of the scale of humanitarian need in Ethiopia, and which of the programmes currently operating in the region are expected to continue?
Ukraine’s grain exports are crucial to ensuring global food security. Before Russia’s full-scale illegal invasion, Ukraine accounted for around 10% of global wheat exports and 12% of corn and barley exports. In 2023, Russia deliberately obstructed and withdrew from the Black sea grain initiative, and then attacked grain storage and export infrastructure. Thanks to Ukrainian resilience and innovation, our support and the support of international partners, as of February 2024 over 13 million tonnes of agricultural produce had been exported through the Black sea since September 2023. Those supplies are crucial for the resilience of global grain markets and global food security, and they are especially important for the developing world. Developing countries, including Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan, have received significant quantities of grain directly from Ukraine via that corridor. What is the Minister’s latest assessment of the quantity of grain going through the Black sea and of the resilience of Ukraine’s export infrastructure?
To conclude, this week Nutrition for Growth convenes at a crucial moment for the world, and we wish the parties a successful summit. The Conservatives are proud of the leadership we showed in bringing international partners together and in embedding nutrition at every level of the FCDO’s work. I hope the Government will build on that foundation and continue to address these challenges.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Jardine. It has been a genuine pleasure to listen to and take part in this debate between hon. Members on both sides of the House, who share a deep passion for these issues. I am particularly grateful to the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for securing the debate, and to the APPG and the IDC for their crucial and important work.
The debate is timely, as I can confirm that my colleague Baroness Chapman will lead the UK delegation at the Nutrition for Growth summit in Paris. That shows our continued commitment to this issue. The ambassador looks forward to welcoming the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale and my hon. Friends the Members for Exeter (Steve Race) and for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) to the event she will host tomorrow at her residence to discuss these issues.
The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale gave a typically powerful and informed speech. He rightly noted the UK’s leadership on this issue. I have clearly heard his recommendations about the UK’s contribution to Nutrition for Growth, and the points he has raised in this debate and over the past months. I cannot provide him with all the assurances he requested on specific financial and related targets, but I will respond to the substance of many of the points raised by him and other hon. Members. I thank him for his kind words about our FCDO staff, with which I heartily concur.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter for his work as the co-chair of the APPG and for his kind comments about my ministerial colleague Lord Collins, who we all know has a strong passion for this issue, particularly in his role as Minister for Africa. We heard many powerful personal examples today, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter. I had the honour to see similar work on hunger and nutrition in my past career in the humanitarian sector, including when I worked for World Vision, which was mentioned a number of times in the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter raised a number of important points. I agree with him about the links between nutrition and health, which other hon. Members also noted. He mentioned illicit finance, and he will know of the Foreign Secretary’s important work in that area and on getting resources back into countries that need them.
It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), with his consistent and principled pressure on these issues. He rightly highlighted the important role of churches, and faith communities more broadly, on these issues, which reflects my own experience of working with such organisations. In response to him and other Members who asked about this, I can confirm that we are currently on track to meet the 2022 to 2030 commitment of £1.5 billion. To give the latest figure, we spent £366 million in 2022. I do not have more recent numbers, but I am happy to keep the House updated.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West made important links between public health and nutrition—we know how crucial that is—and spoke passionately from her own experience. We heard excellent speeches from the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed). She highlighted issues of conflict and food insecurity, and it was particularly important that she raised the situation in a number of places. On Sudan, our emergency assistance is helping over 1 million people, including Sudanese refugees who have fled the conflict and are seeking safety in Chad. On Gaza, UK support means that over 500,000 people have received essential healthcare and 647,000 have received food. Those are important issues, which my hon. Friend raised.
The shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), asked about Ethiopia—[Interruption.] I am glad to have some inspiration on that issue. We are supporting Ethiopia through the child nutrition fund, which is helping the Government there to deliver lifesaving nutrition services through the health sector. She also made some very important points about Ukraine, and I can again confirm that we are providing over £240 million for humanitarian support. We are also providing support on issues such as energy and reconstruction, which are crucial to dealing with food and nutrition needs.
I understand the concerns that Members around the Chamber have raised about the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on the necessary cuts to our aid budget. We all know the challenges we face today—the challenges to our national security and to the security of Europe and our world order are truly unprecedented—and the choice made about ODA and defence spending was extremely difficult. It is one that the Prime Minister did not take lightly, as he shares our collective pride in the difference that UK support is making in saving and improving lives all around the world.
The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the entire ministerial team strongly believe in the importance of our international development agenda for the national interest and our standing in the world, and in terms of our moral obligations to serve the most vulnerable. I have been privileged to see at first hand the impact of that work on many occasions. We have a proud record, and as the Prime Minister has said, we are committed to spending 0.7% of GNI as soon as conditions allow. Until then, we will use every pound we have to focus more than ever on maximising impact and value for money. However, for many of the challenges we face—including in this area—we require more than money, and the partnerships we will be creating in this important work on nutrition are part of that work.
The UK’s contribution to this year’s summit squarely reflects that approach. We have worked tirelessly with the Government of France to prepare for a successful summit in Paris, and we have mobilised commitments from a wide range of stakeholders. Central to that is an initiative we are launching tomorrow, which is the global compact on nutrition integration, which came up in many of the speeches. It is designed to ensure that policies and investments in key sectors such as health, food and climate place nutrition at their heart. It will help us to make the biggest impact while making the most of limited resources, including through more joined-up service delivery and targeting root causes more effectively. It will have an important impact on our wider work on climate resilience and economic growth, which of course depend on a well-nourished population, and the wider work we are doing on health has been made very clear.
The compact will improve our chance of making progress at the scale and speed we need. Many good examples have been reflected on today, but the compact will support mothers and children to access supplements and therapeutic foods as part of routine visits to primary healthcare, and make sure that the poorest can easily purchase from local markets all the foods they need for a healthy diet. We have already taken that approach with many of our partners, and I have given some examples already. We also support farmers and businesses to produce the most nutritious foods—for example, lentils in Nepal and vegetables in Ethiopia.
We cannot do this alone; we need others to join us if we are to succeed. We need to continue our work on integrating nutrition with our wider development work. One of the areas I would highlight is that only a tiny percentage of climate finance is allocated to nutrition, which is an unacceptable missed opportunity. We need to work with our partners to give more attention to the nutrition impact of their policies and investments in food systems more broadly. That is why we are calling on all those with a stake in Nutrition for Growth—countries in the global north and south, multilaterals, private investors and civil society organisations—to back the new global compact. That more integrated, coherent approach will ensure that the sum of everyone’s commitments is greater than the parts. This is a challenging time for the summit, given the global economic climate, but we think it will set out a good way forward and bring people together.
The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale and others have lobbied for new financial pledges and specific targets. The spending review and the need to look afresh at the specifics of our portfolio mean that we cannot announce a financial commitment this week—I want to be honest with the House about that—but we will submit the specifics of our commitment in due course through the official Nutrition for Growth channels, noting that France has set a deadline of the end of June. We will of course keep the House updated on that and on the work of the compact as we develop it.
Before I end, I want to say a few words about our continued commitment to tackle child wasting—the deadliest form of malnutrition. Only two weeks ago, Lord Collins reiterated his commitment at the launch of the joint UN initiative for the prevention of wasting—a new partnership with UNICEF, the World Health Organisation and the World Food Programme. That important part of our work complements our work on scaling up treatment through the child nutrition fund, which my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter asked about. Since the FCDO’s initial investment of £8 million, the CNF has attracted more than $29 million from 16 partner Governments and $300 million from philanthropists, including a recent pledge from the Bezos family to match further contributions with up to $250 million. Our contributions to the child nutrition fund were £15.74 million as of the end of 2024 through the child wasting innovation programme. Again, we are working in partnership with a range of sources and making important contributions.
This has been a hugely helpful debate. It is hugely informative to hear the strength of feeling in the House on these issues. I hope that my words today, and the important words of Baroness Chapman tomorrow in Paris, will reassure the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, members of the APPG and the Opposition spokespeople that we are not turning our back on the world and that nutrition will remain a key part of our development agenda.
David Mundell
I commend you, Ms Jardine, on your chairmanship in challenging circumstances in the House. We have still managed to have a very constructive and informed debate. Of course, there are significant challenges on these issues—not least financial challenges—but I feel that the very fact that this debate has taken place will positively feed into the summit and send the message that the United Kingdom takes these issues seriously. I will certainly do my best to convey that.
I should have thanked Lord Collins earlier for his work in the APPG before coming into government, and for the work he does now in the very challenging role of Minister for Africa. I thank my co-chair, the hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race), who spoke of his personal experience of seeing on the ground the difference that interventions can make. That is so important. It really is worth Members who get the opportunity making such visits, because they will see the difference that is being made.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised an important matter that affects not just nutrition but all development issues: securing public support. We must join with civil society groups across the UK and more widely to ensure that there is public support for development, particularly in relation to nutrition, which is a significant contributor to development—indeed, it is foundational, and critical to achieving most sustainable development goals.
The hon. Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) made the important point that a 1% increase in food insecurity leads to a 2% increase in migration. If people are serious about dealing with migration, they must be serious about dealing with food insecurity.
The hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) made an important point on the need to ensure continued UK global leadership on these and other issues; otherwise Russia, China and other malevolent actors will become involved. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) set out, we have done tremendously well in soft power terms in our work on the global stage, but we cannot give that up.
The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) made a very important contribution on two points, the first in relation to conflict, which is so important to the issue of malnutrition and food insecurity. I was very moved by the exhibition of drawings by children from Sudan, and a lot of the drawings were of people being shot while gathering food. It brought home the connection between conflict and food insecurity. The hon. Lady mentioned the University of Sheffield’s institute for sustainable food.
The International Development Committee visited Kew Gardens to hear about its work. I recently visited the John Innes research centre in Norwich with the APPG. A tremendous amount of work is being done on ensuring that we have more sustainable farming and food production that takes account of climate change and local circumstances.
I thank the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) for her continued support on this issue. She has been a key member of both the International Development Committee, including in producing our report, and the APPG, and she made a particularly important point about ensuring that the UK keeps its expert capacity. I am very positive, as the Minister recognised, about the team in the FCDO, but we have to ensure that that capacity remains if we want to have global leadership. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills did a great deal in her time at the FCDO to make sure that UK leadership was maintained in sometimes challenging circumstances—I think that is the best way to put it.
I welcome not just the content but the tone of the Minister’s contribution. I know that there are many in the Government who want to ensure that we still maximise the benefit we get from ODA spending. We make the case that spending on malnutrition has the best bang for buck, and many Members have spoken of the output from the relative input.
As the Minister mentioned the child nutrition fund, I hope he will be sympathetic to the call the hon. Member for Exeter and I made on increasing that contribution to £50 million. Given the longer pledging window, I look forward to the post-spending review, as I hope the Government might come back with a financial pledge. That is certainly the mood of this debate.
The Nutrition for Growth summit in Paris is a key moment for the international community to come together and address the scourge of malnutrition. The UK has a leading role to play and, on the basis of this debate, I hope it will play that role—I look forward to observing it.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Nutrition for Growth Paris Summit 2025.
Seriously Ill Children: Financial Support for Parents
(4 days, 10 hours ago)
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Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
I will call Chris Hinchliff 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.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered financial support for parents caring for seriously ill children.
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Ms Jardine.
I begin by paying tribute to my constituents Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis, who are in the Public Gallery today. Their tireless advocacy, following the tragic loss of their six-year-old son Hugh to cancer in 2021, is an inspiration to me, and I know this feeling is shared by colleagues across the House.
Ceri, Frances and the charity they set up, It’s Never You, have highlighted the immense challenges faced by families caring for seriously ill children. When a child is born, there is a support system in place for parents. Maternity pay provides a safety net for those who must stop work to care for their child, and the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 covers the parents of babies who are admitted to neonatal care within 28 days of birth. However, if a child falls seriously ill outside those periods, parents must navigate burdensome and insufficient systems that were not designed for families facing what is, for most, the very hardest time of their lives.
Ceri and Frances experienced this unfairness at first hand during the 100-mile round trips they had to make to be with Hugh during his treatment. Thankfully, they were financially stable, but they witnessed the harsh reality of our benefits system as they saw other parents being forced to sell their homes and give up work to care for their seriously ill children. Of course, these issues are compounded by the cost of living pressures that all families face, even without family emergencies piling on.
Approximately 68% of women and 57% of men with mental health problems are parents, which highlights the emotional strain that families across the country already face. Last year, a quarter of parents with children aged 18 and under said they struggled to provide sufficient food for their children, and Shelter estimates that 1.7 million private renters do not have enough savings to pay their rent if they were to become unemployed.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Member for securing this debate, and I spoke to him beforehand. Charities such as the Family Fund provide a wide range of grants to families in Northern Ireland who are raising a disabled or seriously ill child or young adult on a low income, to spend on kitchen appliances—a fridge, a cooker or a washing machine—or clothing, bedding, sensory or play equipment, technology or just a much-needed family break.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fact such charities are stepping in no way abdicates the Government’s responsibility to do more to help families when they need help? He is speaking about compassion. Compassionate action is what we need.
Chris Hinchliff
I agree that we should commend such charities. The hon. Gentleman shows moral clarity in rightly saying that the Government have an obligation to support families going through this incredibly difficult time.
Research shows that all the factors I have described mean that families are on a difficult footing even before facing the additional pressures of caring for a seriously ill child. When families need extra support during such challenging times, they are often met with bureaucratic hurdles that only add to their mental and financial stress. To access disability living allowance, parents face a 90-day waiting period, a daunting 40-page application form and long waits for responses. Universal credit and shared parental leave are unsuitable options for too many parents in this situation, as the rigid eligibility criteria mean that many parents of seriously ill children simply do not qualify.
Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)
My constituent Vicky came to my constituency surgery and spoke about Hugh’s law and how she had to take time off to look after her son, who has thankfully recovered. Does my hon. Friend agree that the £750 grant would provide certainty and help parents, by stopping the rigmarole of going through universal credit and those sorts of things? Would the grant help?
Chris Hinchliff
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I encourage the Minister to reflect on the fact that all the evidence we hear from It’s Never You shows that this very real problem is impacting families right across the country.
The systems that are in place were not designed to accommodate the urgent and unpredictable nature of childhood illness. Studies have shown that delays in financial support during critical life events significantly increase psychological stress and deepen financial instability. Research published in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology found that economic insecurity heightens parental stress, which can in turn hinder a family’s ability to provide the best possible care for their child.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for his excellent advocacy for Hugh’s law since his election to Parliament. I wholeheartedly agree with the campaign. Two families wrote to me in anticipation of this debate. One family’s child was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer at the age of just two. They were forced to drastically reduce their joint working hours so they could not only care for their sick child but also look after their other children. It is an enormous burden:
“No parent should face financial ruin while fighting for their child’s life.”
Does the hon. Member agree that day one support for these parents, as advocated by the Hugh’s law campaign, would be very welcome?
Chris Hinchliff
The hon. Lady eloquently highlights the importance of this campaign. I wholeheartedly agree with her.
The benefits system available to parents in these situations leaves a gaping hole for the families of seriously ill children, who find themselves with nowhere to turn, grappling with financial ruin, growing debt or the devastating thought of not being able to be at their child’s bedside when they are needed most. The British Journal of Social Work reports that families in medical crises without immediate financial support often face long-term debt, mental health struggles and career disruption, even after treatment ends.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this critical debate. He mentions the significant financial impact on families who are trying to make sure their children get the care they need. Statistics from Young Lives vs Cancer, and from my meetings with constituents in Redditch and the villages, show that some parents actually miss getting their children to appointments because of the financial challenges they face. This is not just about what happens to their long-term financial security; children are missing important appointments because their parents cannot afford to get them there.
Chris Hinchliff
I agree that the gaping hole in our benefits system is devastating for families. My hon. Friend once again highlights how incredibly important it is that the Government resolve this as a matter of urgency.
Over 80% of surveyed families experienced a significant decline in household finances due to their child’s illness. The core principle underpinning our welfare state is that nobody should have to consider their bank balance when faced with challenges not of their own making. Benefits exist to ensure that when life deals a cruel hand, its cost does not crush those who are already burdened. Instead, we share the responsibility across society, leaving nobody behind.
There is no group more deserving of support than families caring for seriously ill children. If, as a society, we fail to address this gap and spread the burden, we betray the very principle on which our welfare state was founded. Hugh’s law offers a straightforward solution to plug this gap, by providing immediate, non-means-tested financial support to parents of children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. It would provide a grant of £750 a month for up to three months, activated from the day of diagnosis. Eligibility would be limited to children diagnosed with life-threatening or chronic conditions requiring hospital care. Applications would be completed by the healthcare provider, cutting out needless stress for families and meaning no more 40-page forms.
There are examples of similar policies across the world, including in Sweden, France and Canada, where the employment insurance family caregiver benefit provides financial support to parents caring for a critically ill or injured child under 18 years old. Benefits are paid for up to 35 weeks, helping families to manage the financial strain while focusing on their child’s care. It is estimated that Hugh’s law would have an annual cost of just £6 million to £7 million and would support around 4,000 families annually.
To put that into context, the figure represents just 0.0025% of the Department for Work and Pensions’ 2023-24 budget. Given the unimaginable challenges these families face, caring for a seriously ill child while grappling with emotional strain, financial hardship and uncertainty, it is clear that the cost of such support is minuscule in comparison with the burden they carry. Life does not stop when a child gets sick. In fact, families often face higher day-to-day costs that impact them immediately—not in 90 days’ time, when support might become available.
Hugh’s law would offer much needed financial relief, allowing parents to focus on what matters most, being by their child’s side, without the crushing weight of financial anxiety. We have heard about the immense challenges faced by families caring for seriously ill children, which go beyond emotional strain to include financial hardship and bureaucratic obstacles. The tireless advocacy of Ceri and Frances, through their It’s Never You charity, has highlighted a gap in our welfare system that we simply cannot ignore.
Hugh’s law offers a practical and compassionate solution: immediate support to parents with a child diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Some 70 MPs signed my letter to the Prime Minister, and I have since written to the Department for Work and Pensions and met the Minister, who advised that the policy could be pursued with the Department for Business and Trade. I have now requested a meeting with the relevant Minister there.
My request to the Government and the Minister today is simple: embrace this campaign and take practical steps to make Hugh’s law a reality. I will meet with any Minister necessary to advance this policy, but the Government must do the right thing and work proactively to turn Ceri and Frances’s inspiring campaign into law.
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate, commend his consistent advocacy on this topic, and welcome the thoughtful and passionate speech he has made this afternoon.
I have now met my hon. Friend twice, and his constituents Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis, who founded It’s Never You—which I think is also what they said when they received their son’s diagnosis. I thank them for telling me what had happened and telling me frankly about the journey they went through with their son Hugh, who was in hospital with a very serious illness. Their heartfelt reflections and the Hugh’s law campaign help people like me to understand and appreciate much better the emotional and financial impacts that parents experience at an extremely difficult time. I commend the outstanding work that that charity and others do to support the parents and families of children with cancer and other very serious health conditions.
Many parents caring for children and young people with serious illnesses are likely to need additional support through social security. Caring naturally has an impact on work and therefore, very likely, on household income. Financial support is available through universal credit, and if needed support can be available on day one through a universal credit advance. Alongside the universal credit standard allowance, additional amounts—the child element, the disabled child addition, the carer element and housing costs—are added as appropriate. Of course, universal credit is means-tested, and I recognise that it will not help households with greater financial resources, but it is there as a safety net if those financial circumstances change.
In the tragic circumstances of a child dying, the universal credit bereavement run-on is in place. It is designed to ensure financial stability for the initial period following the bereavement, and it can last for up to three months. Universal credit elements—the child element, the disabled child addition, the carer element and housing costs—will all remain in payment for the assessment period in which the child died and two further assessment periods beyond that. To support parents at this very difficult time, benefit conditionality is switched off for six months, which ensures that bereaved parents do not have to work or search for work during that period. After three months, a work coach will be in touch to offer additional voluntary support, which may or may not be taken up.
There is also disability living allowance for children aged under 16 and personal independence payments for those over 16. They are available if a child or young person’s condition or illness is of a long-term nature and gives rise to care, daily living or mobility needs. They are not means-tested. We are currently consulting, following last week’s Green Paper on pathways to work, on raising the age at which young people move from DLA on to PIP, the adult disability benefit, from 16 to 18. That proposal has been quite widely welcomed since we published the Green Paper.
Comparing January to February 2020, just before the pandemic, with September to October 2024, the number applying for DLA for children has increased by 193%—it has nearly tripled in that period. As a result, I am afraid the average journey time for DLA claims has risen; it is up now to about 20 weeks. I very much regret those delays and the Department is working to reduce them. We have increased the number of staff dealing with applications; they are clearing cases in date order, to be fair to everybody.
These benefits are a contribution to the extra costs that may arise as a result of a disability or health impairment. They are assessed on the needs arising, not on the condition itself, so they are available irrespective of the diagnosis. The highest level of benefit is over £9,500 per year. The benefit is generally paid to the child’s parent or guardian, so it can help with overall family finances and be used as the family choose to meet their needs. Many children and young people with serious illnesses may spend a lot of time in hospital. For those under 18, DLA and PIP continue to be paid in full, which is a difference from the adult benefit.
I will now address the three-month qualifying period—which my hon. Friend rightly referred to in his remarks—that applies to disability benefits such as DLA and PIP. Payment begins once the three-month period has been completed, which helps to establish that the disability and resulting care and support needs are of a long-standing nature and provides a division between short and long-term disability. Claims can be submitted during the three-month qualifying period. Consideration will always be given to whether the qualifying period has already been served, at least in part, before the date of claim.
I want to highlight this point: the three-month qualifying period begins when the care needs began, and we depend on the parents to tell us when that was. It could well be a week or a significant period before the diagnosis or the hospital admission, and before the benefit application was submitted. It is important to look at when the care needs began, because that could have been well before the application was made. If the child sadly has an end-of-life diagnosis, as my hon. Friend knows, special rules apply: claims are fast-tracked and the three-month qualifying period does not apply. The highest rate of the DLA care component or the enhanced rate of the PIP daily living component will be paid from the date of the claim.
My officials are currently exploring the legal implications of another measure that has been proposed, which would introduce a run-on for child DLA and extend disability living allowance for a period after the death of a child. They will report on their conclusions once they have reached them. Receiving DLA and PIP can passport to a range of additional support, such as premiums in income-related benefits, carer’s allowance, the Motability scheme and exemption from the benefit cap, providing further help for families.
Help from social security is part of a wider commitment on the part of the Government. For children and young people who have cancer, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has relaunched the children and young people cancer taskforce, which is focused on identifying tangible improvements for that particular patient group. I commend the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), who co-chairs that taskforce and will spearhead its work on patient experience alongside her co-chair, Professor Darren Hargrave of University College London and Great Ormond Street hospital.
The taskforce will examine a wide range of issues across both clinical and non-clinical care, early diagnosis, genomic testing and treatment, research, innovation and, importantly, patient experience, looking at issues such as travel, food and psychological support. Ceri and Frances will be in a position to say a good deal about that, drawing on their own experiences in hospital with their son.
The cost of travel can be a real problem for families of children with serious illnesses. The healthcare travel costs scheme provides financial assistance to patients in England who do not themselves have a medical need for transport, but need help with the costs of travelling to NHS services. The Government recognise that some patients and their families who one might think should benefit from that scheme are in fact unable to do so as it is currently configured. The Department of Health and Social Care is looking at that issue and whether more should be done, alongside its wider work on cancer.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) and I have just been talking about something that we all feel is very important. When a child is experiencing terrible bad health—bad health that, as the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire said, could lead to their death—the pressure on the parents and immediate family is enormous. All they want to do is be with their child and love their child all the time. They need someone there to help—“Here are the forms you need to fill out; here is the help we can give you”—to take the pressure off so that they can focus entirely on their child. That is the issue.
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the pressures on the family in those circumstances. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire referred to the fact that from April this year, the Department for Business and Trade is introducing a new entitlement of up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave and pay for those with babies in neonatal care, to make sure that parents have appropriate support during that time—for exactly the reason the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has just set out. That new entitlement was introduced under the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023, which started as a private Member’s Bill in the previous Parliament and received cross-party support. When opening this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire said that he will speak to Ministers in that Department about some ideas along those lines.
It is important that all parents of children with serious illnesses are supported to return to or remain in work, if that is what they choose to do. Carers for seriously ill children are already protected from employment discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 and parents are entitled to up to 18 weeks’ unpaid parental leave to look after their children for any reason.
The Government’s new Employment Rights Bill will make it easier to access that entitlement, and will make the leave available from day one of starting a new job. It will also make it more likely that flexible working requests will be accepted by employers. To support existing, new and potential unpaid carers to make informed decisions about combining work and care, the Job Help website provides advice and information all in one place, and our new deal for working people will provide further support and help.
This debate has reminded us all that having a child who is seriously ill is surely one of the most worrying and stressful situations a parent can experience. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire for the initiative, which has given us the opportunity to talk about that today. There are no current plans to introduce a day one, non-means-tested grant for parents in this situation, like that proposed in the Hugh’s law campaign and supported in this debate, but I underline that there is already significant support offered by my Department. That is just part of the very important work across Government to improve support for parents in these circumstances, including, in particular, the relaunched children and young people cancer taskforce.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. It is an important and sensitive subject, and I commend him for pursuing it so energetically, the cause having been raised with him so effectively by his constituents. I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate, and I have no doubt at all that we will return to this subject.
Question put and agreed to.
Construction Standards: New Build Homes
(4 days, 10 hours ago)
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Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered construction standards for new build homes.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. It is an honour to hold this debate today on the construction standards for new build homes. I will start by thanking the tradespeople who work in my constituency—the brickies, sparkies, plasterers, plumbers, joiners and groundworkers, to mention just a few. I know first-hand how hard they work and how poorly they can be treated sometimes. It is important to note throughout this debate that the quality of the work of most tradespeople is something we and they should be very proud of. The quality of new builds is an issue for many of my constituents. Having one’s own home is a dream for many people across the country, including in my constituency of Sherwood Forest. Having a safe, affordable and warm home for all is something we should all strive for.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is clear that the issue is not necessarily with the workers, but with the developers. There must be rules and legislation in place to ensure that developers cannot cut corners or ignore the guidelines, and that they supply safe properties. If that does not happen, the Government need to enforce it, with fines if necessary.
Michelle Welsh
I thank the hon. Member for his important intervention. I will say more about that later.
Over 70% of people in Sherwood Forest own their own home.
Michelle Welsh
Over 70% of people in my constituency of Sherwood Forest own their own home, either outright or with a mortgage or loan, and a large proportion of them will be living in a new build home.
I know that we need to build more homes across the country and I am proud that this Labour Government are committed to delivering 1.5 million quality homes over the course of this Parliament. Personally, I know the importance of growing up in a safe, warm house—a place to call home. Of course, new homes that are built will be for homebuyers, for social housing and for housing some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. However, the key to the Government’s commitment must be quality.
There is a growing narrative around new build homes, suggesting that their construction standards are lower than those of homes built earlier. That is because we too often see new build homes that are not fit for purpose, and that are damaged, draughty or unsafe to live in. It is wrong that when someone moves into a new home or into their first ever house, they may not get the quality that they are paying for.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Does the hon. Member agree that not only the house must be of a very high quality, but the surrounding estate that the house is built on? That is essential because the guarantees and building certificates that come with a home do not relate to that surrounding estate, and if there are problems with, for example, the drains or the roads, it can be very difficult to get them fixed, which is a nightmare for a new homeowner.
Michelle Welsh
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and I completely agree with her point, which my constituents have also raised with me. Homebuyers deserve to feel confident that their new home is safe and will not begin to crumble as soon as the key is in the door.
I will refer to the experience of one of my constituents with their new build home. Kelly and her husband Simon moved into their new home in Bilsthorpe in October 2024. They opted to go for a new build home because of their disabled son, thinking that a new build would be clean and that they would not have to spend much time adjusting it to meet their son’s needs.
Almost immediately, however, they realised that the high-standard and handcrafted home that they had been promised was not to be. They discovered numerous issues with the house. These included an incorrectly fitted and sized boiler cylinder, which left them without heating for three days; an improperly installed bath. which dropped and left gaps in the tiles; dirty tiles; damage to the flooring; and windows with scratches and stickers left on. I could go on. All of this was on top of the usual moving house stress. I know from my own experience that the days and weeks leading up to moving house are taken over by worry about what could go wrong. That a new home could contain even more nightmares is the last thing on someone’s mind.
When Kelly and Simon raised their issues with their constructors and builders, Harron Homes, they were met with more bad treatment. Through their complaints, my constituents learned that despite some of these issues being known to the site manager and sales executive, the home was in fact signed off. Harron Homes stated that there was “nothing to stop them” living in the property and that it was “happy” with the state of the home. I know everyone here will agree that the conditions my constituents faced in the house were certainly not good enough, and should have stopped them from being allowed to live in the property, especially with a disabled son.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
I feel for the hon. Member’s constituents. In Silsden, in my constituency of Keighley and Ilkley, Harron Homes carried out a development of 50 plus properties where my constituents faced exactly the same challenges and scenarios of snagging that she is quite rightly indicating. Alongside her, I reiterate my call to the likes of Harron Homes to, essentially, sort themselves out for the benefit of the constituents of us both.
Michelle Welsh
I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman.
When moving into a new home, a high quality and safe living environment is expected. We should not be expecting anyone to live in properties that do not meet these standards.
What has further shocked me about this case is the treatment of my constituents by Harron Homes. In an email, Kelly and Simon were described as “a pain” and they have had to wait weeks for repairs, and even just for a response. They deserve better, yet they are not alone in their experience.
Sara, a constituent in Hucknall, got in touch with me immediately following my election in July, regarding her ongoing case with Persimmon Homes. Like Kelly and Simon, Sara walked into her new home to find it completely below standards, with over 117 different faults and damages across the property. These included damaged flooring, poor insultation leading to cold spots, and plumbing issues. The company had even left my constituent with a broken patio door that had large gaps around the side, leaving her and her family fearing for their safety as the door could not be locked. This has understandably been extremely distressing for Sara and for her elderly mother. While Persimmon Homes has offered Sara some money to put towards the cost of repairs, it will not be enough to cover the full extent of the damages and faults in her home. Over 70 defects still remain. It is wrong that Sara was ever in this position, and that the construction standards of her home were not properly monitored. How many more families like Sara’s have to battle just to get the quality of home they originally paid for?
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and for the case she is setting out. This is something that I have experienced with residents in Mid Sussex over a number of years, particularly in the village of Hurstpierpoint. The village has taken considerable numbers of new houses, and there have been houses among those developments that have been substandard. I think in particular of a family who had a brand-new house where, if you ran your hand down the wall, you could tell there was a film of grey mould. It took years of hassling the housing association and the developer for them even to admit that there was a problem and that they were are at fault.
Does the hon. Member agree that if we are to win the hearts and minds of people who are sceptical about housing growth in their villages and towns, confidence in the quality of new build housing must be beyond question?
Michelle Welsh
I completely agree. I was pleased that the Government announced they are accepting some of the recommendations in the Competition and Markets Authority’s housebuilding market study. I am particularly pleased that we are implementing a statutory UK-wide new homes ombudsman scheme and supporting the development of a voluntary ombudsman scheme to improve consumer protection ahead of the statutory scheme’s launch. For too long, customers have felt like they have nowhere to turn, are not being listened to by the big developers, and do not know their rights. I hope this is a step towards changing that.
I ask the Minister that when drafting the new UK-wide scheme, the Government put quality at the heart and ensure that people have all the necessary protection in cases such as those of my constituents. We must also have better oversight and accountability for companies that do not deliver high-quality construction standards. It is vital that we showcase what good practice looks like. I know there are many builders who do an exceptional job, and take great pride in their work. We cannot let the reputation of new build homes be ruined by a few rogue companies.
I mentioned earlier that I am proud that this Government have committed to delivering 1.5 million quality homes. In my constituency, the quality has sometimes been very lacking, the infrastructure has been very lacking, and the local Ashfield district council has been gerrymandering with its local plan, which continues to put precious historical land at risk, while there are more than enough brownfield sites to be used across the district. I ask the Minister that when we deliver these homes, the necessary steps are taken to ensure that the right companies and builders are selected to complete this work; that we work to provide the infrastructure that is needed; and that when councils let their communities down, like Ashfield district council has, the Government will step in.
I ask the Minister to ensure that the Government and local authorities have the necessary oversight powers to ensure that quality is maintained throughout the house building process. We have a real opportunity to build the homes we desperately need, while beginning to close the skills gap and shutting out rogue companies that underperform. Tradespeople need protection so that they are able to do a high-quality job.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech, and I agree with many of her points. Does she agree that when someone buys a new home, not only do they expect to have the mains water running, electric and gas, but in this day and age they expect to have a good broadband connection? Although the last Government made significant progress with obliging new house builders to connect properties, the £2,000 cap is sometimes giving developers an opt-out—a get-out—from connecting some properties to high-quality broadband. Does she agree that we should go further to ensure that all properties have access to high-speed broadband?
Michelle Welsh
I completely agree with that, as somebody who represents a constituency that has a large very rural chunk. With these new builds it is really important that such communities stay connected.
Future generations deserve to know that they are buying and/or living in quality homes, whether that is in new social housing, or their own home that they have purchased. Our construction workers of today and tomorrow, and the future of our housing, rely on us, as a Government, to get this right.
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Because of the various interventions, we can now continue until 7.47 pm this evening.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate. I am very happy about it, because for about 10 years Persimmon Homes, which she mentioned, has been on my radar both as a local councillor and as a Member of Parliament.
We have an estate in Huthwaite in my constituency called the Mill Lane estate, which was built by Persimmon some 12 or 13 years ago. The standard of work was, to say the least, quite shoddy. There were lots of snagging issues when people moved in, but it is too late then—they have paid the money, they have got the mortgage and they are in these houses with dodgy patios, patio doors that do not fit, kitchens falling to pieces, uneven floors, walls that are not lined up and doors that do not fit. When they complain to Persimmon, it takes ages to come out and see people and put the work right.
In fact, Persimmon did not come out at all, so I ended up, as a councillor, putting in formal complaints on behalf of the residents who had snagging problems. I did it through the previous MP’s office, and lo and behold, once the MP got involved and we put in formal complaints, Persimmon started to come round to people’s houses and put the problems right. However, it should not be for somebody who has just forked out thousands and thousands of pounds, and made themselves skint to get their new dream home, to have to go to the local MP or councillor to complain about a brand-new but shoddy home and try to get the work put right. The owner of a brand-new home would expect it to be right first time. Imagine waking up one morning and seeing all these problems after being in there for a week. That has been happening to residents in my constituency.
We have another Persimmon estate in Ashfield—the Owston Road estate in Annesley. Persimmon—I will name and shame it because I think it is important to do so, as it has been dreadful to my constituents—decided to put a road on this estate made out of semi-permeable blocks of stone. It is not a normal road, but a type of block paving that has been put on the whole estate. Nottinghamshire county council had never seen this block paving before, so it quite rightly refused to adopt the estate, because once it adopted the estate, it would be responsible for the block paving. They have been arguing the toss for over 10 years, and I have been working on this for 10 years as a councillor and an MP. Every year or so, Persimmon staff turn up on site with their high-vis jackets and their boots, and they meet me and speak to residents. They promise to have a plan to put it all right within six months, and six months later Persimmon has swapped staff or sacked somebody, and another person turns up.
This has been going on for 10 years, and I have a resident called Mr Warhurst—Alan Warhurst—who has been campaigning with me for the past 10 years. I actually feel sorry for this bloke, because it has got to the point where he thinks he is banging his head against a brick wall. The killer is that when people try to sell their houses, they may struggle. Some of them may struggle to get a mortgage on these houses, because the estate is in essence a private one. Nobody has adopted it, and nobody wants to adopt it or the highway, because it could cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to put this work right.
I have a solution. I am not sure whether the Minister will agree with me, but I strongly suggest this for house builders such as Persimmon. Don’t get me wrong; I have had this with Ben Bailey, Avant and other house builders, but they have been much better and much more forthcoming in putting right the repairs. I suggest that if we have persistent problems with a house builder, we should reject any planning application from it in the future, until it starts to build houses correctly. I think that is the only way to stop these people.
When a council adopts a new estate, it takes on full responsibility, and the house builder knows that. However, once the house owner has purchased the house—once they are in their house, have the keys and have a mortgage —they are locked into that house and they are stuck with it. They cannot really battle with the house builder, whereas a local authority can. The local authority holds all the aces. It can say, “No, we’re not adopting that road, these pavements or these street lights until you’ve built them to our standards.” It is the same with the local water authority, such as Severn Trent, which can say to the house builder, “No, we’re not adopting that sewer or that freshwater supply until you’ve built them to our standards.”
John Lamont
The hon. Member is doing an excellent job of highlighting the problems with new house developments in his constituency. The National House Building Council will in many cases provide a guarantee backing up the developer to fix the repairs that are required, but I have certainly had difficulties with the NHBC in the past. Has he any reflections on the role it plays?
Lee Anderson
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which, as usual, is spot on. He is quite right, and I have had loads of these problems over the years. In fact, I had a big project running on a few of my new house builds in Ashfield a few years ago, and I was getting exactly that problem. People think they have a 10-year guarantee, but when they try to get in touch with the NHBC to get the work put right, they find it is next to useless. That is why the people on these new housing estates are contacting their local councillor and their local MP in great numbers.
While I am here, I will give right hon. and hon. Members a tip. Because of what the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest has said, if they get a new housing estate in their patch—I am getting one shortly—they should go and knock on the doors, deliver a snagging leaflet or do a survey to ask people whether they are satisfied with their house builder. Hon. Members would be surprised how many surveys we get back from constituents who are deeply unhappy with the state of their house.
Alison Bennett
I have done exactly that. I sent out a street letter and flushed out all sorts of problems with new build estates. Problems with management companies sometimes come up in those surveys. Is that something that the hon. Gentleman wants to comment on?
Lee Anderson
It is. We have had problems with management companies in one of my estates in Kirkby-in-Ashfield over the maintenance of a local park and some of the green spaces that come with these new house builds.
I want to touch on what the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest said about our problems with Ashfield district council. We have not had a local plan in Ashfield for nearly 25 years. Each time the administration changes, it falls out over a local plan. That has meant that developers can apply to build anywhere in Ashfield, and they are attacking our green spaces at great pace. In 2018, we were promised a local plan to protect our green spaces within three years by the current independent-led council, the Ashfield Independents, because they had ripped up the old plan. Fast forward seven years and there is no local plan. One has been put in, but it does not protect our green spaces. It will allow developers to run roughshod over our green spaces in Ashfield. It will allow developers of new houses to come in and build their shiny new houses on green fields, which will lead to loads of problems. In my constituency, we will get loads of people complaining about their new build houses.
As the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) said, people expect to have the internet connected to their houses these days, and some of these housing companies are deliberately misleading their customers. They do not admit that there will not be any broadband in the houses they are selling. Most people assume that in this day and age, it is another utility like their gas, electric and water. It has been a complete nightmare for some of my constituents on the newer estates. I will close there, and I thank the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest once again for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall.
Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
I want to talk about some of the new build housing in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper)—a very able colleague—and I have had difficulties with the same set of developers, so I will hand over to him to talk about the difficulties we have had with the housing in Spen View and Astbury Park, which were dealt with by Stewart Milne Homes. I will also not be giving an honourable mention to the job that Vistry has done in Loachbrook Meadow in Congleton. It is trying to persuade my residents to take on a management company and take over management of the estate, despite the fact that it has not built the sewers or roads to adoptable standards. I can see nods around the room; it is clear to me that I am not the only one suffering with these difficulties.
Currently, however, the leading problem developer in my constituency is Zenith House Developments, which produced Scholars Place in Sandbach. Scholars Place, a mixed development of detached homes and social housing, looks absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, it was not finished with any sort of sewage pumping station, and that is as bad as one might imagine. At the moment, sewage from these homes simply goes into a well, which has a semi-piece of plasterboard covering it and is inadequately fenced, so it is totally accessible and a massive drowning hazard of excrement. It is incredibly dangerous, and it is about 200 metres, at most, from a local primary school. It is absolutely horrific. There are some real questions about whether we have sufficient legal powers in this country, given that that was ever allowed to happen. It is a public health hazard, causing sewage to back up into people’s homes and on to the streets. The road literally runs with poo.
The problems associated with this development and the Spen View development have an impact on social housing providers. In both cases, there were section 106 agreements and social housing was provided. When these enormous and expensive problems occur for residents, the social housing providers that part own the shared ownership homes on such sites become financially entangled in trying to deal with the matter. Because they part own the homes, it is of course appropriate that they should help their residents. However—I suspect this is a national problem—social housing providers, which need to provide social homes, effectively have to cross-subsidise the failings of the private sector in producing these houses. It is an absolutely shocking situation.
It is important to me that we implement section 42 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which would improve the situation around sewer adoption, and that we have an equivalent for highways adoption. The problem across every one of the developments that I have mentioned is that the sewers and roads have not been dealt with properly. People have bought their dream homes—they are so excited—and then they find they have an enormous financial liability. It is a widespread problem in my constituency, and it is destroying people’s lives. It is destroying their mental health; the level of distress among my constituents cannot be overstated.
While we are on the topic of new build homes, I will briefly touch on disability and accessibility in relation to construction standards. In London, category 4 disability access as a planning requirement has been the norm since 2004, but in the rest of the country that is not the case. Baseline category 1 only enables a household to be hypothetically visitable by a disabled person, and it does not guarantee ease of access for someone in a wheelchair. It seems to me to be a very basic minimum that homes that we are building now should be visitable by people who use wheelchairs.
We have an ageing population and lots of people who are waiting for accessible housing. As a Government, we are doing a large amount of affordable housing development, which I welcome. However, I want us to ensure as a minimum that that housing is accessible and adaptable, that a significant proportion of it is fully wheelchair adaptable and that more of it is fully wheelchair accessible.
I suggest we look at the planning frameworks from 2018, because they require local authorities to consider the impact of requiring accessible housing on the viability of their local plan. It is almost a requirement that housing should not be accessible if that will make it difficult to deliver the required number of homes. With the developers I have just described, of course the first thing that they say is that they cannot afford to provide accessible homes —but, of course, they can. They need to be producing good quality homes that everybody can access, in estates surrounded by safe and secure environments in which the roads and sewers are usable. That does not seem too much to ask in an advanced industrial society.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for securing this important debate. As I said in my earlier intervention, it seems that we have both experienced the challenges of Harron Homes, and she has my full sympathy for having to deal with them. In my own constituency, I had the managing director come out—not that he wanted to, but I managed to get him there—and we had a meeting with residents to talk through some of the challenges. I share the concerns that she raised on behalf of her constituents, because it is not a good housing developer and it does not have its residents’ best interests at heart.
Construction standards are not just about bricks and mortar; they go into a home, and they go beyond that, into the sense of belonging that one feels when living in a good quality space. Construction standards are also about the process of planning, site security and development maintenance, all of which play a part in the experience of a resident who moves into a property.
I will use this opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that I have experienced in my constituency, particularly in Long Lee. In Redwood Close, a development is being undertaken by Accent Housing Group. I was called to look at the condition of an existing construction site about eight months ago. It is derelict because those involved in the construction went bust, but this is a site that is right in the heart of Long Lee and, dare I say it, has been causing a huge nuisance not only to those who wanted to move into the development and are now experiencing delays, but to those living in close proximity. I was invited along to see the access challenges to this particular site for myself. Neighbouring properties have had boundary walls, drainage and access all disturbed as the result of ongoing, existing construction. It is completely unacceptable.
I met again with the director for development, who came out on to the site with me around four months ago and reassured me that things would change at speed. I can tell hon. Members that nothing has changed at all, other than giving me further reassurance and then holding a residents meeting. They have told me that Esh Construction Ltd has now been appointed to complete the works, but those works are not due to start until mid-spring and construction of the site at Long Lee will not be completed until 2026.
All the while, those neighbours—who have had their property damaged, access hindered and boundary walls to their properties completely removed, allowing easy access to a dangerous site—have had to live with this right on their doorstep. It prompts the question: what has the local authority been doing throughout this whole process? Bradford council has not monitored the construction, nor has it carried out sufficient enforcement action; indeed, no enforcement action seems to have been taken at all. That is not a satisfactory outcome for the residents in Long Lee.
John Lamont
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and he is right to highlight the important role that local authorities have. However, speaking as a former commercial property lawyer, I think part of the problem is that, when buying a new home, the purchaser is forced to take a contract package that is geared in favour of the developers. When someone buys a second-hand home, there is a degree of negotiation between the parties, but when buying a brand-new home they take the pack from the developer and the remedies for the purchaser to deal with snagging items are very limited. Does he agree that that is part of the problem?
Robbie Moore
I absolutely agree, and that point has been made by the hon. Members for Sherwood Forest and for Ashfield (Lee Anderson): once someone has purchased a property or is tied into a contractual relationship, dealing with those snagging issues is a huge challenge. Where can they go from there? They have been taken out of the local authority’s remit to deal with it, because it has approved the planning application—having probably not carried out any enforcement action at all. That is the problem I observed with Bradford council’s lack of any attention to the challenges that we faced in Keighley, Ilkley and the wider area that I represent.
The problem is that, when someone is locked into a contractual relationship, or has even moved into a property, and there are snagging issues, they are effectively trapped and there is no real ability for any organisation with any weight to deal with that. Will the Minister address in her closing remarks what action the Government will now take to deal with cases where new developments have been constructed of a poor quality and concerns have been consistently raised?
It should not take a Member of Parliament to deal with those concerns—it seems that only housing developers only then suddenly realise they have to do something about them. What will the Government do to provide more weight to these concerns that are being raised, so that people with snagging issues can have reassurance that those problems will be sorted out?
I will conclude my comments by discussing the challenges associated with dealing with section 106 moneys. When planning applications have been approved, there is then effectively a negotiation that takes place between the developer and the local authority. I again have to rely on Bradford council negotiating the best deal for whatever that section 106 money is contributing to. Section 106 money is effectively a payment to deal with any mitigating factors that have been negatively imposed on our community through that development. I give the simple example: if those negotiations are not robust enough, that disadvantages the communities we represent. If that section 106 obligation is not spent or enacted within a reasonable time, our constituents are significantly disadvantaged as a result of a local authority—such as Labour-run Bradford council—not responding well enough. That disadvantages the communities we represent.
Alison Bennett
I have no knowledge about the workings of Bradford council, being a Sussex MP, but in my experience—and I should declare an interest in that I am a district councillor in Mid Sussex—local councils do not necessarily have the powers needed to move swift enforcement action. In section 106 negotiations, they do not necessarily have the deep pockets of the development sector to lawyer up and get those good deals. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?
Robbie Moore
I would politely push back on that. My understanding is that local authorities do have the powers available to them throughout the planning process to challenge the planning application put before them and to have a robust level of negotiation with the developer, resulting in a section 106 obligation being firmly and robustly constructed to deliver residents’ best interests. It is up to the local authority whether it chooses to utilise the powers awarded to it. In my case, I feel that Bradford council does not use any such powers in the first place.
Mrs Russell
In terms of the ability to do those things, the many years of cuts to local authority budgets—amounting to about 30% of local authority budgets over the last 14 years—are highly relevant. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also a question here about directors’ duties? If those organisations go insolvent, no matter how great a 106 agreement is, that money cannot be recovered because the organisation no longer exists to recover it from. It should never have been possible for such a level of disruption to have happened to those residents, or for the people behind it to just go off in their Range Rovers.
Robbie Moore
The hon. Lady raises two points. I will take the second point on the director’s responsibility first. I absolutely agree that it should not be possible for a housing developer to move away from a scheme, leaving it unfinished, as happened in Long Lee, where Accent Housing effectively did not deliver, causing huge nuisance to local residents. That should not be an acceptable situation.
On the section 106 negotiations, the question comes down to this: when is the trigger point kicking in, and is it in the best interests of those residents? If it is not, why? I would argue strongly that, in the scenarios I have seen with Bradford council, those trigger points are not negotiated in the best interests of my residents. That local authority, back in 2021, threw its statutory obligation to Government and said that it was in sound financial health. I do not think that resource or Government cuts are an issue in relation to how it anticipates those negotiations going on; it is just pure lack of willingness to do its job. I conclude my remarks on that point, because I know that there are many other speakers who want to contribute.
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Order. We have to move on to the Front Bench contributions in 12 minutes, so please keep your remarks to five minutes each.
Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) has previewed, I will focus my comments on the collapse of Stewart Milne Homes North West, and the lasting consequences it has had for many families across my constituency and no doubt the wider north-west region.
Stewart Milne Homes went into administration in January last year, leaving several housing developments half-built, although the three in my constituency had been completed for some years. Nevertheless, homeowners have been left burdened with a potential financial nightmare, as streets and sewers were never properly adopted by the local highways authority or the water company. That has created a situation where residents, who have every right to expect a functioning, safe environment, are instead left with a looming threat of significant costs. The reason for the predicament is simple: there was either no bonded section 38 agreement in place with the local council, or no bonded section 104 agreement with the water company for the adoption of sewers—or, in some cases, neither—despite residents having deeds, on completion of their sale, showing that the estate would be adopted.
I can only speak with direct knowledge of my own constituency, but I am aware, through research undertaken by my team and through conversations with the local authority and with United Utilities, that that is far from a unique situation, leading one to wonder whether Stewart Milne either acted negligently, or actively mis-sold properties on the basis that their roads and sewers would be publicly maintained. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton makes a reasonable point about director’s duties in that circumstance.
Without those legal agreements, there is no guarantee that local authorities or utility companies will take responsibility for maintaining those essential services. As a result, the burden of making these streets and sewers adoptable—essentially bringing them up to standard—is being shifted directly on to the homeowners. Families who have already invested in their homes, often using their lifelong savings, are now facing huge, unexpected bills.
That is a situation that residents in one development in Middlewich are currently facing. Despite the estate having been practically complete for a decade, the lack of an appropriate agreement means that the sewers on the development have not yet been adopted by United Utilities. Initial estimates from the inspections to date suggest that costs for the required remedial works could run into thousands. Costs are therefore liable to fall on residents. These homeowners are being forced to pay for poor planning, poor practices and poor execution, through no fault of their own.
We cannot and must not allow this situation to continue unchecked. There is a fundamental need for greater oversight and accountability in the house building sector. The mistakes of Stewart Milne should not become the burden of individuals affected by them, and the gaps in regulation that allowed that to happen must be addressed so that no homeowner is ever left in this position again. We need clearer, stronger regulations on the adoption of streets and sewers. Developers must be held accountable for ensuring that all necessary agreements are in place before any properties are occupied, not after the damage is done. On the utility side, that can be done very easily by implementing section 42 of the Flood and Water Management Act, but I would argue that an equivalent is needed for highways.
The financial cost of completing unfinished works should not fall on the shoulders of families who are innocent victims in this situation. In addition, there must be better protection for homeowners in the event of a developer’s failure. We cannot allow this pattern of abandonment and negligence to continue, with large companies walking away without facing the consequences and residents being left with the fallout. We must ensure that this situation is rectified and that no more homeowners are left to bear the burden of a developer’s failure.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for securing this important debate.
Having listened to the contributions from my good friends, my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest and the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), who represent neighbouring constituencies to mine, I am deeply saddened to hear of the difficulties that their constituents have faced during what should be a moment of joy and achievement, particularly for those families who are first-time buyers.
While many aspire to own their own home, in my Mansfield constituency it has become a dream that many cannot afford. Equally, however, those who cannot also deserve to live in a home that is high quality and fit for purpose. That is why I also welcome the efforts and the work being done by Mansfield district council with its new council home building project. As I saw with my own eyes a few months ago during a site visit, the council are now midway through a £7.7 million development scheme on the Bellamy Road estate in Mansfield, in which an initial 22 high-quality affordable homes are being built. I must say that these homes, which will be rented to local families on the council’s housing list, are all being built to an extremely high standard, and one better than that which is legally required.
The council is ahead of the game in delivering these homes to exceed the future homes standard, which will seek to ensure that homes are built to an environmentally friendly specification. This includes building homes with higher standards of insulation, to keep energy bills as low as possible, which is good both for the planet and for my constituents’ pockets. I am glad to say that the council’s partner, Mercer Building Solutions, had to include a range of social value actions in the development. For instance, it ensured that almost 90% of the workforce lived within a 20 mile radius of the district. These are truly local houses for local people, built by local people.
I am keen that councils and house builders look to British industry for solutions in construction. My constituency is home to Power Saving Solutions, a company that is enabling reduced reliance on diesel-generated power on building sites, and I learnt recently about JCB’s response, with its hydrogen-powered combustion unit, which will also reduce carbon emissions in the construction industry. Those are two great examples of private sector firms enfranchising themselves in our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower.
While I congratulate my council on its innovation and forward thinking, what I have heard in this debate is that it is time for the private sector to up its game and put the quality of houses before profit. As a part of this, we must invest in our local workforce to support the British construction industry. That is why I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of £600 million of funding to train tens of thousands more skilled construction workers in the next four years. The money will go towards creating more places at technical excellence colleges and expanding skills in the sector.
I promised last summer that I would bring good-quality jobs and opportunities to people in my constituency. With this Government pledging to build 1.5 million new homes, it is important that they are built to the highest standards. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister about what the Government will do to ensure that they are.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate and on her powerful description of the impact on her constituent, Sara, of the 70 remaining defects in her home.
Given that 89% of homeowners are satisfied with the quality of their home, we might think that all is well in the world of house building, but throughout the debate hon. Members have highlighted where it simply does not work for our constituents. Just scratching at the surface clearly shows the different reality beneath, because alongside that satisfaction rate sits the stark statistic that 27% of new homeowners report 16 or more defects in their home. That is not minor snagging; it is a quarter of new homeowners moving into homes that are riddled with problems.
As the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) set out, existing homeowners are affected as well. Let us be clear: this is not a new problem. Reports going back as far as the 2007 Callcutt review warned about poor-quality construction and inadequate warranties, yet here we are in 2025, debating the same failures.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) pointed out that confidence must be beyond question, but time and again we have seen developers prioritising profit over quality. The consequences can be devastating. Look at Solomon’s Passage in Southwark, completed in 2012 and condemned just six years later due to serious defects. In my Newbury constituency, a new-build estate, Lancaster Park in Hungerford, does not meet the expectations of the people paying a high price to live there. These are not one-offs; these are symptoms of a broken system.
We cannot ignore that the UK has some of the worst-insulated homes in Europe. Six million households in the UK are living in fuel poverty, including 3,000 in my constituency, yet new homes are still built with gas boilers and inadequate insulation. Minister, we cannot keep building homes that are outdated the moment they are finished. The Government had the opportunity to mandate future home standards in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but they did not do so.
The Liberal Democrats would change that. Zero carbon must be the default. Every new home should have solar panels and renewable energy as standard. Planning must include climate resilience and flood mitigation, as the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) mentioned in reference to section 42 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Retrofitting must be a priority.
Lee Anderson
The hon. Gentleman talks about all these great ideas for what the Lib Dems will do—fitting solar panels and heat pumps and stuff like that—but does he trust house builders to do that to a high standard?
Mr Dillon
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which gets to the heart of this debate. Whether it is building a damp-proof course correctly or installing cutting-edge climate technology, the Government have a responsibility to ensure that a strong regulator holds developers to account when they fail. As Members around the Chamber have said, we have seen failure, but that should not prevent us as Members of this House from setting a high bar for developers to reach.
Finally, I shall talk about infrastructure. It is not enough to build houses; we need to build communities, yet too often we see developments spring up without the GP surgeries, schools, public spaces or public transport links that people rely on, or with highways that cannot be adopted, as the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) highlighted. That is why we Liberal Democrats are calling for a planning system that guarantees delivery alongside housing targets. That means mandatory commitments from developers to fund GP practices, schools and green spaces; to put public transport first—new developments should be built around sustainable travel, not car-dependency—and deploy sustainable drainage, with grey water recycling included as standard in all new builds.
Although the Government have taken positive steps, there is still much to do. Those are all things that have been proven possible. Across the country, Liberal Democrat councils have led the way, from zero-carbon homes when we ran York, to 1,300 new council houses in Portsmouth. We know what works. Now the Government must follow our lead. Every family deserves a safe, warm and high-quality home—not just a roof over their heads, but a real foundation for the future. I urge the Minister and the Government to take action. No more delays, no more excuses—just homes that work for the people who live in them.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you once again, Ms Jardine. I, too, add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing the debate.
I was reflecting, as we watched House staff go about their business, that Hansard will record all the words that have been spoken by Members in this debate. Indeed, they will mirror some of the historical records of ancient Rome and ancient China, when politicians complained about the quality of the construction of the Great Wall and many iconic buildings, and reflected on what could be done to ensure that buildings were constructed to the standard needed.
Of course, for each new generation the specific challenges change. We have different aspirations for the standard of our homes, as well as different technology and construction methods, and we need to ensure that what is built is fit for purpose. Although its focus has been on new homes, the debate has been wide ranging, touching on elements of housing tenure and the implications for the ability of occupiers to get change dealt with, the complications of the legal situation around warranties and insurances, and the challenges reflected in the ability or otherwise of local authorities to address complaints when they are brought forward.
The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon) started out talking about tenant satisfaction. It is striking that, on the whole, people in the UK describe a high level of satisfaction with their accommodation, private renters being the most satisfied. Beneath that, however, as the hon. Gentleman set out, there are a number of challenges.
I encourage the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest to make contact with my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier)—a forest theme seems to be emerging among Members raising this issue—who has a private Member’s Bill specifically on consumer protection for those who commission building work. That would begin to address in law many of the issues that have been raised this evening. Indeed, earlier today I informed a group of housing associations about the need to appoint a clerk of works for new developments—someone who is there every single day, monitoring on their behalf exactly what is being constructed, in order to ensure that the kind of problems that Members across the Chamber have described are not present when they come to undertake the landlord role in those properties.
The Federation of Master Builders has a number of proposals to ensure that the construction industry in the UK adopts significantly higher standards, not only building on the experience of other countries but reflecting the particular circumstances of the UK housing market.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
Talking about future-proofing our homes, a key things we could do with an ageing population is to ensure that all new homes are built to higher accessibility and adaptability standards. The previous Government consulted on that, but never implemented anything. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that was a lost opportunity? By not implementing M4(2) standards, many new homes have been built that do not meet those higher standards.
David Simmonds
I would not describe that as a lost opportunity, but it is an opportunity that we need to consider. We recognise that we have a new Government with aspirations for housing. We had a Government who, despite all the challenges, set themselves a target of about 1 million homes and came very close to delivering on that during the life of the previous Parliament, but as I frequently point out in debates, we need to ensure that we are not simply thinking about the numbers of units. The 1.5 million target is not something we can achieve by packing the highest number of properties—studio flats—into various locations. We need to think about the nature of the homes and the type of housing that communities need, and about how a more nuanced approach can ensure that we build homes that support our housing market. For example, people may wish to downsize or to move because of disability, and to find accommodation that is fit for purpose in their local area.
A number of Members touched on the role that building control services play in signing off developments to assure that they are fit for purpose. All the debate, as reflected on by Members across the House, has demonstrated the complexity of this issue: fire safety is considered through the lens of one set of legislation; building control is about fitness of construction standards; the local authority has its planning responsibilities to ensure that what is built is what has planning consent; and, too, there is the insurance industry, which in essence is a private market that decides for itself what it considers fit to be an insurable and occupiable property. That has enormous influence.
In my constituency, I have the former Royal Air Force Lime Grove development constructed by Taylor Wimpey, where I have been engaging with constituents since I was first elected. That has been a very slow process, not least because things such as drainage have been built well below the standard required and can only be rectified if we are prepared to demolish all the homes that sit on top of that drainage. Those kinds of challenges are enormously complicated.
I place on the record my thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), and the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for the points they made. They described from their personal experience how they engaged with developments that took place in their constituencies in different ways—to enable new occupiers to bring to wider public attention the concerns that they identified, to hold local authorities to account for failure or lack of action, to deal with issues that were patently obvious and needed to be addressed, and to deal with some of the legal complexities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk described. It is all very well having a contract and legal rights in theory, but if those rights cannot be enforced, they do not lead down a useful path.
If we were in government, we would be taking forward these matters, but as we are in opposition, we are challenging the Government to consider them. I will make a few brief points in that respect. A number of Members have highlighted adoptable standards as a significant issue that needs addressing. In encouraging new planning applications to be delivered, I encourage the Government to consider how we will ensure that adoptable standards are complied with. Members on all sides have raised a number of examples of subsequent landlords, such as FirstPort, whose management of the sites has been completely inadequate and compounds the other problems that have been described.
Finally, as we consider the learning from the Grenfell report, which highlights just how complex these projects are to manage, can we ensure that the learning described by the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), where the private sector and the local authority worked well together to bring innovation to bear and to ensure higher standards, is put into the structures of our legal approaches when it comes to all the different issues around development, housing, planning and building control described by Members across the Chamber this evening?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing the debate, and other Members on their excellent contributions.
There is a great deal of consensus about the challenges that Members of Parliament face when they are trying to provide the support that constituents require in these circumstances. I am deeply sorry to hear about the experiences of constituents for whom moving into what they thought was their dream home has in fact turned into a nightmare. From my own experience as a constituency MP, having to deal with similar cases, I know just how traumatic and challenging that can be for all concerned.
Everyone deserves a safe, decent and affordable home, but after a decade of decline in house building, the dream of home ownership is getting further out of reach for so many. This Government were elected to tackle the housing crisis. We made a commitment in our manifesto to build 1.5 million homes over the course of this Parliament. To deliver those ambitious targets we will take a holistic approach to reviewing the entire housing system, so that we can unlock house building growth while ensuring that standards continue to be met.
I am grateful to hon. Members for highlighting their insights and some of the issues that we need to keep a close eye on. Building more homes of all kinds is a crucial part of the Plan for Change to grow the economy, raise living standards and transform people’s lives. Growth is our No. 1 mission, but even as we pull out the stops to boost the pace of house building, we remain absolutely focused on our commitment to protect and enhance our natural environment and strengthen the health and safety standards of the homes we build.
Regulatory reforms have already fundamentally changed the way in which buildings are designed, built and managed, with more stringent oversight. The Building Safety Act 2022 brought in new structures, new ways of working and new expectations. The Building Safety Regulator has a duty to keep the safety and standards of buildings under review, which means that as evidence comes to light, updates to building regulations and approved documents can be brought forward as needed.
Last December, the Deputy Prime Minister announced that approved document B on fire safety is now subject to continuous review, and asked the Building Safety Regulator to undertake a fundamental review of the building safety regulations. Guidance will be produced, updated and communicated to the construction industry, with statutory guidance covering building design that is now subject to continuous review by the Building Safety Regulator. We are building on the work that has gone on so far. The regulator is developing plans to launch a consultation on further changes by autumn 2025.
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
In my constituency of North West Cambridgeshire, there are lots of young families seeking to buy their first home. I am pleased that the Government are committed to building 1.5 million new homes, but it is important that people can trust that they are buying a good-quality home. Just down the road, at the Darwin Green site in Cambridge, 36 new build houses with building control privately managed have had to be demolished for foundational failures. Does the Minister agree that, since the part-privatisation of building control under Margaret Thatcher’s Government, it is a real problem that developers can essentially choose their own regulator, and that it is leading to falling standards?
Rushanara Ali
I hope that I have already addressed some of those points in my remarks. We are of course looking closely at what further improvements can be made to building regulations.
We recognise that the industry needs access to materials that are safe and of sufficient quality. We are setting clear directions for growth for the housing sector, and expect suppliers to increase their capacity to meet demand. On the work in relation to the long-term housing strategy, this Government are focused on ensuring that there is quality alongside the quantity that is desperately needed to ensure that people have the housing they need. Homeowners of new builds must feel confident that their new home is safe. The points on that today have been well made. We know that we must take the necessary action to get the quality, as well as the quantity right.
This Government are absolutely committed to improving redress for home buyers when things go wrong. The regulatory framework ensures that the Government’s commitment to 1.5 million homes over the current Parliament can and must be achieved safely and sustainably. Ultimately, by emphasising quality and safety, the reforms pave the way for innovative construction practices and materials, attracting skilled labour and boosting productivity within the sector.
However, we recognise that, as we have heard in the debate today, things can go wrong for people when buying a new build home. That is why we will bring into force measures to introduce a new homes ombudsman scheme, which developers will be required to join. It will have powers to investigate complaints and make determinations.
Rushanara Ali
I want to address the points that have been made—including the hon. Gentleman’s points, if he will let me continue.
The ombudsman will have powers to investigate complaints, to make determinations, including requiring compensation to be paid, and to help to set expectations of scheme members around standards of conduct and standards of quality of work. We will also have powers to issue or approve a code of practice. That will make it quicker and easier for home buyers of new builds to gain redress when things go wrong and help our wider objectives to bring up standards in the sector.
The introduction of the new future homes standard represents a considerable improvement in energy efficiency and standards for new homes. From 2025, new homes will be future-proofed with low-carbon heating and high levels of energy efficiency. These homes will be zero-carbon ready, meaning that no further work will be needed to ensure that they have zero carbon emissions as the electricity grid continues to decarbonise.
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) mentioned her local plan. Due to the Secretary of State’s quasi-judicial role in the planning system, I am unable to comment on the details of that specific local plan. However, this Government are committed to the plan-making system. Bringing local councils and their communities together to agree their future plans is the right way to plan for the growth and environmental enhancement that our country needs.
I will respond to a number of points that hon. Members made; if I do not address all the points that were made in the debate, we can follow up in writing. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) and for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), to the hon. Members for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) and for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), and to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) for raising a number of issues, including what more we can do around planning. We will look at the points that have been raised.
On the point made about disability, we will set out our policies on accessible new build housing shortly. The Government expect local authorities to plan for and deliver the housing and infrastructure that their communities need. The national planning policy framework, which was revised in December 2024, promotes mixed use sites, which can include housing designed for specific groups. That means that councils must consider the needs of disabled people and older people when planning new homes, and reflect that in their local plan.
I am conscious that I need to leave a bit of time for my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest to sum up. Points were made about water efficiency, and about drainage and waste disposal, which approved document H addresses. However, I am happy to write to hon. Members about the points that were raised that I have not been able to address today.
I am grateful for this debate and for the really constructive contributions to it from all Members, including the Front-Bench speakers, on this very important issue, which affects all of us in different ways in our constituencies, and I am determined to make sure that we work together to address it.
Michelle Welsh
I thank all the hon. Members here in Westminster Hall today for their contributions to what I think was a very important debate for us to have. It was very clear from all the contributions, regardless of party, that those buying new homes need better protections. Going forward, however, it is not just those better protections that they need. When they are tackling issues, they should not have to contact a Member of Parliament to get them resolved.
We have heard some really horrifying stories today and my constituents, like people across the country, deserve better. When someone buys a property, they are locked into a contractual agreement. Often, however, it is impossible to get repairs and snagging completed, which should not be the case. We must change that. Time and again, we see profit being put before quality. Accessible homes and affordable homes are crucial.
Today, hon. Members have raised issues about the processes to ensure—
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Order. Our time is up; I am sorry.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered construction standards for new build homes.