Westminster Hall

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 8 April 2025

[Dawn Butler in the Chair]

Persecution of Christians

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Ruth Jones (Newport West and Islwyn) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the persecution of Christians.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting this important motion for debate. I declare an interest as an officer of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. Around the world many obscene, difficult and heartbreaking things are happening to people because of their beliefs. Our APPG aims to speak for those of all faiths and none, and to act as a constructive voice in this place to address religious persecution globally, both now and in future.

This subject is close to my heart. In 2023, I was pleased to represent the APPG at the International Religious Freedom summit in Taiwan, where we heard harrowing reports of persecution, torture and killings on account of people’s religious beliefs. I pay tribute to the unwavering strength of those killed, removed from their homes, refused jobs, and imprisoned without recourse, solely for their faith.

Amid the increasing instances of persecution, hate crimes and stereotyping, numerous organisations work tirelessly to expose and combat those injustices. I am grateful for their collective efforts, and particularly the hours of research that go into producing reports so that we in this House can be made aware of the suffering caused by anti-religious movements, religious extremism, political oppression and Government overreach. By gathering data, providing legal support and amplifying the voices of the persecuted, those organisations expose violations of the universal declaration of human rights and offer hope to those who have been silenced. Their work is instrumental in ensuring that freedom of religion or belief becomes a better recognised and protected human right. Without their vigilance, many cases of abuse would remain hidden and individuals who have been aided by their efforts would continue to suffer without recourse.

Despite the very real threat of persecution, hundreds of millions of Christians—effectively entire populations—remain steadfast in their faith, at great personal cost. They willingly risk their livelihoods, their families and even their lives to uphold their beliefs. Their resilience in the face of oppression is testament to their unwavering conviction, and their strength should not go unnoticed. It is imperative that we advocate on their behalf, ensuring that they receive the fundamental freedoms that so many of us in democratic societies take for granted. To ignore their plight is to turn our backs on the very principles of justice and human dignity that underpin free nations.

Despite being the world’s largest religion, Christianity is the most persecuted minority faith in many regions. That persecution stems from a range of sources, including Islamist extremism, Marxist regimes and dictatorial Governments. In some countries, public celebrations of Christmas are not only discouraged but life-threatening. Open Doors, an organisation that monitors Christian persecution worldwide, reported alarming global figures for 2024.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Was it not one of the most heartbreaking things that all of us in the House have seen when Christmas was cancelled in Jesus’s birthplace last year? We have seen the persecution in Palestine, and in Gaza what has happened to some of the most sacred sites in Christianity, with the third-oldest church reduced to rubble. At times it is heartbreaking. My hon. Friend listed things such as Marxism and Islamism; does she agree that the situation in Palestine should draw our attention to Christians persecuted there, too?

[Ruth Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. People cannot worship in rubble. It is important that we acknowledge all the areas affected. I will say more on that shortly.

Open Doors’ alarming global figures for 2024 were presented to us in Parliament in January. The world watchlist and accompanying report paint a deeply concerning picture. Last year, almost 5,000 believers worldwide were killed for their faith. Most were from Nigeria. However, there have been rising numbers of Christian deaths in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Burkina Faso, where 201 believers lost their lives—that is a more than fivefold increase on 2023. The last year has seen almost 210,000 Christians forced from their homes into hiding or exile because of their faith. Almost half of them are from Nigeria, despite around half of all Nigerians being Christians.

Since the first world watchlist in 1983, North Korea has been at the top 23 times, which is almost 70% of the time. The persecution of North Korean Christians has worsened in the last year following a rise in reported incidents of violence, which coincides with stricter regulations announced by the North Korean authorities early in 2024.

More and more Christians are having to worship undercover. In Afghanistan, it is effectively impossible for a Christian to publicly express their faith. In Algeria, all Protestant churches have been forced to close, and the number of Christians awaiting trial and sentencing is at an all-time high. In China, the era of relative tolerance is over. Unregistered churches are now illegal. Church teaching is informed by ideological pressure and official indoctrination. Religious education for children is banned. Many congregations are taking their fellowships underground into isolated home groups. Meanwhile, the small Christian community in Libya is extremely careful to avoid a repeat of the March 2023 crackdown, which swept up numerous Christians for arrest. Believers have to be increasingly creative and courageous in how they gather, if at all.

Open Doors states that the persecuted church is increasingly a displaced church, with believers exiled to refugee camps or camps for internally displaced people. Sudan is facing the largest displacement crisis in the world: in a country of 49 million people, the number of IDPs had surpassed 7.7 million by mid-2024. In Nigeria, radicalised Islamic Fulani militants continue to drive Christian communities from their lands. Conflict in the Manipur region in India has forced tens of thousands of Christians to flee for their lives, often with little more than the clothes on their backs. The loss of home and community makes already vulnerable Christians even more of an easy target.

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

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate and on her excellent speech, in which she is outlining the outstanding work of Open Doors and other organisations. Does she agree that as well as co-ordinating a UK-wide attempt to address the ongoing problem, we need to internationalise it to try to make people from a range of nations aware and resolve it?

[Ruth Jones]

Absolutely. Open Doors is a great organisation for highlighting what is going on around the world. The hon. Gentleman is right that we need a concerted effort around the world to stamp out the persecution of all faiths, but we are talking about Christians in particular today.

In Pakistan, young Christian men are increasingly being targeted for forced conversion, with recent violent attacks including one against a Christian youth whose throat was slit after a blasphemy accusation. In Iran, 139 Christians were arrested in 2024, with many sentenced to lengthy prison terms under national security laws, simply for attending house churches.

In Nicaragua and Colombia, church leaders face arbitrary imprisonment and assassination for standing up to authoritarianism and criminal groups. Mexico is 31st on the 2025 world watchlist—its highest place since 2005. It is also the only country in Latin America to rise in the rankings. Organised crime is rampant in many areas, and churches and believers who seek to counter it make themselves targets. There has been an increase in the number of believers killed and abducted there.

From violent attacks to house arrests and forced marriages, Christian women and girls around the world are shamed and persecuted twice—once for their faith and the second time for their gender.

The universal declaration of human rights is the most translated document in the world. It has been signed by all 193 UN member states. Crucially, it covers provisions for the freedom to change one’s religion or belief, to adopt a religion or belief of choice, or to retain one’s current beliefs. Despite the numerous protections outlined in the declaration, there is a universal lack of accountability for those who do not uphold its principles, leaving religious minorities vulnerable to continued persecution.

Over the past 24 months, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has answered 200 written parliamentary questions that mention the protection and aid of persecuted Christians. The steps the UK is taking to protect this fundamental right include advocating for political transition that leads to an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative Government; reminding all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law; and ensuring that official development assistance is allocated to those who are most vulnerable and most in need, irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity. It is vital to consider what measurements will be used to assess the impact of such aid, projects and policy.

The Government must continue their work on this issue. Areas in which they can go further include ensuring that UK diplomats raise cases of Christian persecution at bilateral and multilateral levels, including by urging Governments of concern to cease the repression of religious minorities and comply with international human rights standards; advocating for the establishment or strengthening of UN mechanisms to investigate FORB violations; and expanding UK aid and development funding to support local peacebuilding efforts, trauma-recovery programmes and economic rehabilitation for survivors of religious violence in Nicaragua and Colombia.

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

My hon. Friend mentioned ever-decreasing ODA funding; does she believe that the complete intolerance of religious persecution should be a prerequisite for such funding?

[Ruth Jones]

Yes, I do, and I am glad the Minister is here to listen to the debate and interested in what he will say in response.

It is important to target sanctions under the UK’s global human rights sanctions regime against individuals and entities complicit in Christian persecution. Will the Government ensure that they publicly name and support at-risk and imprisoned Christian leaders, and use diplomatic channels and public platforms to press for their immediate and unconditional release? FORB should be integrated into broader UK human rights and foreign policy frameworks to ensure that the new integrated human rights and sanctions regime prioritises religious freedom alongside other human rights. Gender and religion-specific vulnerabilities should be recognised in the design of strategies to tackle issues including protection, displacement, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, development and human rights generally.

In recent years the UK has shown great leadership in promoting FORB, and it is vital that it continues to do so. When freedom of religion or belief is under attack, other basic human rights are often under threat as well. FORB serves as the ultimate litmus test for the health of other freedoms in a country. We are blessed to live in a society in which the Government do not take these threats lightly. However, the growing issue of rising authoritarianism in North Korea, central Asia and Iran, and the extreme displacement in west and sub-Saharan Africa, remain deeply concerning and under-represented. I look forward to hearing from colleagues and hope the Minister will address our concerns, so that freedom of religion or belief remains a leading priority in foreign policy and diplomatic engagement.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. We estimate that Members should keep to a limit of around four or five minutes per speech.

09:42

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Nigeria is No. 7 on the world watchlist published by Open Doors. Some of the most egregious examples of persecution, with whole communities being laid waste, come from Plateau state. Many commentators, including the EU Parliament, have put that down to the pressures brought about by climate change. Well, climate change does not rape people. Climate change does not bomb church services. Climate change does not abduct women and children and force them into marriage. Those things are done because of an extremist ideology entirely unrestrained by proper state power, because of the state’s incompetence, indifference or even complicity.

What assistance is the United Kingdom affording to Nigeria in the implementation of the Human Rights Council’s recommendation, from its universal periodic review, on the protection of freedom of religion and belief? Has the Minister shared the experience that I had as a Minister of visiting some of the countries where these things take place and having his ear bent by members of both the Opposition and the Government on what we should do about it, as if we were still a colonial power able to do such things? What leverage do the Government actually have, beyond the important role of providing a platform to share views and reassure sufferers that we are alive to their concerns—that we are praying for them, at least?

Finally, I have a word of caution for the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who spoke about official development assistance. Properly spent, it is directed to projects that relieve suffering communities. If it is used as a political weapon—as leverage that is put on Governments and withdrawn—it only makes the sufferers suffer even more.

09:45

[Juliet Campbell (Broxtowe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) for bringing this issue to the House. I appreciate her advocacy for those who are going through persecution because of their Christian belief.

Nobody deserves to be persecuted because of their faith. The freedom to practise religion, to experience communion with family and friends and to worship without fear of violence is fundamental to human rights conventions. Christians around the world are being denied those protections and are experiencing unimaginable heartache and suffering. It is estimated that 380 million Christians around the world are subjected to high levels of persecution and discrimination. The data is clear and is incredibly troubling. There has been a rise in violence towards Christians across the globe over many, many years.

Persecution often involves a broad scope of behaviour. It is usually the bloody and violent extremes that get media attention, which is often short-lived, but disinformation, marginalisation and intimidation come under the informal definition of persecution and they deserve our attention. We have an obligation to talk about the issue and speak up for those who are suffering and those who endure torture and killings. The numbers are rising.

I am keen to understand the steps that are being taken to better support persecuted Christians across the world and promote religious freedom and belief. Are there plans to implement the calls to action from organisations such as Open Doors? I congratulate my hon. Friend again on bringing this very important issue to the House.

09:48

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler, for what I am sure will be the first time of many. I commend the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones), who is a dear friend. Like me, she is an officer of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief; I declare that interest.

I thank all hon. Members who have persistently championed the cause of religious freedom, particularly in relation to persecuted Christians globally. Their unwavering commitment ensures that this critical issue remains at the forefront of our parliamentary discourse. It is imperative that we recognise the alarming escalation in the persecution of Christians worldwide. I have taken the following statistics from a 2023 report by Aid to the Church in Need, which has thoughtfully considered the status of fundamental human rights for all religious traditions.

Some 1.5 million Christians called Syria home before the war started in 2011. Today, that number has plummeted to 300,000, an 80% decline in little over a decade. In Aleppo, the Christian population has dropped from 250,000 to just 30,000—from 12% of the city’s population to a mere 1.4%. In Raqqa, where once there were 11,000 Christians, barely 100 remain today. Deir ez-Zor was once home to 5,000 Christians, but that number has fallen to nearly zero. That tells us all about the decline of Christian faith in Syria. Sadly, we see religious persecution once more being ignored, and Syria is not alone; Nigeria has approximately 3.3 million internally displaced people as a result of religiously motivated violence. Communities have been uprooted and entire cultures have been erased.

I am heartened to support a Government and a Minister who have made significant strides in delivering on the recommendations in the Bishop of Truro’s report. We have seen particular progress on recommendation 2, which calls for the UK to be

“the global leader in championing freedom of religion or belief, ensuring it is given due priority in the UK's engagement in multilateral institutions”.

The UK Government have answered nearly 80 written questions on behalf of religious minorities this year. I extend my sincere thanks to all those who have used their voices to highlight this freedom. It serves as a litmus test for human rights. The liberty to believe in a higher power, to worship and to stand in awe is intrinsic to our humanity. The values imparted by Christianity make the humanitarian efforts of Christian organisations indispensable to the world. For example, one global Christian Church operating in 193 countries and territories has clocked up 6.6 million hours of volunteer work.

Not only are Christian teachings globally relevant, but they hold profound significance here in the United Kingdom. The Bible warns that turning away from God leads to moral decay, manifesting in behaviours such as wickedness, greed and a lack of compassion. Conversely, embracing Christian teachings offers a pathway to healing and restoration within our communities.

In 1 Peter 4:8-10, the apostle Peter says:

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

This is a mindset that builds strong, stable and peaceful societies. Countries that have championed freedom of religion or belief lay the foundation for lasting peace. To those steadfast souls who, in the face of relentless persecution, continue their journey with unwavering faith, I echo the words of Christ in John 16:33:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

I recognise the significance of 2025. Let it be a jubilee year not just in name but in action—a year in which captives and the persecuted find justice, in which those in fear find protection, and in which nations find peace through the promotion of tolerance and interfaith dialogue. That is the sort of country that I want. That is the world that I want. I am sure that everybody here has the same notion.

09:52

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) for securing this debate.

I declare an interest as the recently appointed UK special envoy for freedom of religion or belief. In the three months for which I have been in the role, it has become evident to me that the sad truth is that the scale of religious persecution is growing in the world. In 2019, the Truro report, which gave rise to the role that I am now honoured to hold, commented:

“Christianity now faces the possibility of being wiped-out in parts of the Middle East.”

Christians are suffering from external threats almost everywhere.

Here is a story of persecution that is familiar to many in this room. An effigy of a religious leader was paraded through the streets, hysterical graffiti was chalked on the walls, and books were written criticising people as fifth columnists and traitors. They were suspected, mistreated and had only recently been given the freedom to run for public office. That is not Pakistan or Nigeria; it was London in the 1850s, in a frenzy about newly emancipated Catholics. It is a crucial part of this debate to acknowledge that our country’s credibility on freedom of religion or belief is not because we are holier than thou, but because we got it wrong in the past.

Our country’s mistakes on religious toleration and the learning we take from them are the basis on which we can condemn the horror being inflicted on Christians around the world. I am proud to be the MP for North Northumberland. My constituency is home to Holy Island, which witnessed some of the earliest and most sustained attacks on British Christians in the Viking raids. Over the centuries, Northumberland has come to believe deeply in freedom, tolerance and the right for everybody to believe and confess how they wish.

Today, parts of the world such as parts of Nigeria are becoming playgrounds for jihadists, who are freewheeling through the region. I am reminded of the story of Bishop Wilfred, who I met last month. On Christmas Day last year, 47 Christians in Wilfred’s diocese were killed in militant attacks, with another 6,800 believers displaced. We have already heard accounts from around the middle east. In the middle east, the ancient home of three of the world’s global religions, Christian communities are in freefall. In 2014, there were almost 1 million Christians in Iraq; today there are only 200,000. The point is clear: despite the global growth of the Church, Christians remain vulnerable to persecution and conflict.

[Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment as the special envoy for freedom of religion and belief. I wish it had not taken the Government six months to appoint him, but I am sure that he will approach the role with the alacrity that it demands.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the attrition of global Christianity and the oppression of Christian faiths around the world. Does he agree that in the discourse in which we engage in Parliaments in the west and in societies where religion is tolerated, we need to accept that there is no league table of religious persecution? I am concerned that sometimes Christianity is seen as being at the bottom of that league table—that there is a view that religious persecution is wrong, but that some forms of it are more wrong than others. The persecution of Christians often comes out at the wrong end of that equation. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be crystal clear with the regimes that are persecuting Christians that we believe that it is anathema to what any Government should be doing?

[David Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm welcome. I agree that any human rights violation should be treated the same, no matter what religion or belief someone has. I will come on to the broader connection between rights.

There is no country in the world that is a perfectly free society on the one hand, but just happens to persecute Christians on the other. That makes the persecution of Christians, and of freedom of religion or belief more generally, an acid test that reveals the true colours of many regimes that would rather portray themselves as orderly and harmless. Not being allowed to gather for worship means that there is no freedom of peaceful assembly. Not being allowed to evangelise or convert means that there is no freedom of conscience, speech or expression. Being imprisoned for faith means that there is no right to liberty. Without those freedoms, there is no democracy.

When Christians are thrown in prison, they are likely to share cells with Alawites, Uyghurs, Ahmadiyya and other individuals who are not tolerated because of what they do or do not believe. As our hearts break for Christians who are imprisoned, so they break for the many others who are abandoned because of what they believe. FORB is often seen as a canary in the coalmine for freedoms, but the analogy is imperfect because it suggests that the canary does not matter. FORB is better described as the lone nightwatchman who is found bleeding and unconscious outside as the night grows darker and freedom slips away.

The suffering can overwhelm us, but my hope is that the United Kingdom is uniquely well placed to act. Our country has been on a long journey from persecution to pluralism. That gives us a legitimacy with which to challenge other nations and encourage them to do better. We believe something radical, which is that while religious freedom would certainly be good for those who are being persecuted, it would also bless those who are doing the persecuting, by unlocking new opportunities and freedoms for their nations to flourish. I am encouraged that the Foreign Office is serious about keeping human rights as a cornerstone of our foreign policy. I commit to playing my part as the special envoy, pressing the Government as we seek to navigate this new world.

In my constituency of North Northumberland, we share the common-sense values of freedom of speech, fair play and respect for our fellow man. Those values were hard-won over centuries of debate and sometimes conflict. We now have the opportunity to lead the world in avoiding the mistakes we made, and to end the persecution of Christians wherever we see it. Where we see Christian persecution, we know that those of other faiths and beliefs will be suffering too. It is my expectation that this Government will step bravely into the breach to defend them so that, in the words of Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah, we can

“proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the captives and recovery of sight for the blind, and set the oppressed free”.

09:58

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Ms Butler, and to be in a Chamber with so many of my favourite colleagues. I look around and am genuinely so inspired, pleased and gratified to be among this group of parliamentarians of all parties. I do not know what it is that binds us together. Well, I do—we are mostly believers. I pay tribute to everybody here, particularly to the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith); I welcome him to and congratulate him on his very significant appointment. Congratulations too to the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones), on her championing of this agenda over many years and on calling this debate.

I think it is necessary to acknowledge at the outset—in slight contradiction to the hon. Member for North Northumberland, although I hope that this will not be taken as too Christo-chauvinist a perspective, nor as a sort of Christian supremacist principle—the reason that we in this country defend the liberties we do on behalf of all religions and belief systems around the world, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It is because of the Christian foundation to our politics. All our liberties, and the principle of political liberty that this country has sporadically, with some success and some failures, helped to export around the world, derive fundamentally from the Christian foundations of our political institutions and political philosophy. What we think of as the intrinsic value of every human being comes only from one place: the Bible. All our laws and what we now call human rights have that origin. Indeed, the very concept of the secular space, in which people are free to believe anything or nothing, derives ultimately from the Christian principle that everybody has value, and that it is not right to pry into the souls of other men or women.

I do not agree with the hon. Member for North Northumberland that we derive our legitimacy to speak in this space because of our past sins, as a country or as a civilisation. I recognise those sins, but I think we are speaking on this topic because we are the heirs to a tradition that fundamentally recognises the value of Christianity. His regional patriotism for Northumberland is understandable—think of St Cuthbert and the great saints of those days—but I bring him King Alfred, who defended Wessex, including what is now Wiltshire, against the Vikings, pushed back the tide of paganism, restored Christianity to England and ultimately helped to export it to the world. I think it appropriate to be proud of the Christian basis of our politics in this debate.

[Jim Shannon]

The issues of human rights abuse and persecution cannot be divorced. If there is persecution, there is human rights abuse; and if there is human rights abuse, there is persecution. Does the hon. Member agree that that is the central focus for us, as Christians? We stand up for everybody: those with religious faith, with no faith, and with different faiths.

[Danny Kruger]

I absolutely agree. It is of course not just Christians who think that, but it is right that in our country we proudly stand on that ground, and defend the right of everybody to absolute freedom of belief. As I said, I think we do that, ultimately, because the foundation of our politics is Christian.

I will refer quickly to the Holy Land, as other hon. Members have. I have become chair of the APPG on Christianity in the Holy Land, which was instigated by our former colleague David Linden, who is a sad loss to the House—at least on this topic, not on others. He encouraged me to take up the role, so I have been having a number of very powerful and moving conversations with Palestinian Christians about the state of the Church in the Holy Land. In fact, I visited many years ago, in the early 2000s during the second intifada, with Canon Andrew White, who was the Church of England’s representative to the Holy Land in those days and a very great man. We visited Bethlehem, and I saw how absolutely desperate the plight of the Church was at that time. As the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) acknowledged, the situation has got worse and the state of the Church in the Holy Land is now very dire. I acknowledge that that is the consequence of Israeli Government activity. I recognise that and, as a strong supporter of Israel, I recognise how hard it is for Christians in the west bank to worship.

On a different trip at around the same time, I visited Iraq with Andrew White, just after the invasion. At that point, we could wander around quite freely. There was a sense that there would be a new flourishing of religious freedom in Iraq. We visited St George’s church, for a service to mark its reopening after the war. It was a wonderful moment, with Iraqi Christians, as well as lots of American and British soldiers, present. It felt like the dawning of something wonderful in Iraq. Of course, within months that church was closed, and many of the Christians we had met were dead. The tragedy of the American-led invasion was that Christianity in Iraq has been severely repressed ever since, and we know about the similar phenomena in Syria and elsewhere since. The tragedy of nation-building in the middle east, often led by Christians, has not been good for the Church.

The principal enemy of Christianity globally is not misapplied western liberalism; it is alternative religions and ideologies, in particular Marxism in China, radical Hinduism in India and, of course, radical Islam all over the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) mentioned Nigeria. The situation there is absolutely appalling: 3,000 people a year killed in recent years, and getting on for a quarter of a million people displaced. That is, I think, around half the total global number of those killed and displaced. In Algeria, as the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn mentioned, I want to draw particular attention to the Kabyle people, a Berber community in the north of the country who have been resisting the Islamist ideology of the Algerian Government for many years and who have suffered severe persecution. They are attempting self-determination and their slogan is, “In the name of all beliefs”. I want to acknowledge that—going back to my original point—when we defend Christianity, we are defending everybody, and I pay tribute to that campaign.

I want to finish by asserting this point. Christianity is established in the west and therefore we think of it as the dominant philosophy, even though in many ways in our country I do not feel it is anymore. It is the shield of minorities everywhere, and I think we need a stronger promotion of the value of Christianity in every society. We should not simply be defensive in debates like this about defending the status quo and defending Christians; we should be supporting those who promote Christianity, sympathetically of course and always peacefully. The promotion of Christianity is a moral good, because wherever Christianity is, life is better. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I could not put it better than he did: in an absolute sense, Christianity is good for people.

I pay tribute to Fiona Bruce, the hon. Member for North Northumberland’s predecessor as special envoy—a great friend to many of us and a pioneer in this space in the previous Parliament and over many years for her work promoting religious freedom and belief in this country and around the world. It is a great shame that the Bill she was championing fell before the general election. I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Northumberland would have welcomed it, or if the Government have any intention of reviving the measures proposed in it, which were to establish the position of the envoy on a statutory footing, properly resourced, rather than being something that, as it were, exists at the whim of the Government. I regret that the Bill fell, but I pay tribute to her. I pay tribute particularly to the hon. Member for North Northumberland. It is a tremendous thing that he is now in post; he has a great and important role to do.

Lastly, to end on a note of hope, there are great things happening in the world. Christianity is not oppressed, downtrodden or downcast. We are seeing very positive signs of growth and revival. In China, the house church movement has won many millions of converts. Here in the UK, I am encouraged. There was a report from the Bible Society and Theos recently called, “The Quiet Revival” which demonstrates that, quietly, we are seeing new growth in our faith in the UK. On that basis, I have confidence in the future.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I would like to get everybody in for this important debate. We are looking to get to the Minister at around 10.28 am, so you have about four minutes per speech, please.

10:08

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Butler.

As we prepare ourselves for Easter, it is right that we turn our eyes to those persecuted around the world for following Christ, so I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones).

It has been poignant and humbling to listen to the speeches by Members today, as it is sobering and challenging to read the reports of those who share the same faith as me but whose experiences are so different. Today, around a third of the population, and growing, share the Christian faith in the far reaches of the world, but for many their experiences are so different. As we ruminate over the census of decline here in the UK, we see the persecution of Christians around the world, and the sharp intolerance and violence that their faith often draws.

The Open Doors world watchlist, Aid to the Church in Need, overseas organisations and charities, among many, expose the deep scale of persecution on the basis of faith. Most conflicts and war crimes are also associated with faith, and we know that about 380 million Christians across our planet are killed or experience high levels of persecution because of their faith. We see suppression and imprisonment of people, and the destruction of churches. If there is not such sexual or physical violence against Christians in the west, persecution can often show itself as psychological or spiritual suppression of the all too few who dare to speak the name of Jesus freely—even in a place like the UK, where there are no bounds but people still dare not speak his name.

There are three policy areas that I will touch on briefly. One is covered by the Home Office—ensuring that we have safe and legal routes for people who experience persecution to come to the UK. We talk about such routes, but the reality is so different, and because I represent a human rights city, that is a vital point.

The second area is covered by the Foreign Office. ODA has an incredible impact, ensuring more security and greater resilience, and it is so important that we return to 0.7%. Even in a world where our global economy is so disrupted, we must find space to restore ODA to 0.7%.

Thirdly, on trade, I think about China, as I always do. It is 15th on the Open Doors world watchlist, yet we have just signed a trade agreement with it. How much emphasis was put on the need for freedom of religion and belief in China alongside the ink that marked that agreement? We think, of course, of the suppression of the Church and its leaders in China, and of the public denial of the sacraments to Jimmy Lai. It is so important that we review our policy. We said when we left the EU that we would put human rights at the heart of our trade agreements, but we have work to do to achieve that.

This week, I was listening to a sermon ahead of Easter, which reminded me of persecuted Christians around the world. It talked about coming to the end of the road, where there is no hope, as the Israelites came to the Red sea and the disciples came to the cross. It marked so much as the end. In a nation and world in chaos and crisis, it is hard to find hope. For many persecuted Christians, who are imprisoned and tortured or living in fear, it is hard to find hope. There is such little hope in politics, on our streets or across the world. Yet the sermon went on to say:

“and then there was Jesus”.

That spins logic, and everything else, on its head. The Red sea opened. There was resurrection Sunday. For all of us who put our trust in Christ, we know that there is eternal hope.

It is with that hope that we see the most incredible witness of those who are persecuted. Their hope and their unfathomable joy reminds us all that no regime can suppress the cast-iron security that the Easter message brings. Such hope could not hold Jesus in a grave. It enables persecuted Christians, and all of us, to know that no matter what we face, Jesus is always with us and always will be. As we invest in Him, we invest in ourselves, and have such certainty that the hope in this broken world, including for those who are persecuted, will never be destroyed and can only be found in Him.

10:12

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

It is an absolute honour, Ms Butler, to serve under your guidance this morning. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) for starting the debate so very well.

I think that to be a Liberal is to stand up for the rights of people that we do not like and do not agree with. It is easy to stand up for the minorities that we agree with. But on this occasion, I speak as somebody who I guess belongs to the minority on planet Earth and indeed, if we believe the last United Kingdom census, in this country: I am a Christian.

As other people have said, I will try to race through my remarks, so that others can get their fair share of the time available. I pay tribute to Open Doors for its world watchlist and for the work it has done in exposing persecution around the world. I will just focus on one or two instances, in particular the state of Libya.

Libya is very important for so many reasons. It is the fourth most persecuted place on planet Earth for Christians. Only 0.5%—35,000—of the people in Libya are Christians. If a woman in Libya is even suspected of being interested in Christianity, they will face horrific abuse, sexual violence, house arrest, forced marriage and even, so to speak, “honour killing”. Neither men nor women are spared. They are subjected to losing their jobs, their homes and their livelihoods. Such incidents are not isolated in Libya; there are widespread attacks upon Christians and suspected Christians right across the country, and the total instability there makes things even worse.

I highlight Libya because it is the country through which so many refugees who may end up in this country go through. When we talk about the channel crossings, let us put things in perspective. Whatever dangers people put themselves through to cross the channel—and they are huge dangers—they are absolutely nothing compared to the hideous dangers that people go through to cross Libya, in order to get themselves to the Mediterranean in the first place. Eritrea is a country where 44% of the population is Christian, and where young men and women find themselves forcibly conscripted indefinitely, very often to kill their own people. We need to be aware of that when we are talking about the refugee crisis.

It is not just failing states where there is a threat to Christians. We see Christian nationalism around the world, where Christianity is appropriated for political purposes—either to shore up the regime, country or state, or one’s own political party. I counsel all Christians to be deeply suspicious of those who seek to appropriate the gospel for political purposes. China has been mentioned as well—a country where, on the face of it, Christianity is tolerated. However, branches of the Church, house churches and those faithful to Christ alone who will not bow the knee to the state, find themselves increasingly under serious threat.

It is worth touching on for a moment why Christians are the most persecuted group on planet Earth, though they are not the only persecuted group—we should stand with all others as well, as I said in my opening remarks. Christians believe we have ultimate allegiance somewhere else. Famously in Matthew 22:20, Jesus is approached by someone who is trying to catch him out by asking, “Are you going to pay taxes to the temple? Are you going to pay taxes to Caesar?” Jesus picks up a coin and says, “Whose image is on this coin?” The image is of Caesar’s. Jesus famously says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” That may or may not be an instruction to pay taxes, but it is definitely about giving the image-bearer—or the image-provider—all of what the image entails. That coin had Caesar’s image on it, but God’s image is on us—so yes, give the coin to Caesar, but give all of oneself to God. One can see why that is deeply counter-cultural and offensive.

I heard Justin Welby being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg the other weekend, as many hon. Members will have. The most irritating part of the interview, from my perspective, is when Justin Welby did not push back when Laura Kuenssberg said, “Why isn’t the Church more in tune with the culture?” That is because we are not meant to be. We are counter-cultural in every place and generation, which will wind up dictators and so-called democrats. That is why I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for appointing the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), and for recognising that freedom of religion and belief is something we must always fight for because especially for Christians, as we live our counter-cultural lives, we will always be offensive following one who caused the greatest of all offences and died on a cross for all of our sins.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

In order to fit everybody in, I will put a two-minute time limit on speeches.

10:18

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time today, Ms Butler. As I have two minutes, I will be very brief.

The persecution of Christians was brought to my attention by one of my constituents, a member of the Heysham Free Methodist Church. I was appalled to learn of the threat of violence from so-called social media influencers and Hindu nationalist leaders; people have been displaced, with their homes and businesses destroyed, and that is absolutely abhorrent. I wish us to speak with one voice on this matter, and to speak against the state enforcement of religion and state tolerance of religious persecution; that is absolutely unacceptable.

I want to call particular attention to the persecution of those who hold no faith, a reality that too often goes unrecognised. In 2022, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for a supposedly blasphemous Facebook post. As of January this year, we have blasphemy laws in 91 countries in the world, including in Northern Ireland. Blasphemy laws lead to the harassment and persecution that Mr Bala suffered, as well as that faced by people of all faiths and none. That must end. Mr Bala will be coming to the all-party parliamentary group Humanist Group on 14 May, and I invite hon. Members to join us and hear more of his story.

This debate shows us that people of faith and no faith can have a powerful connection and can find common cause. No one should be persecuted for their faith or lack thereof. Religious freedom, freedom of thought and freedom of belief must be actively protected and are worth fighting for.

10:20

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

That we live in a strange age is beyond doubt. The guilt-fuelled self-loathing that poisons so many tiny bourgeois minds extends beyond the disowning of where we have come from—our shared history—to being insecure about who we are. To deny the Judeo-Christian roots of western civilisation is to ignore the essence of the values, which by underpinning what we share make us capable of the judgments necessary to know what is right. Widespread insecurity about our Christian heritage neuters the response, by people who should know better, to the persecution of Christians.

The hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) spoke about parliamentary questions; I asked one when 70 Christians were found beheaded in the Congo. The response I got was full of broadly drawn liberal platitudes about universality and multilateralism, and it said that the Government were saddened—not outraged, disgusted or determined to do something, but saddened. Well, that quiet sadness is an acquiescence of people who, in G. K. Chesterton’s words, exercise unquestioning tolerance. He said, “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”

The truth is that throughout the world Christians face discrimination, largely in the name of the Islamisation of parts of the world that used to be Christian. The middle east is a classic example, where the number of Christians has fallen sharply over my lifetime and where Christians continue to be persecuted—in the birthplace of the son of God, bear in mind. In an age that falsely divides people into victims and victors, too often people in the west see Christians as victors even where they are being persecuted.

I simply ask the Minister: will he prioritise this issue? Will he put on a statutory footing the role of the person designated to defend minority religions? Will he make sure that the Government’s policy in respect of aid and foreign affairs addresses the persecution of Christians worldwide?

10:22

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones ) for securing this debate.

Freedom of religion or belief is not a western ideal. It is a universal human right, enshrined in article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights. Yet millions of our Christian brothers and sisters, especially women and girls, are denied that right every single day. For many of us in the UK, faith is a core part of our lives and identity. However, too often Government policy has treated faith as an optional extra. This debate is not about abstract policy, it is about people—men, women and children—who suffer for nothing more than professing faith in Jesus Christ. I am thankful every day for my ability to profess my Christian faith, and to live in a society where we have civil and religious liberties, and I am thankful for those who have fought for those liberties.

Today, I focus my comments on how persecution disproportionately affects women and girls. These women face a double vulnerability; persecuted for their faith and gender, and often suffering in silence and invisibility. I want to commend Open Doors for its fantastic work in Parliament and across the globe. If we think of gender-specific persecution, we only have to think of forced marriages, domestic and sexual violence, psychological abuse and isolation, and abduction and disappearance. Many voices go unheard, and unfortunately, because of time, we are unable to hear those voices today. In Nigeria, in 2024 alone, more than 4,100 Christians were killed for their faith; over 80% of all reported Christian deaths worldwide. Church leaders, worshippers and entire villages were kidnapped and killed for no reason other than their faith.

Given the huge changes in international relations in the last few months, can the Minister assure me that the freedom of religious belief remains a foreign policy priority for this Government?

10:24

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

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

The first Christian martyr was Stephen. Stephen was martyred simply because of his loyalty to the head of the Christian Church, Lord Jesus Christ. Stephen has been followed, down the eons of time, by millions of others who have been persecuted and put to death for simple adherence to the basic Christian message of redemption through the sole mediation of Christ. There is nothing offensive in that and yet it offends. The offensiveness has caused many to lose their lives, and that is a shocking indictment of the wider world. We take for granted all of the freedoms and liberties we have, but a debate such as this rightly causes us to reflect on those who exercise the freedoms that jeopardise their own lives. Think about Iran, where there has been an increase in the imprisonment of Christians from 22 in 2023 to 96 in 2024, indicating the trend. Think of Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s return and their extreme sharia law means many people have been executed simply for converting to Christianity. That is a sobering reminder of the values that we have, should hold to, and never take for granted. I finish with words from the beatitudes:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

10:26

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Jesus of course warned his disciples that in this world they would have tribulation. Many Christians across the world have experienced that tribulation in their own personal lives. Over 340 million Christians are actively persecuted for their faith. That ranges from discrimination, to imprisonment, torture and death. I think many of us find it difficult to contemplate and comprehend that people making the choice to be a Christian know that, in some countries, that is what they will suffer.

One of the most moving experiences I have had in this House was at the Open Doors event, where I met a pastor from Nigeria, who told me that his church of 400 members was down to 22 because most of them had been killed. He was going back to be their pastor and to lead them, regardless of the consequences. I do not know how many of us in this room would have that kind of bravery. In this Parliament, we have a duty to keep highlighting these issues through the questions we ask and the debates that we have. The Government have power to do things through their trade, aid and asylum policies. One of the bishops in Syria told me that the Christian Church had been decimated in Syria, but even when refugees went to refugee camps, they were the first to be persecuted and discriminated against there. I think our asylum policy has to bear in mind those groups fleeing persecution and still being persecuted as they should have priority. There is much we can do and I hope that debates such as this one encourage the Government to do it.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I would like to give the mover of the motion two minutes at the end.

10:29

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) for securing this debate, which is as important as it is timely—I am pleased to be speaking today as we break for the Easter recess.

The right to practise one’s faith freely, without hindrance or discrimination, is fundamental. The Liberal Democrats have a proud history of liberal universalism. We believe that all people should be able to live their life free from fear, including fear of religious intolerance; that human rights are applicable everywhere; and that the universal declaration of human rights, which enshrines the freedoms of thought, conscience, faith and religious practice, has the same resonance now as it did when it was enshrined almost 80 years ago.

It is distressing, therefore, to see Christians across the world persecuted and, worse still, to know that for many the situation is deteriorating. Today, at least 318 million Christians live lives subject to high levels of persecution and discrimination—an increase of 12% on 2021. Moreover, the number of countries that Open Doors considers to be conducting extreme or very high levels of persecution against Christians tripled in the past decade from 23 nations to 60.

It is no coincidence that those statistics rise in parallel to increasing levels of conflict and instability around the world. Four of the top five nations in which Open Doors judges that the most extreme persecution of Christians takes place—Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Sudan—have suffered particularly acute civil strife and are highly fragile. When nations collapse into violence, it is often minority groups, whether ethnic or religious, who suffer first and most. Sudan, where the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe is taking place and where more than 25 million people are in need of food support, is home to more than 2 million Christians who have been swept up in the brutal conflict. More than 150 churches have been destroyed—some deliberately targeted—and there are accounts of Christian leaders who have been murdered.

[Sir John Hayes]

Of course that is true, but it is not the whole story because the persecution of Christians predates much of that. For example, in the middle east, the Ottoman empire gave licence for persecution on exactly the grounds I described: aggressive Islamism perpetuated by the Ottomans led to the persecution of Christians, particularly in Palestine, Bethlehem and similar places. Conflict matters, but it is not all that matters.

[Monica Harding]

In conflict, religious and ethnic minorities are persecuted.

British investment, through international development spending, peacebuilding and deconfliction, reduces the risk of religious intolerance. I am deeply concerned that, as with so many vital areas encompassed by official development assistance, British efforts to safeguard freedom of religion or belief will suffer because of the Government’s decision to slash development spending to the lowest level this century. Previous aid cuts fell hard on programmes focused on those issues. When ODA was reduced from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% in 2021, the Institute of Development Studies found that some programmes protecting freedom of religion in south Asia saw their budgets plunge by 50%.

The burdens are borne most of all by women and girls, who disproportionately face the horrors of religious intolerance whenever it appears. As evidence given by the APPG to the International Development Committee in 2021 attests, religious intolerance often goes hand in hand with the repression of women and girls. We tend to see that most clearly when it results in girls losing access to education. That deprivation is most acute when applied to women from religious minorities, for whom, as the APPG said,

“their gender acts as a further marginalising layer of identity”.

Freedom of belief and gender equality are both cherished objectives of the Government’s development policy, yet cuts to aid spending will result in setbacks on both fronts.

I am also disturbed by the growing trend of authoritarian states using the digital weapons at their disposal to control and repress minority religious populations, including Christians. We see that in China, a country home to almost 70 million Christians—the single largest Christian minority population anywhere in the world—which has taken to deploying surveillance cameras inside and outside houses of worship capable of identifying believers. China also uses biometric data as a tool to monitor and therefore control faith groups. It is particularly concerning that the extent of that repression, and the potential for it to become still greater, has increased in tandem with technological development, and I urge the Government to monitor that closely.

Britain must play a role in safeguarding religious minorities and Christian communities across the world. In the past, the UK has helped to play a convening role, bringing together Governments, non-governmental organisations and civil society organisations—for instance, through the declaration of humanity, which opposes religious interpretations that are used to justify conflict-related sexual violence and other crimes.

As the UK makes the moral and strategic error of cutting development spending, it is critical that we do all we can to preserve our diplomatic capabilities. I am glad that the Prime Minister has appointed a special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, and I welcome the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) to his role. However, to be maximally effective, that role must have dedicated support from within the FCDO, so can the Minister share what FCDO resources are available to support the work of the envoy? In view of the darkening situation for Christians around the world, is the Minister willing to reassess the Government’s decision not to legislate in this Session to put the envoy on a statutory footing?

Persecution based on faith should have no place in today’s world. The worsening global outlook for tolerance is an indictment of increasing levels of violence, conflict and extremism, and it is an invitation to redouble our efforts, through diplomacy and development, to protect religious minorities—Christians and others. This is the worst time for the Government to make such deep cuts to our international aid budget, which supports projects that protect religious minorities. I urge the Government to row back on those plans; to return to the challenge of carrying the beacon for human rights, including Christian rights, in these most deadly times; and to match today’s rhetoric with action.

10:35

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I commend the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) for raising this vital issue in the House today, as we approach the most holy period in the Christian calendar, to remind us of the appalling persecution of Christians throughout the world. I will not mention every country, as so many have been mentioned today, which highlights that it is dangerous to be a Christian in parts of our planet, and we in this country must stand up against that kind of persecution and oppression.

I commend all Members who have contributed to this wonderful debate, but I draw particular attention to some of the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), which were replicated by my hon. Friend the Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger). I am looking at the crown above the door to this Chamber. There is a cross on that crown, which tells us that our constitution, our liberties, our freedoms and our British way of life are founded on Christian values. Whichever political party we represent, it is vital that we defend those traditions.

We are here today to discuss a deep moral urgency. This is not an abstract issue; it is about the very real suffering of people—men, women and children—who are targeted, attacked, imprisoned and even murdered simply for their faith. Christians have faced oppression for centuries. At home, that persecution has found new ways of expressing itself, but abroad it is still very much the same—murder, state-sanctioned discrimination and violent oppression. Today, around the world, Christians are being oppressed on a staggering scale.

First, in the light of the Government’s efforts to begin removing sanctions against Syria and their stated desire to work with the interim Government of that country, it is imperative that we ask the Minister what assurances the UK Government have received that this new approach to Syria will not come at the expense of religious minorities. How will progress be monitored? What can be done to ensure that a codified constitution in Syria represents everybody equally, especially Christians? What discussions has the United Kingdom had with our partners in Washington and Europe to ensure that any future settlement does not come at the expense of those vulnerable communities in Syria? Crucially, what steps are the Government taking to support displaced Christian families and to ensure accountability for the reported atrocities we have been hearing so much about?

In recent months, we have observed what appears to be a growing alignment between the Government of the United Kingdom and China, a country where religious oppression has become ever more brazen. The Government have announced an audit of UK-China relations. Will Christian persecution be a key part of that audit? Have individual cases—for example, the recent arrest of Bishop Shao Zhumin, who was detained for refusing to pay a fine related to a mass that the Government of China deemed illegal—been raised at the highest levels? How are the UK Government ensuring that their diplomatic efforts with the People’s Republic of China include pressing for greater protections for religious minorities—especially, of course, for Christians?

Having read this year’s Open Doors “World Watch List” report, which many Members rightly highlighted, I am sure that I speak for all Members across the House when I say that, while we welcome its publication, its revelations are no less troubling than those of the previous year. Sadly, there seems to be very little progress. In south Asia, Christian communities continue to endure grave challenges and are under increasing social pressures. In Pakistan, blasphemy laws continue to be disproportionately weaponised against Christians, with widespread reports of abductions, forced conversions and systematic discrimination in day-to-day life. In Bangladesh, rising hostility and subtle everyday forms of persecution, particularly in rural areas, have created an environment of fear and exclusion.

What representations have the Government made to those Commonwealth countries? How is British aid being used to safeguard religious minorities and promote genuine freedom of belief? What more can the Commonwealth of Nations, as an organisation, do to promote religious freedom, and will the Minister use the Government’s influence to ensure that the Commonwealth acts where it can across Commonwealth nations in this respect?

Nigeria is another Commonwealth nation that many Members highlighted. The situation there grows more dire by the day. Christian villages are being attacked, with churches burned to the ground and priests kidnapped and executed. Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa undermine the rights of anyone who does not subscribe to their extremist ideologies. Have the Government sought assurances from the Nigerian Government on protecting Christian communities, especially in vulnerable regions of that country, and what support is being given to enhance the security and resilience of these communities against such threats?

[Sir John Hayes]

To be blunt, we have a lot of influence in Nigeria, so I would go as far as to say, “No trade and no aid until their Government act on this.”

[Andrew Rosindell]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We have to get tough with countries that behave in this way, and we have to uphold the freedoms of these people. That is part of our heritage, and we should ensure that the rest of the world receives our support where minorities are threatened and persecuted. I could go on with examples—from countries ravaged by war to those where legislative oppression cloaks persecution in legality. We could all do so, but the suffering of Christians is global and unrelenting, and our response must be equally tireless and resolute.

The last Government introduced the position of the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief: Fiona Bruce, a wonderful person whom we very much miss. I am delighted that the current Government have renewed that commitment by appointing the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), but will the Minister outline what progress has been made since the new envoy’s appointment? How is the envoy working across all Departments and with international partners to protect Christians at risk, and will the Minister enshrine the appointment as a permanent part of how we do things by making it law, as Fiona Bruce attempted, so that we always have someone who fulfils that very important role? What more can we do to support and amplify the envoy’s position to ensure it delivers meaningful change?

Let me be clear that this is not a partisan issue. It is about standing up for the fundamental right to freedom of religion. It is about defending those who are suffering simply for their faith. We cannot—we must not—remain silent. Britain has a proud history of standing up for the religiously persecuted. We must remember that if we do not defend religious freedom abroad, we weaken it at home. A world in which Christians are persecuted with impunity is a world in which faith is no longer safe. Our message today must be clear: we will not stand idly by. We will not allow the persecution of Christians to be ignored any longer.

I end with a passage from the Gospel of St Matthew that feels all too relevant today:

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves...you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.”

Let those words remind us of our duty. The question is: what will His Majesty’s Government do to defend the freedom of religion and the rights of Christians, and to prevent, condemn and stop persecution around the world?

10:46

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Butler, for your first time in the role. I am particularly grateful to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones), for securing this debate and for highlighting many shocking examples of the persecution of Christians around the world.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. I especially thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), our new UK special envoy for freedom of religion and belief. I welcome his appointment and commend his efforts. I look forward to engaging with him over the coming months to discuss his work so far and what the Government can do to support it.

As Proverbs 31:8-9 reminds us, we must

“speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves”.

That has been the tone of many of the contributions today, with Members representing the stories and the lived reality for many persecuted Christians around the world in diverse, difficult and extremely dangerous—often life-threatening—contexts. I am glad that we have heard such passionate contributions, despite the fact that they represent some extremely horrific situations.

I declare an interest as a Christian, who has also worked with Open Doors and other related organisations in the past to highlight these cases. I am conscious of the example of my namesake, Stephen, which the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) reflected on. Indeed, the name of this place in Welsh is San Steffan, not Westminster, which is a reminder to me when I walk in through the entrance to this place. I remember asking my mum as a young child why I was called Stephen and what was the story, and reading about the horrific persecution and death that St Stephen endured.

I am also privileged to represent Cardiff South and Penarth, a constituency rich in religious diversity and tolerance. Its Christian communities encompass Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Nigerian Pentecostal—every kind of church and chapel—which represents its diversity and wonder. Those churches also sit alongside mosques, temples, gurdwaras and synagogues, and those who have no belief. That makes my community beautiful and rich, but sadly that is not the experience in many parts of the world, as we have heard.

The statistics bear repeating: 380 million Christians face high levels of persecution and discrimination, which is one in seven believers. Nearly 4,500 were murdered for their faith last year, and over 200,000 were forced into hiding or exile, each with their own terrible story to tell. For many in parts of Africa, the middle east and south and east Asia, persecution, harassment and discrimination is part of daily life. Of course, that is the reality for many people of many different beliefs and in minority communities, but we have heard about Christians specifically today.

Through the course of my own duties and my personal life, I have met many courageous Christians who have suffered for their faith. Indeed, I reflect on the visit that I undertook just a few weeks ago to Ukraine, where I met a priest in Bucha who had worn civilian clothes during the Russian invasion after a fellow priest was killed. He showed me some absolutely brutal and shocking atrocities that had been carried out by the Russians. He had to bury members of his congregation. Indeed, he helped to dig their graves.

On a personal trip to Jerusalem a few years ago, I visited St George’s cathedral, where I heard of the abuse that Christians face from extremists, even in that holy city, including being spat on and persecuted. Many other examples of suffering have been raised today, and while I will not be able to cover all of them I will attempt to address some of the key points.

First, let me say that the UK remains strongly committed to freedom of religion or belief. No one should live in fear because of what they do or do not believe in. That is why we are championing freedom, tolerance and mutual respect through our work on the international stage, our bilateral work, and our programme funding. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland has been busy with international engagements and outreach since his appointment. Alongside his efforts, we are using our extensive diplomatic network across the world, and dedicated FCDO staff, to champion freedom of religion or belief and to challenge the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities.

I pay tribute to the work of organisations like Open Doors; its crucial world watchlist shines a light on Christian suffering around the world. To the many brave human rights defenders drawing Government attention to these vital issues at huge personal risk, I say that we stand with you. Members have referred to many of the recommendations in the Truro report. We welcome the report and its recommendations, which we are considering carefully.

A number of Members have raised the very difficult decision taken by the Prime Minister, with conflicts overseas undermining our security and prosperity at home, to cut our ODA budget from 0.5% to 0.3%. The Prime Minister and myself have been clear on many occasions that this was not an announcement that we were happy to make. We will of course do everything we can to move towards rebuilding our capacity. Our commitment to freedom of religion or belief and to tackling the persecution of Christians and other minorities will not waiver. I have noted the various points that have been made about specific countries and programmes —the envoy, my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland, will have heard those too.

I highlight the important work that we do in our programme funding, including through the John Bunyan fund, which enables us to target funding through our posts and centrally to support our objectives on freedom of religion or belief. We also build awareness of relevant issues among our staff and our platforms through seminars and training. We hosted a seminar last summer for religious engagement on foreign policy. We mark and use the important international dates and campaigns, such as Red Wednesday, to reinforce our commitment to promoting and protecting freedom of religion or belief.

We also continue to work at the international and multilateral level. That includes our work through the United Nations, where we regularly engage and participate in interactive dialogues with the special rapporteur. Last month our special envoy, my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland, was in Geneva to do that in a session on the intersection between freedom of religion or belief and torture. We have participated in different dialogues in New York, and we also co-sponsor side events at the Human Rights Council.

We regularly raise freedom of religion or belief during the universal periodic review process, which has been mentioned a number of times. In November, we specifically made statements on Bhutan, Nicaragua and Qatar. In the case of Nicaragua, we noted our increasing alarm at the deteriorating human rights situation, including the closure of Church-affiliated organisations, and the harassment and arbitrary detention of members of the Church.

I will give some other examples of the work that we have been doing, because this is very much at the heart of the efforts that the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers have been engaged in. Last December, the Foreign Secretary wrote to Pastor Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, imprisoned in Cuba, to express his solidarity and calling for his release. We were delighted when he was released in January. Freedom of religion or belief is also crucial to our work in Pakistan. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), visited in November to promote that work during meetings with Government Ministers, business and religious leaders.

Members have raised a number of countries. Many right hon. and hon. Members raised the situation in Nigeria. I reassure colleagues that we regularly raise freedom of religion or belief with the Nigerian Government. Of course, the drivers of intercommunal violence are complex, and through our security and defence partnership we engage with our key stakeholders to address that. We regularly raise freedom of religion or belief with the Nigerian Government, including during their periodic review in January 2024. We condemn all instances of intercommunal violence. We raise concerns at the United Nations Security Council. Through our £38 million Strengthening Peace and Resilience in Nigeria programme, we are attempting to address the root causes of conflict in the middle belt of the country and beyond. That partnership builds the capacity of Nigeria’s security forces to tackle violence against civilian communities, including those of different religious backgrounds and beliefs.

Many colleagues mentioned Syria. We have made it absolutely clear that the Government who are forming there must ensure the protection of all civilians, set out a clear path to transitional justice and make progress towards an inclusive society, which must include the protection of diverse religious minorities and communities in the country. Let me also be clear that we will judge them by their actions. I am the Minister with responsibility for sanctions and we are closely monitoring the situation there.

China, of course, was mentioned by many. Let me be clear that the United Kingdom Government stand firm on human rights in China, including on the repression of minorities. We raise our concerns at the highest levels. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor and the Energy Secretary have all raised human rights recently with their counterparts in China.

In Iraq, our specific freedom of religion and belief objectives are absolutely threaded through the programme work of the British embassy in Baghdad and the British consulate-general in Erbil. In Algeria, the British embassy in Algiers has raised freedom of religious belief with the Algerian authorities on a number of occasions, and did so again recently. On 10 February, our ambassador met the Minister of religious affairs and we will continue to raise concerns, including in relation to Kabyle and the operation of the Protestant Church of Algeria.

On Libya, last year we co-sponsored a human rights resolution at the Human Rights Council relating to these issues. Of course, the Holy Land itself was regularly referred to in the debate; I referred to it myself in my own opening remarks. Respect for freedom of religion and belief, and the promotion of inter-religious dialogue, play an absolutely important role in securing a sustainable peace. Our consulate-general in Jerusalem regularly meets and discusses issues with the Christian community in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including with the patriarchs and the heads of churches in Jerusalem.

We continue to press for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to collaborate with the international community and to take steps towards implementing its human rights obligations. Obviously, the situation there is hugely concerning, not only for Christians but for so many other people. Christians are categorised there as a “hostile” class, according to the special rapporteur on the DPRK.

We continually raise human rights concerns with the Eritrean Government. Indeed, the UK special envoy for the horn of Africa and the Red sea raised human rights during her visit to Eritrea in June last year, and we continue to work on that issue closely.

Obviously, the situation in Sudan is absolutely horrific. That is why it has been so key in the Foreign Secretary’s efforts, and indeed in our commitments on ODA and in our work at the United Nations Security Council.

Of course, Iran was also mentioned, and we are absolutely committed to holding it to account for its restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, including at the UN’s third committee in October.

In conclusion, I reiterate the Government’s absolute commitment on these issues, and the importance of them to me personally as a Minister, and indeed to the Foreign Secretary. I will continue to do important work with our special envoy, my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland, and with organisations such as Open Doors. I very much welcome the different examples that have been raised by right hon. and hon. Members today. It is very important that these voices are heard, and that the situations are exposed. Members can be absolutely assured of our commitment to work with them in tackling persecution against Christians, and indeed in tackling persecution against anyone on the basis of their religion or their non-belief around the world. That is the right thing for this country to do and we will continue to do it.

10:58

[Ruth Jones]

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for attending this debate, and for participating in it in such an informed and knowledgeable way.

Hopefully, we have highlighted the plight of persecuted Christians around the world. I hope that we have amplified their voices, so that people here in the UK will wake up and realise just what is going on across the world today. I especially thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), the special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, for attending the debate, and I look forward to following his work as he represents the UK on the world stage.

It has also been good to hear from the Minister about what he and his team have been doing, and I look forward to seeing him continue his work to promote religious freedom, especially for Christians across the world. We need to make sure that we are turning laudable words into concrete actions to protect and support our Christian brothers and sisters across the world.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the persecution of Christians.

Congenital Hyperinsulinism

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I will call Sarah Hall to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of congenital hyperinsulinism on patients and their families.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I dedicate my remarks to my constituents Joanne and Gavin and their daughter Ibbie, who is two years old. Ibbie lives with a rare and serious condition called congenital hyperinsulinism. This is a term many will not have come across, but one that has come to define every part of life for the families that it touches. CHI affects around 95 babies born in the UK each year, with just over 2,000 people currently living with the condition. It causes the body to produce too much insulin, leading to dangerously low blood sugar levels. Left undiagnosed or unmanaged, the consequences can be life altering, increasing the risk of long-term neurological complications and impaired neurodevelopment.

The clinical challenges are complex and the emotional toll on families enormous. When I recently met Ibbie at one of my constituency surgeries, I met a bright, smiling two-year-old, full of life, but behind that smile is the reality her parents face every single day of managing risk, navigating a system that too often does not understand their daughter’s condition, and fighting for basic support. While the challenges Ibbie faces in living her life are many, her parents Gavin and Joanne are doing everything they can to help navigate them.

Joanne and Gavin are both teachers—a maths teacher and an English teacher—but they cannot work. Ibbie’s needs mean they must always be close by. They must always have access to a car, and theirs cannot be a one-car household. Every family decision, no matter how small, is shaped by proximity to emergency care. Their other children have also been drawn into the experience. They have learned how to spot signs of danger and been taught how to perform heel pricks. The whole family has stepped up to help keep their baby sister safe and well. It is clear that congenital hyperinsulinism is not just a medical diagnosis; it is a whole-life diagnosis.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this forward. I declare an interest as a type 2 diabetic—a condition that is not as bad, I have to say, but still has to be managed. Northern Ireland has a high prevalence of diabetes, with almost 115,000 people living with the condition, and the number is increasing annually. Does the hon. Lady agree that early intervention for those who are pre-diabetic is essential and that consideration must be given to widening the ability for Ozempic, Mounjaro and other glucagon-like peptide-1 drugs to be prescribed more widely to help in the prevention of full-blown type 2 diabetes? That needs to be done not just in my constituency or the hon. Lady’s but across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Sarah Hall]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.

As I was saying, it is clear that congenital hyperinsulinism is not just a medical diagnosis; it is a whole-life diagnosis. It affects emotional health, finances, education, work, family life and more. Far too often, families say they feel invisible, left to navigate this journey alone. Ibbie’s family have had to personally teach staff how to carry out a heel prick and spot signs that she might be unwell. What should have been a joyful milestone becomes a period of anxiety and worry.

Even basic medical information is hard to access. After Ibbie was diagnosed, her parents were not given guidance on how to manage the condition—no education, no tools, no support. Even their GP and health visitor were unfamiliar with CHI. They had to travel from Warrington to Alder Hey in Liverpool just to ask whether Ibbie could take Calpol. Disability living allowance forms have been difficult to complete. There is no easily accessible support, and little knowledge of the condition. All of this compounds what is already an extremely worrying situation for families, and results in many feeling isolated and lonely.

That kind of gap in care is not just inconvenient: it is dangerous. It speaks to a wider failure to provide families with the knowledge and resources that they need. I thank the Children’s Hyperinsulinism Charity for helping to bring these issues to the fore. It is a small charity, run by dedicated parents who are doing the work that should be supported—and, in many cases, delivered—by public bodies. We know that the financial burden on the NHS is considerable. A 2018 study found that congenital hyperinsulinism costs the NHS over £3.4 million a year. That is why early diagnosis, consistent care and good support systems are not just good practice; they are essential and cost-effective. Yet, across the country, parents tell us the same story: late diagnosis, poor awareness, postcode lotteries in care, and a lack of access to vital medication and monitoring technology.

Gavin and Joanne had to fight to get a continuous glucose monitor for Ibbie, a tool that allows real-time blood sugar readings and could prevent neurological damage. They succeeded, but the funding lasts for only a year. After that, they are back to square one. While some hospitals such as Alder Hey, Royal Manchester Children’s hospital and Great Ormond Street offer specialised support, families who live outside those areas are left with fewer options. Geography should not determine the quality of healthcare that a child receives. As it stands, congenital hyperinsulinism is not even listed on the NHS website. That is a small but symbolic gap, and it makes a difficult diagnosis even more isolating.

There are misconceptions about the condition; comments from health professionals to my constituent when they are told about Ibbie suffering from hyperinsulinism include, “Is that like diabetes?” Improving clinical understanding of CHI is essential. At present, no routine test for the condition is carried out in newborns. The standard heel-prick screening, familiar to most parents, does not check for hyperinsulinism. For families like Gavin and Joanne’s, early diagnosis comes not through systemic checks but chance; their daughter Ibbie was seriously unwell at birth, which prompted further testing and led to the diagnosis. Others are not so fortunate. Many children with the condition show few symptoms initially, and diagnosis only follows a serious health episode. In too many cases, it is not clinical vigilance that identifies the issue but emergency.

That unpredictability is compounded by geography. Families describe a postcode lottery in access to timely treatment and care. In Ibbie’s case, even medication is not easily obtained in Warrington. Her parents must travel to Alder Hey, where she is able to receive the specific brand that she requires. For a family already managing a complex health condition, that adds further pressure and strain.

I have some specific asks, drawn directly from the lived experiences of families in my constituency and beyond. The first is to ensure that congenital hyperinsulinism is added to the NHS website as a priority, to raise awareness with healthcare professionals, caregivers and the general public; the second is to work with families, charities and health professionals to create an information campaign and resource pack for parents and other frontline health professionals; and the third is to guarantee equitable access to treatment, medication and monitoring technology, including CGMs, regardless of geography or condition type.

My fourth ask is to provide more consistent support with benefits processes, such as DLA, where families currently face a wall of bureaucracy and misunderstanding; my fifth ask is to address disparities in access to key medications, such as diazoxide, and work to prevent supply shortages; and my sixth is to fund ongoing research into treatments to reduce the need for invasive procedures such as pancreatectomies. Finally, will the Minister meet the families affected by hyperinsulinism, including Gavin and Joanne, to hear directly from them and explore how the Government can close the health and care gap?

In closing, let me return to the heart of this debate: not just the medical condition, but the families whose lives are shaped by it—people like Gavin and Joanne, and their daughter Ibbie, whose story reminds us that behind the terminology and statistics are children who deserve the chance to thrive, and parents who deserve to feel supported and not abandoned. We must not accept a healthcare system where someone’s postcode determines the standard of care their child receives, nor should we tolerate a lack of basic awareness among professionals about a condition with such serious implications. When families are educating their GPs and nursery staff on how to manage their child’s condition, something is wrong.

Every child deserves the same level of care, and every parent deserves the reassurance that the system is there to support them. Families like Ibbie’s are not asking for the world. They are asking for recognition, understanding and a system that helps them to do what they already do so well: love and care for their children. We owe them that, and more.

11:10

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) for securing this important debate, which really is a tribute to her and to her constituents, Ibbie and her family, who have clearly been through a very challenging time but have shown tremendous strength, bravery, love and compassion. I would be grateful to my hon. Friend if she could pass on our very best wishes to the family and thank them for helping us to look at this issue.

The birth of a new member of the family should be a moment of excitement, celebration and, indeed, exhaustion. Realising that their baby might have a serious illness should be the last thing on any new parent’s mind. That is why getting help quickly is so important, as is ongoing support. Around 95 children are born with congenital hyperinsulinism in the UK each year. Although that means it is a rare disease, it should not be overlooked.

The Government are committed to improving the lives of people living with rare diseases. On that point, I have carefully noted the seven asks that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South listed, including her request to meet the relevant Minister. I should say that the lead Minister in this area is our colleague the Minister of State for Health, who is not present today—I am standing in for her. My officials will pass on to her all my hon. Friend’s asks, including the one for a meeting. I am sure that the Minister of State for Health will be happy to follow up on those points.

Rare diseases like congenital hyperinsulinism are individually rare but collectively common. There are more than 7,000 rare conditions, meaning that one in 17 people will be affected by one over their lifetimes. Each condition will have different symptoms and experiences, and every person is unique. Despite that, across all rare diseases there are shared challenges, which have shaped the approach of the UK rare diseases framework and England’s annual action plans. The national conversation on rare diseases in 2019 identified four priorities for the framework: ensuring that patients get the right diagnosis faster; increasing awareness of rare diseases among healthcare professionals; the better co-ordination of care; and improving access to specialist care, treatment and drugs.

[Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) on securing this important debate. I had not intended to intervene, but my hon. Friend raised issues similar to those in my constituency in respect of young boys diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, who are having difficulty accessing the drug Givinostat in Scotland. I am aware that the Minister might not be able to respond immediately, but will he meet me to discuss access to that drug in Scotland, and how we can help other young people affected by a rare disease?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am happy to look into that. Healthcare in Scotland is devolved, but all the nations of the United Kingdom can learn a huge amount from each other—nobody has a monopoly on good ideas—and it would be excellent to find out a little more about the issues my hon. Friend referred to.

The four framework priorities form the “what” of what we do, and are supported by underpinning themes—the “how” of how we get there. The themes include keeping the patient voice at the heart of all we do. I pay tribute to advocacy groups such as the Children’s Hyperinsulinism Charity and Genetic Alliance UK for their excellent work supporting families and continuing to raise important issues that help to make things better for people with congenital hyperinsulinism.

In England, we published the fourth rare diseases action plan on 28 February, which is otherwise known as Rare Disease Day. The plan provides updates on the progress made since the beginning of the framework in 2021. I am pleased to say that it also includes three new actions for the future, which aim to improve the co-ordination of care, make things easier for families who need to visit multiple specialists, and improve the environment for research on rare diseases in the UK.

Receiving the right diagnosis as soon as possible is vital, particularly for conditions that present in infants and young children, such as congenital hyperinsulinism. The Exeter Genomics Laboratory is the national provider of hyperinsulinism genetic testing and the research centre of excellence. That lab, the paediatric endocrinologist community, and highly specialised service units have a close relationship, so patients can be diagnosed rapidly and managed effectively via a multidisciplinary team framework.

A diagnosis means that the right treatment can be given early, ultimately helping to improve health outcomes. Advances in genomics represent a huge opportunity to find children with rare diseases as soon as possible. The generation study, which commenced last year, is run by Genomics England and is piloting the use of whole-genome sequencing in newborns to identify more than 200 rare conditions, including congenital hyperinsulinism. The study is now under way and recruiting across 18 NHS trusts. It aims to screen 100,000 babies.

Diagnosis is only the start of managing a rare disease, and I know that there is still unmet need. Too many people continue to struggle with challenges, including lack of access to reliable information or specialist treatment. Only 5% of rare conditions have an approved and effective treatment—that is a shocking statistic. To improve the situation, we have made pioneering research another underpinning theme of the UK rare diseases framework. The highly specialised technologies programme of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence evaluates technologies for very rare, and often very severe, diseases. We are working with the regulatory system to look at access schemes such as the early access to medicines scheme, the innovative licensing and access pathway, the innovative devices access pathway and the innovative medicines fund. Those schemes are all designed to support the earlier availability of innovative treatments to patients who need them, and they must also work for rare diseases.

Many people struggle to access reliable information on rare diseases. With over 7,000 different rare diseases, which often need highly specialised input, the NHS website is not always the best place for such information—although I note the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South made about the website, and we will look into that. Patient organisations and charities play an important role in creating high-quality information on rare conditions. Therefore, in this year’s action plan we have set out the steps we are taking to support organisations to get the information they produce accredited under the Patient Information Forum’s trusted information creator—or PIF TICK—scheme, so that families will know they can rely on trustworthy information.

Living with or caring for someone with a rare disease can be mentally tough. We know that people living with rare conditions, and their families and carers, often struggle to access mental health and psychological support. This is not right. Alongside the wider steps that we are taking to improve mental health access, the NHS genomics education programme has this year published new resources on rare diseases and mental health, aimed at healthcare professionals. It has also developed a communications tool to help healthcare professionals with sensitive conversations, to ensure that patients and families feel supported throughout the diagnosis of a rare condition.

I close by again thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South, as well as those affected by congenital hyperinsulinism and organisations that advocate on their behalf. Although the five-year UK rare diseases framework will come to a close at the start of next year, we remain committed to improving the lives of those with rare diseases. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) will work with officials and colleagues in the devolved Governments to chart a course forward and maintain the momentum we have built.

Question put and agreed to.

11:19

Sitting suspended.

Fly-tipping: West Midlands

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

11:13

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of fly-tipping on communities in the West Midlands.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue, particularly as the debate coincides with the conclusion of the Great British spring clean, in which many colleagues, from both sides of the House, take part.

Fly-tipping is a growing concern not only in my Aldridge-Brownhills constituency but across the wider west midlands region and beyond, as I have noticed of late on my social media and in my inbox. Once people were aware of this debate, a number of them got in touch to say that they have fly-tipping issues locally. In some areas it has become a persistent and damaging problem. It is vital that we come together to explore practical solutions and collaborative efforts to tackle its impact on our communities. I consider litter and fly-tipping to be an expensive nuisance; that sums it up in a short and succinct way.

Keep Britain Tidy, which does so much to raise awareness of fly-tipping and littering, estimates that local authorities in England dealt with 1.15 million fly-tipping incidents in 2023-24—up by 6% on the year before. Sixty per cent of all fly-tipping involves household waste. It costs the economy a staggering £1 billion, and there is enough fly-tipped waste to fill Wembley stadium 30 times over. It is shocking to see that amount of fly-tipping in this day and age.

Of course, those of us who represent the west midlands are dealing with our own fly-tipping and littering situation thanks to Labour-run Birmingham city council’s bin strike. I am a bit disappointed that there are no Birmingham city representatives on the Government Benches, although there is a colleague from—is it Birmingham Northfield?

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Wendy Morton]

There we go. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has joined the debate, because there is a large number of Labour MPs in Birmingham city.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on securing the debate. A deposit return scheme under which people take plastic bottles and cans back to the shop to get their money back, using a reverse vending machine, has reduced black-sack litter in many countries across Europe and the world. Will the right hon. Lady explain why her party voted against a deposit return scheme in Parliament on 21 January this year, despite having previously backed one as part of the solution to fly-tipping?

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I absolutely support recycling schemes, as do Conservatives more broadly. That specific vote, which I believe was before the hon. Lady came into the House, was not UK-wide, and I think that was the issue. We need to work cross-party to find the best way forward on recycling and bottle deposit and return schemes. Any scheme has to work with individuals, communities and producers.

The ongoing bin strike in Labour-run Birmingham is now having a detrimental effect on every one of us who shares a border with Birmingham. For example, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), who cannot be with us today, abuts Hall Green in Birmingham. On one side, the bins are piling up, whereas over the border on the other side, in Conservative-run Solihull, the streets are clean. In the past few weeks my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) has highlighted the similar situation on the border of his constituency.

[Laurence Turner]

The right hon. Lady highlights an issue that affects my constituency, as well as that of the hon. Member for Bromsgrove. Given that party politics were mentioned, I want to put on the record the fact that there have been disruptive bin strikes in Conservative-run authorities over recent years—Wiltshire, Adur and Worthing all spring to mind. Does the right hon. Lady agree that there is no particular party pattern and that Conservative-run authorities are by no means immune to the issues she raises?

[Wendy Morton]

I was hoping this was not going to be an entirely party political debate, because there is so much cross-party support when it comes to tackling these issues. My biggest concern is the magnitude of the Birmingham strike and making sure that it gets sorted out. Several right hon. and hon. Friends have been raising the issue. The amount of uncollected waste has risen to a staggering 21,000 tonnes, which is an eye-watering amount. It is also eye-watering that we now have rats as big as cats hurtling around the city. We all know that these squeaky blinders, as they have been named, do not respect borders.

I have heard that some city residents are burning the waste, as they simply do not know when the next bin collection will take place. I have staff members who live in Birmingham and have not had their waste collected for more than a month, and who have had no recycling collection services all year. This is not right and not fair, so it is only right and proper that we call on the Government to sort it out.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) is not able to be present, but he agrees that the situation facing residents is abominable. Some residents are taking responsibility by going to recycling centres, which is sensible, but that is having a knock-on effect in constituencies such as mine, with people seeking to access our recycling centres in Aldridge. It was reported that on one occasion this brought gridlock to Aldridge. It is worth remembering that when that happens, Walsall council tax payers are left footing the Bill.

At its worst, as has been observed in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove, in the absence of councils doing their job, sorting out the bin strikes and cleaning up the mess, people are driving out of the city to dump rubbish. We now have a bin strike that is a major public health emergency, as the Minister will be aware. Andy Street said last week that it is having a major impact on the reputation of Birmingham and the wider west midlands, which will take years to recover from. Birmingham is making headlines on a daily basis as far away as Australia, for all the wrong reasons. The longer the stand-off goes on, the worse the situation will become, with more than 4,000 tonnes of rubbish being added weekly to the current 21,000 tonnes.

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

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and demonstrating yet again what a powerful champion she is for her constituents and region. I am sure she is aware that last night the BBC news reported from Birmingham not only on the Prime Minister’s visit but on the rubbish collection issue. Does she share my concerns that what is happening in the UK just now sends out a negative message to potential tourists and the global market?

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which I was just about to come to. The reputation of a city and of a country is so important when we are trying to attract inward investment and grow our economy. It is only three years ago that, under the leadership of then Mayor Andy Street, Birmingham and the wider west midlands was showcased as the host of the Commonwealth games. Now, three years on, it feels like we are being showcased for all the wrong reasons: as a basket case because of a bankrupt council that cannot empty its own bins.

Under the previous Labour leadership of Birmingham —before he was unceremoniously dispatched by the national executive committee—we were promised a golden decade. It is really disappointing. If this is a golden decade, I can only despair. It is important not to forget that this is the second time in only seven years that we have had bin strikes on our doorstep in Birmingham. Residents really do feel that enough is enough. The public health emergency—that is what it is now—has to end, not just for the residents of Birmingham, but for the residents in my constituency and all those bordering Birmingham who are feeling its effects.

My local council, like other neighbouring councils, is looking at ways to assist Birmingham, but I feel that would be putting a sticking plaster on a problem that needs sorting out, and would come at extra cost. Can the Minister reassure us that if other local authorities helped, any costs incurred would be funded by the Government or by Birmingham city council? I do not feel it is the job of my local taxpayers to fund the clean-up of the Labour council’s streets in Birmingham.

On fly-tipping specifically, I think we all agree that the challenges posed are significant. However, it is heartening to see that proactive leadership can make a real difference. I do not want to just speak about Birmingham: I want to highlight some good work on fly-tipping, because that is equally important. In stark contrast to the situation in Birmingham, where residents are enduring ongoing bin strikes, Walsall council has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to keeping our communities clean and safe. I pay tribute to the leadership there and to all the staff.

Under Conservative leadership, Walsall has taken decisive action to combat fly-tipping and improve waste management. The results speak for themselves. Walsall’s operational teams work tirelessly to ensure that waste is collected efficiently, with one of the highest performance rates in the country. Over the past year, the council has successfully completed 7 million bin collections on time, achieving an outstanding success rate of 99.96%. In a climate in which some councils are failing to maintain basic services, it is only fair that we recognise that that level of dedication and public service is a testament to the commitment of the team in Walsall. By keeping our streets clean, Walsall council is not just ensuring a healthier environment but enhancing the quality of life for residents, supporting local businesses and making the area a more attractive place to live and work.

Walsall’s innovative approach to tackling fly-tipping has been nothing short of remarkable. For example, the environmental crime scene project has delivered tangible, long-lasting results. The initiative was launched in February 2023 and treats fly-tipped areas as crime scenes, to deter illegal dumping. Since its introduction, reports of bulky waste fly-tipping have plummeted from 40 to just five a day. In some wards, perpetrators have removed up to 70% of the fly-tips. The environmental crime scene project has sent out a clear message: fly-tipping will not be tolerated in Walsall.

The council has also organised a range of events that bring together councillors and volunteers to tackle fly-tipping hotspots across the borough. Thanks to an incredible network of dedicated litter pickers, over 67,000 bags of rubbish have been collected across the whole of the borough in the past five years. I hate to imagine how big a mountain of bags that is, but it quite some rubbish that has been collected by litter pickers, who have been doing this on a voluntary basis. In my Aldridge-Brownhills constituency, I know of groups such as the Pelsall Wombles, the Walsall Wood Wombles, the Pheasey Park Farm Pickers—I was out with them on Sunday—and so many individuals and community groups, including the Friends of Streetly Library, who are really making a difference.

It has been heartwarming to see our local schools, such as Pelsall village school, get involved in the Great British spring clean initiative and others. As I walked over to Westminster Hall this afternoon, I noticed that Shire Oak academy had taken part in the great big school clean—I had not come across that initiative before, but it is a really good way of encouraging the next generation to take part.

[John Lamont]

I recently spent time with the Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous group, picking up litter around Duns. Dozens of groups across the Scottish Borders are doing similar work. Although my right hon. Friend is right to highlight the great work that Conservative-led councils are achieving, does she share my view that, often, it is in partnership with volunteers that they are able to achieve such success?

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There are some beautiful villages in the Scottish Borders, and I have been fortunate to visit many. He highlights how these community-led initiatives have not just improved local cleanliness but have helped to foster a strong culture of environmental awareness, education and civic pride. That proactive and community-focused approach sets Walsall apart from the ongoing challenges faced by neighbouring areas, where waste management issues continue to spiral. Walsall’s model should be a beacon of best practice for other local authorities to follow.

Turning back to the national picture, when we were in Government we took decisive action to tackle the scourge of fly-tipping. Under the antisocial behaviour action plan, in July 2023 we increased the upper limit of on-the-spot fines for fly-tipping to £1,000. We also supported local authorities to better deliver for their communities. In 2022, we launched the fly-tipping grant scheme, which awarded £450,000 to crack down on fly-tipping in local communities. Following the success of measures including roadside CCTV, social media campaigns and targeted surveillance in hotspot areas, we almost doubled the funding available for councils in 2023 to £775,000. In Walsall, the use of CCTV has made a big difference to some fly-tipping hotspots.

Last May, we went further, announcing a third round of grants that would see 26 local authorities across England benefit from a share of almost £1 million, with individual grants of up to £50,000. There is always more that we can do; the work is not finished yet, because the litter and the fly-tipping are still out there. What plans does the Minister have to build on the successes of the grant scheme, and can he announce a fourth round? Birmingham could take advantage of that if there were another round.

In 2024, our manifesto pledged to punish polluters by making fly-tipping an offence that carries penalty points against a driving licence. That is a sensible measure that would introduce a further deterrent by directly linking fly-tipping to driving penalties. I believe we must further consider this type of action. Individuals and businesses would think twice about offending if they risked losing the ability to drive or getting points on their licence. It may even allow us to deter those who choose to absorb the costs of a fine.

The forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill is a golden opportunity to implement this type of reform. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), has tabled an amendment to the Bill to introduce the relevant legislation. The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), said she would ask her counterpart at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to consider the benefits of endorsing penalty points for fly-tippers.

I read a report prepared by Policy Exchange, called “Litterbugs 2.0”—I am sure the Minister or his officials will have seen it—which calls for higher penalties, a local authority league table and, interestingly, a national litter awareness course. Those are all worthy ideas that we need to continue exploring, because we cannot just rely on volunteer litter groups or councils. Government cannot do everything; there needs to be a cross-Government, multi-layered approach. Will the Minister enlighten us on his views on this matter? I am sure that he shares my desire for sensible reforms that strengthen the deterrents against fly-tipping. Personally, I would like that extended to litter as well because, try as I might, I have yet to find a clear definition of the difference between fly-tipping and litter, so let us tackle it all in one go.

In a recent litter pick in my constituency, I could not help but notice that litter was being thrown indiscriminately out of vehicles—hence my previous point. At the weekend, members of a local litter picking group asked very pertinent questions around the littering on slip roads to highways. If the Minister has not noticed already—I am sure he has—I suggest that when he is travelling or driving he takes notice of the vast quantities of litter and fly-tipping that we often see on the sides of roads or slip roads going on to motorways. Could he clarify whether the responsibility is with councils or National Highways, and whether the approach is the same right across the country?

It is time that we properly recognise the incredible work of volunteers. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) has rightly highlighted the importance of providing funding to local parish councils and encouraging collaboration with local businesses, particularly to support the installation of more automatic number plate recognition cameras to deter and catch offenders. Could we find a way to offer greater recognition for some of those litter champions, maybe through the honours system, which could do so much more to inspire and reward people at the grassroots level. Those individuals and groups who go above and beyond in their communities deserve more than a thank you—a lot of them would not expect it, but they do so much good work.

In Walsall borough, we are proud to have over 1,000 registered volunteers and nine community litter picking hubs, where residents can sign up and collect equipment. A huge amount of good work is happening at the grassroots level, but Government must play their part, too. We cannot expect councils and volunteers to carry the full weight of this challenge alone.

To conclude, I have a few asks for the Minister, who I am sure would be disappointed if I did not. Sitting through DEFRA questions in the main Chamber the other week, I saw so much cross-party support for tackling this problem; there must be some way that we can move this agenda forward. Can we have a national debate and a clear action plan that leads to real, measurable delivery that makes a difference to our communities?

Will the Minister consider the appointment of a litter and fly-tipping champion in Government—as we have champions and envoys in other Departments—to lead a joined up, cross-departmental approach? I assure him that I am not bidding for that job, but it could be a really important role. Could we have for a strong commitment to education and a zero-tolerance strategy? It is so important that we shift public behaviour. That is what a lot of this is about—shifting public behaviour and attitudes towards fly-tipping and litter so that it is not acceptable to drop litter.

Finally, on enforcement, we need to move beyond warm words and see concrete actions to tackle this costly and persistent blight on our communities. With the promised 13,000 extra police officers, perhaps that extra resource could be used to tackle this nationwide problem.

14:56

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate. We will talk about some of the specific issues she raised in relation to Birmingham, but this issue attracts attention in every region and, as she rightly said, is an issue across the west midlands region.

I pay tribute to some of the volunteer groups in my constituency, such as the Rubery Wombles, who do excellent work. Just this weekend I joined a community litter pick to clear one of the walkways off Torre Avenue in Northfield, which had accumulated a volume of fly-tipped litter. That did not come about through a particular organised group; it was simply residents getting in contact and suggesting that we come together to take matters into our own hands and clear that waste.

The right hon. Lady made some valid points about areas where there is an overlap in responsibility between national agencies, such as National Highways, and local authorities, and some of the problems that can arise, which I am sure are familiar to all Members through their constituency casework.

The right hon. Lady spoke about working together, and started by talking about who was here in the Chamber. In case it is not clear, let me point out for the record not only that am I standing here as a Birmingham city MP, but that of the three political parties that represent the city of Birmingham in Parliament, only Labour is represented in this debate today.

[Wendy Morton]

I did apologise at the time for forgetting the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Forgive me; I will not do that again. On the point about balance, I am a Conservative with a west midlands seat, so the Conservative party is represented in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) may be a Scottish Conservative, but I will not hold that against him—he is part of this debate too.

[Laurence Turner]

The right hon. Lady is exactly right to say that there is west midlands Conservative party representation; I was merely making a point about the city.

We do not have the same figures for the region, but nationally, fly-tipping incidents rose by 37% between 2010-11 and 2023-24. For the west midlands, where records start a little later, the increase has been higher—the number of recorded fly-tipping incidents rose by 80% between 2012-13 and 2023-24. Within the city of Birmingham, that increase was lower until we got to this current, very difficult period of industrial disputes. This is an issue in communities across the whole region, and I see it in my own constituency. As I said, just yesterday residents and users of Bell Holloway in Northfield, which is an arterial route in the constituency, found that the road had been closed due to fly-tipping in nearby woodland. It is not the first time that such an incident has happened on that particular road.

Through my constituency postbag, I have picked up on a large number of very serious recurring cases across the constituency. There is a set of flats in the Longbridge area where there is some confusion over land ownership and organised groups are seemingly taking advantage of this grey area to repeatedly fly-tip at that location. I know that fly-tipping is a serious problem on private land, in particular when landowners may not have the resources to respond to regular and large-volume fly-tipping.

I pay tribute to everyone who works in my office; as MPs, we individually take up casework, but of course it is the people who work for us who take on much of the heavy load. I have cleared regular fly-tipping in Weoley castle car park, and have helped to secure permanent physical adaptations at a site on the Frankley estate, which has helped to deter repeat fly-tippers.

Turning to the strike in Birmingham, just this morning there was an unfortunate incident involving the mobile waste centres that are being sent out around the city, which over the last week have sadly become the subject of misinformation about when and where they will be deployed. Overnight, a very large amount of black-bagged waste was dumped on Vardon Way in Kings Norton, which of course will reduce the capacity for residents who attend that mobile service at the advertised time. I pay tribute to Councillor Corrigan for Kings Norton North, who I have worked closely with over the last 24 hours to ensure that waste is cleared.

[John Lamont]

Earlier, I referenced the BBC News reports from Birmingham; the hon. Member probably watched them himself. There were scenes of refuse trucks trying to leave the council depot to go and collect rubbish, but being stopped by Unite trade unionists, who blocked them as they tried to leave the depot and then slow-walked in front of them so that collections could not be carried out. Will the hon. Member do the right thing and condemn the actions of those trade unionists, and stand up for his constituents who want their rubbish collected by those trucks, which those union workers are preventing from getting out?

[Laurence Turner]

For the avoidance of doubt, I am a member of Unite. I was on the BBC over the weekend to talk about exactly these issues. There has been a change in the policing of the egress from the depots, one of which is in my constituency. Also, at the start of last week, a major incident was declared in Birmingham. I support the action taken, which should lead to a 40% increase in the number of trucks that are able to leave the depots. I hope that means that there will be a change in the frequency of collections.

[Wendy Morton]

Does the hon. Member agree that, although a public emergency was declared, it is good news if a few more trucks are getting out because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) said, lorries have been slowed as they have tried to get out of the depots? The only way to crack this is to break the strike, and for the Government, Birmingham city council and, if necessary, the commissioners to get back round the table and sort this, because the only people who are losing out are the residents.

[Laurence Turner]

A 40% increase is more than “a few”, by any measure, but on the right hon. Lady’s substantive point, I was a trade union official, and in my experience the vast majority of disputes are ended by the two parties involved—in this case, Unite the union and Birmingham city council—coming to an agreement. Talks have resumed and that is positive. Members of this House have a responsibility through our words and rhetoric not to make a resolution less likely to be achieved. The exact details are held by the people in those discussions. I hope we will see some news from those discussions soon, because the strike needs to come to an end, and I hope that the offer on the table will be put to Unite members in a ballot.

The reality is that the bin collection service in my constituency was not good enough before the strike; that is an important point that we cannot lose sight of. Waste collection rates in the city of Birmingham are too low. That has a consequence for the council’s finances, as well as for the environment. I have serious concerns about the number of commercial contracts that I hear anecdotally are being cancelled because of the lack of reliability of the service during the strike and the potential implications for the city’s financing.

The context that has not been touched on is local government funding. That has a particular expression in Birmingham, but it affects all our constituencies—although the situation in Scotland is a devolved matter. We all remember when the previous Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), boasted that he had redirected funding away from what he called “deprived” cities to more affluent areas. That is certainly what we have seen in Birmingham.

Research that I have commissioned from the House of Commons Library shows that over the last decade Birmingham has suffered the sharpest decrease in spending power of any unitary authority in England. Taking inflation into account, residents of the city have lost more than 40p per £1 for every single person. We have lost more than 60% of the staff at Birmingham city council because need has risen in addition to that broad fall in spending.

The challenges are not confined to Birmingham—although because of its levels of deprivation perhaps the wave hit there first. When we look locally, Solihull, Dudley, Worcestershire and Shropshire are all councils that are experiencing severe financial difficulties; indeed, the scale of the cuts proposed in Shropshire is greater as a proportion of the council’s revenue than those planned in Birmingham.

Of course, the extremely difficult financial inheritance has an effect on the ability of local authorities to monitor and enforce fly-tipping prevention. Keep Britain Tidy has said, appropriately enough, that we are facing a “tipping point”. Some of those problems are attitudinal, and as has been said, once people know that they can dump once and not face effective sanction, it is more likely to happen again.

West Midlands police has an important role to play in preventing fly-tipping, but it still has 1,200 fewer police officers and police community support officers than it did in 2010. The police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster, recently submitted a bid to the Home Office to employ an additional 150 police officers. It would be a good start if that were granted.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for explaining that the police and crime commissioner has bid for some additional police officers, because try as I might, using written parliamentary questions and debates, I have been unable to find out how many police officers the west midlands will be getting out of the 13,000. Despite budgets and everything else, does the hon. Member agree that if someone is resident in Birmingham, where they have had a council tax increase of 17.5% in the last couple of years, all they want is to get the strike ended, their bins emptied and the streets tidy again?

[Laurence Turner]

I think what people in my constituency want is a regular and reliable service. They want the current backlog to be cleared. Some streets in my constituency have not had a collection for four or five weeks. Of course, that is completely unacceptable, particularly when other streets have had much more regular collections, even during the strike period. We need to modernise the service.

Council tax is a burden on all our constituents. The impact assessment for the 10% council tax increase in Birmingham last year made it clear that approval for that increase was given by No. 10 and the Treasury when they were under Conservative leadership. The decision has been taken this year not to go ahead with the second 10% increase that had been planned under the Conservatives. I think that is positive. We are also starting to see significant funding coming into the city, which reflects the higher level of need. Over many years, we heard from the Conservatives that they were going to introduce a fair funding review for local government. It never happened. I am glad that action is finally being taken on this matter, but it takes time to turn these situations around. I hope that we see progress on these matters soon.

To return to discussion of the Government’s plans, I note that I received a reply, not from the Minister present, who I know also takes these matters extremely seriously, but from the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), who is also a west midlands MP. In answer to a written parliamentary question, she said:

“We have committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.”

That is a welcome and sensible measure, and I hope that we will hear from today’s Minister, either during the debate or when we come back from recess, about what actions are planned, because people in my constituency are fed up with the actions of the organised criminal groups that are taking advantage of wider problems in society, including the severe restriction on resources for our councils and our police.

15:12

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for introducing this important debate. Fly-tipping is a crime against the environment. It is damaging to our local communities, and creates danger for children and pets, particularly when drugs and drug-taking equipment are discarded.

The consequences of fly-tipping extend beyond visible pollution. It affects soil, water, wildlife and human health when hazardous material such as asbestos and oil contaminates groundwater and soil. Fly-tipped waste, including household appliances, can clog drainage systems and streams, preventing water flow and leading to flooding and overflows upstream. It has a devastating impact on wildlife. Fly-tipping blights the roads and fields in my constituency of Stratford-on-Avon, harming nature and putting a mental and financial toll on my constituents. Unfortunately, across the west midlands, we are no stranger to litter on the side of the roads, or broken and abandoned furniture and car tyres dumped in verges, fields and lay-bys.

Our struggling local authorities cannot keep up with the scale of fly-tipping, with incidents increasing nationally by 6% in the last year, up from 1.08 million to 1.15 million. Last year, fly-tipping cost local authorities an average of more than £13 million, and as the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) noted, the burden on councils has increased to such an extent that they are forced to make impossible choices in their funding and vital local authority-funded services are suffering. That includes local authorities’ ability to keep household waste centres open, which is deepening the fly-tipping crisis.

When fly-tipping occurs on private land, the situation is even worse. There is no obligation on the local authority to clear up, so landowners have to take it on themselves to clear up other people’s waste. In my constituency of Stratford-on-Avon, as well as in other rural areas of the west midlands, it is often our farmers who are paying the price for illegal fly-tipping. Farmers are forced to pay extortionate fees to clear other people’s rubbish off their land. We want local authorities and the Environment Agency to have the resources to prosecute all instances of fly-tipping. We also want the police to have the appropriate resources, including mobile ANPR cameras and rural drone kits, to help and support any investigation. According to the National Farmers Union, the total cost of rural crime rose to a staggering £52.8 million in 2023, up nearly 22% since 2020. The Liberal Democrats are therefore calling for the Government to commit to proper community policing—and to a rural crime strategy including fly-tipping—to ensure that officers are visible, trusted and able to tackle local and rural crime.

In my constituency I have some fantastic groups that generously give up their time to help clear our streets, verges, fields and streams. These include Rubbish Friends in Stratford and Clifford Chambers and Litter Free Alcester, as well as many litter picking initiatives in villages. We saw many of these during the Great British spring clean. I pay tribute to all of our community groups that volunteer to pick up rubbish thrown carelessly by others. However, their actions alone will not keep our streets and fields clean and clear and limit pollution in our streams and brooks and in groundwater. We need effective legislation and enforcement to get rid of illegal fly-tipping. I propose education as well. We must teach our children and young people in schools the value of the natural environment and the importance of protecting it. I hope the next generations, in my constituency and beyond, will grow up understanding the value of taking care of their communities and have civic pride in the villages, towns and cities in which they live.

15:17

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for bringing forward this really timely and important debate. As she rightly and eloquently illustrated, fly-tipping is an absolute crime. It blights our landscape, risks pollution and disease, and costs thousands of pounds to clear up. It is shocking that many people actively choose to dump their waste, causing huge cost. That is not only to the taxpayer for clearance but also the detrimental impact on the many local communities where not only fly-tipping but littering takes place.

What a timely day to bring forward this debate, as many of our litter pickers have been getting out there as part of the Great British spring clean. I would therefore like to comment on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on his work with Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous. He has been not only advocating on their behalf but getting out with many other litter pickers across his constituency. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills commented on Walsall Wood Wombles and many others who she has been out helping in her constituency. I am pleased to hear that the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) was also out litter picking this weekend. I am surprised he managed to get back to Westminster given the huge amount of rubbish that is on the streets of Birmingham this week, but it is noted that he was out litter picking on Sunday.

I should like to pick up on the points made on litter picking before moving on to the bigger challenges that are faced across the west Midlands. It is right to make the point that our parish councils, which are at the grassroots of facing these challenges, do need extra support to try to deal with some of the litter waste that exists within their communities. I want put on the record my thanks to the Ilkley litter pickers, who meet every month. I have been lucky enough to go out litter picking with them across Ilkley and up at The Cow and Calf regularly, helping them. They have vast numbers—about 60 people now—regularly turning up on a Sunday, when they meet, and it is incredible to see.

The situation in the west midlands is absolutely shocking, and it is no wonder that fly-tipping is getting considerably worse as a result, but the diagnosis of Labour mismanagement is no shock at all to me, because Labour-run Bradford council outrageously closed not only Golden Butts household waste recycling centre in Ilkley but Sugden End household waste recycling centre up in the Worth valley in my constituency early last year, despite massive protests by local people and a petition, which I organised, receiving more than 9,000 signatures. And guess what? In Craven, Ilkley, Worth Valley and Keighley West wards, the wards closest to the shut tips, we have seen fly-tipping increase as a result in the following year. By contrast, for those wards that are nearest the tip that remains open in the centre of Keighley—despite Labour-run Bradford council’s wanting to close it in 2023—fly-tipping reports are fewer.

Quite simply, Labour local authorities cannot see the wood for the trees. They cut waste services supposedly to save money, but they do not take account of the vast increases in fly-tipping that there will be as a result, and who has to pick up the cost for that? The taxpayer. Waste is far more expensive to remove once it is fly-tipped. It would be more properly disposed of at a proper waste facility. Just because Labour has removed waste services does not mean that waste will stop piling up. That is exactly what we are seeing in Birmingham, because Birmingham city council is failing to get to grips with the huge challenges over the last month, and who is being impacted by that? The residents, the council tax payers, on the back of their council taxes dramatically increasing in recent years.

[John Lamont]

I will make the same point to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister as I made to the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner), about the tactics that the Unite trade unionists are using: the blockade of the depots to prevent the refuse trucks from leaving, and the slow walking in front of the lorries to prevent the bin workers from getting out to collect the rubbish. The hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield was a bit reluctant to call that out. Will the shadow Minister join me in saying that that type of action is completely unacceptable and should not be allowed in this day and age?

[Robbie Moore]

It absolutely is action that needs to be condemned. Why? Because those who are being impacted are the hard-working residents of Birmingham. They are dutifully paying their council tax—despite its having increased as a result of Labour’s mismanagement of the council—yet they are expected to be taking their waste to an allocated disposal site, either a site that has been allocated by the council to dispose of their waste or a waste wagon; but wagons needing to get out of the depot are being held up by those who are striking, yet the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield will not actively and openly come out and condemn their behaviour, which is having a negative impact not only on his constituents but the residents across Birmingham more widely. Does he want to intervene? I will let him use this opportunity to condemn their actions right now if he chooses.

[Laurence Turner]

I have made my comments. The hon. Member is acting irresponsibly, because we are in discussions—I mean “we” in the sense that the council, which I am not a member of, and the union are in discussions. The most important thing is making sure that the strike ends, and that there is no new equal pay liability. Let us not forget that the first equal pay liability in Birmingham arose under Conservative leadership of the council, with huge costs to my residents. The most important thing is that we get a resolution. The hon. Member can grandstand all he likes; it does not bring the dispute one inch closer to being finalised. I am conscious that this is a long intervention. I commented on the issue over the weekend; those comments stand on the record.

[Robbie Moore]

I note again that the hon. Member has not condemned the actions, yet who is being penalised but the residents of Birmingham as waste piles up outside their houses? The BBC was reporting on that very action last night. It reported not only on the action being taken by Unite trade unionists, but on the residents who are being impacted. It reported on residents who could not even get down their street, blockaded in their own homes, because of piles of rubbish outside that are causing a huge nuisance: a huge impact with the smell and a huge impact on their livelihood and way of life. That is completely unacceptable.

[Wendy Morton]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. It was obvious last week in the Chamber that the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), just washed his hands and passed it back to Birmingham. I come back to the same point: does my hon. Friend agree that the people who are suffering are the residents of Birmingham and those in the surrounding areas? What is wrong with standing up and saying, “Come on, folks, let’s get together and sort this out”? It is the 21st century and we have rubbish on the streets of our second-biggest city.

[Robbie Moore]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If you are a resident in Birmingham paying your council tax, you want action. You do not want talks after talks, discussions after discussions. Residents have been impacted for too long—a month in certain circumstances. I was in Birmingham two weekends ago, and the level of rubbish on the streets was completely unacceptable in Britain’s second-largest city, yet what is the Minister doing about it? What is the Minister doing to hold Labour-run Birmingham to account? What action are the Government going to take, other than just passing the buck down the line to Labour-run Birmingham city council to sort it out?

Other local authorities are impacted, too. I note that Lichfield district council has offered its waste services to help Birmingham tackle the mountain of waste. That is highly commendable, but what is the impact on Lichfield ratepayers? Is that what they want from their council tax payments? What is the Minister doing to ensure that the other local authorities that neighbour Birmingham will be compensated for providing assistance? The net increase in undealt-with waste, as a result of Labour-run Birmingham city council, is currently running at an estimated 1,000 tonnes per week. That is enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool with rubbish every two weeks. How will Birmingham residents not be tempted to fly-tip in Birmingham, and further afield in places on the periphery that are likely to be impacted such as Walsall, when they have literally run out of pavement space to put their rubbish on? It is hardly their fault. They pay their council tax, yet the Labour council cannot be bothered to get around the table properly and sort the issue out.

There is also the impact on local investment. Under Andy Street, Birmingham and the wider west midlands area saw a huge amount of inward private investment to the benefit of many residents, yet the level of nuisance the situation is causing—not only in Birmingham, but in the wider area—makes matters significantly worse.

[Laurence Turner]

I must say, listening to this, that I feel there is a real rewriting of history going on. Under the leadership of the Conservatives, the sharpest central Government cuts on any local authority in England were inflicted on Birmingham. Will the hon. Gentleman apologise for his party’s role in that?

[Robbie Moore]

Dare I say it, but the mismanagement under the Labour administration in Birmingham is the absolute result of what residents are now being faced with—an increase in council tax across Birmingham and a significantly negative impact on the current level of service, with their rubbish not being collected.

I fear that the worst is yet to come for the people of Birmingham. We have already had reports of rat superhighways under streets—tens of millions of rats scurrying between rubbish piles and commuting through sewers. But what happens when the rubbish is finally removed, when there are no rubbish bags on the streets and the food in the rubbish has been removed? We will see starved rats running around the sewers looking elsewhere to find food. I fear for the residents whose homes may be impacted, and the additional cost that will be put on Birmingham city council to deal with vermin on the streets, not just clearing the waste.

The terrible lesson from this saga is obvious: Labour’s mismanagement of Birmingham has left residents in the lurch, with literally a mountain of rubbish on their doorsteps, just one year after the budget-busting council tax rises—nearly 20% since 2023. From council tax to local services, the facts show that Conservative councils deliver more for less. In Labour-run Birmingham, they do not appear to be delivering anything. I want to come on to the points that have been raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills to do with the initiatives that Conservative-led Walsall council are bringing out, such as the environmental crime scene project, which seems a great idea—treating every fly-tipping scene as a crime scene and taking a robust approach. We have seen reports drop from 40 reports a day to five. That is 70% of fly-tipping removed. A Conservative council taking a robust approach gets the problem solved—delivering a better result for the taxpayer. That is the result of best practice.

Under the previous Conservative Government, we delivered £2.2 million to councils struggling to tackle fly-tipping, helping them get ahead of the problem. We have seen an increase in spot fines, a fly-tipping grant scheme and a better, more collaborative approach. I fear for rural councils and our farmers, who are most impacted and on the periphery of those urban environments—as has been picked up in this debate. So why on earth did the Government remove the over £100 million rural service delivery grant, which was a grant specifically aimed at helping those rural councils deliver services? Undoubtedly, those services are much costlier and harder to deliver in a rural environment.

So far, this Labour Administration have only committed to revising statutory guidelines in the Crime and Policing Bill. It shows a startling lack of awareness that when waste in Birmingham is piling up at a rate of one bin bag every 4.5 seconds, the best that this Government can offer are some revised guidelines and advocating further talking shops in Birmingham. I ask the Minister, what on earth is he doing? What on earth is this Labour Government doing to get to grips with the problems in Birmingham? While there is nothing wrong with sharing and enforcing best practice, it is not the fly-tipping revolution we need. It is simple: as we have seen in Labour-run Bradford council and now in Labour-run Birmingham, “Vote Labour and you get trash.”

15:32

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

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. Anyone would think it was election season, would they not?

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing today’s debate and making a thoughtful and considered introduction with a number of questions for me, which I will attempt to address. She asked for a champion of these issues and I can think of no better champion than the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), who would normally be here and who I am sure would welcome the cross-party support that the right hon. Lady offered.

I thought that the right hon. Lady made a number of sensible suggestions, for instance around points on licences, which I know is under consideration. She talked about having a national debate and a national action plan—all of these things are under consideration and are good ideas. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for not only making an excellent speech on the issues around waste and fly-tipping, but for putting some context into the political argument that is happening about the history of Birmingham. These issues have to be understood in that wider context.

To go back to fly-tipping, it is not just a load of rubbish: it is a serious crime that blights local communities and the environment. We appreciate the difficulty it poses to councils, landowners and residents. Local councils reported more than a million fly-tipping incidents in 2023-24, representing a significant cost burden to the UK economy. Over the last five years, those reported fly-tipping incidents have increased by 20%. That is unacceptable and this Government will take back control of our streets and our countryside. We are committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created, as part of a crackdown on antisocial behaviour and we look forward to providing further details on this commitment in due course.

We recognise the crucial role of councils in tackling fly-tipping. Fly-tipping happens for a variety of reasons, from people misunderstanding how to deal with their waste to hardened criminals seeking to make money from the co-ordinated dumping of large amounts of waste, so the response will vary depending on the circumstances. We want to see an effective enforcement strategy at the heart of local authority efforts to combat fly-tipping. I strongly encourage them to make good use of their powers, which include prosecution. That can lead to a significant fine, a community sentence or even imprisonment and compensation for a landowner’s clearance costs.

Much has been said about Walsall council’s splendid record—the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills talked about it at length—but I note that it failed to bring a single prosecution in 2023-24. While sentencing is a matter for the courts, I understand that the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group, which is chaired by DEFRA officials, has previously produced guidance to support councils in presenting robust cases to court. Right and hon. hon. Members across the House may wish to bring that to the attention of their local councils.

Instead of prosecuting, local authorities can issue fixed penalty notices of up to £1,000 to those who fly-tip or £600 to those who pass their household waste to someone without the proper licence. They also have powers to stop, search and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. To help councils to make full and proper use of their enforcement powers, we are seeking powers in the Crime and Policing Bill to provide statutory enforcement guidance, to which councils will need to have regard.

[Wendy Morton]

Perhaps the Minister’s records are not as up to date as mine. I want to gently point out that Walsall council successfully prosecuted an individual for fly-tipping a fridge while serving a suspended sentence order in February 2024.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am very pleased to hear it. It sounds like there was one prosecution, which is better than none.

We are under no illusion about the scale of the pressures that local authorities are facing. We all know how much pressure they are under, and it impacts the services that they can provide to local people. The 2025-26 local government finance settlement will provide over £5 billion of new funding for local services over and above local council tax. The majority of funding in the local government finance settlement is un-ringfenced, recognising that local leaders are best placed to identify local priorities. It will be a choice for local authorities, and they will make their choices.

The situation in Birmingham has been raised. I recognise the misery and disruption it is causing to residents and hear what Opposition Members have said. It is in the interests of all parties and, most importantly, of the residents of Birmingham and the surrounding areas, that this industrial action is brought to a close as soon as possible. We encourage all parties to redouble their efforts to find a resolution. We believe that it is right that the response continues to be locally led, as is usual in the case of council-run services such as rubbish collections.

Birmingham city council declared a major incident on Monday 31 March, which means that it can increase its street-cleaning operation and fly-tipping removal by bringing in extra vehicles and crews. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government updated the House on Monday 7 April on how the situation is being managed following that declaration. She, the Minister for Local Government and MHCLG officials are monitoring the situation closely. Birmingham city council continues to lead the response, as is appropriate, but cross-Government mechanisms have been activated to ensure a co-ordinated response, with MHCLG in the lead and DEFRA supporting.

The backlog of waste must be dealt with swiftly to address public health concerns. The council began its work to collect the hazardous accumulation of waste over the weekend, and the Government stand ready to play their part in supporting the council in that work.

[Robbie Moore]

How bad does it need to get for the residents of Birmingham before the Government step in and take stronger action?

[Daniel Zeichner]

We absolutely recognise the gravity of the situation, but we believe that the best thing to do is to work with people locally to try to get a solution. It is a complicated situation, as has been outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield, and I think we had better concentrate on trying to get a solution than scoring political points.

[John Lamont]

rose—

[Wendy Morton]

rose—

[Daniel Zeichner]

I will carry on for a minute.

In the time-honoured spirit of scoring political points, I return to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan), who queried why the Opposition voted against the deposit return scheme. That vote was just a few months ago, in January, when 67 Conservatives voted against the very policy that they had promoted in government. If we are going to have this knockabout and tit-for-tat across the Chamber, let us recognise that there are issues on both sides.

[John Lamont]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Absolutely—I will happily have a further tit-for-tat with the hon. Gentleman.

[John Lamont]

I view this as an important part of our democratic process, not as a tit-for-tat. It is important to recognise the concerns around that deposit return scheme. I was a Minister in the Scotland Office when the Scottish Government put forward proposals, and the previous Government were concerned about how those would impact on the operation of the internal market in the UK. Are the current Government saying that having different deposit return schemes in different parts of the UK is no longer a concern?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The point we are making is that it is quite extraordinary that the Conservative party in government promoted a piece of legislation that the party in opposition now appears not to support.

I am going to move back to fly-tipping, because that is the subject of the debate. We recognise the role of the public in tackling fly-tipping. Approximately 60% of fly-tips involve household waste, and householders have a legal duty to take all reasonable measures to ensure that they give their waste only to an authorised person. They should check the register of waste carriers to avoid giving waste to criminals who promise quick, cheap waste collection but only go on to dump it in our communities. I have asked officials to look at how we can strengthen the regulatory regime for waste carriers, brokers and dealers to crack down on the waste criminals.

We also need to help householders to get rid of their rubbish before they turn to rogue waste collectors. Simpler recycling will provide all householders with a comprehensive and consistent set of waste and recycling services, end confusion and enable householders to recycle as much waste as possible. DEFRA recently published guidance to ensure that local authorities consider certain factors when they review services, such as residual waste collections, to ensure that reasonable standards are maintained. Those include ensuring that there are no disamenity impacts, such as an increase in the fly-tipping of residual waste. We expect local authorities to monitor any changes to collection frequencies to ensure that there are no adverse consequences.

We also recognise the importance of household waste recycling centres, which was mentioned by Opposition Members. It is for local authorities to make the relevant decisions. They hold the responsibility for the operation and management of such centres in their areas.

I recognise the difficulty that fly-tipping poses to rural areas, and recognise that more than 80% of farmers say that they have been affected by fly-tipping on their land. We will continue to work with the National Farmers Union and others through the national fly-tipping prevention group to promote and disseminate good practice on how to prevent fly-tipping on private land. Whether it is councils, individuals or businesses, when we all work together we can tackle fly-tipping and littering more effectively. Our work with the national fly-tipping prevention group, which includes councils, the Environment Agency and police representatives, is identifying issues, highlighting innovative ways of tackling fly-tipping and sharing best practice.

Members on both sides spoke warmly about their experiences of volunteering. I commend all those who have been out picking up litter themselves, as I have done in the past, as well as all the volunteers in voluntary groups around the country. The Government have been proud to support Keep Britain Tidy’s excellent Great British spring clean campaign, and my colleague, the Minister for nature, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East, was pleased to speak at the launch event earlier this year. DEFRA colleagues recently cleaned a section of the Regent’s canal with the help of the Canal and River Trust. I urge everyone to try to get involved in helping to create an environment we can be proud of.

Reducing waste in the first place should mean that there is less of it to be dumped unlawfully. In our manifesto, we committed to moving to a circular economy, in which resources are kept in use for longer and waste is minimised. The Secretary of State has convened a circular economy taskforce of experts from industry, academia, civil society and beyond to help the Government to develop a circular economy strategy for England.

The strategy will be supported by a series of road maps, detailing the interventions that the Government and others will make. Among other things, the outputs will aim to support economic growth and tackle threats to our environment and circularity, such as fly-tipping. What gets tipped is often landfilled, rather than recycled, remanufactured or repurposed.

In conclusion, this Government believe that whether someone lives in the countryside, a town or a city, they should be able to walk through their community feeling proud of a clean environment that is free of rubbish and litter. That is why we are committed to stamping out antisocial behaviour such as fly-tipping from our streets and countryside. It is time to dump the excuses. Working with councils, regulators and others, we will force offenders to clean up their mess, put a stop to waste criminals and together keep our communities clean.

15:45

[Wendy Morton]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), the hon. Members for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) and for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan), and the shadow Ministers for contributing to the debate.

It seems to me there is a lot of cross-party support when it comes to fly-tipping and litter. I think we all agree that we need to do more and go further. I for one will certainly follow the Crime and Policing Bill closely in the coming weeks.

It was clear, though, that we disagree on the situation in Birmingham. It is disappointing that, time and again, Government Members would not condemn the strikes, and that the Government continue to wash their hands of the shocking ongoing situation in Birmingham and on the doorsteps in so many local authorities, including my own. I say gently to the Minister that if he is serious about taking back control of the streets when it comes to rubbish and waste, will he please start in Birmingham?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of fly-tipping on communities in the West Midlands.

15:46

Sitting suspended.

Radio Teleswitch Service Switch-off: Scotland

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

16:00

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government preparations for the radio teleswitch service switch-off in Scotland.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I welcome the Minister to her place.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when things go wrong, Governments get the blame—whether it is their fault or not. That is just one of the unfairnesses of politics with which we all have to live. In opening my remarks, therefore, I will say something very unusual—I struggle to think of another occasion when I have said this in almost 24 years as a Member of Parliament—if the radio teleswitch service switch-off goes badly, it will not be the Minister’s fault.

In the relatively short period that the Minister has been in the job, she has demonstrated a willingness to take hold of the issue and to make things happen in a way that I wish we had seen two or three years ago, because we all knew that the switch-off would be a problem. It is only now, when we are just over two months away from the final switch-off, that people who should have been alive to it long ago are finally waking up to the reality. I genuinely welcome the Minister’s engagement, and I hope that her energy will drive a less bad outcome than we might have had otherwise. It might still be possible to rescue the situation, even at this late stage—who knows?

The basic facts of the challenge with the radio teleswitch service are well rehearsed—this is not the first time that the Minister has been in one of these debates. RTS is a technology that allowed for automatic tariff switching for customers and enabled tariffs such as “total heating with total control”, which have been valuable to households in rural communities, particularly those that are off the gas grid. That includes most of the highlands and islands, and certainly the entirety of Orkney and Shetland.

RTS is planned to be switched off on 30 June this year, less than three months from now. A number of extensions have been made to the deadline previously, but the switch-off cannot be delayed indefinitely due to the system being obsolete and increasingly unreliable—quite apart from the fact that it relies on the BBC to commission it. It would be helpful if the Minister in her response could offer some explanation for the exact reasons for the hard deadline that we now face.

Despite being aware of the need to move away from RTS meters for years, Ofgem and the energy companies have not done enough to prepare—candidly, they have been asleep at the wheel. At some future date, we might want to revisit that to look at what should have been done earlier and why it was not but, frankly, for today’s purposes, that is an unhelpful distraction. I just put the energy companies, Energy UK and Ofgem on notice that they may yet have to account for something that visits a serious impact on my constituents and constituents who rely on RTS throughout the whole United Kingdom.

The first challenge is to get as many RTS meters as possible replaced with smart meters before 30 June. Across the United Kingdom, hundreds of thousands of RTS meters remain; perhaps the Minister can give us an update on the exact figure. I know from my frequent engagement with her that the numbers are going in the right direction, but not as fast as she would want. A disproportionate number are in rural communities in Scotland, such as my own in the isles.

I would appreciate clarity from the Minister on how the Government propose to drive faster meter replacement in places such as Orkney and Shetland. I have heard that some energy suppliers intend to make a concerted push to replace meters first in Orkney and then in Shetland in the coming weeks. I would be grateful if she could clarify whether the spring sprint, as we are hearing it called, is being driven from the centre and whether all companies are going to be part of that surge effort.

In Orkney and Shetland, customers were historically served by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, or the hydro board as it was called. That then became Scottish and Southern Energy, which then hived off its retail business to OVO Energy. I would therefore guess that OVO is still the dominant supplier in the local market, but in this age of switching, there are several other companies as well. Will everybody be expected to put their shoulder to the wheel in the spring sprint?

If there is a co-ordinated surge plan for our communities, the more information we can receive on that plan and how it will work on the ground, the better. I do not believe that many people are still unaware of the RTS switch-off, at least not in Orkney and Shetland, but we can still build momentum and maximise the number of people who replace their meters if people are fully aware of when and how they can get a replacement. Simply put, if we make this surge work in Orkney and Shetland, we have the opportunity to build momentum for work in other island rural communities, and indeed for those on the mainland. Getting it right for us is an opportunity for everyone.

The second critical issue is customers’ right to be no worse off under their replacement meter tariff. The Minister held a roundtable with me, other MPs and Ofgem on the state of play at the start of February. That meeting clearly had some effect as, a week later, Ofgem announced its consultation on new rules to protect customers. I note in passing that the consultation has since closed, and we are awaiting the results. Although that is not the only lever that can be pulled to drive progress, I hope we might soon have word on the results of that consultation, as we are not exactly flush with time. That would be a welcome practical signal from Ofgem—not just what its representatives say when they are sitting in the Minister’s office—that it has genuinely woken up to the need to approach this issue with greater urgency.

Central to Ofgem’s proposals under consultation was a commitment that energy suppliers must give consumers tariffs that leave them no worse off than their existing tariff arrangement when their meter is replaced. That promise is critical and it has to be delivered, both as a matter of fairness and for the practical success of the project. We need to give families the confidence that they can replace their meter in the knowledge that they will not be left worse off.

I have some concerns about how that proposal is being interpreted by energy suppliers in practice. I have been contacted by constituents who, having been offered a meter replacement by EDF, for example, have been told that they are not allowed to have an Economy 10 tariff but must take a more expensive and inferior Economy 7 tariff instead. That would leave them worse off than they were on the RTS tariff, which seems to be a prima facie breach of Ofgem’s rule and undertaking. It also suggests that EDF, perhaps because it is not the biggest player in some of those markets, has not fully appreciated the scale of what will be required of it.

When I publicised in the local media that this debate was going to take place, I was contacted by another constituent, who said:

“On Saturday 5th April, my old RTS meter was replaced. I am with OVO and was with SSE before”—

a fairly classic Orkney and Shetland customer—

“I previously paid around £5 per day on average...In just over two days since the new meter was installed I have spent almost exactly £30 on electricity. Quite an increase, I’m sure you will agree.”

I certainly do agree and if such stories continue to appear, they will make a mockery of the rule that people will be no worse off. As the energy companies are among those who have to push hard and play catch-up here, it would assist everybody—including them—if they demonstrated a better understanding of the no detriment rule that Ofgem is seeking to enforce.

As the regulator, Ofgem is responsible for judging whether such a breach has occurred and what sort of penalty or remedy must be applied if it has, but I would be interested to hear whether the Minister agrees with that assessment, and to hear the Government’s view on what seems to be a basic matter of fairness. That matters because I have heard other such cases from constituents. In such communities, it does not take much for a narrative to set in that Ofgem’s rule—or guidance or whatever it will be called—does not hold water.

There are also concerns about the consequences for people who, for whatever reason, are not upgraded by the end of June. Ofgem has stated that there will be no interruption of the electricity supply to homes as a result of the switch-off. That is essential, because, apart from anything else, our communities are entirely off the gas grid. It would also be helpful for my constituents if they received clarification from the Minister about the exact process of the switch-off in June and what it will mean for individual customers.

One of the defining features of RTS is the use of “total heating with total control”, which turns heating on and off automatically according to the radio signal. If heating is stuck on at the point of signal shutdown, that will be a significant problem for households, which will incur significant costs. It could even be dangerous for older and more vulnerable people. We should remember that we are talking about what might be euphemistically called some of the most windswept and interesting parts of Scotland; RTS being switched off in June is no guarantee that people will not still have their heating going. If the Minister has any answers about what is being done to avoid such issues, that information would again be welcome for my constituents.

Beyond these specific technical questions, my worry is that safety nets for the remaining customers will be weakened once the numbers start to come down. Bluntly, Ofgem and the electricity companies have shown little interest in or concern about our communities thus far. They may be coming to the table now, when there is political and public pressure on them, but once the numbers are down to the hard core of hard-to-shift cases, I worry that their interest may wane again. There is a natural risk that isolated homes, and isolated and vulnerable people, will make up a disproportionate number of the remaining cases. Even if they are small in number, each one of them matters and no one should be left behind.

There are also specific challenges around connectivity for rural and island communities in Scotland. Smart meters may be the solution for most people who are replacing their RTS meter, but many areas in the isles do not have the signal required for smart meters—indeed, they likely never will. I understand through correspondence with energy suppliers that technical solutions are being sought for those cases. Again, however, I remind the House that there are just weeks to go. If the Minister can give further updates about what the energy companies intend for those hard-to-reach cases, that would again be a source of useful information and reassurance for my constituents.

I suggest that such challenges further reinforce why Ofgem’s commitment that tariffs must be no worse than they were under RTS must be delivered, so that there is no backsliding to inferior meters and tariffs. Hitherto, the overall communication and consistency from Ofgem and energy suppliers have been pitiful. Constituents continue to be given poor or conflicting advice about their appointments, their eligibility for smart meters and much more besides.

Even now, some constituents find themselves unable to book any appointment, regardless of date. Just last week, I was contacted by a constituent who was offered an appointment in April, only for that appointment to be cancelled and replaced with one in August. Taken individually, those may be minor issues, but each one risks adding to the sense of confusion or suspicion about the way that suppliers are going about their business, precisely when we really need confidence.

This is a matter that we have been fighting on for years. I am afraid it illustrates on the part of the big corporates and regulators such as Ofgem a shameful indifference to the fact that they need to provide a different service to people in the highlands and islands, and in island and rural communities such as mine. It has left our communities in a place where, frankly, they should not be. We are grateful to the Minister for that understanding and for doing what she can to push them on, but sometime in the future I think we will have to return to this matter and see why we have been left swinging in the wind in the way that we have been.

16:16

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

I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for raising this important debate on the radio teleswitch service. I also thank him for meeting me on Thursday to discuss the concerns of his constituents, and for all the work that he and other Members are putting in to ensure that the switchover is as smooth as we can get it for constituents across the country.

We all know that the deadline for the switch-off is fast approaching. The reason for that hard deadline is that the technology behind the RTS system is at the end of its life and will soon be obsolete. When the service ends, meters still reliant on the signal will no longer be able to switch between rates. In some cases, consumers may lose control of their heating or hot water. That is incredibly concerning for constituents who might be impacted. Let me reassure the House that while the RTS switch-off has been and is industry-led and industry-run, the Government are doing everything we can to ensure the transition is delivered properly in the interests of consumers.

The progress made so far on RTS replacements has simply not been fast enough or good enough. As of 7 March there were 521,892 meters in Great Britain, with 139,000 in Scotland and 47,277 in the highlands and islands. That is not acceptable so close to the deadline. The Government are meeting regularly with Energy UK and Ofgem, as well as the suppliers, to address that, with particular focus on Scotland and remote rural areas. In those meetings, I continue to emphasise the need for urgency to ensure that RTS households across Great Britain receive a suitable replacement as soon as possible.

Turning to the focus of this debate, although there are RTS meters across Great Britain that require urgent replacement, and we are working on that, the Government are very aware of the significant number in Scotland, many of which are in remote rural and island areas. Some of those areas have had challenges with sufficient installer capacity and resource to do the job at hand. To address that, the RTS taskforce—convened by Ofgem, led by Energy UK and attended by Government—agreed that resources should be targeted towards regional hotspots with a high number of RTS meters. As part of that, a number of suppliers are planning a series of spring sprints over April and May, as part of a targeted effort to replace RTS meters in the highlands and islands.

OVO, as the key supplier, is taking a lead, but other suppliers will also be playing their part. These sprints aim to provide dedicated resources to hard-to-reach areas, ensuring that engineers are in the right areas at the right times to provide the RTS replacements to communities when they need them. To support this, Ofgem is working with suppliers to ensure that consumers are sufficiently engaged and ready to let suppliers into their properties for their meter replacements during these periods.

We will be working with Members, local government, charities and local partners to spread the word and ensure there is sufficient demand when we provide surge capacity and installers to do the job. This is part of the work that Ofgem and Smart Energy GB are doing on the RTS national consumer engagement campaign; since it began in January, it has been encouraging consumers with an RTS meter to contact their supplier to book an appointment. We are seeing an uptick in engagement—the campaign is having an impact.

On the important question of replacement meters working, technological solutions do exist and are available to replace RTS meters in every single household. The Department, alongside Ofgem, expects suppliers to replace RTS meters with smart meters where appropriate, so that consumers can access smart meter benefits in good time, including across a range of tariffs.

However, I acknowledge that some rural areas with relatively large numbers of RTS consumers, such as the highlands and islands, may have lower levels of network connectivity—we saw that in the casework that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out. In these circumstances, we believe that pre-configured smart meters can be installed in households with RTS meters. A pre-configured smart meter operates in a similar way to an analogue meter, recording energy usage accurately. These meters can provide a similar service to that provided by RTS, including electricity tariffs Economy 7 and Economy 10.

I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman on the legitimate concerns about consumers being no worse off. We cannot have a situation in which consumers do the switch over and are worse off. That is why Ofgem has been consulting on proposals, including one that would put a condition on suppliers to take all reasonable steps to provide a tariff that leaves their customers no worse off than they were under the RTS meter. When Ofgem publishes the final proposal, which will be very soon, I hope that it will go a long way towards addressing some of the concerns that I know people have about that. I would expect all suppliers to comply with these rules, which will be baked into licensing conditions. We will be doing our part to make sure that they comply.

Let me conclude by saying that this Government understand the urgency of the situation. As the right hon. Gentleman said, we should not have been in this position. We now are, and we have to collectively work to get a grip of it and to make sure that there is no detriment to constituents across the country. I again thank him for bringing this debate to the House. I thank all Members who have been working with us, including at the roundtables, to make sure that we do this well in the final stages. I will be reconvening the roundtable after recess. I look forward to many Members attending and to collectively working to ensure that we deliver the transition in an incredibly short space of time and, critically, that no consumer is put in detriment.

Question put and agreed to.

16:23

Sitting suspended.

Court Waiting Times: Kent

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

16:28

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered court waiting times in Kent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank everyone present for attending. I appreciate that it is the end of the term, so it will be a pleasure to witness the popular and lively debate that we are going to have over the forthcoming hour, I hope, but we will see.

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to open today’s important debate about court waiting times in Kent and, more broadly, across the entire country. This issue has become more pressing in recent years and is symptomatic of deeper structural challenges across the entire justice system of England and Wales. The issue is not just about numbers or administrative delays, but about real people whose lives are being upended because the justice system is struggling to deliver in a timely manner.

I hope that today’s debate will allow us to scrutinise these issues and, more importantly, to come together to find practical and meaningful solutions to the crisis that we are facing, because at its core the phrase “Justice delayed is justice denied” remains as relevant today as when it was coined. That truism has never been more evident than in the context of the growing delays in trials and hearings. For victims, defendants, witnesses and everyone involved, long waits for justice can be an agonising experience. The delays are not just frustrating; they have far-reaching consequences for people’s lives, for their mental health and for the reputation of the justice system itself. When delays are allowed to go unchecked, the system loses its legitimacy and people begin to lose confidence in its ability to deliver justice at all.

This is a national issue affecting courts across the entire country, but Kent has been particularly impacted by the delays, especially certain parts of the county. Some courts are experiencing far more severe backlogs than others. For example, according to open-source information, Maidstone Crown court currently has 2,367 outstanding cases, compared with Canterbury, which has 894 outstanding cases. Those figures are interesting, and I will go on to talk more about them. Additionally, the latest figures from the Kent police and crime commissioner, covering the period from July to September last year, show a 269% increase in court backlogs compared with 2019. This leaves a total of 3,261 Crown court cases waiting to be heard in Kent as of September of last year.

The stark disparity in waiting times between courts is deeply concerning, as it undermines the principle of equal access to justice for all. It is a problem that demands urgent attention, as it reflects a growing imbalance in how the justice system is applied. I know it is popular in this place to talk about “two-tier justice”, to coin a phrase, but it appears that under the Governments from 2019 to 2024, many victims and alleged perpetrators, and their families, have had no-tier justice—they have been left in an ever-extended limbo.

The constant pressure to move the system forward means a record-high Crown court backlog across England and Wales, now exceeding 73,000 outstanding cases. That represents a 10% rise between September 2023 and September 2024 and a near-doubling of the backlog versus 2019. It is essential to note that these figures are not just abstract numbers. They represent real people—victims and defendants who have been waiting months and, in some cases, years for their cases to be heard. The cases vary in nature. Some are extremely distressing; they include rape and other sexual offences. For those people, the growing backlog is not just a statistic but a source of extreme anxiety, frustration and uncertainty. For the police, it means an ever-increasing cost to them and the risk of losing cases because of the time that it has taken for them to get to court.

The backlog has a profound impact not just on individuals but on the entire criminal justice system and confidence in it. Courts that are overloaded struggle to maintain their pace. They are increasingly relying on stretched resources and often working in difficult conditions. For those working in the system, deeply honourable individuals—judges, barristers, solicitors and clerks—who have given over their life, in some cases, to supporting the criminal justice system, there is a constant pressure to clear cases more quickly, which has created an ongoing mental health crisis among staff and concerns about the fairness of the justice process in meeting those timelines.

The problem is not only the sheer volume of cases but their complexity. I know that the Government are doing some work around sentencing to look at how we can streamline these processes, but the complexity of cases involving serious violence and domestic abuse requires significant time and attention.

How do we resolve these issues? I have met a number of professionals, including police officers who have been working at the frontline and professionals in the Crown court system itself, whom I have met independently of the process. I have also met people from advocacy organisations and groups, who have suggested a number of recommendations. Some are structural and will involve cost, but there are others that I have been working on with them. One of those is the question of how we can move cases around the system as it stands. As I understand it, the current system does not allow transfers easily between court jurisdictions within geographies, so my first question for the Minister is, can we look at a more centralised approach to case distribution, to move some of the cases from areas of high backlogs to areas of relatively low backlogs? For example, in Kent, we could move cases from Maidstone to Canterbury or other areas around the region, to reduce those times.

My second question for the Minister is about expanding digital and video recording equipment—capital investment —in some of these courts. We know that, with such investment in pieces of equipment, courts can streamline cases. Does the Department have an investment programme to investigate the cost-benefit of speeding up court cases as part of a revenue versus capital exercise? Has that been positioned to the Treasury?

Thirdly, there must be a review of sentencing. I welcome the Government’s current move to look at sentencing, in a process being led by David Gauke, among others. One issue that judges have raised to me is that a significant number of people are electing to go to Crown courts, creating additional pressures on those courts. What could we do in the sentencing process, and what steer has been given, to try to reduce the throughput into Crown courts? I fully accept the principle of justice in this country that individuals have the choice to go before a jury, but is there some way of reducing the throughput into Crown courts?

Fourthly, we know that there is a capital investment issue in some Crown courts, but I understand that family courts are operating out of some Crown court locations across the country. Other family courts are operating out of council buildings and other locations that do not need cell capacity. Has there been a conversation about the family courts moving out of Crown court locations, since they do not need the cell capacity, and freeing up that court space for Crown court and criminal cases? That is another capacity question.

Fifthly, on recruitment of judges, I understand there are significant pressures around locums and trying to get KCs to come into Crown courts to cover the backlog of cases. Is there a streamlined process that could be managed centrally, to advertise or promote that as a career aspiration, rather than an ad hoc process where people can be requested to come in on a regional basis? More central management and support is required from an HR perspective, including supporting criminal justice officers and clerks and the processing of cases in our Crown courts. In many cases, a lot of back office processing is required for the court’s management of individuals. I suggest that, if we invested more in that back office space, we could process cases more quickly.

Some of those solutions require some capital investment —I suspect the Minister will not be entirely happy with that, because it requires engaging with HM Treasury—but some do not. Instead, they require a change in the system’s approach to the judiciary. I absolutely understand that there will be pushback on some of these suggestions, since this has been a nominally independent system for many decades and almost centuries. However, when I have suggested many of these ideas to judges and other court professionals in the system, they have said that in some cases they are already operating with these models. There is already shared casework among some of the London Crown courts, for example, because they have ad hoc agreements. We could support existing conversations between senior professionals in the court system to ensure that we are reducing backlog.

Ultimately, all these ideas are part of a wider pattern to try to reduce backlogs in the Crown courts, which would ultimately serve all our communities: it would help the police with resource allocation around ongoing cases that have reached charging and are waiting to be presented at Crown court; it would help the victim, because the individual would get their day in the sun, and justice, much more quickly; and it would help the defendant, because an innocent person will be able to get their case heard in front of a court without having to wait, in some cases, for years, with all the tolls on mental health toll and on families that such a wait entails. It would also help to restore confidence in our criminal justice system, which is in crisis at the moment due not solely to cuts to Crown courts, but to a lack of policing, and lack of confidence in the back office, in probation and in other criminal justice approaches that we have taken.

I am not suggesting that my solutions will resolve all the problems with our criminal justice system, but this backlog is causing significant concern among residents in my part of north Kent. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers.

16:40

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) on securing the debate and giving us the opportunity to discuss an issue of great concern to many of my constituents in Ashford, Hawkinge and the villages. He made an excellent speech and offered many suggestions. Many of the issues that he spoke about not only impact his part of the county, but are unfortunately only too evident in east Kent.

The record and rising court backlogs that this Government inherited from the Conservatives are a threat to the integrity of our justice system. As a result of the decisions taken under the last Government, justice is simply not happening quickly enough in Kent, as in so many other parts of the country. Criminal cases are taking too long to come to trial, family court proceedings are being repeatedly adjourned and civil disputes are dragging on.

The delays have a real-world impact on our constituents. To cite one example, a victim of domestic abuse contacted me because the enforcement of a child arrangement order was taking weeks to come before the family court instead of being heard urgently, as we would normally expect in such a case. I perfectly understand my constituent’s deep frustration that the delay in the family courts meant that they were not able to properly protect children who are victims of domestic abuse.

Another constituent contacted me to explain the delays in a civil case that he and his wife were pursuing against a builder, which had been dragging on for a number of years. As a result of the delay, and what my constituent felt was the mishandling of his case, he and his wife believe they have been completely forgotten by the justice system.

Timely and effective justice is key to increasing confidence in the system, but the delays that this Government inherited are preventing that. The scale of the delays means that this situation was not going to be addressed overnight. Indeed, the latest data from the Ministry of Justice shows that, in December, there were just over 2,900 open cases in magistrates courts in east Kent. The system is overburdened and, in some places, close to breaking. This is a result of decisions taken by the Conservatives to cut the number of courts, including the courts in Ashford, and their failure to invest in the rest of the justice system.

When I previously raised the issue of court delays in Justice questions, the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Swindon South (Heidi Alexander), told me that the Government were providing extra funding to ensure that more cases were heard, and as a result Crown courts in Kent were on track to sit for nearly 3,000 days during the financial year that has just ended. I would be grateful if the current Minister could provide an update on that, and also on what is being done to reduce delays in magistrates courts in Kent.

The Government have spoken about consistently investing in the recruitment of judges and tribunal members across all jurisdictions. That is, of course, to be welcomed. What is being done to ensure that these new recruits receive the necessary training, especially in dealing with cases involving sexual violence or domestic abuse, where delays do untold harm? What is being done to put victims at the heart of the judicial process, including giving them greater support while they navigate the system and ensuring they are getting regular updates on what is happening with their cases? Finally, in civil cases, what steps are being taken to ensure that cases that need to go to trial are dealt with more quickly, including the increased use of digitised court processes and remote hearings?

Court delays have real human costs. They have a detrimental impact on the mental health of victims seeking closure and families in crisis. They also undermine confidence in the justice system for communities that depend on law and order. Justice delayed is truly justice denied. I look forward to hearing the Minister set out what steps the Government are taking to ensure that justice will be delivered in a timely manner in Kent.

16:44

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) on securing this debate.

As I have said in the Commons Chamber before, the fact that tens of thousands of victims and survivors have been waiting years for their day in court is one of the darkest inheritances this Government have taken on from those that came before. The backlogs in Kent are unacceptable, and so are those in Sussex, where both I and the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) hail from.

We have heard about the problems in Kent, so I will not go over those again, but I will share Sussex’s woes, which are not dissimilar. For example, our Crown court faced a 117% increase in backlogs at the end of last year compared with 2019. That is 1,166 open cases in limbo, of which 195 are sexual offences cases waiting to be heard and 316 are violence against the person. New court listings are running into 2027 and beyond.

As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford said, these are not just statistics—they are people. In Eastbourne and beyond, they are individuals awaiting justice, victims in prolonged distress, families seeking closure and communities yearning for safety. The agonising delays also mean that victims and witnesses may withdraw from proceedings, as we have seen time and again, or that those who do stay in the mix find their recollections weakening over time and the quality of evidence declining, which compromises the dispensing of justice altogether. We have heard this twice already, but I am going to say it again because it is so true: justice delayed really is justice denied.

While the Government’s announcement of additional court sitting days is welcome, we all know that it is a drop in the ocean, as the Justice Secretary has said in the Chamber. For that reason, the Liberal Democrats welcome the Leveson review, and I have met with Sir Brian to input my proposals, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, for tackling this scandal. In particular, we have been calling for a presumption against sentences of less than 12 months, in light of the 58% reoffending rate among those offenders, which demonstrates that these sentences are not effective at tackling crime—they do not provide time for sufficient tough in-custody rehabilitation to take place.

Ultimately, the Government must turbocharge their efforts to prevent the very crimes that end up clogging our courts in the first place, as part of a public health approach to tackling crime. That includes, for example, investing in the diversionary youth provision so neglected by the last Government. Before I arrived in this place, I dedicated my career to running an organisation as one of those providers. Youth provision is about much more than pizza, ping-pong and PlayStation. It is about creating safe spaces for young people to develop pro-social values—sensitive communication, conflict management, team working and the rest—all skills that support people to function at the core of society, rather than being pushed to the antisocial or criminal margins.

For as long as these delays continue, and victims and survivors are left in limbo, the Government must support the victims’ charities that provide essential help and guidance to those facing that lengthy anguish. That is why it is heartbreaking that the Government have proceeded with cuts to PCC core funding and the national insurance contributions increase, which organisations such as Victim Support have said are tantamount to a 7% real-terms cut in their funding. I have heard the Government respond that tackling violence against women and girls is protected, but Victim Support has said that, notwithstanding that protection, there are still significant problems. I sincerely hope that the Government will reconsider those moves. Victims in Eastbourne and across the country deserve that, as well as the robust action needed to tackle the gross injustice of these lengthy court delays.

16:50

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) for securing the debate and for his opening remarks. He laid out the impact of court waiting times in Kent on behalf of constituents, as is his job.

I will begin by laying out the background to how we arrived at the challenges that we face, given the apparent profound amnesia of all other Members who have spoken. As a result of the pandemic, all jury trials in England and Wales were suspended on 23 March 2020. There was a limited reopening in June, beginning with just 26 courts—less than half the total. Gradually, more courts were added, but trial times and the number of individual courts available were both significantly impacted by the need to have covid protection measures in place.

The previous Government, recognising the central importance of jury trials to our judicial system, decided to keep them during the pandemic, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford recognised. That decision was supported at the time by the then shadow Justice Secretary, who is now the Foreign Secretary. The Opposition will not apologise for keeping jury trials, and I welcome the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin), recently reiterated his party’s agreement with that decision.

The decision required the Government to take extraordinary steps to tackle the impact of social distancing measures on our ability to hold jury trials. We opened, and extended the use of, 20 Nightingale courts, and increased the number of judges by 1,000 and raised their retirement age. That brings me to sitting days, which are of course necessary to fund the use of the court capacity available. Each financial year, the Lord Chancellor decides to fund a certain number of sitting days in the Crown courts to ensure their efficient and effective operation. In April 2021, coming out of covid, the then Lord Chancellor removed the cap on sitting days for ’21-22 and subsequently removed the cap for the following two years. As a result, the number of sitting days in each year rose from 81,899 in ’19-20 to 98,604 in ’21-22, and to 100,950 in ’22-23.

Let us look at what Labour said it would do when it was in opposition. Its general election manifesto argued:

“Victims wait months, sometimes years, for their case to come to trial, unable to move on with their lives.”

Labour said that it would “address the courts backlog”. It would therefore have been reasonable of voters to assume that Labour had a plan to bring the backlog down, but what has been the reality since it took office? What do we see today, after Labour has spent nine months in charge? Instead of working through the backlogs, waits are getting worse under this Government. There are now over 74,000 unresolved prosecutions in our courts and the backlog is growing. Some suspects are being told that they may not face trial until 2028.

Those delays, caused by court closures, the pandemic and strike action, have serious consequences. A record 17,000 people are now held on remand, taking up one in five prison places. Yesterday, on 7 April, according to the Idle Courts data feed, 68 out of 516 Crown courtrooms across England and Wales sat empty. That is 13% of our Crown capacity not in use. Yesterday, in Kent, the picture was equally stark. Only three courts were sitting in Canterbury and just one in Maidstone. This is not a system working at full strength. In a stark admission, the Lord Chancellor herself actually admitted defeat and said that the courts backlog will keep on rising. So much for what Labour said in its manifesto.

What could Labour have done differently? Since taking office in July 2024, the Lord Chancellor has acted too slowly. She has wasted valuable time by failing to fund the additional sitting days offered to her by the Lady Chief Justice, sitting on her hands when many more court sessions could have been running. On taking office, the Lady Chief Justice was clear that at least 6,500 sitting days were available to address the courts backlog. Did the Labour Government take up that full offer? No. Instead, there was an increase of just 500 Crown court sitting days in September. Realising their mistake, in December, they funded an additional 2,000 Crown court days. That brought the total to 108,500 by the end of 2024.

More recently, the Lord Chancellor came to the House on 5 March and announced that the total number of sitting days would rise to 110,000. That is the story of Labour’s time in government and its efforts to tackle the problem so far—dither and delay. Even now, we are still short of the 113,000 days a year that the Lady Chief Justice says are available, and are losing valuable time to hear cases in order to tackle the backlog. Nearly half of victims have had their Crown court trial date rescheduled, with most facing repeated delays before their trial takes place. The frequent adjournments and extended waiting times cause victims immense stress, severely impacting their wellbeing.

I know that the challenge is particularly severe locally, for which I understand a number of causes have been identified. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford identified variation even within the waiting times that he has experienced locally. For example, there are more cases entering the system, likely related to the fact that police numbers in Kent are at an historic high and charges are up 50%. There are also acute staffing challenges, which have not only resulted in the closure of the Maidstone Nightingale court but, as I highlighted earlier, left courts empty even when the physical space is available. One of the reasons that has been discussed locally is that Kent struggles to recruit and retain legal professionals, as many move to London for better pay. I understand that there has been discussion of a south-east allowance to tackle that.

For victims, it is vital that the Government take action to reduce the backlog. As Members have said, justice delayed is justice denied. In yet another display of the absence of their own ideas, Ministers have asked Sir Brian Leveson to consider the future of criminal courts, and specifically the merits of hearing more trials outside the Crown court. The review will consider the merits of longer-term reform, as well as court efficiency. I understand that Sir Brian will consider court reform options that would reduce demand on the Crown court. We look forward to seeing his recommendations in full and giving our perspective on them.

The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde), asked questions about shorter sentencing. He fell into a common trap of trying to make comparisons between short sentences and non-short sentences in relation to reoffending rates. He fails to understand that when judges make decisions on sentencing, they do different things with different cohorts. If we case-match for the difference between the types of people who get short sentences and non-custodial sentences, the differences in reoffending trickle down to single figures. I ask him to consider that when discussing this issue in future.

When might we expect to see the review published, and does the Minister, or the Government, intend to implement any of its recommendations in legislation this year or in future years? Can she update us on how many Nightingale courts remain in use, and what assessment the Department has made of their value for money in bearing down on the backlog? The Government should also think about how to ensure that court procedures are efficient. To that end, will she be looking to extend the pilots for the court case co-ordinators that have been implemented recently? I would be grateful for her comments on those points.

Quite simply, we need more courts open for longer, hearing more cases. The Labour party decided to tell the general public that it would fix everything once in office, and that it would solve the many difficult challenges across our public services flowing from the pandemic and global challenges. However, whether it be small boat crossings, inflation, economic growth or today’s topic of the court backlogs, things are actually getting worse, not better.

The Government talk frequently about their inheritance. Even if we take at face value the contested £22 billion in financial pressures apparently binding their hands, which I do not, I gently remind them that the equivalent figure in 2010 when we took office was around £100 billion. I do not remember them giving us much leeway for the difficult decisions we had to make then, including in relation to funding the judicial system. The buck stops with them now, and I took forward to the Minister fulfilling their commitments.

16:57

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) for securing this important debate. Our ability to provide justice to the public and restore confidence in our criminal justice system, so bruised after the last 14 years, is of the utmost importance. I am grateful to be able to debate these issues today.

I will start by touching on the profound challenges that the Government face in the Crown court. When we came into power, we inherited a record and rising backlog. As others have pointed out, today it stands at 74,000 cases, which is around double what it was five years ago. I heard the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) outline his somewhat fairytale account of how we got here. His Government neglected their responsibilities both in the context of prisons, which were at breaking point when we entered government, and the dire inheritance in our Crown courts. He seeks to blame it purely on external factors, such as the covid pandemic. Who does he think was responsible for the industrial strike and the failure to broker with the professions? Under whose watch was that Crown court backlog allowed to rise? The failure to invest and reform are failures that this Government are intent on reversing.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford pointed out, the backlog involves real people. Real people lie behind these statistics. As we heard, countless lives of both victims and accused people have been put on hold as they wait for cases to come to trial. It simply represents an affront to the concept of swift justice, and I am afraid it represents the failure of the previous Government to take decisive and significant action—action that we will not shirk taking. The issue is more complex than simply rising numbers. Receipts are increasingly high and rising. The nature of the case load is different than before the pandemic; it is now made up of a greater proportion of more serious and complex offences, which take up more court time and tend to have a lower guilty plea rate. We acknowledge that has real-life consequences for victims and witnesses and that we are letting people down, both those who serve in the system and those served by it.

Addressing the Crown court backlog is a priority for this Department and this Government. We are not dithering and delaying—far from it. We have actually gripped the crisis. Last year, the Lord Chancellor funded an additional 2,500 court sitting days on top of the allocation agreed by the previous Government, contrary again to what the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle said. His Government agreed one settlement; we looked to fund over and above that, with 2,500 additional court sitting days and additional sentencing powers given to magistrates to free up vital capacity within the Crown court.

We did not stop there. To deliver swifter justice for victims, we announced funding that will enable 110,000 crime court sitting days in this financial year. That is an additional 4,000 more days than the previous Government funded and the highest allocation in recorded history. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle says, “Well, that’s not as many as the Lady Chief Justice could offer up.” The fact is there is a difference between sitting days and the capacity of the system. It is not simply a matter of judicial sitting days; it is about the capacity of our prosecutors, defence lawyers, legal aid and the entirety of the system to operate. We have allocated a record number of sitting days within that context.

I know my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford is specifically concerned with the situation in Kent, and I am thankful for his efforts and those of fellow Members of Parliament within the Kent area for raising this issue. I am sincerely sorry to hear about the experiences he describes and how they are impacting his constituents. With this record Crown court sitting day allocation, Kent can sit all its courts for the full year at capacity. That will include an additional courtroom at Canterbury, which we have equipped for Crown court use. To his question about flexibility, of course listing is a matter for the independent judiciary, but that additional capacity at Canterbury will enable some of the cases at Maidstone to be transferred there. There is also flexibility in the system to deal with additional capacity and pressures. In addition to the sixth courtroom at Canterbury, we are working closely with circuit-presiding judges to enable additional Kent cases to be heard in London. Some of that has already begun, with cases emanating from north-west Kent being dealt with at Woolwich Crown court. I hope that will alleviate some of the pressures faced by his constituents.

Just yesterday, I spoke to Lisa Killham, the delivery director for court services in the south-east region, to ask what additional steps she and her team can offer to provide additional capacity and flexibility within the system. I know they are working hard to alleviate some of the particular pressures felt at Maidstone. Some of that is a system design problem. The role of case co-ordinators, which the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle raised, is really important, as is the use of case progression meetings to strive to improve the effective trial rate. All those measures will be vital in bearing down on the Crown court backlog in the Kent area.

We know the backlog is serious and rising. Doing nothing is not an option. That is why we asked Sir Brian Leveson, one of our most distinguished judges, to conduct a wholesale review of our criminal courts and propose radical, once-in-a-generation reform to deliver swifter justice for victims. That is not outsourcing policy thinking; it is bringing the very best expertise and experience within our system to assist the Government in what needs to be a once-in-a-generation level of reform—and nothing is off the table. As Members will know, Sir Brian is looking at things such as re-classification of offences and what sorts of cases are appropriate for a jury trial.

Jury trial will always be a cornerstone of British justice, appropriate for the most serious cases, but the right to jury trial is not absolutely sacrosanct; what we need to ensure is the right to a fair trial. At the moment, victims of rape or serious sexual violence are having to wait one, two or even three years for their date in court, and that is not fairness at all. That is not a fair trial for any of the participants. That is why Sir Brian is looking at every single option. We inherited a justice system on its knees, and we steadfastly refuse to let it fall over entirely. Restoring swift justice in this country will require the courage to take decisions—big decisions that could and should have been taken by the last Government.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for raising the situation for victims who are badly let down by the current system. Court backlogs have an undeniable impact on victims. The disruption to victims’ lives affects their ability to function, work and maintain relationships and the Government take it very seriously indeed.

The Victims’ Commissioner recently published a report highlighting the profound effect of the delays on victims, including the particularly adverse effect on victims of rape and serious sexual offences. To ensure ongoing communication with victims in the pre-trial period, the Government will ensure that every Crown Prosecution Service area now has at least one dedicated victim liaison officer in its rape and serious sexual offences unit, and that pre-trial meetings with a prosecutor are offered to all adult victims of those crimes. That singular point of contact can make a real difference.

As part of our landmark ambition to halve violence against women and girls, the Government have committed to introducing free, independent legal advice for victims and survivors of adult rape across England and Wales, to help them to understand and uphold their legal rights. We aim to begin a phased roll-out of the service later this year.

In the upcoming financial year, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne rightly pointed out, we have protected dedicated victim spending in the Department by maintaining this year’s funding level for ringfenced sexual violence and domestic abuse support. The hon. Member challenged us to go further and is right to do so. We have ensured that the funding for victim support is spent in the most effective way. That is why we have victim liaison officers and why we are introducing independent legal advice for victims and survivors of rape. It is right that we target resource on the most vulnerable victims in our system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford was right to raise the issue of backlogs not just in the Crown court jurisdiction, which is our focus today, but right across all jurisdictions. The Crown court is of course a significant priority for the Government, but as courts Minister I am focusing on managing demand across all our jurisdictions, including our magistrates and our civil jurisdictions.

The truth—the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle seems to have forgotten this as part of his party’s collective amnesia—is that the Conservatives left us with a mess in every single part of our justice system. On the civil justice side, whether someone was an employee, a tenant, a landlord, or an individual with a claim and a desire for redress, they were left with a mess. In our criminal justice system it was the same, whether in the magistrates or the Crown court.

More than 90% of all criminal cases are dealt with at the level of the magistrates court, where cases continue to be completed swiftly. That is a good news story. Although the open caseload rose by just under 14% in the year up until December 2024, timeliness in getting through cases has remained stable. We expect demand to continue to rise and, to keep pace, we will continue to invest in the recruitment of more magistrates. We are aiming to recruit 2,000 new and diverse magistrates this year. The diversity of our magistracy is highly important.

Whether it is the civil jurisdiction or our tribunal system, we are at capacity, sitting at the maximum, or close to the maximum, number of sitting days across all jurisdictions. That reflects the Government’s commitment to bear down on backlogs in every single part of our justice system.

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle asked when Sir Brian is due to report; that will be later in the spring. When will the Government legislate? We want to get on with it, so we will legislate as soon as possible, either later this year or early in the new year. We are not hanging around; we have to get on top of this issue. Do we see a continued role for case co-ordinators? We absolutely do: effective case management is vital. Reducing delays in the criminal courts, maintaining our progress across all jurisdictions—including in the family court and in the civil justice space—and of course improving the experience of victims continue to be priorities for the Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford raised the issue of digitisation. I hot-footed it here from the Justice Committee, where we were talking about digitisation in the civil justice space. The Government are ambitious about what we can do, the efficiencies and the greater access to justice we can realise by end-to-end digitisation. A small example of that is the Government’s commitment, as part of our renters’ rights reform, to have fully digitised processes in the possession claims space—end-to-end digitisation vindicating the rights of renters. That is just one example. We can import the same learnings into our criminal justice space, as well as make greater use of remote hearings and alleviate the particular pressures that exist in my hon. Friend’s part of the world, and in the rest of Kent, which this debate is all about. We know of the particular pressures not just in the criminal jurisdiction but in the civil jurisdiction in London and the south-east. The Government are working hard to alleviate pressures in both places.

The hon. Member for Eastbourne was right to talk about prevention, not just cure. It is right that when we look at demand coming into the system, we look at the whole of the societal pressures that lead to the increasing demand. That is why the Government have a policy, in relation to youth hubs, that is introducing exactly the sorts of services to which the hon. Member once contributed so much.

Reducing delays in all areas is vital. We will deliver once-in-a-generation reform of our courts, to deliver swifter justice for all and adequately tackle the Crown court backlog not just in Kent but right across the United Kingdom. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford again for raising this important issue for debate.

17:11

[Tristan Osborne]

I thank all for contributing this afternoon. I have nothing further to add, and wish everyone a relaxing break.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered court waiting times in Kent.

17:12

Sitting adjourned.