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Immigration Reforms: Humanitarian Visa Routes
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the potential impact of immigration reforms on humanitarian visa routes.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate. I will focus today on two groups, Hongkongers and Ukrainians, as the two largest recipients of humanitarian visas between 2019 and 2024. Recipients of humanitarian visas, however, come from a wide range of places, including conflict zones in Africa and the middle east. Hon. Members who wish to refer to broader UK initiatives, including the Afghan resettlement programme, are welcome to do so.
Since 2021, thousands of Hongkongers and Ukrainians have made the UK their home, including many families in my constituency, who now live, work, study and volunteer here. They have become our neighbours, colleagues and friends. I believe our communities are richer because they chose to build their futures in the UK. Colleagues will recall that, after Beijing’s imposition of the national security law and the crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong, there was cross-party recognition that the UK had a moral and historical responsibility to offer a route to those holding British national overseas status—thus the BNO visa scheme was born.
Since 2021, approximately 200,000 Hongkongers have come to the UK and put down roots in this country, working their way towards indefinite leave to remain after five years. That is why that, when the Home Office published its immigration White Paper in May this year, it was a shock for many to learn that the Government intended to increase the standard qualifying period for settlement to 10 years across the board. That created significant uncertainty, especially for Hongkongers, with accusations that the goalposts were moving retrospectively.
Fast forward to last week, when the Home Office published Command Paper 1448 and launched a 12-week consultation on how to implement the White Paper. For Hongkongers, that paper contains an important and welcome clarification: BNO visa holders will be fully exempt from the proposed earned settlement criteria, and will retain a five-year route to ILR. The paper confirms that the Government remain fully committed to the BNO route. The Home Secretary went further on the Floor of the House by noting that this country has
“always supported…the repatriation of Hongkongers.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2025; Vol. 775, c. 547.]
The word “repatriation” is important. It communicates the sense that the UK sees Hongkongers as people who rightfully belong and whose presence is understood and recognised. That is an important and powerful message. I want to place on record my thanks to the Home Secretary and Home Office Ministers for their continued commitment.
The headline announcement has not dispelled all anxiety, however, for two reasons. First, the consultation document suggests that, to be eligible for ILR, applicants should demonstrate that they have earned at least £12,570 per year for three to five years. The intention behind that is understandable—to maintain confidence in the system—but the BNO route was never conceived as a classic economic migration route. It is a humanitarian route for people who have demonstrated a uniquely strong attachment to this country.
Many BNO households are income poor but asset rich. They arrived with significant savings and have supported themselves without recourse to public funds. Given the shift to a new culture and way of living, income patterns do not necessarily fit neatly into rigid salary thresholds, which is a concern. Secondly, there is the proposed increase in the English language requirement from B1 to B2. Thousands of BNO holders have already paid for and passed the B1 test in good time. Moving the goalposts to B2 now would shut many people out of ILR in the short term, despite years of lawful residence, work and contribution.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
My constituents in Chelmsford, which has a sizeable BNO population, are concerned about the issues that the hon. Member has just raised. As for the question of economic migration, many of them came here as students or retirees so it is difficult for them to fulfil the criteria, and they feel that the rug is being pulled out from underneath them through retrospective changes to the language criteria. Does the hon. Member agree that that does not make sense and needs to be looked at again?
James Naish
I will come on to five groups who need to be given special consideration, including those that the hon. Member has just mentioned.
Over the weekend, more than 5,000 BNO visa holders completed a survey about the proposals. The results show that if the requirements outlined were strictly applied with no transitional arrangements, only 8% of BNO households would expect all members to be able to apply for ILR after five years in the UK, and 43% said that no members would be eligible for ILR at the five-year point.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent advocacy on this issue, which is much appreciated across the House. In Uxbridge and South Ruislip, which has a significant and important BNO community, I recognise the concerns that he has outlined. I welcome the fact that the Government have moved, but does my hon. Friend agree that, under the amended proposals, so few BNO holders qualifying for ILR would have a real impact on people’s ability to access student finance and study in the UK, and to integrate into society, and that people being unable to access their pensions back in Hong Kong would have a massive economic impact?
James Naish
Yes, I absolutely agree. I will come on to why that issue matters and I will cover both of my hon. Friend’s points.
Given that the route was designed as a safe and secure five-year pathway for intergenerational families fleeing a severe crackdown on civil liberties, the figures are worrying. They highlight the importance of making sure that the small print aligns with the Government’s overarching strong and welcome commitment to the BNO scheme.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
Many Hongkongers in Altrincham and Sale West have written to me with concerns about any changes to the pathway for indefinite leave to remain. My hon. Friend is powerfully making the case on how changes to language or income requirements would have a major impact on their lives. Does he agree that the fact that Hongkongers now account for less than 2% of total visa grants should be an important consideration for the Government as they consult on their immigration proposals and on building a fair but balanced immigration system?
James Naish
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to note that applications fluctuate. Certainly, the 200,000 members of the BNO community who are already here are very much part of our community, but the numbers coming through now are much smaller.
That brings me to why this issue matters. ILR is not a technicality for Hongkongers; it is fundamental to their security and their ability to live a full life in this country, as has already been mentioned. Without ILR and, in due course, citizenship and a UK passport, families will be unable to travel safely. Considerable pension savings in Hong Kong can be accessed only once ILR has been granted, meaning that any delay to ILR could push some into severe hardship. ILR is the gateway to home student fee status. Until children in BNO families have ILR, many will be unable to afford university in the UK. Put bluntly, the way we design and implement these rules will determine the safety, socioeconomic security and contribution of tens of thousands of Hongkongers over the next few years.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
I am grateful for the speech that the hon. Member is making. He has highlighted many of the reasons why I wrote about this issue for The Atlantic more than six years ago, and why my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), as the then Home Secretary, was able to change the law at the time. Does he agree that the importance of this change is fundamental, because it is not just about the ability to integrate here, but about fear of persecution abroad?
The reality is that in our own community now there are many Hongkongers who fear the long arm of the Chinese Communist party, and if they are not secure in their position here, they could be—or at least in their own minds they could be—dragged back to Hong Kong and very severely punished in pretty horrific ways, as Jimmy Lai’s case demonstrates. This is therefore actually about the liberty of British citizens and not just about the right of abode.
James Naish
The right hon. Member has been a tireless advocate for this group of people. I completely agree with everything that he said and I am sure we will continue to work together on these issues.
Over the weekend, I received hundreds of real-life stories from Hongkongers who fell into five main groups, of which a couple have already been referenced. Those groups are, first, self-employed people whose income has varied significantly from year to year since arriving here; secondly, primary carers, typically women, who have purposefully stayed at home to look after young or old dependants; thirdly, children still completing their education; fourthly, older couples who work limited hours for age and health reasons; and finally, families who for practical reasons will not be able to arrange for everybody to study and demonstrate linguistic competency in the next few months.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that this policy framework distinguishes between immigration control on the one hand and, on the other hand, how we treat lawfully present migrants? Does he agree that we must restore order and control to the system for those coming into the UK, but that once people are here, we need to encourage integration and value non-monetary contributions as well, so that we do not skew the system away from the integration that we ultimately need to see for those who are lawfully here?
James Naish
Absolutely. I think that the concept of a retrospective introduction of criteria is what is really concerning residents, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will have been listening to the point that my hon. and learned Friend just made.
With months to go until many BNO families hit the five-year mark, the possibility of a sudden shift has understandably caused anxiety. I therefore ask the Minister to consider the following questions. First, if the Government are to impose a financial test, could this be an assessed contribution at household level rather than for each person in isolation? Secondly, will the Government consider introducing transitional arrangements so that anyone already on a pathway to ILR is not subject to new conditions retrospectively? Thirdly, will the Government consider exempting the BNO route from the changes altogether, having openly acknowledged this group’s historic attachment to the United Kingdom? Fourthly, if these new rules are needed, will the Government look into common-sense exemptions for pensioners, children, disabled people and others whose earning and linguistic potential is likely to remain low?
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. A very large number of people wish to take part in the debate, and I will try to get everybody in, but if there continue to be interventions, some people will not get in. I just ask the hon. Gentleman whether he can shortly bring his remarks to a close so that I can get everybody in. Thank you.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
All right, we will have one more intervention.
Jo White
Thank you, Sir Edward; I will be very quick. I received yesterday a petition from 500 people, so I feel obliged to contribute. Many Hongkongers relocated here, trusting the UK Government’s promise. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) agree that altering the rules after relocation contradicts the spirit in which and the legal ethics under which the route was established?
James Naish
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend and I worked together at Bassetlaw district council and welcomed a lot of Hongkongers into our community, so I thank her for her support today.
I will now turn much more briefly to Ukrainian humanitarian visa routes. It is 11 years since the beginning of Russia’s illegal occupation of parts of Ukraine, and three years since Russia began its full-scale invasion. Since then, over 200,000 displaced Ukrainians have arrived in the UK under Ukrainian visa schemes. However, there remains no pathway to permanent settlement for Ukrainians in the UK, and time spent under these schemes does not count towards the UK’s 10-year route to ILR. A very recent survey of 3,000 Ukrainians by the University of Birmingham demonstrated that this uncertainty is having a deep, emotional and practical toll on that important group.
Like many hon. Members here, I am proud that my constituents continue to support the Ukrainian war effort. In my recent survey, 87% of them said that they support this Government’s continued iron-clad support for Ukraine. I know that many of my constituents would like that support to be reflected in our approach to Ukrainians living in the UK, too. I therefore hope that the Home Office will fully explore how it can enhance the existing Ukrainian visa schemes to provide a route to ILR for Ukrainians deeply embedded in the UK. After all, some Ukrainian children have now spent far more time in the UK school system than the Ukrainian one, and more time speaking English with their friends than Ukrainian. Both Ukrainian adults and children have built vital support networks that they will require as their country is slowly rebuilt, and they should not be forgotten.
I am proud of the BNO and Ukrainian communities in my constituency. In Rushcliffe, Hongkongers and Ukrainians are working in our NHS and care homes, starting businesses, volunteering in community groups and enriching our cultural life. The UK is better off because they chose to come here. I believe that this House recognises their contribution, and I am confident that colleagues will continue to work together to advocate for them. We must ensure that the small print genuinely reflects the spirit of welcome and protection expressed by Ministers, rather than inadvertently undermining it. I look forward to colleagues’ contributions and the Minister’s response.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
I remind Members that if they wish to speak, they must bob. As you can see, a large number of colleagues are trying to take part. I shall impose an immediate three-minute limit on speeches. Bear in mind that if you make interventions on your colleagues, somebody may not get in.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) on his strong advocacy on this topic.
I welcome the Government’s confirmation last week that people with BNO visas will continue to qualify for permanent residence in the UK after five years. That is the right and fair thing to do for people with such unique attachments to this country. However, the Government’s new consultation has left many of my constituents in Bath concerned about their future, particularly our valuable Hong Kong community. As has already been said, BNOs are not economic migrants; many made an irreversible decision to come to the UK to flee political persecution and repression. For many, returning to Hong Kong is not an option. Changes to indefinite leave to remain requirements could put BNOs in an impossible position: unable to settle in the UK and unable to return to Hong Kong.
One of my constituents is a self-funded PhD student on a BNO visa. He is concerned about the proposed income requirement for ILR. Since any part-time work during his studies could be under the taxable income threshold, it is likely that he will not meet the income requirement during that period. He feels that the UK Government are, in effect, encouraging him either to abandon his PhD in favour of entering the job market or to leave the UK after his PhD studies are complete.
BNO families came to the UK seeking safety, stability and the shared values of freedom and democracy. Retrospective changes risk undermining the spirit of the BNO pathway altogether. The potential for a sudden increase to the B2 English language test is particularly concerning to some of my constituents. Thousands of BNOs are due to become eligible for settlement in 2026. They have been planning and preparing—as we have already heard—for the current B1 English requirement. A sudden mandatory increase to the B2 level, which requires near-fluent conversation and complex argument, is a significant step up from B1 and would be difficult to achieve, especially for many older applicants. For my constituents who have begun the process of settlement while contributing to society, it now feels like the Government are throwing additional barriers in their way.
The Government must look at providing flexibility through a transitional period if they are to press ahead with any of these changes. At the very least, the major wave of applicants in April 2026 should be left unaffected by any of those new rules. I urge the Government to listen.
Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward.
Many families in Warrington South have been in touch with me over recent months, worried about their future. We opened the BNO pathway because it was the right thing to do. We did not do it out of charity but because we recognised a historic responsibility and a bond that runs deep. When the BNO route opened, thousands of Hongkongers uprooted their lives under extraordinary pressure. They arrived self-funded, often highly skilled, and determined to make a contribution.
In Warrington, that is exactly what they have done. They work in our public services. They set up their own businesses. They volunteer. They pay taxes. They have bought homes. They are raising their children here with the quiet hope for stability in a country that they now call home. I welcome the Government’s confirmation that the five-year route to ILR will remain intact for BNO families. That was the right decision: it recognises Hongkongers’ unique position and our responsibility to them. But that reassurance is valid only if the mandatory requirements reflect the same spirit of stability and trust.
The concerns that I am hearing are simple: people feel that the goalposts are being moved in the final minutes. Raising the English language requirement from B1 to B2 and introducing a mandatory earnings threshold for settlement risk shutting out people who have built their lives here in good faith. I have heard from constituents who met every rule set out when they arrived who now fear that they may not qualify because their partner struggles with the written element of the B2 test, or because a family member earns below a threshold, despite working. I have met constituents who have already taken their B1 test, fully prepared to apply for ILR in 2026, who now fear that the standard might change at the last minute.
Additionally, a rigid income requirement risks misunderstanding how many BNO households operate. Many are income-poor but savings-rich; others have one parent working part time to support the family through their transition to a new country. If income is measured at the level of each individual rather than at the level of the household, thousands could be locked out of ILR through no fault of their own. That would be an unintended, deeply unjust outcome, and one that we should avoid.
A longer journey to settlement risks leaving people stuck in limbo, which is no foundation for a stable life. These are our new neighbours, friends and colleagues. They fled political repression and trusted our word—that trust matters. Of course the immigration system needs clarity and fairness, but fairness and the rule of law cut both ways. These families followed every rule: they paid the fees, they made the leap, and they contributed to our economy and our civic life from day one.
I ask the Minister, before any final decisions are made, to listen to the communities affected, to honour the commitments already given and to ensure that humanitarian routes such as those on which BNO families arrived are treated with the dignity and stability that those families were promised. Let us avoid retroactive changes. Let us make sure that transitional arrangements protect anyone already on the pathway. Let us keep the BNO route grounded in the principles it was built on: sanctuary, clarity and trust.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for setting the scene so well on a subject close to all our hearts. This debate is not simply about policy but about the lives of people who will be deeply affected by the impact of the proposed immigration reforms. We must navigate such reforms with care, mindful of our moral and legal obligations to those seeking refuge.
I will speak specifically about people of faith who are persecuted and have to flee to seek asylum. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, I reiterate the importance of our duty to protect individuals who have fled their home countries due to violations of religious freedom and human rights. Across the world, countless individuals are forced to abandon everything they know—family, community, culture—simply because they choose to practise their faith or live their life according to their conscience.
Today, over 380 million Christians face high levels of persecution or discrimination. More than 80% of the world’s population live in countries in which their freedom of religion or belief is restricted or severely restricted. The United Kingdom has long been a place of refuge for those seeking safety from oppression, including those fleeing the civil war in Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan. We provided not only shelter but the opportunity for individuals and families to rebuild their homes in dignity, free from the daily threats, discrimination and violence they once faced. That tradition reflects the best of our British values of compassion, justice and an unwavering commitment to human rights. As the UK has proven itself to be a leading figure in promoting freedom of religion or belief worldwide, we must ensure that those escaping persecution receive the support and protection necessary.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
I have also had Hongkongers in my constituency contact me about the changes, so I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this debate.
The immigration reforms come with a strengthened commitment to provide safe and legal routes for those who are genuinely fleeing persecution, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable groups such as children. That would be a great step forward in getting rid of the criminal gangs, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need more details from the Government on how these safe and legal routes will work, in order to emphasise their commitment to protect those who are genuinely in need?
Jim Shannon
The Minister is, no doubt, listening. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure the Minister will give a positive response.
We must not ignore the plight of those suffering for their faith: the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, Christians in Nigeria and the Baha’is in Iran. Faith groups in countless other countries such as Sudan, Eritrea and Myanmar are subjected to unspeakable tragedies. The UK has provided lifesaving refuge to groups fleeing religious persecution through humanitarian visa routes.
When we consider genuine cases of forced displacement due to freedom of religion or belief, it is not a short-term issue. It is important to strengthen the UK’s immigration system to provide greater efficiency and fairness, but in doing so, I urge right hon. and hon. Members, and the Minister in particular, not to turn our backs on those who are targeted solely for their faith or belief. As Isaiah 1:17 states:
“Learn to do right; seek justice. Give the oppressed reason to rejoice; take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”
We must ensure that, in reforming the terms for humanitarian visas, updated and quality training is provided to decision makers so that they make the right decisions, and so that legal standards are applied correctly in any subsequent settlement decisions. Civil society and non-governmental organisations have a significant role to play in assisting with their expertise, evidence and on-the-ground insight. Their partnership is essential if we are to ensure that those fleeing genuine FoRB violations are given the protection that they so urgently need.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important debate.
I think there is wide agreement across the House that our current immigration system is broken. It is inconsistent, confusing and, far too often, inhumane. It is right that it falls to a Labour Government to fix it and to build a system grounded in our values of fairness, transparency and humanity. At present, the system does the very opposite.
I will specifically speak about Hongkongers who settled in the UK through the British national overseas visa scheme, many of whom have become proud and valued members of my constituency. We estimate that about 400 BNO status holders now call South Norfolk home. They enrich our towns and villages through work, volunteering, culture and the arts, and they have shown extraordinary resilience after fleeing political persecution.
Following Beijing’s imposition of the national security law and its severe crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong, all parties in this House supported the launch of the BNO pathway in 2021. Over 200,000 Hongkongers have since arrived in the UK, rebuilding their lives under the terms we set out. In September, concern filled this Chamber during the debate I led on behalf of the Petitions Committee. The consultation launched on 20 November has exposed new risks that could inadvertently undermine the BNO scheme’s very humanitarian purpose. Let me be clear: if applied to BNO applicants for indefinite leave to remain, an income requirement would disproportionately disadvantage BNO families.
The visa route is fundamentally different from a work visa. It was never designed around employment. People came here as families with stay-at-home parents, part-time workers, students and retirees. Their eligibility depended on need, not on earning power. Many of them face systemic barriers to having their professional qualifications recognised, preventing them from securing jobs that reflect their skills immediately upon arrival. They are not failing the system; the system is failing them. To require three to five years of earnings above £12,570 would not reflect their reality. Many BNO households are income-poor but savings-rich. They moved here under the explicit promise that no financial conditions would be attached to this humanitarian route.
The proposed increase from B1 to B2 English has caused deep worry among BNOs, particularly those nearing retirement or who have already earned their B1 qualification and are months away from eligibility for settlement. B2 is effectively A-level proficiency. For many, achieving it with only months’ notice is unrealistic, and I hazard a guess that it would be unrealistic for many Members of this House as well. We must be cautious not to retroactively impose standards that people could never reasonably meet in that time.
Above all, BNOs are not economic migrants; they made an irreversible decision to come to the UK to escape political repression. For many, returning to Hong Kong is not an option. If we were to shift the goalposts now, we would risk placing them in an impossible position —unable to settle here or return home. That would be a betrayal not only of policy, but of principle. I urge the Minister to listen to the speeches today and to make the progressive changes we need in the immigration system.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important debate on the potential impact of immigration reforms on humanitarian visa routes.
I am here to speak up for the individuals and families in my constituency of South Cambridgeshire and across the country who arrived here in moments of crisis, conflict and persecution in search of safety, dignity and a chance to rebuild their lives through safe and legal humanitarian routes. My constituents from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong arrived here via those routes, making huge life-changing decisions, fulfilling all the established requirements and believing that the UK would stand by its words, yet they now fear that those promises and the rules-based order is being ripped up from beneath them. To tell them, years after arrival—with many of them just one year away from fulfilling the five-year eligibility requirement for indefinite leave to remain—that the rules are changing is not only unjust; it undermines the very principle of humanitarian protection.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree that at the heart of this debate is article 8 of the European convention on human rights? This is a fundamental attack. Let me make myself clear: in attacking article 8, the Home Secretary does not speak for me. Imitating Reform will only lead to further hatred and division on our streets, and that is not the way forward. Forcing people to wait 10, 15 or even 20 years for settlement is not a migration system; it is a punishment regime. It punishes ordinary workers, families and, in particular, children who have built their lives here. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need a fair and humane system, not even harsher hurdles designed to score headlines and create further division and hatred on our streets?
Pippa Heylings
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that.
I want to turn to the punitive regimes that many of my constituents have fled in coming to this country through a fair system, and to speak principally about those constituents who are British nationals from Hong Kong. From 2021, Hongkongers were offered a humanitarian route to indefinite leave to remain in the UK. That reflected the UK’s historical and moral commitment to those people of Hong Kong who chose to retain their strong ties to the UK by taking up BNO status at the point of Hong Kong’s handover to China, following on from their previous British dependent territories citizenship. Rightly, in the wake of China’s national security law in 2020 and the breach of the Sino-British joint declaration, BNO visa holders were promised a clear and safe five-year route to settlement. Even then, that route was more restrictive than for other citizens of former British colonies.
On behalf of the many BNO visa holders in South Cambridgeshire, I thank the Government for the important reassurance that they are exempt from the changes to the length of the route for ILR eligibility. The consultation launched by the Government, however, has introduced other areas of concern for those same BNO holders. I would like the Minister to clarify two points, because although the goalposts for length have not been moved, what constitutes a goal has changed.
First, when the visa was created in 2021 there was no requirement to meet an earnings threshold. The BNO route is a family-based application and each family faces very different situations and conditions, and there are also different divisions of labour in those families. One constituent wrote to me—we know what it means when they write to us with their own stories and fears of transnational repression—about how her family came to the UK as retirees. Immediately, they faced punitive measures by the Chinese Government, who have made it impossible for them to keep their pension—
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Lady must sit down.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this debate, and it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests relating to Labour Friends of Taiwan, given that my comments are about the Hong Kong community.
More than 40 constituents have been in touch with me regarding the BNO scheme. I will not repeat the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe, but more than 200,000 people from Hong Kong have used that visa route. I have met several people who have used the BNO scheme to come to the UK, as well as a lot of activists from my constituency, and the two key points they made were that decisions to come to Britain three or four years ago were based on the existing rules and that the proposed new requirements would create real hardship for those who are already working extremely hard to integrate and to contribute to Britain. I would like the Government to exempt the BNO visa scheme from the B2 English requirement, and I welcome the Home Office’s position that the community have a
“uniquely strong attachment to this country”.
We need common-sense exemptions from the language requirement for ILR, including for infants, people with disabilities and pensioners. Everyone in this Chamber will be very aware of the deep historical ties, dating back to Hong Kong’s time as a British territory, and our unique shared connection. The BNO scheme should be exempt from the contributions rule. For many people on the scheme, it is challenging to have annual earnings of over £12,570 for a minimum of three to five years, for a variety of reasons that I do not have time to list. We are not talking about small numbers; we are talking about a large number of people. People both young and old from Hong Kong have been very emotional when speaking to me about the uncertainty of their future, so it is important to get this right.
There are several faith groups in Stockport, and across Greater Manchester and the north-west, but two faith groups in particular have been going out of their way to support the newly arrived community from Hong Kong. St Mary’s church is the oldest parish church in Stockport, and I want to place on record my thanks to Rev. Andy Crook and Rev. Chris Blunt for supporting the community. They have a weekly worship in Cantonese each Sunday, and at the Methodist church in Stockport, the Hong Kong fellowship meets regularly to support people with languages—they also have socials and all of that. I reiterate the cross-party strength of feeling on this issue to the Home Office.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for an excellent introduction and for securing the debate. I ought to draw people’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and the support I get from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project.
Humanitarian visa routes are an effective tool to tackle irregular migration, alongside efforts to target criminal gangs. From the failure of UK immigration policies under several Governments that focused only on deterrence, we know that that does not impact the irregular journeys of refugees. The push factors are too strong, and it is not hard to see why. Imagine being an 18-year-old young man from Eritrea—a persecuted Christian likely to be conscripted to murder his own people as they flee the evil dictator Isaias Afwerki. He has made his way through the lawless, deadly chaos of Libya, crossed the Mediterranean and found his way through Europe—as if the 30 miles across the channel is a terrifying threat compared with that. As the Home Secretary has rightly said, we need to change people’s calculations at the moment of decision. A viable, safe route will change the calculation of asylum seekers, so that people no longer feel the need to pay smuggler gangs.
We talk about Ukraine and Hong Kong. It is worth bearing in mind how many Ukraine and Hong Kong refugees are in those boats: none, because there are safe routes of one kind or another for those people. In the light of that, the UK-France deal announced in July is absolutely to be welcomed as a framework to build on, because an asylum seeker can apply for safe passage from outside the UK without the need to make dangerous journeys. However, for that to be an effective deterrent or alternative for people, the Government urgently need to ensure that, by the time the pilot is evaluated in June next year, there is some proper data to analyse.
My questions to the Minister are: what steps is he taking to increase the number of people coming to the UK under the UK-France agreement? How is it being advertised to migrants, and how can confidence and trust in the route be increased? Can applicants have a timeline for their applications, so that they know how long they will have to wait for a decision, and so that they do not choose small boats instead? It will not be an alternative to crossing the channel if people do not know about it.
The Government also say that they are looking for community sponsorship to be the resettlement model for the UK. My questions are: how will that be done at scale, what support will the Government offer to communities that want to sponsor, and what changes will they put in place to make the process quicker and easier? Given that refugee family reunion is a safe route, used predominantly by women and children, will the Government’s decision to stop it not push more children and women into the hands of smugglers?
Should we not recognise that the pull factors that bring people to the United Kingdom are not the stuff we hear about benefits, but the fact that we are seen to be a decent and safe country? We should be proud of that.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) on securing this debate and on making such a powerful case. First, I welcome many of the Home Secretary’s announcements from last week about reforms to the asylum and immigration system, particularly the proposal to develop safe and legal routes, and a move to a community sponsorship model that is very much based on the Ukrainian and Hong Kong schemes. I hope that it will break the pull factors that force migrants into the hands of people smugglers and into using the treacherous cross-channel route.
Moving on to the substance of the debate, Hongkongers in Devon is a community interest group based in my constituency. It was founded by Dennis Mak, and it estimates that there are about 1,000 Hongkongers in Devon, most of whom are based in Exeter. Many are teachers, university lecturers, nurses, IT professionals and so on, and they are enriching our community and contributing to the local economy. Our Hongkonger community is exceptionally active, holding Chinese new year breakthrough events, a mid-autumn festival lunch, and dragon boat racing on the River Exe. Both culturally and economically, Hongkongers in Exeter are a valued and vital part of our community.
Having worked with Hongkongers to make the case to Government on a range of issues—including the conditions of their visas, their ability to access funds still held in the Chinese system, and of course Chinese state monitoring of Hongkongers in the UK—I greatly welcome the Government’s Command Paper, published last week, which confirms that British national overseas visa holders would be fully exempted from the proposed earned settlement criteria and maintain a five-year route to indefinite leave to remain, in recognition of their unique circumstances and, indeed, the UK’s historic responsibilities to the people of Hong Kong. I know that the community welcomes that.
Will the Minister comment on how else we might support the Hong Kong community in the UK, in particular the request for a special British identity for their newborns who are born in the UK, in order to guarantee their rights and recognition as integral members of the community in the future? Hongkongers are also asking for a simplified route for BNO passport holders seeking British citizenship. I know that the Government have worked hard to clarify many areas of the visa settlement regime for Hongkongers, and I welcome that. However, my question for the Minister is: how can we ensure that we provide total clarity for those communities?
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important and timely debate.
Like so many of my constituents, I was delighted to hear last week that Hong Kong BNO passport holders will keep their five-year route to settlement. The Liberal Democrats have fought hard for that, so I am pleased to see the Government finally respond to our campaign. Britain and Hong Kong share a special relationship, and nowhere is that clearer than in my constituency of Sutton and Cheam, and across Sutton borough. Thousands of Hongkongers have built their lives, raised families and grown thriving businesses in Sutton. They are part the very fabric of the borough that I am proud to call home.
Although I welcome the Government’s decision, my inbox and social media have been flooded with messages from BNO holders who are rightly demanding further clarity. I therefore call on the Minister to answer their three most pressing concerns. The first relates to the new requirement for earnings. Will the new earnings requirement for settlement status above £12,570 be applicable to BNO visa holders? Many Hongkongers are retired, studying full time or caring for children or loved ones. That requirement will cut directly against the humanitarian intent of the BNO visa. Any new sustained and measurable economic contribution test or minimum income rule risks permanently excluding those entirely legitimate residents. Those Hongkongers are already fully integrated in their communities and contribute to British society in non-financial ways. Earning less does not mean contributing less; their contribution might not always show on a payslip.
The second concern relates to the English language requirement. Will the new English language requirement of B2 be applicable to BNO visa holders? For many families, that will be a huge and unexpected hurdle. Tens of thousands of BNO visa holders will reach the five-year point and become eligible for settlement in 2026. A sudden increase to B2 level without adequate notice or transition would throw many vulnerable residents off balance and deny permanent status to people who have lived, worked and put down roots in Britain for half a decade.
Thirdly, on the 20-year route protection, I am extremely concerned that the combination of the new 20-year baseline for refugees on the core protection routes and the suggested additional 20-year extension for anyone who entered as a visitor will apply to Hong Kong political exiles who have no access to the BNO visa scheme. Many young activists, particularly those born after 1997 or whose parents never registered for BNO status, have no safe and legal route to the UK. They are compelled to travel to the UK as visa-free visitors and only claim asylum once inside the country. They fear that declaring an asylum intention at the border would lead to detention or being refused entry and returned to Hong Kong. They are often subjected to surveillance and oppression by Chinese authorities while in Hong Kong, and have needed the time in the UK to prepare adequate evidence to present to the Home Office. These are political refugees fleeing persecution in Hong Kong at the hands of the CCP. Imposing a 40-year wait for settlement on brave young dissidents would be wholly disproportionate. In refusing to consider Hongkongers for this type of exemption, we do not simply adjust a policy; we threaten the humanitarian corridor that has long connected two nations through history, culture and a shared belief in freedom.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing today’s debate.
In a dangerous and dystopian world, our word must be our word. It must be honoured. Many have fled to our land for sanctuary, safety and security, and we cannot change the terms retrospectively; nor should we change them for those to come. We rightly have made commitments to people who have embarked on their settlement journeys, from the horrors of Taliban Afghanistan, to our BNO friends from Hong Kong who have fled the human rights abuses of the Chinese regime, young people who have arrived under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees schemes, and our good friends from Ukraine who have come to the UK because of the sanctuary and human rights we have extolled and spent 80 years leading.
I will say it plainly today. I believe the Government have got this wrong. Their analysis is political, not factual, and their propositions are unacceptable. I agree with all the hon. Members today who have made such pertinent points in this debate. I appreciate how the Tories absolutely destroyed the system. They built the backlogs, did not put the staffing into the Home Office and lost focus and urgency, weaponising our systems. They did not have functional pathways. But all of these things speak of the pace that is needed, not slowing the pathways down.
It has been wrong not to have the humanitarian routes available to so many, and I welcome the Government now putting those in place. But it is right that we honour the schemes already in existence and create the right culture for our country to be safe and secure for others fleeing dangers, so that they have security here as well.
On the issue of language proficiency, what we need is functionality around language. I therefore ask the Government to think this through carefully again. Also, we know that many will not make the earnings threshold. They will be predominantly women who are carers of children and adults. I therefore call for an impact assessment to understand how gendered already our pay is in this country, and how the policy will press into that space and discriminate.
As somebody who represents a human rights city—the only human rights city in England—articles 3 and 8 are not to be questioned. We need to ensure we have secured the right human rights framework and use it to protect people at home and abroad. If we lessen rights for others, it lessens the rights of us all.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing today’s debate. As I have said before, Wokingham is home to a strong Hong Kong community who have had a positive effect on the area. Many have written to me to express their grave concerns about the Government’s immigration reforms and what they mean for them and their loved ones.
First, there have been significant changes to the language requirements for ILR. Previously, those applying for the BNO visa had to pass a B1 English test; now they must meet the higher B2 standard. That creates unnecessary barriers, especially for the elderly, and those with families and with trauma from their experiences in Hong Kong. Will the Minister reassure my residents that ILR English requirements will remain at B1?
The proposed income thresholds for BNO visa holders have created an awful lot of anxiety. Many Hongkongers contribute to essential sectors in Wokingham and across the country, even though their salary may fall below the proposed £12,570 threshold. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will not impose a new income threshold for BNO visa holders?
The Government’s new 20-year residency requirement for refugees would inflict serious hardship on those fleeing Chinese persecution from Hong Kong, particularly those who could not access the BNO route. Does the Minister recognise that applying these rules to Hongkongers who missed out on the BNO route is unfair and inhumane?
Many of my constituents have shared their anxiety with me about the Government altering immigration requirements while they are mid-application. That is seriously undermining the trust built with Hongkongers and violating any sense of good faith. Will the Minister reassure Hongkongers in Wokingham, and across the country, that the rules for BNO visa applications will not be altered mid-process? BNO visa holders are not foreigners; they are British nationals. It is time the Government treated them as such.
Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important debate, which could not have come at a more pressing time following last week’s announcements.
These suggested reforms are unlikely to deter people from seeking asylum in the United Kingdom—however they arrive—nor will they assist in integrating asylum seekers and refugees into our communities. We hear Ministers speak frequently of the need for stronger integration and better community cohesion, but at the same time they are determined to posture as being tough on immigration. That inherent tension between the desire to appear hardline and the need to foster cohesion means that the Government’s approach is likely to fail and may well create more problems than it resolves.
The Government want refugees to contribute, yet having their status reviewed every two and a half years gives employers little incentive to offer stable employment. Equally, asylum seekers have the right to work only after waiting 12 months for a decision from the Home Office, and even then only in a limited set of roles. Once again, there is the appearance of being torn between professing an interest in integration and a desire to appear performatively cruel towards refugees and asylum seekers.
I welcome, in principle, any expansion of safe and legal routes. The introduction of tight caps suggests that the number of people who will actually benefit will be very small. The displaced talent mobility pilot, for instance, provided places for just 100 applicants. More troubling is the implication that only the exceptional, the talented and the skilled are deserving of refuge. That is not what the 1951 refugee convention says, and it is not a principle that any compassionate country should embrace. Refuge is a protection owed to people because they are fleeing persecution, not because they meet a labour market threshold.
In truth, the UK receives less than 1% of the world’s refugees; most remain in neighbouring countries. While the finger is pointed at migrants and asylum seekers, the reality is that working people have far more in common with an asylum seeker living on £49 a week than with a billionaire. The real threat does not come from those arriving in small boats but from those arriving on super-yachts. We should be tackling inequality and holding the super-rich to account, not scapegoating migrants.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
I cannot comment on the content, but the delivery of the last speech was certainly very powerful.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important debate.
Let me say at the outset that I will focus my remarks on the Hong Kong community in my Bolton West constituency. In Westhoughton, Lostock and across Bolton, Hongkongers have enriched our schools and supported local businesses, and they continue to make a meaningful contribution to local life. I pay particular tribute to my constituent Po, who is a fantastic champion in the community. She has done tremendous work not only to assist Hongkongers in my constituency but to speak with folk across Westhoughton and further afield about her experience and that of others who had to flee persecution and the crackdown on human rights in Hong Kong.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to retaining the five-year route to settlement via the BNO via. That is the right course of action and I am pleased that the Government have heeded my concerns and those of many hon. Members in this House. I fully back the Government’s determination to reduce irregular and unlawful migration. But the BNO scheme is not a standard immigration pathway. It was created in response to a political crisis in Hong Kong, reflecting our historical responsibilities and moral obligations. Families in Bolton took life-changing decisions in good faith, leaving jobs, uprooting their children and starting again, based on the rules as they were. Altering any rules now would be retrospective and, frankly, could undermine trust. The proposed requirements in the Home Office’s immigration White Paper could fall hardest on the most vulnerable: home-makers, who are often women caring for children or elderly relatives, and students who came under the original terms but could be disadvantaged.
The BNO route was never intended to filter visa applicants by income, qualification or employment. It was designed as a safe, fair and non-discriminatory avenue for people seeking stability and safety—nothing more. The Hong Kong community in Bolton has more than fulfilled their end of the bargain. They have paid the full immigration health surcharge, moved at their own expense and contributed through work, volunteering and entrepreneurship. My constituents have concerns about the proposed changes, especially, as we have already heard today, about the raising of the English language requirement from B1 to B2 level and—quite understandably—the introduction of an earnings threshold of £12,570 for three to five years. With the political situation in Hong Kong deteriorating, uncertainty here in the UK only adds to the pressure that families already feel.
I will press the Minister on three points. First, will he definitively rule out any retrospective changes to the BNO settlement pathway? Secondly, will he recognise BNO holders as a distinct group, who have deep historical ties to the UK? Thirdly, will he offer transitional arrangements for those forced to come here via alternate routes due to the political pressures they faced in Hong Kong?
The Hong Kong community in Bolton West placed their trust in the UK. We must honour that trust with integrity, by ensuring that the promise we made is the promise we keep.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this debate, which is important because it speaks to who we are as a country and how we uphold commitments to all people fleeing persecution.
Earlier this month, the Prime Minister acknowledged that racism is “returning to politics” and that
“racist rhetoric, divisive rhetoric…makes people feel very scared.”
That recognition is welcome, but the Home Secretary’s asylum proposals in the “Restoring Order and Control” policy paper have undoubtedly prompted widespread criticism from refugee support organisations and others. However, I commend the recognition across the House that we need an immigration and asylum system that is both controlled and humane. That balance is not only possible; it is essential.
Unfortunately, the debate on this subject has become toxic. Stories claiming that refugees would be stripped of valuables provoked fear. Thankfully, the Home Secretary has clarified that no such policy exists. But criticism of policy is not an attack on democracy; it is proper scrutiny in a properly functioning democracy.
One of the most troubling reforms is the proposal to review refugee status every 30 months, potentially over decades. Framed as reassessing the status of safe countries, the proposal raises serious legal, practical and moral concerns, as highlighted by the Refugee Council, Amnesty International and others. The Home Office already struggles with backlogs, and repeated reviews would leave people in constant insecurity. Amnesty warns that the policy could trap refugees in limbo, undermine family life and integration, and breach the refugee convention. Refuge must mean stability, not a fragile, temporary status.
The British Red Cross highlights further concerns: family reunion may be delayed or blocked; reassessing core protection every two and a half years risks instability; and ending statutory asylum support could push vulnerable people into destitution.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
My understanding was that the Government’s immigration plans were geared towards tackling so-called illegal immigration, such as channel crossings—although I would argue that they are in fact irregular, not illegal, because it is not illegal to seek asylum.
The measures we are discussing today are about retrospectively making regularised migration rules more stringent. As such, they will not have any impact on channel crossings, but will instead cause fear and uncertainty for many settled, tax-paying families. This is not just about Hongkongers; there are people from all over the world who are equally deserving of our compassion and integrity. Does my hon. Friend agree that to tackle channel crossings—
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be better to tackle channel crossings by introducing more humanitarian visas and, once we have, not pulling the rug out from underneath people?
Andy McDonald
I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent point. Indeed, that is one of the things the Red Cross highlighted. Narrow safe routes alone will not prevent dangerous journeys. The Public and Commercial Services Union report “Welcoming Growth” recommends processing claims within six months, and legal, English language and employment support for refugees. Such measures would protect people, reduce costs, speed up integration and enable people to contribute to society.
Will the Minister say whether unaccompanied children and families who are in danger will be exempt? Can core protection be granted for five years to provide stability and reduce bureaucracy? How will the Government safeguard against the unfair loss of support? Will family reunion remain accessible, with the piloting of a humanitarian visa system to provide legal protection?
The way to build a fair, humane and effective system is to invest in faster processing; get it right first time; provide legal, language and employment support; and strengthen humanitarian visa routes. If we truly want safe alternatives to dangerous channel crossings, to combat smuggling and to maintain control of our borders, the path forward is thoughtful reform that supports those who are genuinely seeking sanctuary and integrates people.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for safe and legal routes for refugees. That is how we, as a country, can stop the dangerous small boat crossings, which put lives at risk, and provide sanctuary for those who are fleeing their former homes for their lives. However, there is cross-party concern, ably led today by the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), that the Government are seeking to limit and restrict the two successful humanitarian visa routes for those from Hong Kong and Ukraine.
In my Woking constituency, we know how life-changing a functioning immigration system can be. Since 2015, we have welcomed more than 300 refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and especially Ukraine, and they have been resettled in our community. They arrived after fleeing conflict and persecution, and Woking has worked hard to rebuild their lives. Humanitarian visa routes must enable more stories like those in Woking, but that will not happen if the system becomes harder, slower or less certain for the people coming here. I join colleagues from all parties in urging the Minister to reassure Hongkongers and Ukranians who are worried about their future.
Under this Government, we have seen the suspension of the refugee family reunion visa. That is not acceptable. It was a vital safe route that allowed close relatives to join loved ones who had already been granted asylum in the UK. It is due to reopen in spring 2026, but with more restrictive rules. It is also apparent that new skilled or student visa routes for displaced people will initially be capped in the low hundreds.
Without more legal routes, such as work and student visas or family reunion, people who have nowhere safe to return to may be forced on to the irregular and often dangerous routes that put lives at risk, and that the Government say they want to stop. We do not want to force human beings who are desperate to avoid a life of slavery and crime into dangerous channel crossings. Britain has a proud history of responding to people fleeing war, oppression and unimaginable horror. Communities such as mine in Woking continue to show that compassion works when the Government match it with leadership and resources.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
I pay tribute to the residents of my community who have opened their arms to numerous Ukrainian families who have fled the war. It worries me that, time and again, I am asked to step in to help Ukrainian family members who are getting visa extensions for one member of their family but not for others. That is creating real concern among those families, who have fled war and conflict, that they are going to be split up. Nothing in the Government’s proposals does anything to deal with the huge backlog of cases. Does my hon. Friend agree that none of this will work unless we deal with the millions of people who are stuck in the system?
Mr Forster
My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate not just for his West Dorest constituency but for the refugees who have made it home. The previous Conservative Government deliberately ran up a huge asylum backlog of 90,000 cases, which now results in £2 million a day being spent on asylum hotels. They did that because they wanted to put asylum seekers off. That failed, it has cost the taxpayer dear, and it is showing that the UK is not as welcoming as we should be. I worry that the new Government are making not the same mistakes but different mistakes in the same vein, by saying that refugees’ cases have to be reviewed every two and a half years or so. That will put unbelievable strain on the Home Office, and it worries my constituents who are refugees, as well as those who are compassionate and care about refugees.
As a country, we should be building on our proud success of supporting refugees. We should not be placing new barriers in front of people who are already vulnerable. If I may conclude with a football analogy, the Government plan to move the goalposts and change the rules for those with humanitarian visas after the match has kicked off. That is fundamentally unfair and un-British, and Parliament must not allow the Government to do it.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I thank you for chairing the debate, Sir Edward, and the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for allowing Members the opportunity to discuss the impact of the reforms on humanitarian visa routes. I also congratulate him on his recent appointment as patron of Hong Kong Watch, an organisation that has done a great deal to scrutinise successive Governments and to help to communicate essential information to those from Hong Kong who have sought refuge. He joins an illustrious collection of individuals, including current and former elected officials from across the House.
The humanitarian visa route set up under the previous Government sought to recognise the scale of the crisis we experienced at the onset of this decade, whether that be the reprehensible invasion of Ukraine or the complete mistreatment of the existing rights of Hongkongers, which breached commitments enshrined in international agreements and law. I think Members from all parties would almost unanimously agree that it was right that such schemes were set up, and that it was necessary to put forward an offer to ensure that those in great danger, and to whom we have a historic responsibility, received protection.
When we reflect on the context of such schemes, it is right that the immigration reforms appreciate the context. As such, I reiterate that the Conservative proposals on the change to settlement, which were made months before the Government’s own, always stated that they would have no impact on BNO visas and those from Ukraine, given the unique nature of those routes. Many constituents have reached out to me in fear that this Government would not continue that position.
As mentioned, the Government announced last week that those on BNO routes would not be impacted by the changes to settlement. That finally gives them and many others the clarity they have been asking for. It also raises the question of why the Government could not have offered sufficient clarity earlier. Despite the unnecessary delay, I welcome the Government’s decision, and I echo the sentiment expressed by those in the community who are very pleased to see it.
As we consider settlement, it is worth acknowledging the work done on the BNO visa. The previous Government not only instituted a scheme that has seen thousands of people come to this country—with over 166,000 people having arrived in the UK as of June 2025—but brought forward support for those who came. That included funding for 12 welcome hubs across the UK and demand-led funding for local authorities to provide English language and destitution support in England. That work underscores the seriousness with which the Conservative party viewed the integration of this community.
Sarah Bool
I think we would like to hear from the Minister, so I will push on.
Although it is unsurprising, given the continuing restrictions on freedom, the fact that the Government assume that those who arrive on the BNO route will settle after five years, and that those who switch on to the route will also settle after five years, demonstrates that the route has been broadly successful. A qualitative study of the visa route for MHCLG showed that participant responses overall suggested they felt supported by the UK Government, and people with BNO visas were grateful for the existence of the route.
I appreciate that specific challenges and difficulties remain, such as the need for greater engagement with programmes to improve integration. Nevertheless, we can already see some of the immense contributions that those who came through the pathway are making both to this country and to the Hong Kong diaspora. For example, only recently Chloe Cheung won the 2025 Magnitsky award for outstanding young human rights activist. She is one of the numerous people, including young individuals, who have had bounties placed on their heads by the Chinese Government for exercising their democratic rights. The complete undermining of the safety of those individuals and of the UK’s sovereignty is wholly unacceptable, but it is welcome that those individuals are resolutely fighting for the values that underpin the necessity of the visa.
However, as has been expressed in the debate, questions still remain about what the Government’s broader changes will mean for this community. What will BNO visa holders and their dependants need to demonstrate in respect of new income or economic contribution requirements? Will the current English language standard for settlement on the BNO route be maintained at B1, or will it be B2? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that those born after 1997 have protection? I appreciate that those questions do not necessarily have simple answers but, given the concerns about the lack of clarity expressed recently by the community, it would be helpful if the Minister could outline answers to those matters.
Ultimately, we believe there is a great deal more to do to reduce levels of legal migration, so changes to settlement are appropriate. However, as is the case with many such changes, there will be an impact, and transparency about the precise impact will always be welcome. I hope the Minister will agree that the Government should do as much as possible to express clearly the impact of the changes on people who have come to the UK through humanitarian routes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mike Tapp)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important debate, and I thank all Members for their considered contributions. I know this topic is of significant interest and concern to my hon. Friend, and that has come through clearly in his and others’ contributions, for which I am grateful.
A fair amount of ground has been covered, and I will address as many of the points raised in the debate as possible, but first I want to set the discussion in its wider context. That means acknowledging that the immigration and asylum systems that this Government inherited were not working as they should. After years of chaos and dysfunction, the British people had lost confidence in the state’s ability to fulfil one of its most basic functions: deciding who can come to our country and who must leave. It has fallen to this Government to put that right, and that is what we have been working to do ever since the general election.
We have taken decisive and important steps to stabilise the systems. The foundations are much stronger thanks to those efforts, but now we have to go further. That is why we published our immigration White Paper earlier this year, and why last week we brought forward the most significant asylum reform package in modern times. Through those plans, we are determined to restore order and control. We cannot go on as we have with systems that are failing or broken. Change is urgently needed, but I assure hon. Members that we pursue these reforms with a keen sense of our international and historical responsibilities, and a recognition that this is a fair and tolerant country that welcomes those who come here legally to contribute and that is compassionate to the plight of those fleeing peril.
Last week the Home Secretary announced a fairer pathway to settlement and launched a public consultation on the proposed new earned settlement model, and earlier this year the immigration White Paper set out an increase to the default qualifying period from five years to 10 years. That, in general, is not open to consultation, and individuals will need to meet certain requirements to be granted settlement. They must have a clean criminal record, speak English to the higher A-level standard, have made national insurance contributions for at least three to five years, and have no debt in this country.
Individuals will have the opportunity to reduce the length of the qualifying period to settlement based on their contribution to the UK’s economy and society. Those who make a sustained and measurable contribution to this country will be rewarded with a shorter path to settlement. A reduction in years may also be earned by speaking English at an advanced level, known as C1.
We propose that settlement is delayed for those who contribute less to our public life, including those who have claimed benefit payments. A long penalty would also be applied to those who have entered the country illegally, which aims to strongly discourage entering the country via those routes. That follows the announcement of a new 20-year settlement path for refugees who remain on the new core protection route.
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) did not let me ask this question earlier, but is it not true that the safe and legal routes have been all but destroyed except for BNO and for Ukrainians? It is really important that the Government restore safe and legal routes to this country to make sure that everybody can actually benefit from our safety and our respect for human rights.
Mike Tapp
I thank the hon. Member for that good point. Safe and legal routes are part of the solution. We are not making these changes to the immigration system to please any part of the political spectrum; they are about solutions, such as safe and legal routes and harsher penalties for those arriving illegally. I will talk more about safe and legal routes shortly.
Rachael Maskell
Will the Minister set out what the English requirements and the earning requirements will be for someone with a learning difference? Clearly, those requirements will be significantly different from those for the wider community. How will they be assessed?
Mike Tapp
I thank my hon. Friend for a very good question. Within the 12-week consultation, we will consider vulnerable groups. I reassure hon. Members that more detail is coming on the exact requirements. When we say “A-level”, we are not talking about our A-level standards—applicants are not going to have to study Shakespeare and poetry. The standards will be for foreign language speakers, but more detail will follow on the English language requirements.
We will continue to offer a shorter pathway of five years to settlement for non-UK dependants of British citizens. We will retain existing safeguards to protect the vulnerable, including settlement rights for victims of domestic violence and abuse. The EU settlement scheme and grants under the Windrush scheme are not within scope of the proposed reforms, so those routes will remain unchanged.
The earned settlement consultation, officially launched on 20 November, will be open for 12 weeks until 12 February 2026. We have had nearly 60,000 respondents to that consultation so far, and this debate is useful for feeding in the views of constituents, so I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I encourage all hon. Members to ensure that their constituents are aware of the consultation so that it reaches as many members of the public as possible. As the Home Secretary set out last week, the reforms are underpinned by values that are truly representative of our country: contribution and fairness.
Andy McDonald
Will the Minister reaffirm that the act of seeking asylum is not illegal or unlawful—in fact, it is lawful under the refugee convention? That appears to have become somewhat muddied and clouded in this debate. Would he like to clarify the Government’s reaffirmation of the principles of the convention?
Mike Tapp
I thank my hon. Friend for his important question. Claiming asylum is not illegal in itself; it is on the person to claim asylum in the first safe country that they travel into. That said, we are opening more safe and legal routes to ensure that we contribute to helping people in need from around the world, and more detail will come on them.
Turning specifically to the BNO route, the Government remain steadfast in our support for members of the Hong Kong community in the UK and are fully committed to this route, which will continue to welcome Hongkongers. We fully recognise the significant contribution that Hongkongers have already made to the UK and the role they will continue to play in the years ahead. That is why we have confirmed that those on the BNO visa route will continue to be able to settle in the UK after living here for five years, subject to the mandatory requirements. The BNO route is a unique immigration route that was established following China’s passing of the national security law and reflects the UK’s historical and moral commitment to the people of Hong Kong.
Pippa Heylings
I have three questions on those mandatory requirements and minimum thresholds, which are in a way being applied retrospectively. First, will the minimum salary threshold for three to five years be applied retrospectively to BNO visa holders? Secondly, will the tax contribution requirement be applicable to all family members, including non-working dependants? Thirdly, on the change to the language requirement from B1 to B2, and given that some of my constituents have only one more year remaining, has the Minister assessed whether test centres, resources and staff are available? Would equivalence to B2 be accepted, such as someone having passed a university degree in the English language because Hong Kong was a British dependent territory when they got their degree?
Mike Tapp
I will come on to that detail shortly. To warn the hon. Lady in advance, however, we are in the consultation period.
Retaining a five-year settlement period for BNO visa holders provides certainty to Hongkongers and ensures that the UK continues to honour its historical commitments. The BNO route will be included in the new earned settlement framework, with those holding a BNO visa given a five year reduction from the 10-year qualifying period.
The new mandatory requirements for settlement are basic requirements that we think are reasonable for people to meet if they settle here, but we are interested in views on whether certain groups should be exempt from them. I stress that no decisions have been made on that, but I have listened to hon. Members today. We are consulting on the transitional arrangements for those who are here, such as vulnerable groups and those within the BNO route.
We are also consulting on the English language levels that a number of hon. Members have spoken about today. Several hon. Members made a strong argument about assets versus income, which will be taken into consideration when making these decisions, as will the possibility of extending the route for those born after 1997. I am also interested in the survey mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe that was completed by 5,000 people, and I would like to see that over the next 12 weeks before these decisions are made. I have taken away a number of questions, including those from my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Steve Race). I am keen to go dragon boating with the community to listen and learn more from them—perhaps at some point over the next 12 weeks. A number of other points have been made and repeated, all of which have been taken away for consideration.
The UK’s support for Ukraine remains steadfast. Together with our partners and allies, the UK stands in solidarity with Ukraine and condemns the Russian Government’s unprovoked, illegal and premeditated war. I am proud that the British people have shown incredible generosity to the Ukrainian people, opening their homes to those seeking sanctuary. Since the launch of the Ukraine schemes, the UK has offered or extended sanctuary to more than 300,000 Ukrainians and their families through the Ukraine family scheme, Homes for Ukraine scheme and the Ukraine permission extension scheme.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for the positivity of his replies. His commitment is very clear. I asked about persecuted Christians; in the few minutes that he has left, can he assure us that protecting them is also part of Government policy?
Jim Shannon
Of course. I talk incredibly fast, so I will try to slow down. I asked about the Government’s concessions for people who are persecuted across the world. It is really important to have those concessions, so that Christians or people of any religious faith know that if they want somewhere to go, the United Kingdom is available. I need that reassurance, if the Minister does not mind.
Mike Tapp
I thank the hon. Member for his question, and I apologise for not hearing him the first time. Yes, this is a consideration for the safe and legal routes, and I fully agree that issues of faith and persecution must be fully considered within them.
I will make some progress. The Government have already taken significant steps to further extend support. Since February 2025, individuals in the UK under one of the Ukraine visa schemes have been eligible to apply to the UPE scheme for permission to stay for an additional 18 months in the UK. On 1 September, the Government announced that the UPE scheme would be extended for a further 24 months, following the initial 18 months’ permission. That will provide further certainty and stability for our Ukrainian guests, so they can continue to benefit from the same rights and entitlements to access work, benefits, healthcare and education. More information on the extension will be made available in due course.
I turn to article 8. The Government’s asylum policy statement sets out our plans to tighten the application of article 8 of the ECHR, specifically on claims relating to the right to family and private life, to ensure that it reflects a fair balance between individual circumstances and the UK’s economic and social interests. There is no risk of abandoning the ECHR, which underpins trade deals, peace agreements and returns agreements; this is about making it fit for purpose in modern times. We will reform the application of article 8 by setting out a clear framework, which will be endorsed by Parliament, for those seeking to enter or stay in the UK who do not fall within our family policies.
On humanitarian visas more widely, this country has a proud history of providing protection, and we continue to welcome refugees and people in need through our safe and legal routes. However, it is important that safe and legal routes are sustainable, well managed and in line with the UK’s capacity to welcome, accommodate and integrate refugees. That is why, as set out in the asylum policy statement, we are developing new safe and legal routes to offer sanctuary to those genuinely fleeing war and persecution from around the world, in line with the capacity of UK communities to support new refugees.
James Naish
I thank the Minister for his response and for the many issues he has dealt with. In the remaining 45 seconds, I want to say that we in this Chamber all recognise the challenge that the Government have in balancing illegal and legal immigration. It is an immense challenge, but the tone today has reflected the fact that we collectively see humanitarian visa routes as distinctive, important and reflective of our values as a country—who we are and who we want to be as a nation. I therefore welcome the contributions of 14 Back Benchers from across the United Kingdom, and I hope that those listening feel reassured that this House will continue to stand for fairness and dignity, and for the UK being a place of sanctuary.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the potential impact of immigration reforms on humanitarian visa routes.
Level 7 Apprenticeships
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
I will call Sarah Gibson to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.
Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered level 7 apprenticeships.
In the interests of transparency, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Before entering Parliament, I taught architecture at the University of Bath and I ran an architectural practice. As my entry states, I still hold an advisory role with the university and I am in the process of winding down the business. I have additional connections in that I was a Wiltshire councillor on planning committees. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am deeply committed to both education and the built environment. In addition, I represent a rural constituency in the west of England, which has no university, but does have an outstanding college of further education, Wiltshire college and university centre, with strong apprenticeship programmes.
A recent Government assessment identified acute areas of deprivation across all four towns in my constituency, driven in large part by limited access to education and skills. For many young people in rural areas, apprenticeships are the only realistic route.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
Investment in level 7 apprenticeships is so important. Does my hon. Friend agree that we also need to keep up investment in vocational education facilities, and will she join me in congratulating Yeovil college, which has been awarded more than £2 million in Government funding to upgrade its engineering facility? That is the kind of investment that we need more of.
Sarah Gibson
I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s congratulations to Yeovil college.
The option to study while earning is crucial to reduce barriers, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is distinctly the case for architecture—an industry that historically has been run by a narrow, predominantly male, section of the middle class, and where the apprenticeship route has begun to make a real difference. Benchmarking by the Royal Institute of British Architects shows that apprenticeships have achieved a far better gender balance than the wider profession has ever seen, with level 7 entrants last year almost at parity.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate, and I reiterate her point from my experience with level 7 apprenticeship funding at Queen’s University in Belfast. It was disappointing to hear that, from January 2026, public funding for many level 7 apprenticeships will be removed for those aged 22 and over—a blow to the industry. Does she agree that further financial constraints on universities only hinder opportunities for our constituents, and that more must instead be done to support them in advancing their educational skills?
Sarah Gibson
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member.
For underprivileged children, apprenticeships are a fantastic route into higher education. Certainly, in architecture, apprenticeships mark genuine progress in opening the door to a profession that has been closed to those from lower incomes or from under-represented backgrounds.
The Government’s decision to restrict apprenticeship funding to those aged 16 to 21 threatens that progress. A level 6 architectural assistant apprenticeship takes four years, meaning that anyone starting after school will be at least 22 before progressing. Others complete a three-year undergraduate part 1 degree first. In practice, almost no apprentice reaches level 7 before the age of 21 —in fact, in all my years in the business, I have never met anyone who completed the entire course before the age of 25. This decision simply removes the apprenticeship route altogether for architecture.
The consequences for the country are quite serious. Skills England has estimated that more than 250,000 additional workers will be needed by 2028 simply to maintain current construction output. Architects are explicitly identified as essential to delivering the Government’s own target of 1.5 million homes.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech about the reason for keeping level 7 apprenticeships. She talks about construction, but has she considered the impact that the loss of level 7 apprenticeships will have on town planners as well? Arun district council has relied on the chartered town planner apprenticeship scheme to train its own generation of town planners, because it is incredibly hard to recruit into local authority planning departments. The council is really worried about the impact that the change will have on planning, a profession that we know is really important if the Government are to achieve their agenda of building 1.5 million homes.
Sarah Gibson
Absolutely. Right across the built environment, careers take a long time, and therefore we need to be supporting different types of people into those careers at a later age. If we want to meet housing targets, we need planners, architects and surveyors. Otherwise, we will not meet our net zero commitments and we will not be able to unlock the large-scale retrofit of existing homes that is needed and that, as we know from experience, requires technical support to get right. We cannot meet those ambitions while simultaneously shrinking the pipeline of qualified professionals across the built environment.
In addition, the Government’s proposal is prejudicial to those already in the system. Level 6 apprentices cannot access the same undergraduate student finance as their full-time counterparts. Although a full-time part 2 student may receive up to £46,000 in support, a level 7 apprentice progressing to part 2 would receive only £10,000. The very pathway that has enabled young people without family wealth to enter the architecture profession risks becoming a dead end.
The Architects Registration Board has been undertaking major reforms of the initial education and training of architects. It has stated that a key plank of those reforms has been to increase access to the profession for those taking non-traditional routes and, in particular, those from disadvantaged backgrounds or minority ethnic groups. The apprenticeship route in architecture is still in its infancy, but it is a very important part of the wider strategy that the Architects Registration Board is trying to achieve.
Architectural practices are overwhelmingly small and medium-sized enterprises. They rely on the growth and skills levy to train apprentices; without it, they simply cannot take them on. The engagement that the Architects Registration Board has had with trailblazers, employers and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has led it to conclude that the removal of funding for level 7 apprenticeships could close off this route entirely. The benefit of being able to learn while you earn, in a profession that takes seven to 10 years to qualify for, cannot be stressed enough. Extending the date until which those over 21 can receive funding would help to reduce the cliff edge and would give universities, learners and employers time to adapt.
I therefore ask the Minister the following questions. What assessment has been made of the impact of restricting level 7 funding on the future diversity of the profession that requires this level as part of its final qualification? What impact will this restriction have on the ability of the profession to deliver the homes and infrastructure that the country desperately needs?
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
Like my hon. Friend’s constituency, West Dorset is rural and has no university, but we have a further education institution in the shape of Coastland college’s Kingston Maurward campus. We know the skills gap that is emerging in rural Britain and the need to give people an opportunity to progress. Level 7 apprenticeships provide the technical capability, but there are broader issues around welding, engineering, agriculture and the other services that are vital to delivering the home-building target. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must do more to support the further education institutions that are providing the workers of the future to help us to meet the targets she is talking about?
Sarah Gibson
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am a strong believer that apprenticeships are a way to make further education open to a wider group of people, particularly in rural areas.
Will the Minister consider raising the eligibility age to 25, extending transition arrangements and enabling level 7 apprentices to access full undergraduate student finance for the built environment professionals? Finally, if the Minister is unwilling or unable to do that, would he at least consider extending the current date for the funding withdrawal for those over 21, to minimise the disruption while new apprenticeship models are developed? Extending the date until which those over 21 can receive funding could at least help to reduce that cliff edge that the Government are preparing to shove the apprentices off, giving universities, learners and employers time to adapt to the new model.
These are modest, practical steps with widespread support from across the built environment sector. Without them, we risk losing the first real breakthrough, one that opens the door to the architectural profession for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, in the past 30 years.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) on securing this important debate and on her considered speech on a subject where she has considerable experience, as she set out. Before I respond, I should add a declaration of my own: prior to working in politics full time, I worked for a leading global civil engineering consultancy, and have a pension with them.
As colleagues know, apprenticeships are a new and very welcome addition to the Department for Work and Pensions from the Department for Education, following machinery of Government changes set out in September. Whether at debates like this or out and about in our constituencies, it is brilliant to hear about the incredible impact that apprenticeships can have for learners, employers and our communities. This Government are on a mission to create an apprenticeship and skills system that drives growth and leaves no place or person behind. Within that, we want to ensure a particular focus on young people, who for too long have not been able to access the apprenticeship opportunities they need to get ahead.
We all know how valuable apprenticeships can be for young people in building confidence and ability at the start of their working lives and the longer-term opportunities they offer for increased earnings and career progression. We also know the benefits that young apprentices in turn bring to businesses through fresh perspectives and the chance to mould a workforce motivated to make a difference from the get-go. That is why it is such a scandal that, under the last Government, apprenticeship starts for young people fell by 40%. We therefore want to balance the programme back towards young people at the beginning of their careers.
In order to create more opportunities for young people at the start of their working lives, we need to prioritise public funding towards them. That is why, as confirmed in June, from January 2026 the Government will no longer fund level 7 apprenticeships except for young apprentices under the age of 22 and those under 25 who are care leavers or have an education, health and care plan in place.
Skills England was asked to provide insight into the impact of removing funding from level 7 apprenticeships. It engaged with more than 700 stakeholders from various sectors, employer representative bodies and young people. It was clear that, although apprenticeship training at level 7 is important for meeting the skills needs of the economy, alternative routes are well supplied. Skills England’s evidence suggested that there was unlikely to be a significant or unavoidable fall in the supply of these skills in the long term post defunding.
We are encouraging more employers to invest in upskilling their staff members aged 22 or older to level 7, which delivers benefits to both the business and the individual. Large numbers of level 7 training options, equivalent to master’s degrees, are available to employers, and those options include non-apprenticeship routes. It will be for employers to determine the most appropriate training, and that will enable Government funding to be rebalanced towards young people.
Skills England also did not find a strong enough economic rationale to exempt a small group of level 7 apprenticeship standards from de-funding. Although level 7 apprenticeships can be, and often are, a valuable route for some disadvantaged learners, a significant proportion of such apprentices are from non-deprived backgrounds, and they are significantly less likely to be deprived than those at lower levels. Compared with other apprenticeships, level 7 apprenticeships generally also have a higher proportion of older learners—particularly, for example, the senior leader apprenticeship. I recognise that the hon. Member for Chippenham was talking about architecture, and later in my contribution, I will refer to some of the points that she made on that subject. However, 99% of apprentices on that particular apprenticeship are over the age 25, so there is a specific issue there that the Government are seeking to address.
We have seen thousands of people take advantage of level 7 opportunities, and that will continue under our new approach, but we are shifting that focus to funding younger learners. As part of our ambition to rebalance apprenticeships back towards young people, it is vital that we also create more opportunities at lower levels for younger people. We know that currently it can be hard for people at such a young age who have a rough but not exact idea of what they want to do to access training that supports them to take the first steps in their careers. That is why we have introduced new foundation apprenticeships as a key first part of our growth and skills offer, to give young people a route into careers in critical sectors, enabling them to take a wage while developing vital skills.
The first foundation apprenticeships were launched in August in the construction, engineering and manufacturing, digital, and health and social care sectors. To support businesses to make the most of those opportunities, we are providing employers with up to £2,000 for every foundation apprentice that they take on and retain in their industry. It is great that there is already demand to broaden the availability of foundation apprenticeships, and work is under way to identify other sectors in which they would be welcomed.
I want to respond to some of the comments from the hon. Member for Chippenham about the architecture sector. As I said earlier, I recognise her specialism in the area and I understand her argument that level 7 apprenticeships have opened up access in architecture. In terms of the extent to which level 7 apprenticeships, compared with lower-level apprenticeships, attract people from more deprived backgrounds, we do not see anything like the number of people from disadvantaged backgrounds at level 7 that we do in other areas. I appreciate that there may be an impact when compared to the typical architecture student, but looking at level 7 apprenticeships in the round, we do not see that consistently.
The hon. Member for Chippenham is correct to highlight skills shortages in sectors that are key to delivering homes and infrastructure. As I said, the lower-level routes that we are looking at—foundation apprenticeships —have a particular focus on sectors such as construction and engineering. That will make a significant contribution to starting to address some of the skills shortages. However, I accept that for particular professions, such as surveyors and town planners, the level 7 apprenticeship route is a mechanism through which to fill key roles through which local authorities can build infrastructure.
On the subject of architecture—I appreciate that the hon. Member for Chippenham framed it as a prejudicial approach—student finance is available for people to undertake the masters qualification, subject to the usual criteria. However, overall, it is about this Government’s commitment to ensuring that apprenticeships are a mechanism to support people at the start of their careers. That is why we are so determined to make the change that we are making, to ensure that it is under-22s who benefit most from the support that is available.
The hon. Member for Chippenham asked a specific question about what assessment was done on architecture. I hope that she will forgive me for having not done my homework about her background, as I thought that I was responding to a general debate on level 7 apprenticeships. I will write to her separately to ensure that I address the points she made about flexibility and more time. I did not know I needed to be specifically equipped to respond, so I will come back to her. I hope, however, that I have explained the rationale on level 7 apprenticeships more generally.
Jess Brown-Fuller
Will the Minister outline the possible impacts on local authorities taking on a town planning role? There are serious budget constraints on local authorities. It is hard to keep and retain staff in a planning department, especially when they are attracted to the private sector. Local authorities use level 7 as a key tool to upskill the workforce, which aids retention. If the Government are to achieve their mission to build all those new homes, does the Minister agree that the apprenticeship route is important?
Andrew Western
I certainly agree that apprenticeships are an important route. The hon. Lady will be aware that there has been a significant shortage of town planners for some time, and I do not think it is reasonable to characterise these changes as the cause. I am not suggesting that that is what she is doing, but we need to be careful. She is arguing that this may exacerbate an existing problem.
We have a broader challenge with town planners that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, they tend to qualify and go to the sort of civil engineering consultancy that I used to work for, to earn lots more money. Based on the call for evidence and the information collected by Skills England last year, we are hopeful that we can work with a number of employers, including local authorities—accepting funding constraints—and the NHS, because specific nursing routes have been excepted, having been considered a challenge early on, to look at whether they can fund level 7 apprenticeships directly. We think that is more feasible than at a lower level of apprenticeship, because there is often a long-standing existing relationship between the employer and the potential apprentice. The evidence suggests a greater willingness to invest in individuals, because employers recognise their skills and talents, and have been working to develop them for some time.
Sarah Gibson
My specific point earlier was about some of the built environment professions being different from big engineering firms; they are not Jaguar Land Rover. A large architectural firm—even the largest ones in London—probably has no more than 50 to 60 employees. They are small businesses and, in the same way that local authorities are constrained, they are not in a position to finance their apprentices. They rely on the levies because they are just not big enough as businesses. That makes a difference to the sector, as does the fact that it is one qualification, not a separate thing. The constraints in the profession are quite acute because of the size of the business. That makes a difference—it is not the NHS.
Andrew Western
If I suggested it was the NHS, I apologise, because that was not my intention. Established long-standing relationships, where an employer has invested, mean that level 7 apprenticeships may be a space to encourage conversations between employers and existing staff members, because they have proven their value.
I appreciate that architecture has a particularly long, challenging and incremental qualification route, which is the best way to describe it. That is why it is important that, when there are challenges and employers are not in the position to offer a post-graduate financing route, that that remains available. As I said, I will come back to the hon. Member for Chippenham on the questions she raised about her sector, as I had not realised we were going to drill down so particularly. She is right that architecture firms come in all shapes and sizes, from large consultancies that have an architecture or built environment function embedded in them, to out-and-out architecture practices that may not be that large. I undertake to come back to her in writing on those issues.
Question put and agreed to.
Violence against Women and Girls: London
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of tackling violence against women and girls in London.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. Violence against women and girls remains one of the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violations in the world. The statistics are stark and frightening: according to Refuge, there were more than 159,000 reports of domestic abuse crimes in Greater London in 2024 alone, and globally almost one in three women have been subjected to physical or sexual intimate partner violence at least once in their life. As an ongoing survivor of domestic abuse, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence and abuse, I know that it can affect women at all stages and in all aspects of their life. It damages health and wellbeing and undermines democratic freedom and our pursuit of equality. Urgent and immediate action is overdue.
Survivors are complex and multifaceted beings, and we are being let down by systems, structures, institutions and processes. Today, I aim to set out why there continues to be a need for a multifaceted approach and for a strategy that is both comprehensive and cross-departmental, going beyond criminal justice to social security, employment, housing and so on, to address perpetrators while empowering survivors. The Minister has been deeply committed to this area, and I will continue to engage constructively with her work, including through the work of the APPG on domestic violence and abuse, in the interests of victims and survivors in London and far beyond. This debate aims to further our mutual interests and our commitments to survivors, regionally and nationally, in anticipation of the upcoming new VAWG strategy, which I understand may be published very soon.
Parts of my speech, like much of my work over the past year, will be about responses to this problem beyond the criminal justice system, but I want to be clear that there can be no question but that the criminal justice system woefully lets down survivors. I continue to be concerned about perpetrators being released too early from prison, as well as the abysmal prosecution and conviction rates. The lack of independent and high-quality legal advice for survivors is concerning, as is the lack of available legal aid funding. That sits alongside the postcode lottery of who is able to receive support from an independent domestic or sexual violence advocate. The importance of funding, to enable frontline workers to help survivors navigate the complexity of the criminal justice system and access lifesaving legal advice, cannot be overstated.
Distrust of the police continues to be at an all-time high. Not dealing properly with abusers in their own ranks undermines trust. The Casey review, in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard, was a damning indictment of the Metropolitan Police Service: it found the force to be institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic. This is also reflected in the abhorrent behaviour shown in the recent “Panorama” documentary. Survivors in London simply need to be given the confidence to come forward and report abuse when it occurs, without the fear of not being believed or the prospect of facing penalising consequences themselves.
During last year’s debate, I spoke about the London Victims’ Commissioner’s stalking review, which found that 45% of stalking victims withdrew from the justice process and a further 41% saw no further police action on their complaints. The review evidenced the disastrous consequences of the confusion and lack of awareness among police and prosecutors: that police continue to treat incidents as single events, meaning that stalking goes unrecognised and patterns of behaviour are not properly understood.
In my own experience, the current stalking legislation allows stalkers to be colluded with and encourages repeat behaviour, punishing victims who resist and reject their stalker’s behaviour. As the review detailed, the phenomenon of “moving forward” or “threat management” strategies is well recognised in research, but is in practice too often weaponised against victims, who are blamed for not being the “perfect” victim. I know this all too well. I was pleased to learn that the Home Office is now carrying out a review on stalking legislation. It is my hope that the outcome will be to pivot stalking investigations and prosecutions towards a suspect-focused lens that does not place the onus on the victim to prove that their stalker has achieved their aim.
As of November last year, domestic abuse protection orders had been piloted by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice in parts of south London, including Croydon, Bromley and Sutton, and in Greater Manchester, with the intention of providing victims with the option of being protected from non-physical abuse and controlling or coercive behaviour, with immediate protection following an incident of abuse. This is a civil order that can span different courts, as I understand it. It would be helpful to understand whether the Minister believes that that has been a success, and whether there is any intention of a wider and more permanent roll-out.
It is imperative to end impunity by holding perpetrators accountable, with support and consideration at every stage of the criminal justice system. Not only do the law and the court systems let us down, but they are even being used by our abusers, including through stalking by way of the courts—in other words, lawfare. It is striking that my and other women’s experiences of vexatious litigation continue to be commonplace in the court system, including in family courts, where some of the gravest injustices and harms are reproduced.
The momentous decision to remove the dangerous presumption that all parents, even abusive ones, should have involvement in their children’s lives is therefore incredibly welcome. I have no doubt that hon. Members will be discussing that in this week’s Backbench Business debate, but I highlight it today because I note that it was made possible through cross-departmental working between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. I look forward to seeing the process of placing it on the statute book.
Just as the impact of violence against women and girls is vast and far-reaching, so must the solution be. As I have mentioned, a whole-system approach is vital. Indeed, I understand that the upcoming VAWG strategy aims to distinguish itself from VAWG strategies of previous Governments in that way.
Since last year, I have been campaigning for greater protections for survivors in the workplace. Unexplained absences, lateness and negative impacts on performance can feature in an individual’s working life. For many survivors, abuse continues in the workplace: often, their partner turns up at the workplace or stalks them outside it—something I know at first hand. For some, the workplace is the only safe environment to seek help. In debates on the Employment Rights Bill, I called for measures such as flexible working, paid leave and domestic abuse policies in every workplace, like many other hon. Members in this House. I know that that continues to gain support across the House and in the other place.
I believe that being a member of a trade union is the best way for workers to ensure that their rights are upheld. That is certainly the case for survivors. Indeed, many trade unions have been pioneers in this area, such as USDAW, which has ensured alternative payment arrangements, and facilitated one-off payments and flexible working in a number of retail stores across the UK. That is just one example of the work being done by trade unions. The End Not Defend campaign, led by trade unions, trade union activists and workers, is also seeking to bring sexual harassment at work within the scope of the Health and Safety Executive. I reflect on the statutory guidance for the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which reminds us how pivotal the role of an employer can be. Strengthening survivors’ rights at work is the crucial next step towards realising the commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.
Safe and affordable housing, including social homes, for women and girls escaping is an urgent necessity, and protection from eviction for survivors is essential, including in London. Domestic abuse is a housing issue. There is a reason that my ex-husband and his supporters continue to focus on my living arrangements and regularly try to use the media, and even spur on the far right, in this regard after all these years of attempting to pursue a vexatious case against me about my housing. I want to be clear that I will not be hounded out of my home.
There is no doubt about it: the funding crisis for domestic abuse services and other support continues to be catastrophic. Ringfenced investment for refuge provision would recognise refuges as specialist, trauma-informed services and would reflect the expertise required to deliver them. I understand that there is a London-wide grassroots support fund for specialist “by and for” services. Funding is ringfenced for specialist services, but I believe that it must fully recognise that many “by and for” services, such as Southall Black Sisters, are well established and experienced at working with a range of communities across intersectionalities. They should never be left at risk of losing funding.
The cost of living crisis is exacerbating economic and financial abuse, with low incomes, rising poverty and soaring rents leaving people feeling trapped in a relationship even when they need to leave. It is therefore no coincidence that the ongoing violence against women and girls crisis comes after more than a decade of attacks on social security. I have never been more alarmed at the risk at which women and girls are being placed by the proposed cuts to welfare. It is well evidenced that they are more reliant on social security and public services, which means that they are more severely impacted when public services and social security nets are cut. I am particularly alarmed by the cuts to disabled people’s benefits, including the health component of universal credit, given that disabled women are twice as likely to experience abuse. That is why it is crucial for disabled people to be the sharpest focus of investment, not cuts.
The current political climate has created a toxic and dangerous atmosphere for migrant women, with immigration status and the fear of deportation being used as control tactics by perpetrators. I am therefore reiterating my calls for a firewall between all public services and the Home Office, so that every survivor can report abuse and so that perpetrators cannot evade justice by weaponising immigration status in order to silence, abuse and control. That is something for which the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, I and many others have long campaigned—and, yes, it also remains a matter of urgency that the no recourse to public funds rule be scrapped and that there be an end to the hostile environment.
Globally, we know that violence against women and girls continues to be exacerbated by conflicts. In Haiti, women continue to face gang violence, including pervasive sexual violence. In Sudan, the continued reports of mass rapes are incredibly horrific. In Gaza, women and girls are being killed, starved and expected to survive with absolutely nothing, so tackling violence against women and girls must include a ceasefire and stopping all UK arms being sent to Israel or anywhere else to kill women.
At home, we must acknowledge that in London and beyond, targeting refugees and anti-migrant scaremongering will not benefit the majority of people. Traumatising already traumatised people, including women seeking asylum in the UK because of violence that they are fleeing, will set back the progress being made to eliminate violence from our society. Most importantly of all, it will harm the very victims and survivors who need support. Systemic discrimination is making it harder for individuals to seek help. Fears of discrimination or bias, such as racism, Islamophobia, homophobia or transphobia, are exacerbated by instances of people being denied assistance and access to public frontline services.
When speaking about my own experiences, I have been particularly anxious not to participate in perpetuating tired, racist tropes against Muslims, because we all need to be clear that that does nothing to empower women and girls. Rather, racism is a driver and facilitator of abuse, leading to the voices and lives of ethnic minority women being overlooked and devalued. It is so fundamental that the VAWG strategy is actively anti-racist. I am pleased that a definition of honour-based abuse is now being committed to, and that the Home Office is working with “by and for” services to develop the definition accordingly.
It is impossible to cover all the types of violence against women and girls in the time I have today, but I have tried to set out examples to illustrate that violence against women and girls is not a side or separate issue. At its core, it is a question of equality and of the type of world we want to live in. It is intrinsically connected to structural discrimination, exploitation and the intersection of different oppressions, so it requires joined-up thinking and bold and brave initiatives. That is what I hope the next VAWG strategy will have at its heart.
Several hon. Members rose—
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. I remind Members that even if they are on the list, those who are able to should bob at the end of speeches if they want to catch my eye.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I commend the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for leading today’s debate and for her strength of character as well. I have had talks with the hon. Lady and I understand there are things in her own life that she has dealt with. She shows a character and a courage that I admire and that many others in this House admire as well, so I thank her for bringing the debate forward.
This problem is a huge issue across the world, particularly in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so I am pleased to take part in the debate, first to support the hon. Lady in highlighting the issues and, secondly, to represent the people of Northern Ireland, in solidarity, about the problems that we have back home. I listened intently to the hon. Lady’s comments. The statistics and stories are shocking and saddening. She has undertaken great work on the APPG on domestic violence and abuse, and I am aware that she has opened up previously on her own experiences of that—things that we really need to take note of. We must do more, of course.
It is also a pleasure to see the Minister in her place. None of us will be disappointed with her response at the end of this debate, because she has lived all of these stories. Many moons ago, way back when we first got to know each other in the House, she brought all those personal stories from her own constituency—they were raw stories, I remember. I used to get quite upset sometimes when she told us about things that had happened. I am pleased to see her in her place, because I am sure she will be able to speak out for every woman and girl not just in London, but further afield. As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse outlined, this occurs not just in London but across the world, and she gave examples as well.
The Met police conclude that the crime of violence against women and girls in London has increased significantly; it rose by 37% between 2018 and 2023. According to the London Assembly, in the year up to January 2025, recorded sexual offences rose by 7.4% compared with the previous year, so we are unfortunately seeing a trend—I suspect that it is a trend in society. I am going to give some of the stats for the Northern Ireland; the Minister will know them. They are incredibly worrying and disturb me greatly. We should note that that figure of 7.4% is only what is recorded. We know that often women do not feel confident to come forward for numerous reasons, so that figure could be the tip of the iceberg.
Although the debate is centred on London, I would not feel right if I did not mention Northern Ireland, and others would think it wrong of me, especially since the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse mentioned problems elsewhere. I want to give some stats about Northern Ireland just to put things into perspective. I raise this subject continually and will continue to do so to increase awareness of the dire situation. According to a report by our own Ulster University, almost 98% of women in Northern Ireland report experiencing at least one form of violence or abuse in their lifetime. Can Members imagine that? Of every 100 women we see in Northern Ireland, 98 have experienced abuse of some sort.
Domestic abuse instances are very high. For example, in the year ending 31 March 2025, almost 30,000 domestic abuse incidents were recorded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Furthermore, in the 12 months to this date, there were six domestic abuse homicides in which all victims were females. Since 2019, PSNI data indicates that some 30 women and girls have been murdered by men. We have the worst stats in the whole of the United Kingdom. The Minister has spoken about that and has answered questions in the Chamber. I have asked her questions and she has responded. The figures are shocking, but this is a reality for thousands of women on a daily basis. Violence against women and girls is not rare; it is about walking with keys between the fingers, checking a friend gets home safe, or hearing a bang next door and thinking, “Should I intervene? Should I go and see if everything’s all right?” It is worrying, but unfortunately, the experience of so many has become normalised—and it can never be normal.
Everyone in this place has a role to play, and we must ensure that our services are approachable so that women feel they can come forward and, more importantly, be believed. When they go to report such behaviour, they should know that someone is there with a listening ear, prepared to take their story on board and do something. Behind every story that has been heard today or in the past stands a brave individual who, perhaps at one time, was not sure that she would escape and seek help. Those stories are testament to what support is available.
To conclude, we do not talk about this topic lightly. It is heavy—it is supposed to be, to help people understand the seriousness and scale of the problem. Statistically, the situation has gotten worse, and I want to do more to encourage people to be part of the conversation. We all need to praise those strong and brave women and girls who have told their story. Let us remind those who are afraid to speak out that they are not alone, and that we will all do our best in this place to ensure that they can safely access the help they need. I look to the Minister, as I always do, to commit to that. I understand that she will give us a response on London and the mainland, but I know that she has an interest in Northern Ireland because of what is happening there, so I look forward to her response. I thank the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse again for sharing her story.
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
There are seven people bobbing and 38 minutes left, so the arithmetic is relatively simple: just over five minutes each. I will not impose a time limit, unless somebody abuses the situation.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for securing the debate. Since she has come to Parliament, she has been a tireless campaigner on this issue and a real credit to her community and any victim of violence against women and girls.
The damning statistics are so well reported and have been well noted in the debate so far. Although this is a national challenge, in London specifically, almost 160,000 domestic abuse crimes and more than 25,000 sexual offences were reported to the police last year. We know that those figures actually underestimate of the scale of the problem, because so much goes unreported. Silence is not consent; it is the result of a system that fails to empower survivors.
As we all know, the effects of violence against women and girls are often too deadly. Across the UK, a woman is killed, on average, every three days. Just think about that for a moment. Behind those numbers are mothers, daughters and sisters—precious lives cut short too soon by a death that was entirely avoidable. Their names and stories must never be forgotten, and today is our opportunity to honour each and every one of them.
When instances of violence against women and girls occur, victims should be able to turn to the police, but, too often, women lack trust and faith in our police—and their concerns are not without merit. Reports of misogyny and sexism in police forces remain commonplace and continue to undermine confidence in policing. Just last week, former Met police officer David Carrick received another life sentence for sexual offences. Let us be very clear: today, on our streets, purporting to keep our young women safe, are police officers. When one of Carrick’s victims attended hospital following being assaulted, she was warned that it would be difficult to seek justice as the law protects its own. That is emblematic of a view held by many that officers close ranks and protect their own rather than listening the voices of survivors. The only way for the Met to rebuild trust is to take action when officers fail to meet the high standards that we all rightly expect of them. I know that the Met and its leaders have promised action, and I am sure that any changes will be well supported by us all.
No one should have to plan their route home, clutch their keys, or second-guess whether a street is too dark or too quiet to walk down. As a mother of two girls, I should not be having to think about when the right time is to tell them what side of the road they should walk on or how they should seek help, or to take them to learn Muay Thai and boxing at a local gym, because I feel that that is the only way I can protect them in this day and age.
In my constituency of Tooting, I launched my Safe Space campaign, signing local businesses up to offer a place of safety to anyone on local streets. The situation is critical, but there is cause for hope, and I welcome work done in London to create our city’s own violence against women and girls strategy, which champions prevention and education while placing responsibility squarely on perpetrators to change their behaviour. I know that our Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, cares deeply about this, and with over £17.7 million invested in specialist support, the strategy recognises that harm often begins with words and attitudes, and it seeks to restore trust in justice.
In Wandsworth, our Labour-run council has been proactive in addressing violence against women and girls. It has doubled investment to address violence against women and girls, which has allowed for the employment of a domestic abuse specialist in the housing team and the creation of an advocacy service to help women to navigate the system. These measures will go a long way to supporting those in desperate need of help.
While this work is much needed and welcome, we surely all see that there is much more to be done. Violence against women and girls does not occur in a vacuum. It is born out of misogyny. It is born out of the sexism that goes unaddressed on our streets, in our workplaces and in our schools. We need a continued focus on early intervention and education to address the root causes of the violence that impacts too many women and girls. The online world has become a breeding ground for extreme misogyny, targeted at young boys and often glorifying violence against women. Finally, survivors must feel empowered to come forward. That can only be done by driving up standards in our police forces and fixing our justice system, so that all victims are believed.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
It is a real honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and I thank and salute the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for her bravery and determination in bringing this debate to this Chamber. That we are discussing violence against women and girls in 2025 is a sad indictment of our society, but, simultaneously, it is really encouraging to see so many people determined to take the scourge head on.
I have four points to address. The first concerns the cultural stigma and cultural sensitivity that some societies still hold on to. Violence against women has never been acceptable, is unacceptable and will never be acceptable, and we must engage with communities to address and tackle the issue head on. Many eastern cultures—I am going to demarcate them by religion—revere women to the utmost level. Hinduism, the oldest religion in the world, has millions and millions of men bowing down to goddesses every single day. Sikhism was founded on the principle of parity between the souls of both males and females. In Islam, women are revered to such a degree that the way of salvation and paradise is that, in such a strong monotheistic religion, if prostration was allowed to anybody but God, it would be to a woman—their mother.
We must overcome cultural insensitivities, and I commend the work done in my constituency of Leicester South by Sharma Women’s Centre, Wesley Hall and Zinthiya Trust, which all provide education and a support network for all women but particularly for those from minority communities. I am really concerned about this year’s cuts to the victims core grant, which may leave victims of rape, domestic violence or stalking with even fewer resources. Will the Minister ensure that private charity organisations on the frontline are funded appropriately by the Government?
Secondly, there is education. We are breeding a generation for whom sexual violence—consensual or not—is the norm. In a 2025 YouGov poll of teachers, almost 80% of respondents said that that was a huge problem across British schools. Nearly two in every five secondary school teachers who responded said they hear misogynistic remarks every day. Staff are not immune either. A Unison and UK Feminista survey found that 10% of female support staff in secondary schools have experienced sexual harassment, mostly from male pupils. More than half of teachers say that misogyny in school has worsened. What is the Minister’s Department doing to ensure that classrooms are safe for both women and girls—both staff and pupils?
Thirdly, there is the criminal justice system. Sexual abuse trials in London have an average waiting time of 18 months, but in my city of Leicester it is three whole years. Recently I met a constituent who, after years of being a victim of sexual abuse, finally summoned up the courage to leave her partner and bring forward a case against him, only to find that her case was postponed not once, not twice, but three times, while her abuser walks freely in her neighbourhood. Such long delays exacerbate anxiety and trauma, so much so that Jasmine House in my constituency, a Rape Crisis centre, tells me that many victims simply drop their cases. They want to get on with their lives—they want to get married, they want to have children; they cannot wait for five or six years to explain to their family members that they have to go to court for a case. In the past year alone, over 280 rape prosecutions collapsed because the victim withdrew.
Finally, in the real world misogyny does not just stop at schools; it is invading our digital spaces. According to Amnesty, 85% of women who spend time online have witnessed online violence and 38% have been the target of such violence. Reports from Ofcom show that black women and girls are more likely to be targeted with toxic, dehumanising and misogynistic content.
With the Online Safety Act 2023 taking effect, social media platforms have now signed up to voluntary guidelines to ensure that they combat misogynistic abuse, coercive control and the sharing of intimate images without consent on their services. Ofcom has been tasked with enforcing those new rules, but without any mechanism for enforcement. Given the voluntary nature of the guidelines, the companies might just ignore the key mechanisms to tackle violence against women and girls. Will the Minister’s Department work closely with Ofcom and other Government Departments to ensure that digital space can be better protected for all our women and girls?
Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for securing this debate. I admire her courage and her continued fight for a better future when it comes to tackling violence against women and girls. I support her quest to make the lives of women and girls safer.
In 2023, the Metropolitan police recorded 8,800 cases of rape, which translates to a staggering 24 reported rapes per day. However, when we consider that recorded rapes make up only about 20% of cases of sexual violence, we realise that the true extent of this crime is—shamefully—much larger. Nearly every woman in London has a story to tell. Hundreds of thousands of women carry around the hurt and trauma of sexual violence, even if their stories never make it on to the front pages.
Since becoming an MP, I have received many distressing emails from constituents, some as young as 14, who have recounted their experience of sexual violence and harassment: women and girls who told me that this time they had escaped, but they dreaded to think what might have happened if they had not. Women and girls should not have to live their lives as a series of lucky escapes, constantly feeling relieved that on this occasion they were not assaulted. To be able to walk around safely without fear is a bare minimum—it is a basic human right. Yet the lived reality of so many women and girls in London and across the UK is a cycle of fear and relief, with their terror assuaged only by a sense of gratitude that they are safe—this time, at least.
Women and girls who do experience sexual harassment or violence are blamed for it: blamed for walking alone at night, for wearing the wrong item of clothing or for sending the wrong signal. In my constituency of Ilford South, a young woman called Zara Aleena was walking home. CCTV footage showed another young woman running into a shop because she saw the horrible monster who was following her; she felt threatened and went into the shop for safety. A second woman on the same journey, on the same fateful night, ran to her home. She was on the main road, Cranbrook Road, and she lived very close. She ran home, and she too was safe. That meant that the monster moved on to Zara, who was tragically killed. She was only walking home—that was her crime; she was simply walking home. What gives anybody the right to sexually assault, rape and then kill somebody simply walking home? A young law graduate with a career in front of her was taken in her prime.
Sadly, there is a new form of sexual violence that shows these rape myths for the empty victim-blaming narratives that they are. The growing prevalence of technology facilitates the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes. Recently, there have been growing reports of boys as young as 12 using nudification apps to create deepfake nudes of their classmates and teachers. Girls are seeing realistic images of their faces superimposed on to a naked body that they do not recognise. Such images are then often sent to their friends, classmates and even family members, shattering girls’ self-esteem, body confidence and trust in others for years to come.
This debate is about sexual violence in London, but this type of technology-facilitated abuse transcends borders and regions. With these technologies, the perpetrators do not even need to be in the presence of those who they choose to victimise. Ten years ago, we could not have conceived of this type of crime; now teachers have to tackle a crime that did not even exist when they were growing up, unequipped with guidance to support pupils, parents or themselves. That scares me. I think about the constituents who have written to me. This is a new type of crime that they will have to hope that they are safe from. This is a new way in which men can assert power, control and entitlement over women and women’s bodies.
I know that the Government are working hard to tackle the growing prevalence of such gender-based abuse, including by criminalising the creation and sharing of intimate images and deepfakes through the Online Safety Act, but we must do more. First, we need a joined-up approach between the Home Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to ensure that women and girls are protected from technology-facilitated abuse and that the advancement of AI technology does not come at the cost of women. I desperately urge the Government to enforce an outright ban on nudification apps, as recommended in Baroness Bertin’s pornography review. Many such nudification apps are widely available and advertised specifically to appeal to young men and boys, operating on a premium business model and encouraging users to share the app with others. A few weeks ago, the Government announced an updated curriculum—
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. I draw the hon. Member’s attention to the time. He is beginning to run into that allotted to other hon. Members. I assume he will draw his remarks to a conclusion.
Jas Athwal
My questions to the Minister are: why do the majority of women not report crime? Why is the prosecution rate so low? Why do men feel it is okay to inflict pain on women and girls?
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for securing this important debate and making such a great contribution, drawing on her personal experiences before widening it out to London, the country and the world. This issue does not have borders and is not limited to a single socioeconomic class, religion or area of the country.
I congratulate the Minister on the success of her domestic abuse protection orders, which hit 1,000 this week, in keeping survivors protected while they are at their most vulnerable. I thank Treasury Ministers for their financial inclusion strategy, which is starting to address economic abuse, and Ministry of Justice Ministers for tackling the ongoing abuse in family courts. We are all looking forward to the VAWG strategy: its publication and its ambition to halve violence against women and girls. That is a goal we can all get behind.
Although it is the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we in Milton Keynes call it White Ribbon Day. I will focus on why that is and on prevention. Milton Keynes is the first White Ribbon city. White Ribbon is very close to my heart because it was started by men in Canada after the shooting at an École Polytechnique. A man went in and shot women engineering students because he had not got a place at engineering school. Like many of us here today, those men in Canada were sick and tired of the rhetoric that women were somehow at fault—maybe they should have locked the door of the classroom; maybe they should have behaved differently. They recognised that the problem was started by men and needed to be solved by men.
What does it mean for Milton Keynes to be a White Ribbon city? It means that more than 160 companies, organisations and charities have become White Ribbon accredited: from the YMCA to the MK Dons; from big corporations to small, niche ones; from voluntary groups to the city council; and from the police to the fire service. Thousands of individuals have also signed up, together making the pledge to never commit, excuse or remain silent about male violence against women.
We all know that this is not all men; the difficulty is that too often the majority of men, who would never consider committing or excusing such abuse, remain silent. The issue is about empowering them to be active bystanders and to know how to comfortably walk into a situation that does not feel right and call out their friends’ behaviours in pubs, changing rooms and other places. Alternatively, it is about empowering them to talk to a co-worker who used to be a fantastic, performing female colleague, but who has all of a sudden gone quiet: to know that there is a reason why and what to do with the answers.
We need to do this not only in Milton Keynes, but right across the country. MPs from across the House have signed up to White Ribbon. I thank Mr Speaker and the Madam Deputy Speakers for their commitment to making us the first White Ribbon Parliament in the world, setting an example for the country. I know they are progressing on that as quickly as they can. Parliament is a workplace, not a lifestyle. We have seen incidents right across this Estate that, unfortunately, do not bring it pride. The catering staff, the MPs and everyone else who works on the Estate need to feel safe, as do the visitors who have meetings and tours here. Members of Parliament must be held to the highest standards because we are setting the example against the misogyny promoted online.
I conclude by talking about the Online Safety Act 2023. There is a huge campaign against the Act, but it is making real progress. It does need to make further progress in some areas—not just releasing guidance on how platforms can help protect women, but also making it mandatory, doing work on deepfakes, addressing the 850,000 consumers of child sexual abuse imagery and tackling the grooming of children on gaming platforms and on end-to-end encrypted sites.
We can and must do more, and this is the moment. We have the Government commitment, we have personal ministerial commitments in different Departments and we have the cross-party commitment. We have the commitment and demand from voluntary groups, mums and dads, and our sisters and daughters. Today is the day we make that change.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for securing this crucial debate and for the incredible work that she has always done to shine a light on this issue.
I want to be absolutely clear that we are discussing specifically male violence against women and girls. The word “male” is often omitted, giving us the neat acronym VAWG, but when we leave it out in discussion, we remove the perpetrators from the conversation and the focus shifts solely to victims. While the protection of survivors must always be a priority, we cannot treat this as a women-only issue. This is not a female issue at all—we are not the problem. It is and always has been a male issue. There is no action that a woman can take that will ever justify her harassment, assault, rape, abuse, femicide, mutilation or any other of the horrific crimes committed by men against women and girls.
Violence against women and girls is not inevitable; it is the predictable outcome of a society that still treats women’s safety as optional rather than fundamental. If we are serious about ending violence against women and girls, we have to start with prevention, and that means embedding consent and healthy relationships in education in every single school. Our focus has to be addressing the culture that raises some men and boys to believe that such behaviour is acceptable. We must confront the gaps in our criminal justice system that in practice decriminalise these offences, signalling time and again that they can be committed with little fear of consequence.
I am a London MP and violence against women and girls is definitely a city-wide problem. We have heard and will continue to hear statistics that show its scale. For most women, this violence can occur anywhere—at home, at school, at work, on a night out, walking in a public space and even when travelling on public transport. Most women and girls in London will have a story about harassment on the capital’s public transport network. The data suggests it is harder to find a woman who has not experienced such harassment, although we know it is rarely reported.
Of the incidents that are reported, the figures paint a very stark picture. Last year, more than 120,000 crimes of violence against women and girls were reported to the Met, with alarming levels on public transport. In the first half of 2025, 907 sexual offences were reported across Transport for London services, up from 879 in the same period the previous year. On the Elizabeth line, there was a 247.8% increase from 2023 to 2024, followed by a further rise this year. On the underground, offences rose to 856 cases from 745 the previous year, and on the bus network, reports rose by 28.6%. Again, we know these figures represent only a fraction of the true scale of offending.
Surveys have found that more than half of women in London have experienced sexual harassment on buses, the tube or trains. A significant proportion of women who have experienced this harassment and assault never report it. Transport-related incidents are no exception. Too many women who do come forward are not believed, are treated as though they are the problem rather than the victim, or witness at first hand the shortcomings of investigations. They are told that the perpetrator could not be identified because the carriage was too busy, that the CCTV was not working, or that nothing can be done on this occasion but they should report it if it happens again. Those responses erode confidence that the police are willing or equipped to deal with such cases, and they add to the wider crisis of trust in policing that women and girls feel acutely.
Perpetrators are effectively given the green light. They know their victim may not report, and that even if she does, the chances of being caught, let alone prosecuted, are slim. This creates a vicious cycle. Fewer reports lead to fewer prosecutions, fewer prosecutions remove any meaningful deterrent, offending escalates, men become emboldened, and women feel increasingly unsafe on the city’s transport networks.
I recognise that the Mayor of London and TfL have expanded poster campaigns to encourage reporting and bystander intervention. It is important that these things are done to improve our culture, but we need more. We need far stronger co-ordination between TfL and the British Transport Police to identify and catch offenders. We need concrete, measurable action to improve conviction rates. We need every institution involved—TfL, the British Transport Police, the Met, City Hall—working together with absolute clarity and purpose to tackle harassment, protect victims and hold perpetrators to account. Women and girls should be able to travel across our city without fear for their safety. We urgently need to get a grip on this issue.
As I come to the end of my speech, I want to make sure to make the point that, as well as prevention, we need to ensure that when women speak out, they have somewhere safe to go. Too many specialist support services are still struggling to keep their doors open, and the services that do exist are often inaccessible to black women, migrant women and women with insecure immigration status. A refuge that a refugee woman cannot access is no refuge at all.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this afternoon, Mr Stringer. Just before the debate started, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) light-heartedly said, “You do know this is a London debate?” He was right to ask the question, because my constituency is about 120 miles away from this room, but I am here today to talk about one perpetrator: a man who is responsible for raping and sexually assaulting hundreds of women, and used his money and power to escape justice right here in our nation’s capital. The man is Mohammed Fayed, the former owner of Harrods and various other businesses. For years, he was known as a flamboyant businessman marked by personal tragedies. He was the father of Dodi Fayed, who died in the car crash that killed Princess Diana.
Today, though, Mohammed Fayed is more rightly remembered as something else entirely: a prolific sexual predator. The scale of his crimes is staggering. Despite the excellent reporting that has blown the scandal open in the last eight months, it remains too little known. There are more than 400 known survivors of Fayed—I am proud that we are joined by some of them in the Public Gallery—and still more women are coming forward; the Met police is currently investigating almost 150 allegations against him. As well as numerous accounts of rape and sexual assault, he is accused of drugging women he planned to assault and trafficking women across international borders. His crimes are now rightly seen as one of the worst ever corporate sexual abuse scandals. This was abuse on an industrial scale.
Fayed died in August 2023 aged 94. He escaped justice. However, he did not act alone, and his network of enablers can still be held to account. Who were the people who helped this billionaire to abuse hundreds of women? There was a security team led by John Macnamara, a former Metropolitan police detective who tailed and threatened women Fayed had abused to enforce their silence. There were lawyers who churned out non-disclosure agreement after non-disclosure agreement and failed to sound the alarm. There were doctors hired to carry out invasive medical exams, including sexually transmitted infection testing, without informing the women what they were being tested for; the results were delivered directly to Fayed, not to survivors. There were senior Harrods staff who at best turned a blind eye and at worst groomed young girls for their boss.
The scale of these crimes raises serious questions about the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service. More than 20 women approached the Met with allegations against Fayed during his life. Survivors say that their concerns were brushed under the carpet. The force is now investigating its own conduct under the direction of the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Meanwhile, the CPS has admitted that it was twice handed evidence against Fayed by the Met and failed to prosecute him.
Survivors need answers. They have already waited far too long for justice; the earliest known allegation against Fayed dates back to 1977—almost 50 years ago—and significantly predates my existence. Their wait must end. That is why I and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) formed the all-party parliamentary group for survivors of Fayed and Harrods. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) and the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam)—I am glad she is in her place today—for serving as officers for the APPG.
My co-chair, the hon. Member for North East Fife, and I came to this appalling scandal in different ways. For me, it was through my constituent Keaton Stone, who is in the Public Gallery. He is the man whose research underpinned the documentary on Fayed’s abuse that blew open the story last year. Keaton, whose wife Sophia is a survivor, has spent years meticulously gathering evidence against Fayed. He has asked me to champion the cause in Parliament on behalf of all survivors. My co-chair is a former police officer with sexual offences training—the only woman in the Commons with that experience. She has used her platform to advocate for women and girls, making Parliament a safer place to work, and to oppose corruption in the police. She was approached separately to become a parliamentary champion. We are eager to work together with other Members to drive this agenda forwards.
The first priority will be the Met’s ongoing investigation. It is an opportunity to pursue all those who enabled Fayed, and the force must cast the net as widely as possible. Given the trafficking allegations, and because some alleged offences were committed at his estate in Scotland, we urge Police Scotland to look again at this issue and ask that our forces work with international partners where appropriate. After decades of delay, that needs to happen fast; officers must bring charges swiftly. Survivors are understandably wary, given that they have been let down by the Met in the past. We will help to keep tabs on the investigation and ensure those questions are answered.
Civil claims against Harrods are also important, with hundreds of women seeking compensation for the abuse they suffered. For survivors, though, this is not about money—no amount of money could make up for the trauma they underwent at this man’s hands. It is about recognition that their employer could and should have kept them safe, and failed to do so. Those cases should be being dealt with much more swiftly.
Fayed’s businesses, the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service are all implicated in this scandal. That is why, ultimately, we must have a full inquiry. Survivors deserve answers and the public should know the whole truth. We must learn the lessons so that crimes like this can never happen again.
Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) on securing the debate. I am honoured to work with her on the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence and abuse.
I also want to pay tribute to the Minister. Her determined and courageous leadership has seen sweeping changes, including the news today that domestic abuse protection orders have protected 1,000 victims since their introduction last year. She has pioneered a new national centre for violence against women and girls, putting VAWG on a similar footing to counter-terrorism for the first time. Raneem’s law has embedded the first domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms. Following years of campaigning, honour-based abuse will have a statutory definition.
I want to focus on healthcare. Health services are too often overlooked in efforts to tackle domestic abuse and VAWG, despite domestic abuse costing the UK healthcare system £2.3 billion. Investing in healthcare-based responses reduces missed opportunities to support victims, ultimately saving money and lives. In my previous life, I worked on the SafeLives report “We only do bones here”. It was titled after a survivor who gave evidence, who said that when she disclosed to her A&E doctor that she was experiencing domestic abuse, he told her:
“We only do bones here, not that relationship, mental health stuff.”
He then sent her away, without even referring her to a specialist service.
The report found that four out of five victims never go to the police, yet in the most extreme cases, victims reported attending A&E up to 15 times. That demonstrates the urgent need for specialist domestic abuse support in healthcare settings. Independent domestic violence advisers, co-located in A&E or maternity units, can identify victims earlier and ensure that women are supported to be safe, ending the awful process of patching up victims, only for them to return a few weeks later, beaten further.
We know that victims are far more likely to disclose abuse in health settings. Research found that hospital-based IDVAs generate a net saving of £2,000 per victim in health costs. Embedding IDVAs in hospitals is key to improving referrals and outcomes, with nine in 10 victims reporting improved safety after hospital-based IDVA support. Support at primary care level, through brilliant evidence-based interventions such as IRIS—identification and referral to improve safety—is also crucial.
Time after time, we read domestic homicide reviews calling on health professionals to share information that could have saved the victim’s life, but cultural change in health is stubborn. I remember meeting a senior doctor and asking why information sharing was proving so difficult. I will never forget his answer:
“I will be honest. I fear a letter thudding on the doormat with the GMC’s logo more than hearing that one of my patients has been murdered.”
Where is “first do no harm”? I know the Minister will agree that the role of health will be crucial in the VAWG strategy.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the clear funding crisis facing specialist women’s charities. That is not new, but the rapid closure of services is. Just as we approach a once-in-a-generation VAWG strategy with an incredible commitment to halve VAWG in a decade, there is a real fear that the expertise we will need to rely on may not exist unless an emergency funding package is issued quickly. I hope that the Government will consider amendments I tabled to the Victims and Courts Bill, which will soon move to the Lords, including one that would create a statutory duty to commission specialist services for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence—women and children. It is absurd that support for the most traumatised and vulnerable victims is not even a postcode lottery; no one anywhere has an actionable right to say, “I deserve specialist support.” We will never truly protect women and girls when the spaces that heal and rebuild them are so easily dismissed.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for securing this important debate and sharing her tragic experiences for the benefit of others. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) on launching the APPG for the survivors of Fayed in Harrods, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain)—a huge scandal that affects women across the country.
There has been lots of talk in recent years, and indeed in the Chamber today, about changing social attitudes—educating men to stamp out violence against women and girls at its root. We have all heard the terrifying statistics that seven out of 10 women have experienced some form of sexual harassment in public. Each London borough faces more than 2,000 domestic abuse offences and 4,000 incidents annually. Even in the context of known under-reporting, the Metropolitan police recorded an average of 24 reports of domestic violence per day in 2023. It is important that we also bring into sharper focus the crucial fact that we have a role—not just as legislators gathered here today, but in the wider public sector and its various arms of governance and jurisprudence—and a responsibility to lead from the front. I echo the call by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) for us to become the first White Ribbon Parliament, which would make a small step in that direction.
Although it is true that, far too often, changes in this place happen because of a changing world beyond our gates, it is also true that, in many ways, society looks to the state to take the moral lead on the fundamental issues of equality and justice. When the state is failing in its duty to take that moral leadership, we do not just compound the problems; we actively undermine efforts happening across society to tackle them. Sadly, in the case of violence against women and girls, I fear that that is exactly what we are at risk of doing, if we do not redouble our efforts to stamp it out.
Perhaps nowhere is that more pressing and concerning a matter than with the Metropolitan police. It can no longer be denied or ignored that there are elements in the force who hold views entirely incompatible with the state taking this issue seriously. Although commendable work has been done by Commissioner Rowley, who I have met and I trust is treating the historic mission with the gravity required of it, recent events have underlined that this is still a serious, systemic problem. The recent revelations broadcast by the BBC’s excellent and sobering “Panorama” investigation about officers based at Charing Cross station, leading to the dismissal of four officers, was shocking and profoundly depressing. To reference just one particularly demonstrative example of the unacceptable behaviour that was uncovered, Police Sergeant Joe McIlvenny, an officer with nearly 20 years’ service in the Met, was dismissive about a pregnant woman’s allegation of rape and domestic violence after a colleague raised concerns about the decision to release the accused man on bail. He replied, “That’s what she says.”
The station had been the focus of an investigation by the police watchdog—the Independent Office for Police Conduct—into bullying and discrimination nearly four years ago. It found that some officers had discussed hitting their girlfriends, shared offensive and discriminatory comments, and joked about rape in a private group chat, and yet nothing changed. Those are not isolated incidents, nor am I latching on to the most recent example for ease. We know there is a systemic problem in the Met: the Casey review in 2023 told us that one in three female officers had experienced sexism at work, and that around one in ten had experienced sexual harassment or assault. Four years on from the death of Sarah Everard, we are left asking whether work is really happening at the pace required to root out those men from the force.
Fundamentally, this is about trust. We would always encourage any woman fleeing violence, or looking to report an assault or harassment, to find a police officer and seek their protection. That is a fundamental tenet of a free and fair society. However, like many men across London, I simply cannot provide them the total guarantee that doing so will mean they are met with the support of someone who understands and respects the problem they are facing or, more importantly, who understands and respects women themselves and all the manifold challenges they face. That is an awful place for society to be.
The uniform of the Met should be a symbol of trust, not a shield for misogyny, hatred and racism, but too many officers have broken that trust. Policing is done by consent, and trust in the police is essential for the safety of Londoners. Incidents such as the ones I have mentioned undermine that trust.
The Home Secretary has a responsibility to intervene and work with the Met to tackle this behaviour, owing to their unique role in its governance. I invite the Minister to tell us in more detail what the Government are doing not only to tackle the misogyny that spurs violence against women and girls across society but, crucially, to address it closer to home—in the arms of the state directly under the purview of the Home Office.
It is not just in policing that these issues rear their ugly heads, but across other arms of the state too. The Crown Prosecution Service, perhaps most notably, is failing victims of violence against women and girls so frequently that it undermines the confidence of women everywhere that they can ever truly seek justice. I know this quite vividly. When I met Claire Waxman in her role as Victims’ Commissioner for London, I heard about women left waiting for months, even years, with their lives on hold while cases crawl through the CPS. I have also listened to the stories of many of my constituents who have had to retreat from seeking justice, despite the awful things that have happened to them.
One constituent was kept waiting for two years while her abuser was released on bail, only to be told that, even though what had happened to her constituted common assault, a charge of actual bodily harm could not be pursued due to the time that had elapsed since the incident. That is despite the fact that several lawyers, during that period—while she was waiting powerlessly for the CPS to move forward—agreed that the incident met the threshold for ABH.
Colleagues, I sincerely invite you to consider the scale of that Orwellian, Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare: the powerlessness, anxiety and exhaustion it wrought on my constituent, and the distance we have allowed ourselves to travel as a society from the promise of justice for all by allowing the CPS to become so gridlocked. It is so backed up and broken that it is telling female victims of crime that they cannot seek justice through the state system because of the system’s own failings.
In case anyone doubts that those failings are not serious or speak to a lack of evidence, let me tell the House about another constituent of mine who was assaulted in broad daylight on public transport during rush hour, in full view of CCTV cameras, and who is still waiting now, two years later, for the CPS to move forward with charges. The situation beggars belief. It is utterly unacceptable.
I ask the Minister to outline in significant detail—and I strongly underline the word significant—what exactly the Government will do to sort this mess out. To return to the point on which I began these remarks, just as the state often looks to society for guidance on social change and progress, so too—and perhaps more powerfully, or at least more meaningfully for those of us in this place with our hands on the levers—does society look to the state for an exemplification of the kind of society we want to live in. We have a moral obligation to lead from the front.
The state will never be the active, positive player in the field that it ought to be—an ally to all those who seek to root out the misogyny that plagues us and sprouts the poison of violence against women and girls—until it is absolutely committed, acting seriously and with pace, to getting its own house in order.
The vaccine against the epidemic of violence and abuse that women face in our society will be administered in our schools, our youth centres and the hubs that remain, in our homes and community groups, in the mass media, but critically, too, on social media. It will also need to be inculcated in our police stations, court rooms, hospitals and many arms of the modern state—and, indeed, here in this Palace, which sits at the heart of the state. Only then will we see the revolution in safety that is needed for women and girls in London, and put an end to the horrifying statistics and stories that we have heard today.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for bringing forward this vitally important debate. She spoke bravely of her own experiences.
It is foundationally important that everyone in this country is able to go about their lives in the knowledge that they will be kept safe. That includes being kept safe from the powerful—be that crooked and despicable police officers, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), or wealthy and successful businessmen such as Mohamed Al-Fayed, protected by a network of expensive lawyers. I am proud to join the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) as an officer of the newly launched all-party parliamentary group for survivors of Fayed and Harrods.
Given the particular physical threats that women and girls can face, both in the home and at the hands of strangers, we must pay particular attention to the threats posed specifically to that group. The previous Government took steps towards recognising those unique threats, including by, for example, launching the grooming gangs taskforce. In its first year alone, that taskforce arrested more than 550 suspects, and it extended protection to more than 4,000 victims and survivors of grooming and rape gangs, the vast majority of whom are women and girls.
In their manifesto, this Government promised to take further action, with a view to halving violence against women and girls over the next decade. In March this year, the then permanent secretary of the Home Office promised that the strategy would be published before Parliament’s summer recess. In July, the Minister promised that the Government intended to publish the strategy in September. In October, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) wrote to the Minster for an update. Last week, as I am sure the Minister will remember, I asked her again in the House of Commons Chamber. Today, we are still waiting for the Government’s strategy to be published. It is complex, cross-departmental work, but victims, survivors and their advocates are concerned at the delay.
When the strategy does arrive, the Government must be absolutely sure that it covers the full breadth of risks to women and girls. We must not shy away if identifying those risks might create uncomfortable conversations, including around subjects such as immigration.
The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse and the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) shared their views on the relevance of migration to victims and survivors. It is also relevant to conversations about perpetrators. The Government refuse to publish full information, but the indicative data that we have suggests significant variations in crime rates by nationality and immigration status. According to data obtained from the Ministry of Justice, foreign nationals made up a third of all convictions for sexual assaults against women. For context, foreign nationals make up between 11% and 12% of the population. In London, where foreign nationals account for roughly a quarter of the population, foreign nationals were responsible for up to 47% of sexual offence charges last year. That suggests that foreign nationals are disproportionately likely to be the perpetrators of sexual assaults against women.
Each and every case of sexual assault is wrong. Perpetrators must face the full force of the law, regardless of their nationality, and it remains the case that statistically, the most dangerous place for a woman is her own home. However, we should be able to have an informed debate about whether mass migration is making the problem worse, particularly when a large number of recent migrants come from countries where attitudes to women are very different from our own. That means publishing the full official data on criminals’ nationalities, including for offences that disproportionately affect women and girls. It also means fully engaging with the impact of mass migration as part of any strategy designed to tackle the problem.
Over the past few decades, we have seen, in the starkest terms, the results of failing to address difficult questions head on. It is exactly that aversion to uncomfortable truths that led so many in the British state to cover up the rape and grooming gangs that have devastated thousands of victims, mostly young girls, across the country. In London alone, we have heard in recent months that many historical cases of sexual abuse across the capital feature the tell-tale red flags of grooming gang abuse.
Will the Minister please assure us that the Government’s proposed national inquiry into grooming gangs will properly investigate historical cases in London? Will the Minister also please tell us whether the Government collect data on the nationality and immigration status of those who commit violent crimes against women and girls? If so, will the Government make it available to the public, and if not, why not? Will the Minister also tell us whether the Government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls will address any potential implications of mass migration for the safety of women and girls, no matter how uncomfortable those discussions might be? The aim to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is laudable. What metric will be used to determine whether the Government have succeeded in halving violence against women and girls, and what are the start and end dates? Did the decade start on the date of the last general election? If not, when did it start? Will the Minister tell us when the Government’s strategy will be published? I know that many people in London and across the country would appreciate the certainty and clarity that a concrete date would provide.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer.
First, as everybody else has done, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) who, at some personal cost to herself, always speaks up on these issues, and does so with clarity, brilliance and bravery. She always approaches the issues with solutions in mind. People across the political divide want to see solutions and to work with the Government, and that is what we should seek to do. I will go through every one of the issues raised by my hon. Friend, and then cover as many of the others as I can. I cannot promise to be completely detailed, but I can follow up with a level of detail.
I suppose I should start with the criticism that has come to me around the delay to the violence against women and girls strategy. Last week, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) asked me in the main Chamber about the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) writing to me to ask when the strategy will be published. My answer is simple: it will be out imminently. About now, I am satisfied that the strategy is as good as it could possibly be. That has taken lots of detailed work across every Government Department. It is not just tokenistically saying, “Enough is enough.”
But I did not need to wait for a piece of paper or something to be published on a Government website. Since I have been in this position, and since this Government have been in power, we have announced that we are providing £53 million in funding over four years to roll out the Drive project across England and Wales. We are introducing a range of measures on sex offender management and stalking through the Crime and Policing Bill. We are investing £13.1 million in a new policing centre for VAWG and public protection.
We have launched the new domestic abuse protection orders—raised by a number of Members—on which the previous Government passed the legislation then did nothing for four years. We are investing nearly £20 million for frontline support to victims and in other projects, including increasing investment to organisations such as Southall Black Sisters, who have been mentioned, and specific increases to ensure that women can remain in refuge if no recourse to public funds is an issue.
In 2024, we announced a funding increase of £30 million, making a total investment of £160 million for the domestic abuse safe accommodation grant. As others have said, we have also banned strangulation in pornography and made fundamental changes to the family court—something that many in this Chamber, including myself, campaigned for a decade to get across the line. I apologise for the delay in ensuring that every Government Department was doing absolutely everything it possibly could to get to where it needs to, but that did not stop me from cracking on with as much as I possibly could in the meantime.
When I had the job of the hon. Member for Weald of Kent, sitting on the Opposition Front Bench, I spent my time, almost week in, week out, with the then safeguarding Minister—the previous Government did not call it VAWG—looking at solutions and at different places. As I said in my letter back to the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford—and I say this to the hon. Member for Weald of Kent now—my door is always open. Not once since I have been in this role has anyone from the Opposition Front-Bench team come to talk to me about possible solutions or things we could work on together, but I absolutely send out that message.
I have met with Lib Dems and Conservative Back Benchers. I feel like I see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) more than my husband, such is our life in this place. I have met Members of every different political hue on my own side. On this we are united. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent is welcome in my office with solutions, ideas about the frontline and detail. I extend that offer with great respect, and I truly mean it. I had great relations with my counterpart before, and I never ever sought to make headlines rather than helping the frontline. As someone who has been in her position, I offer that advice.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse spoke clearly about the need to go beyond the criminal justice system. She and other Members, including the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), mentioned the Charing Cross incidents. What can I say? It was absolutely horrifying. I do want to speak up for some, though: a female officer featured in that documentary was trying to fight for the remand of a violent offender. It is easy to forget that some brilliant people were shown in that documentary—brilliant police officers who were trying to fight for the right thing. We need to make sure that those are the people who rise to the top of the ranks in our police forces.
To do that, the Government plan to lay out, I think at the beginning of next year, a whole-systems reform of policing. Much of that will be about violence against women and girls because, for example, for the last 10 years or however long the police have never been asked to have any performance framework on violence against women and girls. We can talk about collecting data and which metrics we will use; well, based on the last decade the starting point is zero. We will take an overarching measure from the crime survey, which has been undertaken for the first time this year. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent might know that the data on which we will measure the metric was released earlier in the year.
On stalking, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse talked about the review by Richard Wright, who I met this week. He was the prosecuting barrister in the case of Alice Ruggles—a very tragic and famous stalking case. I very much look forward to his work in respect of the legislation, which I imagine will be relatively quick. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam and I have spoken before about what is currently wrong with the legislation for a section 2A stalking charge. I very much hope to come back and talk about that.
Domestic abuse protection orders have been hailed today in the newspapers—the photo they used of me made me realise I need to get a haircut. I cannot stress enough how I am often a bit cynical, including when we were writing domestic abuse protection orders into the law under the previous Government, who wrote nice words on goat skin. I have been a cynic about all protection orders, as a person who has them, and as a person who has worked with them and watched breaches not be followed up by policing. That leads to some of the issues everybody has spoken about in terms of confidence in policing. If an order is breached and no one does anything, you do not call the police the next time, and that might be the time you get murdered.
So I went into it trepidatiously when we came into government. The orders are now used in both the Metropolitan police area and in Greater Manchester, and they have already started to roll out to three other police forces. The plan is absolutely to roll them out across every area—I certainly want them for the women where I live. I am seeing cases of a breach of an order leading to nine months’ imprisonment within a week of the incident happening, and with the woman never having to step inside a courtroom. That is what I want to see from an order regime.
Luke Taylor
The feedback from the local police force in Sutton, which is part of the trial, is that they find them incredibly helpful. There is a ringing endorsement for the orders and we look forward to seeing them rolled out more broadly.
Jess Phillips
Honestly, police officers in the Met and in Greater Manchester, where I have visited them undertaking these orders, are so very grateful. Some tweaks have come out of the pilot, which is the reason for doing a pilot. Some of them are legislative, some are about resources and some are about offender management. The fundamental thing is that they allow the police to do proper, good old-fashioned policing. It means they are responding. We are not waiting on a victim to say, “This person breached it.” They are going out, talking to them and finding out if the order has been breached. I really want to see the state taking the administration off the woman.
It was shared with me that in just one part of the Greater Manchester pilot—I will definitely get the colloquial thing wrong if I say which bit of Greater Manchester—there had been a 76% reduction in repeat offences just in the cohort that had been given domestic abuse protection orders. Anyone who looks at the Government’s mission and who knows anything about domestic abuse and violence against women and girls will know that we cannot halve anything unless we stop the repeat. The repeat is a massive problem, so seeing a 76% reduction in that cohort already is very good.
People have spoken about employers and the need to make sure that they are included in the strategy. There was a great mention of the brilliant work done by USDAW, and organisations such as Lloyds giving staff two weeks’ paid leave. There are brilliant examples. We cannot keep saying that this is everyone’s business and not expect employers to take part. I have to say, actually, that there is quite a lot of enthusiasm—my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) said that the businesses in her area really want to take part.
On the ringfences in respect of refuge accommodation, part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 created a ringfence for housing-related statutory support. This Government have increased the amount of money in the last year by £30 million. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse gave a good example of it being done well in London, and some of the money being used for specialist “by and for” services. She identified the fact that we really need to bottom out where services are commissioned well and where they are not. It is a different story across the country, so it is nice in this debate about London to be able to say that I have seen good practice undertaken in London in this regard, through the Mayor’s office working with local councils. I have seen bad practice elsewhere. We need to make sure that there is a standard in the country, no matter where someone is. It is the same for policing and for the CPS.
As I said, I see the hon. Member for Strangford more than my husband; I feel like he has always been in the room. I have a special place in my heart for Northern Ireland and will continue to work with the devolved Administrations over there.
Many people, including my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) very clearly, mentioned the issue of David Carrick, and other issues of trust in the Metropolitan police. The first part of the Angiolini review has already reported, and reporting on the second part is imminent. The Metropolitan police promised to follow up on the Louise Casey review. I speak to Mark Rowley many times—he is actually from Birmingham—and the Home Office is making sure that the Metropolitan police is following up on all those things. More broadly, we need to change the regime and reform police vetting and standards, and disqualify people when they commit some of these crimes.
Apologies that I did not respond to everybody, but I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse her minute to wind up. I promise I will answer all questions in writing—to which everyone behind me thinks, “I wish she had not said that!”
Apsana Begum
I thank the Minister for her comments and her commitments. I look forward to the much-anticipated VAWG strategy—hopefully as a nice gift for everyone to read over Christmas—and to working constructively with her in the interests of all survivors, regardless of their backgrounds.
I am very grateful for all the contributions today, which touched on not only a wide range of issues but the various local contexts. It is all very valuable and I hope that, over the next 16 days and beyond, we can all speak to our colleagues and make sure we are speaking to everyone in our areas about how we can continue to engage in the 16 days of activities.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of tackling violence against women and girls in London.
Bike Theft: Loughborough
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
I will call Dr Jeevun Sandher to move the motion and then 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. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.
Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of bike theft in Loughborough.
Thank you for allowing me to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I raised the important issue of bike theft in the main Chamber a few weeks ago, when the Minister kindly provided me with an overview of what her Department is doing to address this incredibly important issue. I thank her and the House for allowing me the opportunity to speak and ask more about it today.
Motorbike theft is a scourge of my constituency, threatening the basic sense of security that people should enjoy. People worry that one day they will wake up unable to get to work, and their concern and frustration is on the rise as criminals act with impunity. Every person in our community and across the country deserves to feel safe, and that starts with giving the police more powers to tackle crime, getting more officers on the street to prevent antisocial behaviour, and working with the local community to stop bike theft for good.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He has referred to the stats in his own area. The Police Service of Northern Ireland notes that the number of motorcycles or scramblers recovered by owners in Northern Ireland is relatively low: for example, in 2022, only 30 out of 136 were recovered. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that while the theft statistics are fairly high, the recovery statistics are really low? He underlined the need for the police to have more powers; perhaps the Minister could indicate what those powers might be. Will the Minister give any advice to the regional Administrations to make sure that we tackle the issue better together?
Dr Sandher
It is fair to say that bike theft is a scourge across our nations and islands. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The issue of motorbike theft in Loughborough was brought to my attention during my campaign, and the full scale of the problem has become clearer through time. I will mention some constituents who came to me about this issue: Sarah Staples, whose husband was followed home in broad daylight by criminals whose sole intention was to steal his motorbike, and Stephen Hughes, who also raised bike theft with me. When I asked about the issue in my constituency, I heard story after story of bike theft and attempted bike theft.
Across the country, an average of 59 motorbikes are stolen every single day. That is 21,000 motorbikes and mopeds this year alone—thefts from driveways, back gardens and even locked garages. Criminals are acting brazenly, without care for the consequences. One in five bikers will have their vehicle stolen in their lifetime—that is 11 times more likely than for car owners. The culprits are also far less likely to be caught. It is not just in the case of motorbikes that the rise in theft statistics is worrying: a 30% rise in e-bike ownership means a new lucrative target for thieves who can cash in on vehicles that are hard to trace and quick to resell.
When I raised this issue with my constituents and put it out on social media, the post received thousands of views; tens of constituents came back with cases of stolen bikes, and dozens more with stories of attempted thefts. Several people spoke about how motorbike thefts were becoming so common that it was almost impossible for them to insure their bikes. Let us imagine someone not being able to insure their car because it was at risk of getting stolen—this debate would be taking place in the main Chamber, not Westminster Hall—but this issue is still very serious for those who are affected.
We know that motorcycle theft is driven mostly by organised gangs. Some opportunists steal mopeds and scooters for short-term use and recklessly abandon them by the wayside. Others target high-value vehicles for resale, export or dismantling. Many openly boast about their criminal activities on local community forums and social media, making a mockery of those who cannot stop them and those whose bikes and possessions are stolen from them.
One constituent told me about their scooter being taken from the forecourt of a petrol station. They were too scared to intervene because of how threatening the people looked. Another person told me about a would-be thief threatening to kill them when prevented from stealing their motorbike. Another constituent’s teenager saved for months for a moped to take them to college, only for it to be stolen from their drive in broad daylight. There is also evidence on social media of a network specifically set up to sell and source stolen bikes in Loughborough.
Too often these criminals are getting away without being punished. They are acting without consequence, unafraid of being caught and laughing as they ride away with stolen property. For them, stealing bikes is low risk and high reward, but for my constituents, of course, it is not. Bike theft is not a trivial matter, and it is certainly not a victimless crime. It affects young apprentices travelling to work at 6 am, students commuting to lectures, teachers coming home from work and employees finishing late shifts in factories and other workplaces across the country, who depart after a long day only to find that they can no longer get home.
We can tackle the scourge of bike theft only by working together—as members of a community with a stake in one another’s wellbeing. Leicestershire police, I am pleased to say, recently launched Operation Original to great success. It is joining local officers with the force’s drone team and road policing unit, with specially trained police on unmarked motorbikes going the extra mile to keep my community safe. I thank the officers for that and for the arrests that they have made, the 42 vehicles stopped, the 13 motorbikes seized and the four individuals cautioned for driving offences. Since the operation began, reports of stolen vehicles have dropped by 36% in targeted areas. That is a dramatic reduction in crime in such a short space of time.
We have heard the police say that the operation has been “a great success”, and that they have
“disrupted criminal activity…and taken vehicles off the road which are being used to commit crime. We are…making full use of the range of tactics available”.
But there is more that we must do, and that I must do, to raise awareness of bike theft in our community. This is about continuing to be vigilant, promoting prevention strategies and understanding what we can do to support one another and help to prevent crime. It is about making sure that bikes are locked, keeping them covered to make them harder to steal, and reporting thefts to the police so that we can fully understand the extent of the problem.
The Government are supporting us nationally, and I thank them for that. The Crime and Policing Bill will give officers extra powers to seize and crush more bikes, and there will be stronger antisocial behaviour orders to clamp down on offenders who repeatedly terrorise communities. All of that is deeply welcome. On top of it all, of course, our aim is to increase police numbers to ensure that more officers are available on our streets. In addition, we can do more work to help officers get the training they need to pursue motorbikes so that they can catch those responsible, unencumbered by rules and regulations that make it harder to stop criminals, rather than easier.
I ask the Minister to set out the work that she and the Department are doing, not only on stopping crime in general but specifically on motorbike and bike theft in Loughborough, Shepshed and the villages and, of course, across the country. Every person deserves to feel safe in their community, but that is clearly not possible when they are seeing their property at risk of being stolen from their driveways in a threatening manner that undermines the very sense of safety that all of us should feel in this country. Bike theft is not something that we can simply brush aside or ignore because it is convenient to do so. We must refuse to back down in the face of intimidation by investing in our police, working with the local community and tackling the scourge of bike theft in Loughborough.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Stringer, and to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) on securing this debate and on leading the charge in Parliament for more action for his constituents on bike theft. He was right when he said that if cars were being stolen to the same degree that bikes are, there would be more of an outcry. It is right that he and other Members raise this issue, because it is deeply personal to many of our constituents.
There is not just the inconvenience, the cost and the burden of having a bike stolen, but the fear of further crime and the feeling that someone will have about their community and their safety within it when it appears that people can get away with such crimes without any consequence. I want to support my hon. Friend’s campaign and to help where I can.
As always in such debates, it is a shame that we cannot have a dual debate with multiple Ministers saying what they are doing, because I know that my colleagues in the Department for Transport, for example, would be keen to explain how they are looking at cycling and bike theft. We are working with them and other Government Departments. I will set out some of the things that we are doing in the Home Office, however, which I hope my hon. Friend will support and which I hope will help in the fight against knife theft—sorry, bike theft.
I will set out our approach to crime and policing. For too long, what is often seen as lower-level crime has been accepted and not pursued in the way that we would want it to be. I have many conversations with policing colleagues—I was having some today about knife crime, hence my mis-speak just now—and there are really interesting connections between what is perceived as lower-level crime and more significant organised crime. The more that our police gather intelligence about where there are connections and where thefts are more systematic and linked with serious organised crime, the better our policing will be.
The first principle is that no crime is too small. Across the piece, whether it is retail crime or bike theft, we and our communities expect the police to investigate and to do what they can. People do not always expect there to be an outcome to such investigations, but they want crimes to be investigated. They want the evidence to be used where it can be, and they want to understand and to be kept informed about what is happening with their case.
The second principle is that policing is best done locally. We can prevent crime if we create a climate where it is very clear that there is policing in our neighbourhoods and on our streets that will not tolerate theft. My hon. Friend talked about different types of bike theft. In some cases, kids might steal a bike and then discard it when they have had their fun, as they see it. Others are stealing to order for a higher value and have more links to criminal networks. We need to tackle those things differently, but the principle of having police in our communities who are policing our streets, being vigilant, understanding what is going on and building up an intelligence picture of their local community is key. That is why we will make sure that there are 3,000 extra police on our streets by next April, and why we are spending £200 million on top of the multibillion-pound settlement for our police forces.
Leicestershire police has plans to grow its neighbourhood team by 56 full-time equivalent officers in this financial year. That physical presence—being where the crime takes place—will make a real difference. We are also looking at the data. In fact, we are doing lots of work to map the areas of significant crime and where the risks are, and we are making sure that the police intervene where we need them to.
My hon. Friend talked about working with the local authority and there are things that we can do. We can improve street lighting and CCTV, and we can design our streets with better technology that helps us to catch criminals.
My hon. Friend mentioned the new powers that we are introducing, and I will touch on two of them. The first concerns the way that criminals override locking systems to steal vehicles, including motorbikes and cars. We know that that electronic compromise is now the predominant method of vehicle theft, so in the Crime and Policing Bill we are introducing a ban on having any of these electronic devices. At the moment, if someone uses them to steal something, it is a crime, but just having them is not. However, there is no reason to have these devices other than to steal things, so we will be changing the law to criminalise the possession, importation, making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply an electronic device that can be used to steal a vehicle.
The second thing we are going to do will make a real difference. Indeed, I was on a visit with Thames Valley police last week, and we spoke about the difference this change will make in tackling bike theft. Officers should be able to enter and search premises where they reasonably believe that stolen items, such as GPS-tracked bikes, are located. At the moment they need to get a warrant before they can go in, but we know that that takes time, and by the time they have done that the bike might have been moved on. Where GPS tracking shows that an item is behind closed doors, we will facilitate the swift seizure of what we know to be stolen property, and the police will be able to go in and get it without needing a warrant. That will be a valuable tool for tackling bike theft.
What happens to those bikes after they have been stolen is also really important and we need to tackle that piece of the pie as well. Ministers in other Departments are looking at using the Online Safety Act 2023; I am very interested to see how that plays out. There are now duties on social media and tech companies to prevent the advertising of stolen goods. If people are selling bikes online that turn out to be stolen, there is a duty on social media companies not to allow that. It is relatively early days to see how the Online Safety Act will play out, but we should all be monitoring how it works to prevent the sale of stolen goods online. That applies not just to bikes, but more widely; I was in a retail crime meeting earlier where we talked about how items from shops more generally are sold and how we tackle that in the online space.
My hon. Friend talked about the campaign that his local police have done, which sounds as though it was very successful, using drone teams and the road policing unit, with everybody working together. In the few weeks that I have been in this role, my experience has been that when the police put their mind to tackling a problem, they are supremely good at doing it. The problem is that our police struggle with resourcing and huge bureaucracy, so they do not have enough time to do the things that we want them to do—but once they decide that something is a priority, they get results really successfully. That operational policing response is really important.
That example from my hon. Friend’s local area also speaks to the need to ensure that our police have new technology. For 14 years, there has been a lack of investment in policing; through those years of austerity, we lost not just police officers, but any investment in new infrastructure. We know that drones can be revolutionary in policing, but we need to ensure that the police are funded in the right way to buy the kit that they need, so we will be bringing out a police reform White Paper, building on our decision already to save £100 million through the police and crime commissioner model.
We will shortly introduce a police reform Bill, which I hope will enable our police officers to do what we want them to be doing—focusing on physical crime in their communities and spending less time on bureaucracy, using AI and other new technology that can free them up to do other things. A central policing function will deal with some of the crime that is best tackled at a national level, so that the police can deal with issues such as bike theft in a targeted way.
Using that intelligence-led approach with policing locally is important. Some good work is shared through a couple of national bodies that come together to look at some of these issues. For example, the motorcycle crime reduction group brings together Government and representatives from all the different sectors—manufacturing, insurance, the police, the security industry and rider interest groups—to reduce theft. That is a useful place to spread best practice. The national vehicle crime working group, which is led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and their vehicle crime lead, brings together vehicle crime specialists to look at emerging trends in response to this kind of crime and to talk about good practice and strategies to dismantle the wider criminal groups that are responsible for that level of crime.
Across the piece, I reiterate that bike theft is a significant crime. We should take it seriously, treat our communities with the respect that they deserve and expect better. We can do more in terms of the design of bikes to design out crime. We want members of the public to do what they can; my hon. Friend talked about the need to make sure that bikes are properly locked and that any theft is reported, and that is crucial.
Bike marking is also important, so that people know the model number. The police—in Thames valley, say, since I was talking about Oxford—often talk to me about the number of cases where bikes are stolen, but the people who report the theft to the police do not know the number on the bike, so there is no way of marking it. People should ensure that they take a picture of their number or that the bike is marked in some way so that they can tell the police. There are a couple of online spaces, such as BikeRegister, where bikes can be registered. That can also help if the bikes get stolen.
We need to bring our policing back to our neighbourhoods and make sure that we are following the evidence in terms of emerging patterns of bike theft, which can be linked to more serious organised crime. We need to have the right legislation in place so that the police can act when they need to and work across Government Departments to make sure that we are pulling every lever we possibly can to design out and reduce this kind of crime.
I conclude by thanking my hon. Friend for securing this debate. It has been a useful opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that we face. As ever, I welcome more ideas and suggestions from his constituents and from him on what else we could do.
Question put and agreed to.
Pension Investment in UK Equities
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered pension investment in UK equities.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I think all hon. Members would agree that UK pension funds are hugely important, primarily to the millions of future pensioners, but also to the many scale-up businesses that are seeking additional investment and need extra capital for growth. They are also an important part of the UK’s capital markets more broadly.
The UK has the second largest pool of pension capital in the world, but only 4% of it is allocated to UK assets. UK defined contribution pension scheme assets are set to grow from around £500 billion in 2021 to £1 trillion by 2030, an increase of 100% over nine years, and that growth will accelerate faster beyond that date. The key issue I wish to focus on is how we are to regulate, manage and enable the future form of that pool of capital, and the appropriate oversight of regulators or Government—if any—of the way it is managed.
As I think all Members want, the Government have stressed the growth imperative and its prioritisation, but under-investment in the UK economy will be a significant dampener on growth. Over the past 25 years, allocation to UK equities by UK pension funds has fallen from more than 50% to 4.4%. Since the global financial crisis, the UK has under-invested, both in absolute terms and compared with our G7 peers. Our investment-to-GDP ratio is around 17% to 18%, compared with our peers’ 20% to 25%. That investment gap accounts for around £100 billion.
The Government have introduced meaningful reforms. The closure of defined benefit schemes has resulted in large amounts of capital being moved from equities to bonds. Although that was a rational response to match the profile of obligations of those schemes, it is questionable whether it is optimal for the wider economy. That eagerness to match payouts to known obligations of a defined population has perhaps encouraged a lack of ambition in investment in the wider economy.
What has happened progressively with DC scheme regulation is passive tracking rather than active investment. We have prioritised the minimisation of costs over returns. That has incentivised more and more funds to invest in cheap asset classes, almost alternating their investments, with fixed income, property and indexed funds being used. That is very frustrating, because over the past decade we reached consensus on auto-enrolment, and there was an emphasis on saying, “Oh, we mustn’t have any fat-cat fund managers taking too-big fees”. There was an anxiety about that, which drove an oversimplification of automated fund management. It allowed everyone to say, “The fees are very low”, but we did not have the right focus on performance and whether we were investing in the right things in the economy. It is obviously cheapest for a fund to go to passive, as it does not require active management and the skills that come with it.
There have been previous fundamental reforms, such as the removal of dividend tax credits. Before 1997, when a UK company paid a dividend, it was accompanied by a tax credit, and pension funds could reclaim that credit in cash from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. That meant that pension funds effectively received dividends gross of tax, boosting their investment returns. That reduced the effective yield on UK equities held by pension funds by around 20%, which was then the tax credit rate. There have been changes, with ISAs introduced in 1999 and self-invested personal pensions being widened in 2006, but this has removed the focus on UK investment.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point about the change from defined benefit to defined contribution and the impact of the taxation changes that brought that about. Would he care to comment on whether he sees that as part of an unwitting repricing of the return on risk, which has impacted not only on pension funds, but more widely? He said that pension fund investment in the market is down, but retail investment in the market overall is also down very significantly. It feels like the British people as a whole have lost their appetite for risk, and that might be because the return on risk is now too highly taxed.
John Glen
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my right hon. Friend anticipates an argument that I am going to move on to about the wider culture of awareness of where investments are happening in our pensions, how important that is, and how we need to be cognisant of the gap that exists.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) referred to the impact on Britain, but there is an impact regionally as well. Many workers in Northern Ireland are enrolled in UK-wide pension schemes and equity systems, and their long-term financial security depends on those schemes being able to generate strong, sustainable returns. When the right hon. Gentleman presents his proposals and asks to the Minister, can he try to obtain an assurance that whenever legislation comes through, similar things will happen in Northern Ireland, including for my constituents, thereby giving us all the equality we should have in this system?
John Glen
The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. In a moment, I will speak about what needs to change and where we need to get to.
Returning to my argument, the Pension Schemes Bill, which will have its Report stage next week, has made some welcome progress—I have to acknowledge that to the Minister. It has received significant cross-party support in many areas. The consolidation of DC schemes to provide greater scale and move away from a fragmented system has long been a journey that most people would see as desirable, but we must think about the scale of capital that our growing companies need. I am concerned about how quickly some of those changes will take place. Having been in intense dialogue with the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority when I was in the Treasury, I know that these things do not happen quickly enough. I urge the Minister—though I know he does not need much urging—to be robust in ensuring accountability on the delivery of some of these things.
To advance our understanding of the shift away from equities and towards bonds, let me note that in 1997, UK pension funds held 73% of their portfolios in equities and 15% in bonds. Those figures now stand at 34% and 43% respectively. I have talked about the particular aversion to UK equities, with UK pension funds investing 4.4% of their funds in domestic equities, compared with an international average of 10.1%. However, at the same time, the UK provides pension tax advantages worth more than £48 billion. That is £48 billion of taxpayers’ money that is essentially there to enrich our contributions and lay down a marker for the future. At the moment, though, there is no expectation that any of that is invested in the UK—this relates to mandation, which I will discuss now.
Around half of DC funds are in global allocations. My concern is that outflows from UK equities will continue as that global allocation continues and relative growth is seen in other markets, such as the US. As other economies grow, the UK part of the pie will automatically shrink, which means less money going into UK firms from these sorts of investment funds. As that passive fund practice becomes more prevalent, businesses such as the ones in Northern Ireland mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) are simply off the radar. They do not receive any analysis, and mid-cap and small-cap firms lose out, with pools of capital never being available to them. As such, that 4% investment in equities is likely to continue to fall.
The big point I want to make is about what people think of their pension schemes. New Financial, a well-known and respected think-tank connected with the City, did a survey of 1,000 working adults in the UK with a pension. That survey graphically highlighted what a “low level” of understanding people have of their pensions and the
“disconnect between their expectations and the industry.”
It said:
“On average, people thought 41% of their pension was invested in UK companies or the UK stock market (out by a factor of five to 10 times)”,
and, staggeringly, that
“two-thirds of people said pensions should invest more in UK equities even if the returns might be lower than investing in other markets.”
There is clearly a gap in knowledge and understanding. I advocated against the Department for Education’s backstop; I did not make much progress when I was in Government, but I am glad that this Government have made progress on financial education in the Department for Education and that it has now become part of the curriculum. This is a key chapter that is needed in that textbook.
I am anxious that the answer should not be for the City and pension fund managers to say, “We know best, we have a fiduciary duty—don’t worry about it.” Auto-enrolment has helped provide them with enormous funds to invest, but the disconnect between public expectation and what they are doing with those funds must and should be addressed. The vast majority of consumers investing in DC schemes do not change from their default allocation, although they are of course able to do so. Those defaults require approval, so alongside a campaign to get people to understand what is happening with their pensions and where their money is being put, it is worth asking people to verify what proportion of their pension savings are being invested where. They have that discretion; if they do not exercise it, that investment will default to whatever the scheme is going to do, and the scheme will likely continue in a similar way.
The London Stock Exchange Group tells me that by 2030, overall investment in UK equities by DC pensions would increase by around £76 billion—potentially as much as £95 billion—if this option were used. That is not mandation; I think that would be overreach, but I am sympathetic to the disconnect that exists. We must find a way to open up a proper discussion and increase awareness of the gaps where money is currently not being invested. I recognise that the Government have maintained a reserve power to mandate, although I doubt they will ever use it. However, I believe that individuals should be more empowered to take decisions, and I think they would be more empowered as active members of a DC fund. At the moment, they are not exercising that right. Consumers do and must have a choice about how their pensions are invested, and proposals to amend how default funds are allocated do not, and should not, prevent people from choosing exactly how they want to invest their pension pots.
There are so many opportunities in this country, such as in life sciences—my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) has a great understanding of that sector. When we are looking for that scale-up capital, the lack of funds in the UK to provide options for series B and sometimes series C funding is manifest. I just feel that we are missing an opportunity. I will understand if we do not go for mandation—I am sympathetic to that decision—but we should do something in between.
I know we are on the eve of the Budget, and as the Minister said to me as we entered the Chamber, there is little opportunity for him to adjust anything. I do not know what changes will be made tomorrow to pensions. There is obviously a lot of speculation about a reduction in ISAs, but let us get that in perspective as well. Only about 7% of those who have ISAs use the £20,000 limit. I do not believe that if there is any sort of mandation of the use of equities, people will go out and invest in them overnight, because the vast majority of people who have an ISA are at a later stage of life, and their ISA is in cash, so they will not do that anyway.
Let us get it in perspective. Last year, around £750 billion was invested in ISAs: £461 billion in stocks; £289 billion in cash. Last year, the Pensions Policy Institute estimated that there is a total of £3 trillion in UK pension assets across annuities, DC funds and DB funds. That is where the pools of capital can be opened up for investment in the UK economy. We need a greater focus on the public markets, and a vibrant, active, engaged and informed investor base to change the way that we move forward.
I have a couple more points to make. It is salutary to reflect on what happened with Arm Holdings: a British success story founded and built in Cambridge. As we know, it is a producer of semiconductors and software originally listed in London. The company was taken private because it felt that the public markets in this country could not support it; there was not enough liquidity in the markets. Arm was subsequently re-listed in New York, and since being taken off the London Stock Exchange, its valuation has grown by £112 billion. Of that growth, only £825 million has gone to UK investors. Had it stayed listed in the UK, that number would have been £43 billion. That would have meant higher pension valuations for a lot of people in this country, and more revenue for the Treasury from capital gains. It exemplifies the problem that we have: the lack of active, open markets where investors take risk and adopt a profile similar to those seen in the US. The FCA is disempowered and discouraged from trying to offer consumer redress. Through better financial education, we could get people to engage with the significant obligation that they have to save for the future, to take decisions that are in the interests of the UK economy and to pump more money into UK companies.
In conclusion, I welcome many provisions in the Pension Schemes Bill. Poorly performing pensions need to be challenged. I welcome the consolidation and scale-up of the pots, which will take too long and should be encouraged to move forward swiftly. But I have an anxiety that in a legitimate effort to hold back from mandation, there is a gap in thinking about how we open up the public’s understanding and imagination regarding where they can invest. I urge the Minister to move forward with some tougher rules around how people verify the choices that they are making so that the powerful voices who run the pensions industry do not default to saying, “We know best; we have fiduciary duty, and we will do it better than you could dream of doing.” The evidence is that that is not what people want. A golden thread of careful and delicate interventions is needed so that we can transform public behaviour and outcomes for our pensions industry.
Several hon. Members rose—
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak. I intend to call the Lib Dem spokesman at 5.10 pm and three hon. Members wish to speak. They will have roughly six minutes each.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on securing this debate.
In reality, equity investment from pensions is deteriorating because UK equities are not performing relative to their global counterparts. One of the reasons for that is that we have become over-regulated and over-taxed. When the big bang was launched 40 years ago, the City of London became the most important financial centre in the whole world. In the last 10 years, that has changed. That is why, at Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago, I announced the creation of four key working groups to look at a complete reset—a sort of big bang 2. We need to look again at the whole issue of regulation, and at the status of the FCA relative to the PRA and the Bank of England—that is working group No. 1. Working group No. 2 is on pensions and savings. We also need to consider big-picture issues: why, for example, are we giving tax relief on £300 billion of cash ISAs? How does that help the UK economy? Those are the big questions that we need to look at.
The third working group is on small and medium-sized enterprise growth capital. The right hon. Member for Salisbury asked why it is that on second, third and fourth-phase rounds of fundraising, companies are going elsewhere in the world. The truth is that our markets have become too difficult for raising that additional capital. The fourth working group that I have set up—and it will report in six to nine months’ time—is on taxation. We are over-taxed, and we enjoy the longest tax code in the world. At 24,000 pages, it is four times the combined works of “Harry Potter” and nothing like as much fun.
We need to look again at all those issues, and then we need to look at the performance of our pension funds. If we look at the performance of one of the biggest pension funds in the world, the local government pension schemes, which I have been very focused on, we will see that they are being overcharged substantially, by a factor of about five of what they should be paying, and they are underperforming. In the year to March ’25, the LGPS produced a great performance—not—of 3.3%, yet paid out over £2 billion in fees. Frankly, if the active funds cannot match the tracker, why not use a tracker? That is the challenge for the active industry.
One of the reasons that the LGPS is underperforming is because too much of them are invested in unlisted funds, and now invested in what I would call quite woke funds, but that is a whole different issue. People cannot get out of those unlisted funds, which are at 20% to 40%, and those funds cannot be properly valued. The fees are much higher and they are not performing as well. Those are the key reasons why the performance is deteriorating. The 10, 20 and 30-year track records of the local government pension schemes are all at over 7% in the long term, but in the short term, they are rapidly deteriorating because of wrong investment decisions and overpaying fees, and because we have a market in the UK that is over-regulated and over-taxed. All of those things reduce the incentive to invest.
For many people, it is complicated, but fundamentally, if the active fund managers overcharge and underperform, we should not be surprised if investors end up going elsewhere, and that might mean overseas. We need to change the way we look at things, deregulate sensibly and reduce unnecessary taxation in order to improve the quantity of pensions invested in UK-listed equities.
Callum Anderson (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and to keep the Minister company on the Government side. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on securing this debate and on a highly compelling speech and argument.
The question of whether we can create the right incentive framework for domestic pension funds to invest more in the UK is a strong one—not only in UK equities but across all asset classes, including gilts and infrastructure. It goes to the heart of the Government’s growth mission. It is imperative for strengthening our national economy and for unlocking the regional potential of our economies, including in my own constituency of Buckingham and Bletchley, which lies in the engine room of the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor.
Backing British businesses of all types and sizes across the UK with British capital is fundamental to jobs, greater levels of innovation and, in the long run, higher household incomes. However, it is also important for our economic sovereignty. As hon. Members have explained, if we are unwilling to invest in our own economy, we risk increasing our reliance on international capital, which may not necessarily prioritise the UK’s long-term national interest. I welcome the work that the Minister has advanced through the Pension Schemes Bill. It is a good Bill. Creating larger pension funds that are able to invest at scale will deliver stronger returns for millions of savers, including those in my constituency.
The scale of the challenge with regard to domestic pension investment in our economy is stark. The right hon. Member for Salisbury was clear in setting out the data from the new financial think-tank. The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) explained the steady decline of domestic pension investment over the last two, three or four decades.
Data that I would cite for international comparisons lies in the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, of which I know the London Stock Exchange Group is a leading member, and which I cited on Second Reading of the Pension Schemes Bill, but it is worth repeating now. Canadian pension funds are hugely overweight in their own domestic economy relative to their share of the global markets by about two and a half times. The figure for France is a factor of nine; Italy 10; Australia 27; and South Korea is an astonishing 30 times overweight. By contrast, in the United Kingdom we are underweight by about 40%. That was the data from about a year ago. This is not a marginal trend; it identifies a structural weakness in our global competitiveness, our industrial capability and our long-term national economic resilience.
As has been said, it is not just about our pension funds. Since the pandemic, UK households have accumulated greater levels of cash savings—depending on the financial institution, that is £600 billion, £700 billion and so on. It is positive that UK households have bigger cash buffers, but having excess cash not only potentially damages the ability to grow long-term wealth and secure financial security in the long run, but it deprives the many innovative scale-ups that we have in the UK from the investment that they need to grow, create jobs and deliver tax receipts for the Exchequer.
If we want a stronger, more secure economy, we have to mobilise all sources of domestic capital—that includes pension funds, retail savings and also our public institutions like the British Business Bank—to meet what I think are three principal goals. The first is to strengthen the integrity and vitality of UK public equity markets—I do have an interest, having worked for the London Stock Exchange Group before I entered Parliament—which was rightly cited as a priority in the Government’s financial services growth and competitiveness strategy earlier this year.
Listed companies are already employing 4 million people across the UK. When domestic capital supports the domestic economy, firms can raise further growth capital, which we saw to its benefit during the pandemic. It can also create further jobs. A vibrant public market can also attract, in turn, a wider pool of investors, domestic or international, and create a virtuous cycle of demand, valuation and innovation.
Secondly, I have already referred to national economic resilience. When domestic firms depend primarily on foreign investors, as we have seen in the case of Arm—I was at LSEG at the time—they are more likely to list overseas and more likely to relocate there. Their leadership teams shift supply chains and take their tax receipts and intellectual property with it. We need to mobilise our own domestic capital, which secures our long-term economic sovereignty.
Thirdly, lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it is about ensuring that our exciting innovators, of which there are many in my own constituency, are able to thrive and reach their full potential here. They all require patient capital, which was outlined in the industrial strategy. If Britain wants to lead in those industries, we must mobilise all our pension savings to give our unicorns the opportunity to compete globally. I will stop there because I am very aware of my six minutes.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I thank the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) for securing this debate. We are colleagues on the Treasury Committee, and I always find his contributions extremely thoughtful. He has the best interests of the country at heart, so I thank him for securing this debate.
We probably all agree that the UK investment system is broken, and not because of a lack of capital. There is £2.2 trillion-worth of capital locked up in UK pensions, and I think the consensus is that it is just not targeted well from the perspective of UK growth. We have already heard some figures cited: less than 5% of the funds are being allocated to UK assets, down from the highs of 50% in the ’90s, and that compares poorly with a lot of our international peers. Of course, there is not one way to fix this problem. Other hon. Members have highlighted other structural issues to do with regulation, culture, tax and demand for capital—people often speak to me about the need to get the pipeline of investable projects up in the UK—but mobilising these pools better through pensions reform is surely part of the solution.
UK pensions put too much into low-performing bonds and far too much into global passive indices. The effect is that funds such as the MSCI are putting more into Apple than they are into the entire UK market—I think 4.9% is allocated to Apple and 3.4% in the UK. That leads to a vicious circle, which other hon. Members have alluded to. Time and again, the UK’s best are sold to US big tech: we have heard references to Apple buying some of our best semiconductor and fintech firms, and another example is Google purchasing DeepMind. There are other factors here, including how the London stock exchange operates and the troubles with initial public offerings, which we have spoken about. However, it is worth thinking about how the role of passive indices amplifies that effect. I worry that with the advent of artificial intelligence-driven algorithms in the financial sector, it may be amplified further.
What we see is that the capital goes to the US tech giants, they buy the most innovative UK companies, that makes the UK market less attractive, and that means that UK pensions feel like they need to put more money into US companies—and the doom loop continues. I fear that unless we break the doom loop, we will see complete and utter dependence on a handful of US tech companies. All this happens while UK pension funds receive around £49 billion-worth of tax benefits, so the Government have every right to do something about this issue and act in the interests of our own country. More than that, as the right hon. Member for Salisbury noted, UK pension savers are demanding this. They expect more of their money to be put into British funds, even if it means declining returns.
I empathise with the reasons why the Government want to go down the route of reserve powers and mandation. There has been lots of talk of an industry backlash, but some funds I have spoken to say that they want much stronger guardrails in relation to any mandation. They worry about mandation being used as a substitute for the wider structural reforms that we have spoken about. They also worry about future—perhaps more interventionist—Governments, and they want a much stronger set of guardrails for mandation, if it is to come.
In place of mandation, there is a middle ground. The right hon. Member referred already to the enormous power of default settings, which we have seen with auto-enrolment. Behavioural science and behavioural economics tell us a lot more about how people actually respond; what works is not always rational self-interest and incentives. If we change the default options about UK equities and allow an opt-out, we will probably find that most people do not opt out. Research from New Financial states that a 25% allocation to the UK in these default funds could be worth up to £95 billion. That alone would be transformative, without the need for mandation.
At the moment, UK savers are losing out twice: not only because they are getting poorer returns over the long term, but because we are choking off investment in the areas where they choose to live and retire. We should keep both those things in mind.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on obtaining the debate, which has been quite enlightening; his liberal views on the way forward for pensions are very welcome. The Liberal Democrats are keen to see investment in our British economy, and we are particularly exercised about the need for investment in social rented housing, our high streets and climate change. From my own patch, I reflect on the conversations I have had with our high-tech cluster in Torbay, which often faces challenges in getting investment and getting the right vehicles to support it.
Reflecting on key areas for us, one can understand the principles behind mandation, but there is also the law of unintended consequences, and we have grave concerns about it. A power of mandation might be seen as a reserve power. I am sure, or at least I hope, that all Ministers in power at the moment are reasonable people, but who knows what might happen in the future? Giving the power of mandation to a future Government who may not be run by reasonable people is a significant risk. One only has to look at the other side of the Atlantic and see who now dwells in the Oval Office to realise that some curious decisions have been made there. For many of us on this side of the Atlantic, if the power of mandation was given to similar people here, that would cause us grave concern.
Kit Malthouse
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s views about mandation, as the Minister knows, but would he care to comment on its impact on the appetite for risk? We have learned from my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) that since the change in taxation, the general trend in pension funds has been for managers to de-risk and to go into passive funds. If they do so, no one can complain, they are not taking any risk, they do not have to outperform or underperform the market and they get what they want. If they can pass off yet more risk to the Government and effectively sit there and get paid to be told by the Government what to invest in, they will bite the Government’s hand off, will they not?
Steve Darling
The right hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. One can go back to the significant crash of 2008. I suggest, and I am sure many people would agree, that that has left a scarring on the system and a fear of risk. For many of us who know about the system, risk is a good thing, because it can result in growth. If we do not embrace risk, we will not embrace growth. One minimises growth by failing to go for those risks. I agree that mandation potentially allows people to shy away from risk.
As Liberal Democrats, we are really keen to make sure that there are vehicles for investment, whether in social rented housing, in cleaner energy, in our high streets or in our high-tech industries. However, such vehicles should be designed so that people become aware of them and can make a choice themselves, rather than being dictated to by the state.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on securing this important debate. Given his experience as a Treasury Minister for many years, it has been a pleasure to hear his thoughts on this issue.
My right hon. Friend could not have chosen a better time for this debate, given tomorrow’s Budget. Let us hope that private pension holders are not penalised in comparison with public sector pension holders. Amid all the drama of the Budget, let us not forget that the Pension Schemes Bill comes back on Report next week. Having sat on that Bill Committee, I concur with my right hon. Friend’s point about the need for pension education. That came up many times during the debate, as did the vast majority of what he spoke about. It is really important to expand people’s imagination about where they can invest. It is not just about educating young people; it is about educating people in their 30s, 40s and 50s about where they can invest their money, particularly given what we are likely to hear in the Budget tomorrow. I would potentially be interested in having a conversation about where I can invest my money. Anyway, I do not have that much, so let us crack on with the debate.
Having listened to the speeches this afternoon and during our consideration of the Pension Schemes Bill, I know that there is an obvious consensus across the House on this issue. For one reason or another, pension schemes do not feel confident to invest directly into the UK equity market. The facts do not lie. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of private sector defined contribution assets being invested in the UK equity market has fallen from around 30% to 6%. In 2006, around 32% of defined benefit assets were invested in UK equities; by 2023, that had fallen below 2% in favour of UK gilts. As the Financial Times reported, even the Financial Conduct Authority’s own pension scheme invests only around 4% in UK equities.
These statistics are all the more stark when one considers that, from 2012, total global investment in equities from UK private sector workplace DC schemes has increased from 70% to 76%. It is not that pension schemes do not want to invest in equities, but something has changed that has made the UK equity market less attractive than others, and we need to figure out what has happened. I know that everyone in this Chamber agrees on that; indeed, we have heard some solutions during the debate.
The pensions investment review was a welcome first step in looking at this, and we are glad that many of the recommendations are now in the Pension Schemes Bill. I want to be clear that we support the spirit of the Mansion House accord, which expands on the Mansion House compact that the right hon. Member for Salisbury helped to introduce in 2023. It seeks to persuade those in charge of DC schemes to invest in UK equities, and we think that is reasonable.
However, the Minister will not be surprised to hear that we still do not support the reserve mandation powers in the Pension Schemes Bill. While we are behind the spirit of the measure, we cannot support something that goes against trustees’ fiduciary duties. As the Minister has said many times, better returns for members are what is most important, and we agree wholeheartedly with that. However, does forcing pension funds to invest in what the Government wants them to invest in yield the best returns for members? The answer is probably not. It is no wonder that the industry is so heavily opposed to these powers, and that we are yet to hear a convincing argument for their implementation. Perhaps the Minister will be able to provide a more convincing one.
It seems counterintuitive for the Government to secure the commitment that they did in the Mansion House accord, and only months later bring in this measure. What makes it more confusing is that the Minister said in a recent interview on the “Making Money” podcast,
“I don’t think I’m going to need to use that power…because I see the industry changing.”
What is the point, if industry is changing in the way the Government want? Would it not be better to work with industry and give it a chance to reach the target, instead of holding the sword of Damocles over its head?
Instead, we need to engage with the industry and acquire a better understanding of the barriers it faces. For example, has legislation created an unattractive environment? Have we been too willing to legislate following the Maxwell scandal? Have the UK’s regulators gone too far and over-interpreted legislation? Are they getting rid of reasonable risk in the market in the pursuit of perfection? What has changed in the market that has contributed to that decline? Do the unbundling rules in the markets in financial instruments directive mean that the UK has not got the necessary equity research or data capabilities to attract investment? These are the kinds of questions that need answering before we give the Government such sweeping powers. A doctor would not operate on a patient if they had not properly diagnosed their symptoms—that would be considered malpractice—so why are we trying to solve an important problem without really knowing what is causing it in the first place?
For those reasons, the Conservatives will be tabling an amendment to the Pension Schemes Bill to ask just that question. Our amendment will simply ask the Government to include in their report an analysis of the barriers that pension funds are facing from legislation, regulation and market behaviour. We think that it is essential to obtain, understand and resolve this information before even considering the introduction of mandation powers. We hope the Minister agrees and will see our proposal in the constructive manner in which it is intended. I would welcome his thoughts on it.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, there is much agreement on this wider issue and on the need to create an environment that will incentivise investment into the UK. I know the Minister understands that, and we want to work with him to improve the attractiveness of the UK’s equity market and reinvigorate pension funds’ appetite to invest in it. If we get this right, we could really make a difference. Now is the time to do the hard graft, to work together while this Government last and to make the UK the place to invest in again.
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
We have caught up a lot of time. I ask the Minister to leave a couple of minutes for the Member in charge to wind up.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I will indeed leave several minutes for the winding-up speech. Like everyone else, I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on securing this debate, particularly on the Budget eve; it is very kind of him to make my diary relaxed. It is a topic on which he has thought deeply and that we have discussed many times. As ever, I welcome his constructive and practical approach, which befits someone who confirmed to me earlier that he holds the title of longest-serving Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Luckily, he was not on performance-related pay, given the growth of the economy during that time.
Torsten Bell
He may not have been paid at all. His focus at the beginning of his remarks on growth and one of its key enablers, investment, was right. If we stepped back and forced ourselves to ask, “What is the one thing the British economy needs more of?”, it would be public and private investment. As several hon. Members have said, the UK has the second largest pension scheme in the world, worth £2 trillion. It is our largest source of domestic capital, underpinning not just the retirement we all—or at least most of us—look forward to, but the investment on which our future prosperity depends.
That is why this Government launched and concluded a review of pensions investment within a year of taking office. Those reforms are now being taken forward through the Pension Schemes Bill, as the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) pointed out. First and foremost, the Bill includes measures to deliver bigger and better pension schemes in the DC market. It requires multi-employer defined contribution pension providers to hold at least £25 billion in assets by 2030 or to be on track to do so by 2035.
That requirement will drive scale and sophistication in workplace DC schemes so that they are better positioned to invest in a fuller range of asset classes, including specialist private markets such as venture capital, which we have not heard much about today but which are key. The biggest gap in UK capital markets is growth finance: the gap that holds back our science and tech start-ups, scale ups and pre-initial public offering companies. That does not take away from the challenges we are raising about public markets, but if we look at our capital markets as a whole, that is our biggest gap.
Pensions can be a key source of funding for those economically critical investments and sectors, which my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) set out, as he has done many times in the discussions on the Pension Schemes Bill. This is not just theoretical; it is actually starting to happen. Legal & General is investing in post-quantum cryptography and Nest is investing in energy generation. Last week, the Chancellor and I met with Aegon UK, NatWest Cushion and M&G, which have all confirmed that they will invest £200 million in the British Growth Partnership, a fund managed by the British Business Bank investing in cutting edge British businesses and building on British strengths in areas such as clean energy, advanced manufacturing and the medical technology that other Members have talked about in the past.
As we have heard, Members are well aware of the Mansion House accord, a voluntary commitment by 17 major DC funds to invest 10% of their main default funds in private assets by 2030, including 5% in UK private assets. That will boost investment across a range of asset classes, including growth market equities, which we have not touched on much today. That is welcome news driven by a focus on giving savers better returns and showing how pension funds can contribute directly to making Britain the best place to start up, scale up and ultimately list companies. I should emphasise that we should think about our capital markets as a ladder up which firms can climb. Our job is to make that climb easier, not just to focus on the ultimate destination.
Several Members raised the question of transparency. The Pension Schemes Bill includes a new framework under which DC funds will need to disclose their investments in more granular detail, including UK-overseas and asset class split. We will be able to see in more detail what individual schemes are doing. We are doing that so that we can measure their value for money. For the first time, we will be able to see where those funds are invested.
Finally, as Members know, the Bill includes a reserve power, which has been discussed today, to ensure that the change that the pension schemes themselves say is needed in the interest of members happens. I will repeat what I said on the “Making Money” podcast—it is very exciting that the hon. Member for South West Devon had time to tune in. I am confident that this power will not need to be used, given the progress the industry is already making. It is designed as a proportionate backstop to the commitments that the industry has already made, with strong safeguards to protect the interests of pension savers.
On mandation, I note—as gently as possible, given the excellent tone of this discussion—that I have spent much of the last six months hearing strong opposition to any mandation backstop while hearing, often from the very same people, language that does not directly contradict that, but gets close to calling for mandation, whether it is social housing, public equities or anything else. I just gently note that tension before as gently moving on to set out some of the wider steps that the Government are taking to support our capital markets, because they go far beyond pensions. It is important to note that although UK equity markets have faced some challenges in recent years, London’s markets remain some of the deepest and most liquid in the world. We want to build on those strong foundations and make the UK as attractive a destination as possible for companies to start, scale and stay. There is a danger here: we need to make sure we are having this discussion about the change we need to see, while also celebrating many of the real strengths that exist in London’s capital markets.
Richard Tice
Is the Minister aware that the quantity of listings on the London stock market has collapsed by about 80% in the last decade, and that the number of companies listed on AIM—the alternative investment market, which was the original growth market 40 years ago—has fallen to a 25-year low, so something fundamental is going wrong with our listed markets?
Torsten Bell
I am. I will just gently say that many people, when discussing the reasons for that, point to a policy of Brexit delivered without any ideas about how it should be delivered in a smaller, home market and without any plans for the future. I would probably pause on that before I started offering anyone views on anything at all.
My Treasury colleagues have already delivered an ambitious programme of reforms: modernising UK listing rules; establishing the private intermittent securities and capital exchange system—PISCES—to support private companies to scale and grow as a stepping-stone to public markets; and making it easier to raise capital and IPO in the UK with new prospectus rules from January of next year. To come directly and more fairly to the question that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) raised, I think it is important to celebrate the fact that we have seen some of that translate into positive momentum recently. Hon. Members will know that the stock exchange has had a very strong year, outperforming most of the rest of the world. We saw listings from Fermi America and Shawbrook last month, and there are other exciting companies in the pipeline. I now regularly see my hon. and learned Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in confetti-filled photographs from the stock exchange, and I look forward to seeing many more in the years to come. I encourage hon. Members to go and engage in similar activities.
Our capital markets are not just about celebration and ceremony; they are critical in connecting retail investors’ capital with businesses in the way that several hon. Members mentioned. Investing offers a powerful way for people to make their money work harder and share in growth. That is why the Government are bringing forward measures to get Britain investing again.
The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) raised a point, which I have heard him discuss before, about risk appetite and the incentives that people have. I would say that if we look at the evidence from the last 25 years, we see that it is not the strength of the incentive that is the issue. Many people holding cash ISAs would have made very significant returns if they had held that in equities instead. I will give an example. If someone, each year since the introduction of ISAs, had put £1,000 into an equity ISA rather than a cash ISA, they would be £50,000 better off. The issue is not purely about incentives, and I think focusing there would miss some of the wider changes we have been seeing, but I am always eager to hear about what more can be done.
What we are doing is working closely with the FCA and rolling out a scheme of targeted support ahead of ISA season next year. That will represent the biggest reform of the financial advice and guidance landscape—mentioned by the hon. Member for South West Devon—in more than a generation. It will revolutionise the support that consumers can receive to invest.
Kit Malthouse
I get the example that the Minister talks about, but I think he misunderstands or perhaps misappreciates how the retail investor thinks. They do not necessarily think, “If I put £1,000 in now, in 20 years’ time it will be worth this.” They think, “If I put £1,000 in now, what is my return going to be next year? What is my running return going to be?” And it will be a percentage return on the dividend. That is why we have a P/E—price-to-earnings—ratio for every share; that is what investors look at. If that is impaired because of taxation and the return is reduced, as it has been over the last few years, they will be less inclined to invest. That, fundamentally, is the pattern that we have seen. The Minister never says this, but in the end, people invest in listed stocks and shares, whether through their pension or otherwise, to make money. They are not doing it for the good of anybody else. They are doing it to make money, and if they are going to make less money, or the perception is that they will make less money, because of Government taxation, they will do less of it. Would he not agree?
Torsten Bell
I am not sure that I fully understood, so I am not going to commit to agreeing. Remember that the capital gains on shares in equity ISAs—investment ISAs—receive tax relief in their entirety, so the tax is not the problem in terms of people’s rates of return; the returns would have been very real indeed over, for example, that 25-year period. However, my basic argument is that we need better advice, and that our targeted changes will make it possible for financial firms to offer that.
We are also supporting an industry initiative to rebalance risk warnings to ensure that firms are offering consumers information about investing, not trying to scare them off with over-the-top warnings. Together, these measures will support savers in securing stronger returns over the long term because, as the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire just said, this is about making money for savers—whether in pension savings or elsewhere—putting money into people’s pockets and further strengthening our world-leading capital markets.
I will make one more substantive point and then conclude. This is not just about capital. In the end, the growth agenda, and needing the investment to make it happen, is about actual investment not just financial flows. Financial flows are an enabler of the investment that ultimately matters to the size of the capital stock, the quality of the infrastructure, the quality of the firms, and the amount of capital that workers have to work with. That is, in the end, what matters, and it means firms wanting to grow, which is why I focused slightly more in my remarks on the whole chain of firms’ access to capital.
This is also about being able to get out and actually get things built. I gently remind Members, when I hear them opposing anything getting built, anywhere, by anyone, at any time—I definitely hear the Lib Dem Front Bench opposing—[Interruption.] I am not talking about the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), but the Lib Dems have never seen a house that they wanted to be built. That is my lived experience of sitting in the Chamber day after day. We need to actually get things built, and as I said, I agree with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) on the pipeline of investment. That is ultimately what we need if we want growth to happen; it cannot just be about changing the flows of existing assets.
I once again thank the right hon. Member for Salisbury for securing today’s debate. A strong pensions industry and thriving capital markets are cornerstones of our capitalism, as I think everybody in this Chamber agrees. We are introducing significant reforms of both the capital markets and the pensions industry, and I am grateful to have had the chance to discuss them this afternoon.
John Glen
I thank the Minister for his response. I think there has been a lot of common ground across the Chamber this afternoon, but in some areas we have not quite bottomed out what the Government’s view is about empowered pension fundholders electing to discern what amount of their pension should be invested in UK equities. We have to continue that conversation. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) for clearly setting out our party’s position on the Pension Schemes Bill; I agreed with her very much.
I acknowledge the contributions of the hon. Members for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) and for Torbay (Steve Darling), my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), and my friend the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). I respectfully say to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness that when I was a Minister and I did the capital markets review, the Jonathan Hill review and the Mark Austin review, I did not just passively sit there; I went to the City, listened to people like him who were practitioners in the City in different funds, and worked with my officials to deliver what the City wanted, to optimise the pathway that we were in.
That goes down to having deep conversations about which regulations need to be moderated and which need to be withdrawn, such that the Hill review—and this Government have enacted everything that came from it—still leaves me with a sense of frustration, because there was nothing that I would not do that I was asked to do in the interests of London. To believe that somehow we set up four working groups and have a big bang like 1986 or something, and that it will all be straightforward, I think is mistaken. It is a complicated ecosystem, and we will need to look at the risk profile. I probably agree with the hon. Gentleman that there needs to be a greater appetite for risk. We have to reset that risk appetite, because we have had a dozen years since the reset after the global financial crisis, and we need to look at it again. I do think the PRA needs to be challenged, as I think it will be next week by the Financial Policy Committee, on some of the issues around what level of capital it is prepared for banks to have, which is a good place to start.
I am very encouraged by the constructive nature of the conversation this afternoon. I hope that the Minister will reflect a little more on the need to empower pension holders to take decisions in the interest of investing more in UK equities.