Written Statements

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

Tuesday 18 November 2025

China-manufactured Surveillance Equipment: Sensitive Sites

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)]

The Government continue to take the security of their systems and physical infrastructure extremely seriously. In November 2022, the previous Administration instructed all Government Departments to cease deployment of surveillance equipment on their sensitive sites where it is manufactured by companies subject to the National Intelligence Law of the People’s Republic of China. They also committed to providing an annual update on the matter to Parliament.

This Government have continued the work at pace, and I am pleased to confirm that all sensitive Government sites originally identified with such equipment have now finished their replacement work.

[HCWS1065]

Integrated Security Fund: Allocations for Financial Year 2025-26

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)]

I wish to update the House on the integrated security fund’s initial regional and thematic allocations for this financial year—2025-26. This builds on the ISF’s 2024-25 annual report, which was published on www.gov.uk on 30 October.

The ISF is a cross-Government fund, designed to tackle the highest-priority threats to the UK’s national security at home and overseas. It supports delivery of the national security strategy.

ISF 2025-26 Allocations

In 2025-26, the ISF has allocated £854.82 million, of which £233.00 million is overseas development assistance, and £621.82 million is non-ODA (table 1).

In 2025-26, the ISF will build on its first year of operation by continuing to invest in the UK’s top national security priorities. This includes a combination of activity to both strengthen domestic resilience and security and support our partners and protect British interests overseas. The ISF continues to prioritise support to Ukraine and other partners in eastern Europe and the western Balkans in the face of Russian aggression and hostile state interference. This includes vital stabilisation work for communities near the frontline in Ukraine, as well as activity to strengthen our partners’ capabilities to counter misinformation and cyber-attacks.

The ISF is also investing in bolstering the UK’s own resilience to these threats and in capabilities to improve the economic security of both the UK and our allies through the ISF’s economic deterrence initiative. The ISF will continue to deliver programming to promote stability and security in the middle east and Africa, where instability results in a direct threat to UK national security interests. This is complemented by the fund’s work to address non-state threats, like serious and organised crime and terrorism.

In 2025-26, the ISF has undergone structural reform, including the consolidation of its thematic and geographic portfolios to improve efficiency and streamline the ISF’s work. The changes made for 2025-26 represent a transition towards a revised and simplified governance structure that is due to be implemented over the spending review 2025 period. Allocations for the remainder of the SR25 period will be announced in due course.

Table 1: Indicative ISF Funding Allocations 2025-2026

N.B. the indicative table below omits references to activity and associated budgets exempt from publication. It also provides for a small over-allocation to reflect the fact that underspends can arise when delivering new programming, and to ensure full use of the ISF’s allocated budget over the financial year.

North Hyde Substation Outage Review: Government Response

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)]

In March 2025 the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero commissioned the National Energy System Operator to undertake a comprehensive review of the incident at North Hyde electricity substation. The review was to identify lessons and recommendations for the prevention, and management of future power disruption events, and lessons for Great Britain’s energy resilience more broadly. NESO published its review report on 2 July 2025.

The Government response to NESO’s report sets a clear implementation plan to make progress against NESO’s recommendations. We will build on this implementation plan through our commitment today to publish an energy resilience strategy in 2026. The strategy will set out the Department’s strategic priorities to ensure a secure and resilient energy system, now and in the future.

Energy resilience strategy:

On top of taking immediate action to address learnings from the North Hyde incident, it is critical that we also consider how the risk landscape is evolving rapidly and growing more complex. The Government’s clean energy superpower mission will drive a sector-wide transformation, offering a critical opportunity to further embed security and resilience into system design, strengthening energy reliability.

The energy resilience strategy will address sector-specific challenges across the entire energy system, like those identified following the North Hyde incident. It will set out this Government’s ambition to build power sector resilience across society, including the critical sectors that rely on energy to deliver our critical services, and it will create a framework to embed resilience across the energy system now and in the future.

North Hyde implementation plan:

The North Hyde implementation plan has been developed in collaboration with the energy resilience group—a partnership between Government, the regulator and industry. This ensures a joined-up approach to energy resilience, emergency response and recovery—will set out specific actions to enhance resilience across the three pillars of NESO’s review:

Resilience of energy infrastructure;

Response and restoration of energy infrastructure; and

Enhancing the resilience of critical infrastructure to energy disruption

The majority of actions will be delivered by the end of 2026 and will bolster the energy industry’s prevention and preparedness for exceptional events, reducing the likelihood and impact of energy disruption. While improvements will be made, no energy system can be totally immune from disruption, which is why, in tandem, these actions will support other critical national infrastructure sectors—just as transport—in enhancing their own resilience to such events, as far as is reasonably practicable.

The newly established energy security and resilience taskforce, chaired by the Minister of State at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and comprising senior energy sector representatives, will oversee and assure the implementation of these actions.

[HCWS1067]

Storm Claudia

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

Storm Claudia brought heavy rain and high winds to the UK, resulting in flooding to several areas. The worst impacts were felt in Wales, where a major incident was declared in Monmouth. In England, the Environment Agency is reporting 57 properties flooded to date, with 18,000 properties protected by flood defences. The rain has now passed, and the situation is improving.

My sympathies go to all those affected by the flooding. I have seen at first hand the disruption and distress it causes to communities. My thanks go to the Environment Agency, emergency services, local authorities and other responders who have protected and supported communities and who will continue to do so.

As policy on flooding is a devolved matter, I have contacted the First Minister of Wales to offer my support. The Environment Agency has offered support locally, which includes any mutual aid that may be requested by Natural Resources Wales.

Strong action was taken in preparation for, and during, Storm Claudia to protect communities. Over the weekend, the Environment Agency issued flood warnings and alerts to over 165,000 people. Flood defences were operated in dozens of locations, including the new scheme recently completed at Beales Corner in Bewdley.

Storm Claudia will not be the last storm we face. Flooding poses an increasing risk to many communities. This Government are therefore responding to today’s challenges while investing for the future in our flood defences and building long-term resilience.

This Government have set up the floods resilience taskforce to advise Ministers on flood resilience and preparedness nationally and locally, and to provide key learnings from previous major flood incidents. The taskforce brings together Ministers from DEFRA, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Transport, with experts from the Environment Agency, the Met Office, local authorities and mayoral offices, emergency responders, the insurance industry and rural, farming and environmental groups.

In recent months, taskforce members have delivered a range of improvements. The Met Office and Environment Agency have improved national flood modelling. The agency recently launched a new flood warning system that delivers more timely, accurate, and accessible flood warnings, helping communities across the country prepare and respond more effectively. DEFRA and the Environment Agency have exercised national co-ordination arrangements. MHCLG has raised awareness of flood-recovery schemes with local authorities. In September, the taskforce reviewed flood preparedness for flooding this autumn and winter.

The Government are committing more than £10.5 billion by 2036 to deliver the largest floods programme in history, protecting 900,000 properties. Since this Government came into office, the Environment Agency has already delivered 151 schemes, ensuring that 24,000 properties are better protected.

Climate change means that more communities will face heightened risks of flooding. In October, following a public consultation, we announced reforms to make it quicker and easier to deliver the right defences in the right places by simplifying flood funding rules. These new funding rules will come into effect with the start of the new floods programme in April.

Maintaining flood defence infrastructure is essential to ensuring reliability, safety, and long-term value. In total, we have reprioritised £108 million to maintenance, halting the decline in asset condition and including urgent repairs to defences damaged in previous flooding events. Without this intervention, their condition would continue to decline year after year.

Flood insurance is also a valuable tool to help people recover from flooding. That is why we are supporting people to access insurance through our partnership with Flood Re, a joint initiative between the Government and the insurance industry that ensures households at the highest risk of flooding can access affordable insurance. In the financial year 2024-25 alone, Flood Re provided cover for over 345,000 household policies.

We are committed to improving property flood resilience. In October, the Environment Agency published the “Flood Ready” review. Its recommendations will be taken forward by a core leadership group of industry and Government, who will work closely together to prioritise and deliver key actions. We are working with industry to promote the Build Back Better scheme. This initiative ensures that properties affected by flooding are improved, reducing time families spend out of their homes and lowering the overall cost of recovery.

This Government will continue their steadfast work to protect communities from flooding, improving preparedness, response and recovery.

[HCWS1064]

Planning Reform: Next Phase

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)]

The Government are committed to building 1.5 million homes in England this Parliament. This will require house building at levels not seen in over 50 years, but it is essential to restore the dream of home ownership and ensure every family can access a safe, decent, and affordable home.

Meeting this commitment requires a combination of ambition and resolve: ambition in the scale of our reforms, and resolve to see them through. We have already taken significant action—including introducing mandatory and higher housing targets, modernising green belt policy, taking the Planning and Infrastructure Bill through its final phases, and accelerating growth supporting infrastructure. It is now time to press ahead with our next phase of reform—going further on fixing the foundations, transforming the housing market and building homes for those who need them most.

Over the coming weeks, I will set out the actions that comprise this next phase of reform. That starts today, with three pro-growth planning reforms designed to accelerate house building: unleashing development around rail stations, intervening to support growth, and streamlining the statutory consultee system.

Unleashing development around rail stations

First, development of the right quality and density around train stations enables working families to benefit from greater opportunities to live in close proximity to transport hubs—saving them time and money—alongside unlocking more opportunities for jobs, education, and sustainable growth.

That is why—as part of a revised, more rules-based national planning policy framework—the Government intends to provide a “default yes” to suitable planning applications for development within a reasonable walking distance of well-connected stations. This will give greater certainty for house builders, allow development to be approved more quickly, and unlock tens of thousands of new homes during this Parliament.

This new policy will form part of the consultation on a revised NPPF by the end of the year, and will apply to land around both train and tram stations with a sufficient frequency of services. Recognising the significant benefits for jobs and growth that can be unlocked by building around train stations, these rules will extend to land within the green belt—continuing efforts to ensure that a policy designed in the middle of the last century is updated to work today. As with other green-belt land, the golden rules would apply, ensuring higher levels of affordable housing, local infrastructure and green space are provided to local communities.

The new approach will apply equally across all local authorities, so that these benefits are realised across the country.

Intervening to support growth

Secondly, while planning decisions are principally for local authorities, I hold powers that allow me to take over applications and determine them directly—ensuring the right decisions are taken in the local and national interest.

Given the scale of the housing crisis, and the imperative of building the homes we need, I want to use these powers in a more focused and active way. I will require local authorities to notify me where they intend to refuse an application for 150 homes or more—providing me with the opportunity to decide whether to take it over.

This will be enforced through a new consultation direction and a change to legislation, and supported by a revised call-in and recovery policy.

The Government will also commence new provisions that allow called-in applications to be dealt with faster through written representations, rather than requiring an inquiry, where requested by the main parties.

Streamlining statutory consultees

Thirdly, the statutory consultee system requires reform. Statutory consultees play a crucial role in the planning system by providing expert advice on significant environmental, transport, safety, cultural and heritage issues, ensuring informed and balanced decision making. However, a lack of clarity in the requirements for consultation and an overreliance on statutory advice can contribute to delays and inefficiencies in the planning process.

That is why we want to ensure they offer practical, timely advice, focused on what is necessary for development approval. To that end, the Government are today publishing a consultation that proposes the removal of Sport England, the Gardens Trust, and Theatres Trust as statutory consultees in planning applications to help rationalise the planning system, as set out in the written ministerial statement on the “Reform of the Statutory Consultation System” of 10 March. Since the spring, we have also worked with key statutory consultees to develop broader reforms, which aim to cut applications requiring input from bodies such as National Highways and Active Travel England by up to 40%, saving time and effort for developers and councils.

We expect that these reforms to the planning system will reduce delays and uncertainty in the process and remove bottlenecks to economic growth.

Wider acceleration plan

These three changes are necessary but not sufficient if we are to reach our goal of building 1.5 million homes in this Parliament—which is why they mark only the initial steps in our second phase of reform. I will set out more detail on my wider acceleration plan before the end of the year, including publishing a revised version of the NPPF for consultation that establishes a more rules-based planning system, including our policy on unlocking development around rail.

[HCWS1062]

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)]

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the detention of Gerry Adams—who was interned in July 1973—was unlawful because the interim custody order was not personally signed by William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at the time. The Supreme Court’s view was that the wording of the provision indicated that the Carltona principle was displaced. The Supreme Court quashed Mr Adams’ convictions for escaping from prison while detained under the 1973 order, and he has since applied to the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland for miscarriage of justice compensation.

The Carltona-based challenge was made over 40 years after the order for Mr Adams’ internment. There had been no suggestion at the time of enactment or in the intervening period in any other previous case that the lawfulness of the interim custody orders were in doubt because they were made and signed by Ministers, rather than the Secretary of State personally. At the time that these decisions were taken, Ministers believed they were acting lawfully on the basis of the Carltona doctrine. We consider that, based on Parliament’s intention, they were right to do so.

We consider that it would be unjust and inappropriate in public interest terms for those who were detained under these orders to be able to make claims based on the fact that it was Ministers and not the Secretary of State personally who made the orders. Importantly, there has never been any argument that there was anything other than a proper and lawful substantive basis for making the orders in the Adams case—the grounds for detention were appropriate and sound under the legislation. There can thus be no real doubt that the decisions would have been precisely the same if it had been the Secretary of State taking the decision on the same material as was before the Ministers.

We consider that, in all the circumstances, the right course is one of correction, so that the law is treated as having always been as Ministers then understood it to be. Parliament can change, and can clarify, the law as it wishes, including to correct what it perceives to be errors or unintended consequences flowing from court decisions. It can also ensure that such a change is to be taken as having always been the case—in short, applying the correction of the law retrospectively. Parliament has done so in the past precisely to correct what it considers to have been an incorrect interpretation of the law by the courts.

Clauses 89 and 90 of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill are specifically intended to address the erroneous interpretation made in Adams regarding the application of the Carltona principle. The Carltona principle is a vital principle for Government; and it is right that it should be protected, including by dealing with what are considered to be incorrect inroads into it. These clauses put it beyond doubt that the Carltona principle applied in the context of interim custody orders, by stating that any order made by a Minister of State or Under Secretary of State is to be treated as an order of the Secretary of State.

One effect of the clauses the Government are introducing is that compensation will not be payable in the Adams case and other similar cases. That is the effect of the provision made in the new clauses that they are to be treated as always having had effect—that is designed to ensure a genuine correction of the law. We consider that that is the right decision for Parliament to make. We also consider that it is a course that is compatible with our obligations under the European convention on human rights, which we take extremely seriously. For all the reasons I have given, I have felt able to make a section19(1)(a) Human Rights Act compatibility statement to that effect, and hope that the House agrees that this is the appropriate course of action to take.

[HCWS1063]