Westminster Hall

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

Thursday 27 November 2025

[Emma Lewell in the Chair]

Business and Trade Committee

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

Select Committee statement

13:30

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

We begin with the Select Committee statement. Liam Byrne will speak on the publication of the 11th report of the Business and Trade Committee, “Toward a new doctrine for economic security”, HC835, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and then call Liam Byrne to respond to those in turn. Questions should be brief and Members may ask only one question each.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. Let me record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this debate; to a brilliant team of Select Committee members—it is a privilege to serve alongside them—and to a first-class team who help to ensure that the Select Committee does its work so expertly. The report we present today sounds a note of agreement, but is also designed to sound a warning. The note of agreement is this: we agree that national security is economic security. But the note of warning is stark: we do not find that our economic security regime is fit for the future.

If we think about the risks we faced this summer, with the Jaguar Land Rover cyber-attack, which ended up costing a £1.5 billion state guarantee; the struggles that our Dutch allies went through with Nexperia; and the struggles that our American allies went through in the spat with China over rare earth technology exports, we can now see that the question of economic security is front and centre for businesses and policymakers, each and every day. The warning that we sound is that the risks are going to multiply significantly over the years to come.

The threat surface that most businesses now operate is much bigger than in the past. Artificial intelligence is going to transform cyber-aggression. We now have states and state-backed actors operating in this space. This is all at a time when our country is going to seek to entice around £100 billion extra in inward investment, much of it from abroad and much of it in our energy infrastructure. What Ciaran Martin calls the private ownership of public risk is about to expand exponentially. Yet, right now, we simply do not have the defences in place that we need.

The core argument of our report is that just as we need a whole-of-society approach to defence, so we now need a whole-of-society approach to our economic security, but we do not have the systems in place to deliver that today. That is why change is needed over the years to come. In order to help understand precisely the gaps, we worked together with experts at the Royal United Services Institute, gathered lots of evidence, took lots of witness testimony and heard from Ministers. What that basically revealed is that many of our allies, such as Japan, but also in a way the European Union, have legislative backing for many of the regimes that they have in place.

Our allies in Japan in particular, who have had to think about this for a lot longer than we have, have a very sophisticated set of defences and state machinery. Equally, we could find very durable institutions in the United States and real policy innovation in the European Union today. In this country, we have a number of strategies, which are growing in number, but frankly do not really add up to a comprehensive regime for economic security.

There have been welcome advances, not least the critical mineral strategy that was published this week, but the risk is that ad hoc papers become strategy by stapler, where we have policy papers published that are not durable for the long term. That is a problem, because only the public sector and the private sector working together can mobilise the kind of investment that is needed to transform the country’s resilience for the threats we will face in the future. We argue therefore that, just as we comprehensively overhauled the doctrine to tackle counter-terrorism after 7/7 with the publication of CONTEST, we now need a new doctrine of economic security in order to ensure that there is a whole-of-Government and whole-of-society approach, all pointing in a similar direction.

We conclude that it does not make a great deal of sense for policy to be guided by a hard definition of economic security, because things are going to change: this is a dynamic environment, and a hard definition might entail more risks than it solves. However, we believe that this doctrine should be shaped by a set of strategic principles in the years to come. Colleagues across the House will have many ideas about what should go into that. We conclude that our approach should be guided by six Ds: diagnose, develop, diversify, defend, deter and dovetail.

On diagnosis, we think there should be a long-term technology forecasting centre in Government that supplies not just Government but the private sector with, if not intelligence, then certainly insight, to shape their understanding of risk in the future. We need to build on the work of the National Cyber Security Centre to create a proper platform where public and private sectors can work together in new ways to understand the risks that the country confronts.

We need to specify the sovereign capabilities that we need to develop as a country. Two or three are defined in the strategic defence review, but that is about it, and the defence industrial policy promised some further definitions. We cannot understand what we are going to decouple from allies—or in some cases from enemies—unless we have a more sophisticated understanding of the sovereign capabilities that we need as a country. We then need to line up the national wealth fund and other resources behind this understanding. We also need to modernise the “Managing Public Money” framework so that Ministers, like the excellent Minister in his place today, are not hidebound and forced to issue ministerial directions every time a strategic investment is needed, as was the case with Jaguar Land Rover and the nationalisation of British Steel.

Our third D is diversify, which is well understood. We need to diversify supplies of critical minerals and diversify our critical supply chains, too. The targets for critical minerals published on Monday were important, but there was no investment plan to go with them. We cannot do this alone; we can only do it by acting with allies.

We then need to better defend our infrastructure, including our critical national infrastructure and our cyber-infrastructure, in both the public and private sectors. That is why we think that the mandatory reporting of ransomware attacks is a good idea, and why we think we should be radically expanding the work of Pool Re so there is a backstop to the cyber insurance market, which there currently is not. We need capital allowances to be modernised, so there are real incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in cyber-security. Critical SMEs should probably enjoy access to Government support too.

In the field of deterrence, we need to ensure that we can fast-track investment into our country from trusted sources. That is why a trusted investor scheme would make a lot of sense. We need to explore anti-coercion instruments in the way that the European Union has. We need to name and shame those involved in sanction breaches much more aggressively than we are today. Crucially, we need to make sure we have the right skills in both Companies House and the National Crime Agency. It is ridiculous that there is something like a £28,000 gap between the pay that someone in the National Crime Agency can get and the pay that someone in an equivalent police force can get. That is not the way to ensure that we have the right people on the frontline. We note with concern that Companies House has a 20% vacancy rate in its digital workforce. That is a real risk.

Finally, we need to dovetail what the Government are doing with what the private sector is doing. That is why we need new spaces in which they can work together. We also need to dovetail what we are doing with what our allies are doing: we call for an alliance of free-trading democracies to work together, like the work of the UK and the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership—the Minister has just returned from a CPTPP meeting. The work that we are pioneering in the South Korean trade deal is a good example of the kind of thing that we should be doing more generally. We need almost to be driving forward an economic security union with our closest neighbour, and of course our allies in the United States need to be drawn into this work too.

We need to make sure that the blueprint has a backbone. That is why we call for a cross-Government Minister and an office of economic security to bring everything together, the restoration of the sub-committee on economic security in the National Security Council, and parliamentary oversight through the reform of section 54 of the National Security and investment Act 2021. We think that much of that should be enshrined in a Bill.

We have done this before. After world war one, we comprehensively modernised the state to combat the world of economic warfare. That is a wise lesson and a wise experience to guide us in new times.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. In my short time in Parliament, perhaps the most terrifying thing I have heard so far is the evidence we took on the Business and Trade Committee that state actors are joining forces with criminal gangs to attack this country in the cyber-theatre. From his vast experience, has the right hon. Gentleman ever delivered a report quite so urgent and time-sensitive?

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the question and for his sterling work on the Committee as our inquiry has been driven forward over the last seven or eight months. I have not. It was striking to compare the evidence we took with history lessons from the 1920s and 1930s. As a country, we have developed infrastructure to tackle these kinds of threats in the past. Indeed, the forces that we assembled in the 1920s and 1930s were so important that they became known as the fourth fighting service. It was certainly crucial in helping us to stand up the Ministry of Economic Warfare in world war two with the speed that we did. We are now in a world of chokepoints, coercion and weaponised interdependence, and today’s cyber-attacks will be nothing compared with those in future. Frankly, the country is simply not ready. We have to get our skates on.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his report. I will not mention his vast experience though, because he is still young to me. Redditch was deeply impacted by the JLR shutdown, with many of our supply chains affected. My right hon. Friend talks in the report about the need for an economic security Minister and about the specific measures needed to upgrade cyber-security across our critical sectors. What powers would my right hon. Friend envisage such a Minister having, and how do Government support businesses to get up to date to meet the challenges mentioned in the report?

[Liam Byrne]

We have a very good Minister in place, but in a way, the report is designed to ensure that that Minister is empowered in his work and across Government. But first we must understand, and help the Minister have the powers to understand, the full breadth of the UK supply chains and where the risks are. The Jaguar Land Rover case was striking because the supply chain information was kept on the computers that went down. When the computers went down, they had to generate, I think, almost paper lists of tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers to work out who needed cashflow and who could survive without direct help. We must ensure that we have a full picture of supply chains and where the critical dependencies are, as the Japanese have been doing for many years.

Making sure that there is a proper backstop to the cyber-insurance market is important. That is why the proposals for a much bigger and better-equipped Pool Re are so important. Pool Re, as many will know, was set up to backstop terrorism insurance during the height of the IRA attacks. It now needs modernising for new times. The tax regime that we have in place today simply does not incentivise small and medium-sized enterprises in the way that we could, to draw down on subscription-based cyber-security policies. Making sure that there are the right incentives, powers and insights available are just some of the tasks that we think an economic security Minister needs to be fully empowered to perform.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member on the report. As I am sure he knows, I responded to his request for comment. My question is about the security of financial services. He says that diversification is one of the solutions to the risk of cyber- attack. My worry is that, if we put all our eggs into the basket of an increasingly electronic-based financial services market where high street banks retreat behind electronic walls, that does not just result in vulnerable and digitally-excluded customers struggling to access financial services, but creates a big national risk. It is a problem for our communities where banks are retreating—in Cornwall, there will be only one Lloyds bank left next year—and for the security of the nation as well.

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. This is just a reminder that the debate must end at 10 minutes to 2.

[Liam Byrne]

I was very grateful to receive the hon. Member’s email. He is absolutely right. The shutdown of branches all over our country is a really serious problem that creates real risks. One answer is to ensure that we lean in behind the Post Office plans to create banking hubs, not just in a couple of hundred high streets, which is the proposal of the main banks, but in thousands of locations across the country. The Post Office has in place an agreement with the banks until about 2030, but the future thereafter is not clear, so I hope that Ministers can take up this point in the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that we lean into the plans that the Post Office has developed to transform the availability of banking services on thousands of high streets up and down the country.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)]

I warmly commend the Committee on producing its report. I take no offence at the demand that there be a separate economic security Minister, even though I think the Culture, Media and Sport Committee demanded, when I was the Minister responsible for tourism, that there be a separate tourism Minister as well—there seems to be a growing theme. I am very glad that the Committee agrees with the Government on the need for mandatory reporting of cyber-attacks. It seems to me that until we have a full understanding of the pattern of the problem that there is in the nation, we will not really be able to seize the opportunity. What shape does my right hon. Friend think the legislation that he proposes might take?

[Liam Byrne]

This is a very good point. We want to ensure that there is an enshrinement of the principles of the Bill, so that the private sector has clarity, certainty and confidence in the durability of the economic security regime that we operate in this country. In the inquiry, we heard overwhelming evidence that businesses frankly do not know whom to ring when there is a problem. They did not know whether there were particular spaces where they could work together, certainly with agencies but also with economic security services more generally. Providing clarity, certainty and durability is the only way in which we will be able to mobilise the scale of long-term finance that we will need in order to upgrade the resilience of this country for new times.

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his help and work on this issue. I want to ask his opinion on the efficacy of our arms export control regime. We had two sessions in which we were looking into the F-35 in Gaza, and essentially it seems like the UK has outsourced its arms export controls to the Americans for F-35 replacement parts. Also, we continue to sell a lot of weapons to the United Arab Emirates, and it has been widely reported in the international press that the UAE is arming the Rapid Support Forces, which is creating enormous numbers of atrocities in Sudan. Does the right hon. Member think that our arms export control criteria are up to scratch?

[Liam Byrne]

I think there is a real opportunity in the course of the next year to modernise the way we export arms, and we will need to do that because of the simple reality that the definition of an arm in new times is very different. Many of our allies talk to us, as members of the Committee, about the need to strengthen in particular intellectual property export controls in the future. In a world where ideas can be weapons if they are, for example, novel artificial intelligence programmes, we have to take a much broader approach to this in the future. It is not clear to us that the way we license weapons and control adherence to licence conditions is strong enough, so it is an area to which the Select Committee will need to return. Again, if we are upgrading our economic security defences, I do not think we can do that, in the world in which we live, without comprehensively upgrading our arms control systems too.

Backbench Business

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

13:50

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of extended producer responsibility for packaging.

This is particularly relevant to pubs and breweries, but the EPR scheme extends wider than that sector. I thank Tata Steel, the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, British Glass and the Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association for their engagement.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group, EPR for packaging is one of the key issues raised with me over the past year. The challenges presented by this policy were highlighted many times during the beer group’s inquiry earlier this year. The industry is affected by a wide range of policy requirements across almost all Government Departments. The cumulative impact of these policies and regulations is taking its toll—it is stunting growth, and growth is what our country needs. The Chancellor used the word nearly 50 times in yesterday’s Budget speech, so I know it is important to this Government. In securing this debate, I want to share some of the EPR issues that have been raised with us by the beer sector, and hopefully move them closer to resolution, to help businesses grow once more.

What is extended producer responsibility? It is a major new UK packaging obligation that applies to brand owners and importers of all packaging that could end up in household waste streams. Fees became payable on 1 April 2025. They are in the form of pounds-per-tonne rates for all the main packaging materials: cardboard, plastic, paper and glass. There are some exemptions for very small producers. These fees will raise £1.4 billion to pay local authorities for the collection, management, recycling and disposal of household packaging waste.

Nobody can disagree that the idea of EPR appears to be brilliant. First, the polluter pays, with the businesses that put the packaging on the market bearing the associated environmental and societal costs. Secondly, it is an incentive for companies to design products that are more durable, reusable and easier to recycle. Thirdly, it is meant to promote a circular economy in which packaging is kept in use for as long as possible, minimising waste going to landfill. That all sounds great, but unfortunately the reality for businesses, particularly independent pubs and breweries, is very different.

Laura James, from Gower brewery in my constituency, says that the introduction of EPR means the business has never had so much money going out the door. She fears that EPR requirements—on top of the increases to beer duty, the national minimum wage and national insurance contributions—could be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back. Such independent breweries, which are the lifeblood of communities like mine in Gower, may be forced to close.

Laura talked me through the day-to-day impact of EPR on the business. Every six to eight weeks, it gets a delivery of empty glass bottles, and it uses around half a million every year. Since the EPR requirements came in this April, its supplier has added £5,000 to the delivery, which means the brewery now has to find around an extra £45,000 every year, just for the bottles.

The British Beer and Pub Association, which represents the industry, says that brewers and pubs are struggling, and that the EPR fees for glass packaging are far too high, costing brewers nationwide around £124 million a year. My first ask of the Government is that EPR fees for glass are reviewed. They currently work out at around 6p extra per bottle.

Gower brewery says that, in an ideal world, it would move away from glass to cans, but that requires investment, which is money it just does not have. Alternatively, it would create a bottle deposit scheme, but that also requires money. It would need to rent a warehouse to store the empties, buy numerous bottle-washing machines and pay additional staff to facilitate it all. Added to that, it could not guarantee the integrity of the second-hand bottles—that they would be 100% safe to drink from. That is why pubs and breweries say it is vital that glass fees are made fairer and more sustainable.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. The famous Griffin brewery is in my constituency, as is Fuller’s, with its substantial on- and off-trade. We all want to see recycling increase, but there is the issue of fees and whether it will involve the use of materials that are less recyclable than glass, which is an important manufacturing tool for the brewing industry.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

My hon. Friend is right. I am quite jealous that he has all those wonderful breweries in his patch. The pub and brewing sector is fantastic, and I really enjoy working with it, but I know how hard it is finding things and how it is striving to get to net zero. It wants to be part of this conversation and part of the solution. I take my hat off to that excellent sector.

Secondly, the sector would welcome a quick resolution from Government on the double charging issue, which the British Beer and Pub Association says is costing pubs and breweries nationwide an additional £50 million a year. They pay the EPR charge passed on by suppliers as well as their existing commercial waste disposal fees for the same items, including beer and wine bottles or food containers that never leave their premises. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has agreed that double charging is unfair and against the intentions of the policy. It has suggested that the earliest it can be rectified is 2028, but that is three years from now.

This issue needs to be resolved as soon as possible or smaller breweries such as Gower brewery will go under. Double charging means that not only does Gower brewery pay more to suppliers for its bottles and packaging, it pays Swansea council for its commercial waste collection. A simple clarification from Government would help the industry: the beer sector would like DEFRA to amend its guidance to provide more flexibility on how producers can account for EPR fees. As currently drafted, the rules prevent producers from accounting for the accrual of EPR payments across a 12-month period, which means that businesses are having to absorb the hit in one go in April.

On a positive note, there is no doubt that the pub and brewing sector and wider hospitality share the Government’s ambitions for well-designed schemes to reduce packaging, increase recycling rates and build a functional circular economy. However, on a practical level, it is proving difficult. As well as the increased packaging fees, there are additional admin costs related to the time needed to fulfil EPR requirements. Laura from Gower brewery explained that every item of packaging has to be weighed and logged on a portal, from the bottle to the cardboard tray it is packed in and the plastic it is wrapped in. Each business it supplies has a separate portal, making it a lengthy task.

There is also future uncertainty for businesses, which is not good for jobs or growth. For example, Laura is concerned about how each supermarket will approach EPR in the coming months. What if, say, Tesco decides that it wants her brewery to abandon plastic wrapping in favour of a cardboard box? Gower brewery would then have to find space for lots of flat-packed boxes. That uncertainty is shared by the whole sector, particularly because of the delayed confirmation of the final level of fees required under EPR and the retrospective nature of charging. Those two issues have made it extremely difficult for businesses to plan and to understand the level of investment needed to meet the new obligations.

An urgent solution must be found to the double charging issue, which is unfairly placing additional costs on pubs. If a long-term solution is not possible until 2028 at the earliest, some form of interim measure would go part of the way to addressing the issue. A review of the fees for glass is necessary. They are too high and could have unintended consequences that would cause an increase in the use of less recyclable packaging materials such as plastic. It would also be helpful if DEFRA amended its clarifying guidance to provide more flexibility on how producers can account for EPR fees so that they do not have to absorb the hit in one go in April.

I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue for the pub and brewing sector, which has faced tough economic headwinds. These increased costs for businesses will inevitably impact the price of food and drink for consumers and the cost of living. The Government estimate that in the region of 85% of the cost of EPR will be passed on to consumers.

It is also worth noting that EPR is only one part of a complex packaging regulation landscape—I know the Minister is aware of that—which includes the plastic packaging tax, packaging recovery notes, regulation on single-use plastic items, and the forthcoming deposit return scheme. Consistency of policy across the four nations of the UK is crucial. The Welsh Government propose to keep glass as part of their DRS, whereas that is not the case for the rest of the UK.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue in Parliament. The pub and brewing sector has faced a bit of a battering from policies in the last year. I thank the Minister for listening, and I look forward to what she has to say about EPR.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. If Members can keep their speeches to five minutes, everyone should get in. I call Will Forster.

14:00

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

Thank you, Ms Lewell; I will endeavour to keep to five minutes. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this timely debate so soon after the Budget.

As the hon. Lady said, there is growing concern about the extended producer responsibility scheme. I call it the “glass bottle tax” if I am trying to explain it to a constituent I am having a drink with in one of Woking’s pubs, because they do not get EPR. They understand that it is a glass bottle tax, but they do not get the reasoning behind it.

EPR is intended to reduce waste and increase recycling, which are aims that we all probably share. However, the scheme risks hurting our economy, and especially the hospitality sector, which has suffered so much during the covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis. That is especially true in my constituency. We are proud to have 34 pubs and one brewery—Thurstons in Horsell. We are also home to the brewing giant Asahi, which owns and operates Fuller’s brewery in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), which I have had the pleasure of visiting—in my opinion, it counts as a constituency visit.

I am very glad to have Thurstons and Asahi, and I am very glad that Woking has a thriving hospitality community, but it is under threat. The hospitality industry supports over 2,000 jobs and contributes £131 million to our economy, yet the glass bottle tax will impose more than £150 million in new costs on brewers for glass packaging alone. At a time when businesses are struggling with inflation, energy prices and higher taxes, that additional burden will deter investment and put jobs at risk.

Will the Minister commit to reviewing EPR fees in the light of decisions announced at yesterday’s Budget? The fact that beer duty is rising in line with inflation will have an impact, and will add yet another cost at a time when hospitality is already under pressure. Brewers and pubs tell me that they cannot absorb both. The continued effect of higher beer duty, which is way out of kilter with our European neighbours, and EPR charges will inevitably reduce investment and will add to the growing trend of pubs and hospitality venues being closed down.

The Government cannot tax their way to growth. There are serious issues with double charging. Although EPR is meant to apply only to household waste, many pubs already pay for commercial waste collection. Despite that, the sector faces £60 million in costs, with some larger pubs paying as much as £2,000 more each year.

DEFRA has accepted the flaw but does not have a plan to correct it until year three of the scheme. That is not acceptable, and pubs cannot afford to wait that long. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about what steps the Government will take now to prevent businesses from paying twice for the same waste. Will paying twice be backdated when the charges are introduced in year three?

The Office for Budget Responsibility has classified EPR as a tax, which adds further uncertainty to brewers and pub owners. Without clear guidance on reporting and future fees, businesses cannot plan, invest and expand. At a time when our economy needs stability, that uncertainty threatens growth, which is one of the Government’s key drivers.

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a 5 percentage point VAT cut on hospitality because we feel that we need to support the hospitality sector, particularly to compensate for EPR. Even if only half of that VAT cut were passed through, the average household would save £135 by April 2027. The remaining benefit would help businesses to stay open, protect jobs and support wages. We know that for a fact as we saw it with the 2008 VAT reduction, at least 52% of which was passed on to customers.

Our goal should be support responsible environmental reform while protecting pubs, breweries and the hospitality sector. They hold our British communities together, and they are a big part of the British way of life. Like the hon. Member for Gower, I urge the Minister to listen to the industry. Will the Government address the risks of double charging in our economy? Can they provide clarification on fees? Will the Minister work with Cabinet colleagues to reduce the harm to the brewing and hospitality sector?

14:09

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this important debate.

I am co-chair of the APPG on food and drink, and my constituency is in the heart of the logistics corridor, so it will be no surprise to Members that I have been inside a warehouse or two and that packaging is something I talk about a lot with my businesses. I recently visited Graphic Packaging International’s site at Bardon and saw at first hand the changes it is already making to food and drink packaging to reduce its environmental impact. The company has been innovating with packaging to transition products that are harder to recycle to ones made of more sustainable materials.

The company recognises that extended producer responsibility is an important step forward in the way organisations and consumers respond to the environmental challenges of packaging, but also that it increases costs for consumers. As an international company, it also told me that the lack of consistency in approach across the UK and Europe has the potential to stifle innovation in packaging, and that the costs of EPR in the UK have been a barrier to transitioning to the more environmentally friendly packaging that is used in the European Union. It pointed out that plastic is lighter than fibrous materials, so there is a risk that the fee structure could inadvertently reduce the use of more sustainable materials.

I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that challenge regarding the fee structure for different materials and the costs of implementing recycling. The company gave me a small example: a pack of six cans in a supermarket can be wrapped in plastic or held together by card; the card is not only more expensive to deliver but, because of its weight, more expensive under EPR. The company wants us to look at that issue and see whether it is sustainable in the long term for the better choice to be more expensive.

One of Britain’s biggest exports is waste, and British recycling has flatlined. The successful implementation of EPR has the potential to reverse that worrying trend, but we have to keep an eye on cost. There is undoubtedly room for change, and the funding opened up by the fees will allow more investment to explore recycling alternatives. I recently visited Recycleye, an organisation that is using technology and artificial intelligence to improve the recycling of Tetra Pak materials. That is a long way from the vision of the commingled materials recycling centre, and it has the potential to recycle more of the materials that are sent for sorting.

Customers want to change their habits and feel like they are doing their bit to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. That brings me to the launch of a really positive project that was pulled together by industry, which wants to change and do the right thing. The Flexible Plastic Fund’s FlexCollect project ran a pilot in 10 local authorities—including mine, North West Leicestershire—that aimed to understand how to collect and recycle flexible packaging, from bread bags to crisp packets, confectionary packaging and food pouches. Flexible plastic packaging itself is generally a resource-efficient material: it is lightweight and can play a role in protecting food from becoming waste. It represents nearly a quarter of all UK consumer packaging, but the system for recycling it in the UK is fragmented. I would like to hear from the Minister how we are going to resolve some of the challenges related to all the materials we are using and recycling centres.

What was really interesting about the pilot is that participating households were so surprised by the amount of recycling that they could put in their bags. These kinds of projects are really useful, and the extended producer responsibility funding should be used for them, but we must also listen to the concerns of industry. Will the Minister undertake a full assessment of industry concerns about how fees for the scheme have been calculated, and of how money collected will increase recycling at the kerbside without pushing too much cost on to the businesses that deliver the packages?

14:10

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for setting the scene so well, as always.

EPR is a UK-wide strategy aimed at addressing issues with waste and improving recycling. I often give a Northern Ireland perspective, and we are part of this because the EPR applies to Northern Ireland too. We have been doing our best with our local councils to encourage better recycling strategies and to get our waste management under control. EPR is a decent and progressive strategy that aims to do that. It is good to be here to give a Northern Ireland perspective to the debate, as always.

In Northern Ireland, recycling rates vary wildly between councils. I am pleased that Ards and North Down council has taken significant steps to improve waste figures across the borough where I live. Northern Ireland households produce some 1 million tonnes of waste annually, with packaging a substantial fraction of that. Before I was elected to Parliament, I was in the Assembly and on the council back home. I am going to age myself by saying that I remember when the council brought in recycling, with the introduction of the blue bins. I was not quite sure what it meant, and neither were my constituents, but now we are all focused on what we can recycle. I have my son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren staying with me—wee Freya is seven and wee Ezra is three. At that age, they know what is to be recycled. It is incredible that at that age they are working for the future. Whenever granddad goes to put something in the bin, if I have not put it in the right bin they will tell me which the right bin is—out of the mouths of babes and sucklings does the wisdom flow.

Under EPR many producers in Northern Ireland that were previously outside heavy regulation must register and report packaging data. It is important that we have the data, because that is how we can show improvements. The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland has suggested that many smaller businesses were unaware of or confused by the guidance around EPR, and sometimes that is the case.

I have three asks for the Minister. I welcome her to her place—I should have done that earlier; I apologise. I think we all know that she is totally committed to this, so we will get very helpful answers later in the debate. On the financial costs—packaging fees and the cost of compliance schemes, for example—small businesses often have limited liquidity. It is important that we make that point. Even modest annual EPR fees can cause strain if margins are tight or the volume of packaging is not the same. That needs to be looked at, to ensure that small businesses are not forced into closure because they cannot keep up with EPR costs. Will the Minister ensure that we can work alongside small businesses and navigate the roles that they have to play within the financial restrictions that they have?

I think of the small businesses in my constituency, which are the backbone of the community. I would hate to think that the transitional support is not there to guide them through this change, so I again ask the Minister to make sure that that support is there; I know that she has discussions with DAERA in Northern Ireland. Government must make allowances and ensure that the EPR process is as accessible as possible.

Recent data show that UK households produced around 5.6 million tonnes of packaging waste in 2023—a massive environmental burden—due to single-use packaging and over-packaging. This scheme shifts the cost of dealing with vast quantities of packaging waste from local councils and taxpayers to the producers who generate the waste in the first place, but there are also concerns about whether our recycling and waste management infrastructure is ready to cope with the increased volumes and the more stringent sorting. We have reached targets, but we want to do better, and we need a wee bit of Government help to ensure that that gets across.

There is a proportion of businesses, including some in Northern Ireland, facing disproportionate burdens under EPR, from increased costs to reporting complexity. The Government need to work alongside DAERA and the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that there is a pathway to accessibility and that the viability of our small businesses is not undermined. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Gower for raising the issue today, and I look forward to engaging further. I know the Minister will engage with us all, and with the Assembly, and that is really important.

14:15

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

It is a delight to take part in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on initiating it. I back everything she said about glass, which affects Felinfoel brewery in my constituency very badly, as well as Parsons Pickles, which produces shellfish and pickled vegetables. Because of the time limit, I may not have time to say much more about glass, because I also want to talk about steel.

Steel is hugely important to me. I have the Tata Trostre packaging factory in my constituency. It is the only steel packaging factory in the UK, and it currently produces 400,000 tonnes of packaging steel each year, supports 5,000 jobs across the country in the supply chain and contributes £4 billion to the UK economy. It produces a whole range of different qualities of steel, which can be used to make the various parts of food and drink cans, with slightly different qualities and strengths for the base, body, ring pull and so on.

Steel is one of the most recyclable materials we have; in fact, it is the most recycled packaging in Europe. In 2024, steel packaging achieved an 86.6% recycling rate, making it the UK’s most recycled packaging material. The recycling rate for plastic is only 53%, and for fibre-based cartons it is 29%. Of course, we can go on and on recycling steel—it can be recycled forever. The fees under the EPR scheme should reflect that quality; the ability for a material to be recycled over and over again is valuable. Currently, the EPR values metal the same as materials that can only be recycled once, and then into something less recyclable or even unrecyclable and of much lower value. Recycling steel can also save 70% of the energy that would be needed to produce new steel.

Food cans are also very easy to sort. I was going to say that even a child can do it, but even an adult can easily understand in which bin, or which part of a segregated kerbside collection, a can should go. We all know that is not the case for alternative forms of packaging, which can be made of complex layers of different materials. Is it paper? Is it plastic? Is it foil? What is it? Likewise, mechanical sorting of steel is easy.

Another quality of steel is that it is incredibly strong, so it can be four times thinner than competing containers. Unfortunately, that also makes it two times heavier, and that is where we get punished under the EPR fees. However, in her reply to me in June, the Minister mentioned that volume is also a factor—and think about the volume of some of the fancy doo-dah packaging all over the place. We need to come back to that, because some other forms of packaging do not do well on volume, and they certainly do not do well on recyclability, not to mention the worry about them being made abroad cheaply and brought over here. We have enough challenges in the steel industry as it is, as I am sure the Minister will be aware.

We have a fantastic material in steel. Of course, it has been a very difficult time for steel in south Wales. Trostre has traditionally been supplied by Port Talbot, where the last blast furnace was closed before the electric arc furnace was built. We are very much looking forward to the opening of the electric arc furnace, which is a fantastic recycling asset, and a lot of work is being done to ensure that we will be able to use the EAF steel for the range of products produced at Trostre. In the meantime, though, that brings the added pressure of having to source steel elsewhere, as well as our usual challenges of a highly competitive market and energy costs. I very much welcome the Government’s announcement of some support on the way for energy intensive industries.

The current EPR fee methodology does not recognise recyclability or material value. Instead, it prioritises material weight, meaning heavier but more sustainable materials such as steel and glass face higher fees, while lighter, less recyclable plastics gain a competitive edge.

The issues that I want the Minister to focus on strongly are: action as soon as possible, or we are going to lose our industries; and a reform of EPR fees to reward genuine recyclability and circular value. The basic fees per tonne for steel need to be three times lower than for fibre composite or plastic alternatives. We absolutely must differentiate by end-of-life outcomes and the scrap value, which would, again, bring the UK model into line with some of the best EU practice, such as the Belgian system.

If we are not careful, between the EPR and high excise duty, we could discourage investment in the UK because firms will want to set up plants elsewhere. We will deter the growth that we all want to see.

There is a huge amount to do. I would like to know what engagement there has been with stakeholders since the letter of 7 June, what stage that engagement is now at, and whether any progress has been made. I will finish on that note.

14:21

[Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this debate.

I come at this issue from a slightly different angle. In my constituency of Runcorn and Helsby, I have an incredibly impressive business, Encirc, one of the largest glass manufacturers in the UK. I have had the pleasure of visiting the factory and meeting the impressive team. It employs 1,000 people. Quite rightly, as the Member of Parliament for Runcorn and Helsby, it is my responsibility to do everything I can to protect jobs there.

Encirc is owned by Vidrala, which is looking at a £500 million investment in Encirc, which is so important for the north-west and for the UK. It is now reassessing that £500 million investment because of this tax, which is unfairly penalising glass as a material. I have jobs and investment at risk in my constituency.

On the impact of the EPR, first, the proposed level of the EPR for glass in this country is the highest of such schemes in the world. In Germany, for example, glass is cheaper than any other material for use in bottles. I ask the Minister to please reassess the level of fees for glass as a material.

Secondly, I want to point to the potential impact on manufacturing jobs and businesses. The 120,000 jobs in the glass manufacturing industry nationally are potentially affected, and could be endangered with these increased costs. The EPR is already causing significant business damage, leading to falling revenues in the UK glass manufacturing sector, primarily in the north of England.

Customers of my glass manufacturer are already switching to less environmentally friendly products. That is what does not make sense about the way that the Government have calculated the fees. Customers are switching to plastics or cans; glass is infinitely recyclable and those materials are not. From an environmental point of view, it just does not make sense.

There is a disproportionate burden on glass. Glass will bear £500 million of the £1.5 billion cost to businesses of this EPR in the current fee format, despite being less than 5% of total packaging in the UK. It is totally disproportionate, and penalises glass manufacturers.

The solution that I ask the Minister to look at is, first, urgently changing the inaccuracies in the current fee methodology, which includes glass having an inaccurately low value in EPR, inflating the EPR price. Secondly, would she please look at recalculating the fees based solely on volume, not weight, as soon as possible, to ensure that glass producers and users are not being unfairly penalised to the benefit of plastics and cans? We must act now to avoid further material switching by customers.

To summarise, I ask the Minister to look at moving from a weight-based fee calculation, which penalises glass and favours less environmentally friendly plastics and cans, to a volume-based fee calculation. In Runcorn and Helsby, 1,000 jobs and £500 million of investment are at risk.

14:25

[Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing the debate.

EPR, at its base, is a tax on recycling. Recycling is devolved in Wales, and we would not normally speak on devolved issues as Plaid Cymru spokespeople, but today, I am making an exception, because several local businesses have asked me to highlight the cost to their businesses and to obtain clarity. One such business, Evan Evans, is a small local brewery that produces the best-quality beer in Llandeilo, which is in my constituency. The owner of Evan Evans, Simon Buckley—a direct descendant of the family behind the famous Buckley’s Brewery, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith)—stated:

“I have seldom felt more demoralised than now. The outlook in Wales for a small brewery is not good. Wages bills are going through the roof, and were it not for the fact that we celebrate 260 years of family brewing in Wales in 18 months’ time, I would shut up shop.”

Those are damning words.

Rural breweries and small and medium-sized enterprises that employ local people within their communities will feel the cost of EPR the most. These businesses are the backbone of our Welsh tourist sector. Where, locally, is the alternative employment? In my constituency of Caerfyrddin, farming has been hit, contractors are working within calendar dates, national insurance contribution hikes have meant that many young people cannot find alternative work, and as we all know, hospitality is on its knees.

Extended producer responsibility—phased in during 2023, and officially published as legislation in 2024—means that businesses have to report their packaging use, pay fees and purchase packaging waste recovery notes. The prices fluctuate based on supply and demand for recyclable materials—glass, plastic or cardboard—so businesses face cost variability. Previously, if someone’s turnover was less than £2 million or they had less than 50 tonnes of packaging a year, they were exempt, but that has all changed. If they manufacture, import or fill packaging that ends up with consumers, they may be responsible. If they supply packaged goods under their own brand, they may be responsible. If they import packaging products into the UK for sale, they may be responsible. The last one does not affect the manufacturing businesses within my constituency, but the first two do.

As the hon. Member for Gower mentioned, businesses do not mind paying their share, but the lack of clarity between the two ends of the M4 makes it difficult for businesses to prepare and analyse the cost effectively. I say that while acknowledging that Wales has the best recycling rates in the UK; indeed, we are second in the world, with only Austria above us. We want to keep it that way, so we need to work with our businesses. My ask to the Minister is that all Governments speak to each other to get the clarity that my businesses and constituents deserve.

14:29

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing this important and timely debate, and on her excellent speech. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s desire to make manufacturing and packaging more sustainable, minimise waste and create the foundations for a truly circular economy. Limiting the environmental damage caused by waste requires us to improve our recycling of packaging. However, progress on recycling has been much slower than it needs to be, making it even more vital that we prioritise rethinking how packaging is made and processed.

The extended producer responsibility has the potential to be a key driver in securing a better circular solution for packaging waste. However, its implementation must support, rather than add additional burdens to, the producers expected to deliver it. Liberal Democrats have long been calling for a deposit return scheme for single-use drinks containers as it would obviously improve recycling levels and environmental standards, yet the current approach to EPR raises significant unease about the unpredictability of escalating costs for producers. That will particularly impact the financial viability of many independent businesses across the country, putting their future viability at risk.

As a party, we recognised that the previous system was not fit for purpose following the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry, and supported its recommendations to incentivise better recyclability and transparency of products to help the transition to a circular economy. The reform brought forward by DEFRA will alter the way that local authorities are required to manage household recycling. It is therefore important that local authorities’ role in the scheme is supported, as they are once again being asked to do more while receiving ever-decreasing levels of funding from central Government. With the EPR packaging payment scheme having started last month, the Government have estimated that the shift in cost from local authorities to producers will total over £1.2 billion in its first year.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to reinvest that revenue to improve local recycling infrastructure during EPR’s first year. However, EPR currently lacks a mechanism to ringfence funds and ensure that they are all invested in that infrastructure. Despite PackUK having informed local authorities that they will receive lower payments for a failure to do so, there is great concern within industry that, in future, funds will be redirected to replace central Government spending, threatening the Government’s ultimate ambitions for EPR. Without a firm guarantee to ringfence a certain percentage of funds to be invested in local recycling services, Somerset council, where the Liberal Democrats are now clearing up the mess after 14 years of Conservative maladministration and which, like many local councils, is facing financial difficulty, will be unable to achieve its goal of increasing the county’s recycling rate to 60%.

I am fortunate to represent a constituency with a thriving food and drink sector. Businesses in Glastonbury and Somerton contribute over £29 million annually to our rural economy, supporting 101 pubs and providing employment for over 1,200 constituents. However, the introduction of the EPR in its current form has the potential to erode the profit margins of those vital businesses, forcing them to raise their prices beyond the point their customers can afford, risking the viability of their businesses.

Those concerns have been repeatedly echoed by local brewers and distillers such as Glastonbury Brewing Company and Somerset Spirit in Castle Cary, which, like many others, are having to grapple with serious financial pressures as a consequence of the Government’s increase in employer national insurance contributions and rising business rates, in addition to EPR.

I remain concerned about the negative impact that the current approach to EPR will have on our hospitality sector, in particular our pubs. Glastonbury and Somerton, as I have just said, is home to a wide and thriving publican community. Those pubs are more than just businesses; they are important pillars of our towns and villages. They bring residents together, create jobs and drive rural growth. A leading example that springs to mind is Curry Mallet’s community pub, the Bell Inn, whose existence has always relied on the generosity of its local community. I pause here to congratulate the community group involved in reopening the Bayford Inn, formerly known as the Unicorn, as a community-run pub in Wincanton, and to wish it every success.

The introduction of EPR may become, as UKHospitality has identified, “a margin killer” for the sector. DEFRA’s approach to EPR has been designed to make businesses responsible for the waste packaging that enters the household recycling stream, but in the case of pubs, their packaging and bottles never leave their premises and they are disposed of through private waste contracts. Consequently, pubs now face a double charge for packaging waste—once through their commercial waste disposal contracts and again through EPR charges having increased the cost of supplies from producers—because the current framework does not exempt non-household waste streams. That means that rural pubs, such as the Catash Inn in North Cadbury, now face being burdened with further charges of up to £2,000 a year because of EPR, adding to the crippling costs being levied against them. As a result, the Liberal Democrats have urged the Government to consider exempting pubs from EPR and allowing time to review the scheme’s scope and timeline. That would, I hope, avoid further damage to our already struggling hospitality sector.

As I have mentioned many times in this place, the UK cider industry is one of our nation’s most distinctive and successful manufacturing sectors, rooted in our rural economy. In the south-west, the cider industry contributes more than £270 million a year to the regional economy, supports more than 5,700 jobs and sustains numerous family farms, with Somerset—of course—the historical and spiritual home of British cider making. My constituency is home to a number of excellent cider makers, including King Brain cider in Little Weston, Tricky Cider in Low Ham and Harry’s Cider in Long Sutton, in addition to wonderful orchardists such as Julian, Diana and Matilda Temperley of Burrow Hill cider farm, who have cultivated their orchards for many decades.

Cider makers are generally pretty supportive of a greater circular economy. However, the charges that DEFRA confirmed in June of this year are a real threat to our cider producers, because glass packaging is charged at £192 per tonne, which is one of the most expensive rates in Europe. Given that context, small and independent cider makers are having to decide whether they can continue to use glass to package their produce in the future and keep their businesses viable at the same time. For cider makers in my constituency, that fee equates to about 5p for a 500 ml bottle of cider, and up to 12p for a 750 ml bottle.

Although EPR is intended to promote sustainability, the way it has been implemented will have detrimental financial impacts on independent cider producers who use entirely recyclable packaging and, ironically, could result in them pivoting to use a less environmentally friendly material such as plastic, which has a lower fee, to avoid those exorbitant costs. The introduction of EPR in its current form, when combined with rising employment, energy and raw material costs, already eroding margins, and the forthcoming deposit return scheme, poses a significant threat to our cider industry’s future. Given its economic importance to Somerset, that will be a devastating financial blow for the many fantastic drink businesses in Glastonbury and Somerton. The Liberal Democrats have been consistent on this point: EPR’s fees and implementation must be both fair and sustainable. With producers facing substantial added costs, they need to be properly supported during the transition to a more circular economy, not punished.

Yesterday’s Budget was a missed opportunity for the Government to demonstrate their support for our hospitality sector by cutting VAT, energy costs and employer national insurance contributions. The Chancellor decided to forgo further support and to levy additional taxation on our pubs, breweries and cider makers by bringing alcohol duty in line with inflation, putting more pubs and breweries at risk of closing their doors for the last time.

We are wholly supportive of the Government’s intention to tackle waste by improving recycling processes, but we remain unconvinced that the introduction of the EPR in its current form will achieve the desired goals. By creating a system that will impose unaffordable added costs on producers, the Government run the risk of forcing them to use cheaper and less recyclable materials or else jeopardising the viability of key local businesses that are driving growth—something that the Government should be committed to protecting.

14:40

[Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing this critical debate.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group, the hon. Lady has heard first hand from many stakeholders, including the British Beer and Pub Association, about how the extended producer responsibility regime is directly affecting businesses. We have heard contributions from Members from across the House today, and indeed from across the United Kingdom, proudly standing up for the businesses in their constituencies and highlighting some of the challenges that the scheme is creating, as well as the challenges facing the hospitality, pub and brewery sector in the United Kingdom in the last year under this Labour Government.

As well as the hon. Lady, we have heard powerful representations from the hon. Members for Woking (Mr Forster), for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack), for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—I had to hold myself back from intervening on the hon. Gentleman—for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith), who talked powerfully about steel packaging, for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) and for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies).

I am extremely proud of the positive action taken by the previous Conservative Government on packaging and waste. Between 2010 and 2022, the amount of waste going to landfill was successfully reduced by 47%, and the amount of biodegradable waste going to landfill by 46%. In 2015, we introduced a charge on single-use plastic bags, resulting in a 95% cut in sales of plastic bags in major supermarkets. Building on that, we went further and banned the use of single-use plastics such as plastic straws, cutlery and cotton buds, which also restricted businesses’ use of other single-use plastics such as plastic plates.

The last Conservative Government also introduced a tax on plastic packaging containing less than 30% recycled plastic, which encouraged businesses to reduce the use of single-use plastics in their supply chains. Finally, we introduced a simpler recycling collection system, which I am pleased the current Government have taken forward from us, thereby continuing to make recycling more user-friendly, cutting down on confusion and the time spent recycling, and ultimately improving recycling rates, which is good for our environment. These actions were achievable and proportionate.

Importantly, the last Government also laid the correct economic foundations to make those changes and supported businesses—which, I have to say, stands in contrast to what we heard yesterday when the Chancellor delivered her autumn Budget. Many Members here joined me to speak in this Chamber in May, when we had a Westminster Hall debate on glass packaging and the EPR scheme. Back then, I raised my concerns with the Minister about the economic situation and spoke about how, when introducing measures that place costs on businesses, the Government have a responsibility to consider whether this is the appropriate time to impose new burdens on businesses. The British Retail Consortium has said that retailers support the “polluter pays” principle, but it is concerned that the levy will not deliver value for consumers in these challenging economic times—times made far worse by this Labour Government and their mishandling of the economy, as we saw in the run-up to, and the delivery of, yesterday’s retrograde Budget.

The hospitality industry is a key growth sector. A June 2023 report by Ignite Economics, which was commissioned by UKHospitality, found that, for every pound that the UK hospitality industry directly contributes to GDP, it creates a further 58p indirectly and a further £1.30 when including the induced impact. That report also outlined that between 2016 and 2023, hospitality increased its annual economic contribution by £20 billion, to £93 billion. Furthermore, since 2016 employment in the sector has risen to 3.5 million, making hospitality the third largest employer in the country. Finally, hospitality contributed £54 billion in tax receipts to the Treasury last year.

Unfortunately, it appears that this Government do not understand that higher costs and taxes burden businesses and can cause them to close, leading to job losses and destroyed livelihoods. Since the autumn Budget last year, figures published in August of this year show that two hospitality venues are closing every day—including over 100 pubs and restaurants.

Turning again to glass, which is a key reason behind this debate, glass packaging is 100% recyclable—and infinitely recyclable, meaning it can be recycled again and again without losing quality. The previous Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), received a joint letter from the British Beer and Pub Association, British Glass Manufacturers’ Confederation, Scotch Whisky Association, WineGB, Wine and Spirit Trade Association and UKHospitality. The letter warned the Government about the “numerous economic headwinds” that businesses are facing, and highlighted that, while glass represents only 5% of the volume of containers placed on the market, the glass charges cover approximately 30% of the scheme’s cost. The fees are much higher for glass than any other materials, at 10p per average bottle of wine and 17p for every average bottle of spirits, eight times as high as equivalent EU schemes. Indeed, those organisations said in a joint statement:

“There is a risk that without action from the UK government to reduce these fees and move to meaningfully support businesses rather than restrict them, the scheme will result in producers switching to less sustainable materials and that many producers will be charged twice—further restricting investment into the economy.”

Does the Minister agree that that is clearly not how a circular economy should run?

The Minister may be familiar with Mermaid gin and its iconic bottles, which are so beautiful that some companies have upcycled empty bottles into drinking glassware. The Isle of Wight Distillery, which produces Mermaid gin, has said that bottles were designed to be reused and returned to the circular economy. As their compliance and sustainability manager noted,

“it would actually be cheaper to put our liquid into plastic bottles.”

Does the Minister agree that no environmental or recycling policy, however well-intentioned, should end up incentivising companies to think about switching to packaging that is actually less environmentally friendly?

Furthermore, in an article published 31 October by Food Manufacture, Josh Pitman, managing director at sustainable packaging firm Priory Direct, is quoted as saying that he is still receiving hundreds of queries from its over 21,000 customers who do not understand EPR and what they need to do. Mr Pitman outlines how his firm has effectively acted as “EPR customer service” and is quoted as saying that

“there appears to be a lack of clear, helpful guidance and limited proactive engagement with affected businesses from government, aside from some overly exclusive and expensive events featuring official spokespeople.”

What action will the Minister take to provide clearer and more accessible guidance to affected businesses?

The Minister may also be aware that One Water, a water brand that seeks to provide clean water and sanitation to communities around the world, has warned that EPR is placing a disproportionate burden on compliant companies, with the scheme estimated to cost the firm £140,000 in 2025. It is estimated that the scheme has already contributed to a £400,000 loss in glass product sales, mostly through lost hotel, bar and restaurant sales. How will the Minister work with stakeholders to ensure that compliant companies are not disproportionately affected?

Climbing food prices, record levels of farm closures, two pubs or restaurants closing a day and business confidence at a 15-year low, as well as the awful costs of the family farm tax—even before it has fully come into force—outline why we are currently in a food and farming emergency. As the Minister may know, last week the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), hosted a food and farming emergency summit to ask farmers, fishermen and food producers what urgent measures they need to survive the next 12 months. The EPR was raised as a key issue that is causing the sector significant concern because food, drink and hospitality businesses, including local pubs, are currently being unfairly charged twice.

Following that summit, and having listened to the measures the industry said are needed, my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State wrote to the Secretary of State to ask the Government to work with her on the industry’s call for a rapid review of the impact of the Government’s EPR scheme on the food, drink and hospitality sectors, including through the double charging of pubs, about which we have heard many times today. I hope that the Minister will consider the merit of that request, which came directly from those attending the emergency summit.

I noted in yesterday’s Budget that the Government will: consult in 2026 on the extended producer responsibility and proposals to measure how often and how well local authorities use fees; appoint a producer responsibility organisation by March 2026 to give industry a role in the scheme’s operation; and consult on reforms to the packaging waste recycling note system. Perhaps the Minister will repeat that in due course. That is all well and good, but the sector needs urgent action now to ensure that the EPR system is fit for purpose and that our fantastic food, drink, retail and hospitality sectors are protected and encouraged to thrive.

14:51

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing the debate, and thank hon. Members from across the House who have made valuable contributions today. I am struck by the cross-party consensus. This is the first time we have welcomed a Reform MP—the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin)—to these discussions.

Let us remember that these are the biggest changes to recycling policy since the landfill tax was introduced in 2002, under the last Labour Government. The changes were introduced with cross-party consensus. All parties support what this Government are trying to do. Indeed, the changes are the continuation of much of the policy of the previous Government, but there have been some important changes—we have certainly not done the seven bins that they proposed in the Environment Act 2021.

EPR for packaging is the cornerstone of the recycling reforms. The reforms are designed to drive up the recycling rate to 55% over the next 10 years. The rate has languished at 42% since about 2015, despite what the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson) said. The reforms will increase the quality and quantity of the recycling that local councils collect, support sustainable growth in the UK waste management and reprocessing sector, and reduce our reliance on materials imported from overseas.

We have just come back from the conference of the parties in Belém. The negotiations galvanised all nations to take steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and our impact on the planet. Think globally, act locally—this is our local action.

EPR moves recycling costs from us as taxpayers to the packaging producers. It works alongside other reforms to create systematic change. Simpler recycling in England will make recycling easier and more consistent. From 1 April, we will be able to recycle the same materials, including glass, whether at home, work or school. That will change the quality of the material streams to enable us to move to the much more circular economy that we all want to see.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mary Creagh]

I am going to make some progress, because otherwise we are never going to get through this.

We have already provided £340 million to local councils in England alone, in particular to bring in food waste collection. That is particularly important, because it will allow us to create green gas and digestate, which we can use as fertiliser. We have to move away from the high-input fertilisers we use now.

In this space, pEPR has an important role to play. It will divert packaging from residual waste into recycling. We estimate that the policy will save 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and about £189 million in emissions. My hon. Friend the Member for Gower spoke about growth. These reforms will support a thriving economy. As a result of these reforms, the waste management sector has committed to create 25,000 new jobs and invest more than £10 billion in the economy. Circular industries, keeping products and materials in circulation for as long as possible, now deliver £67 billion each year to our economy, and growth in this sector is more than double the rate of the overall UK economy.

We have heard concerns, which I shall address quickly. We have met with glass producers—I can go through the list of the meetings. Basically, glass, due to its durability, is uniquely placed to take advantage of the generous financial incentives pEPR provides for reuse, because reusable containers only attract a fee the first time they are used.

The Government recognise the value of the glass sector to the economy and have provided direct support to four of the major container glass manufacturers—Encirc is one of them—through the British industry supercharger scheme to ensure they remain competitive in a global market. I have some details here about how much they are going to save. Four glass companies are in receipt of this support and the package of measures is estimated to save eligible companies around £24 to £31 per MWh and reduce electricity costs so they are more closely aligned with their key international competitors. That is designed to reduce the risk of carbon leakage and help them to compete on the international stage.

Yesterday’s Budget was mentioned. For pEPR, the Chancellor has announced consulting on proposed changes to the packaging recycling note scheme; consulting on options to drive transformation of local authority waste management and ensuring the accountability of pEPR funding. I have written to local authorities, as well as to PackUK, to reassert the need for this money to be spent on collecting packaging waste and not on cross-subsidising other areas of local authority spending; and appointing producer leadership of the scheme by March next year to give industry a central role in running the scheme.

In the hospitality sector, we are publishing a national licensing policy framework, asking licensing authorities in England and Wales to consider the need to promote growth and deliver economic benefits in their decisions; we are appointing a retail and hospitality envoy to champion and deliver these changes; and we are making a commitment to explore changes to the planning framework to make it easier for hospitality businesses to grow.

We heard a lot about the brilliant small businesses in MPs’ constituencies. For small businesses, we have some of the most generous exemptions of any scheme in the world. Businesses with a turnover below £2 million or that place less than 50 tonnes of packaging on the market are not obligated to pay pEPR fees or recycling obligations. The exemptions mean that 70% of UK businesses that supply packaging are not obligated under this scheme. We have also heard about issues around the bills and the paying of the bills. To help larger businesses that are obligated, PackUK is offering quarterly payment options to help with cash flow. PackUK will watch the thresholds carefully, knowing that raising them would push costs on to the remaining businesses as local authority collection costs stay the same.

We have been listening to feedback so we have adapted our approach. This time last year, we were working tirelessly with the Environment Agency to bring so-called free riders into compliance—people who were putting glass on the market but had not actually registered with anybody anywhere. That increased the total tonnage of material registered in the scheme and enabled us to reduce the final fees, so the reduction of the base fees for 2025 actually went down by up to 38%, depending on the material.

Let me talk quickly about steel. I met with the Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association in September, and officials are following up on that. I am very conscious of the need, when the new arc furnace comes on stream, to make sure that we have a steady supply of scrap steel to enable it to stay in continuous production.

We are also engaging with stakeholders to develop the approach to in-scope packaging. We are looking at household packaging that is sometimes disposed of in business waste—for example, beer and wine bottles can be disposed of in pub bins.

We are looking at changing the recycling assessment methodology for next year to address complex composite packaging, which is really hard to recycle—particularly foil packages, which may have plastic on the inside and may contain paper. I talked to local authorities about that only this week, and we hope to bring forward a solution as soon as possible.

[Christine Jardine in the Chair]

[Andy Slaughter]

The Minister has a deep understanding of this issue, and we all support the objectives that she is aiming for, but obviously we have come along to bring our problems to her. I hope she will not mind dealing with the two issues that have been raised: double charging for pubs, which is estimated to cost them £50 million, and the fee for glass—the weight versus volume equation—which is estimated to cost brewers £124 million a year. Those are real costs to businesses, many of which are up against the margins and are dealing with other pressures in the hospitality industry.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his follow-up questions. Several colleagues have raised the issue of cost being calculated by weight and not by unit, but waste management costs are largely driven by weight. We have taken into account other factors that influence collection costs, including the estimated volume of each material in bins and collection vehicles. Glass is a heavy material with a low resale value. A unit of glass packaging costs more for a local authority to manage as waste than an item made up of more lightweight and high-value material. Our recycling assessment methodology changes are published on defra.gov.uk, so people can see the changes that we are proposing to bring in next year and how we are ramping up the fees payable for less recyclable packaging.

Reuse and refill of packaging provides a real opportunity for economic growth and job creation. Earlier this year, GoUnpackaged produced economic modelling that made a compelling case for scaling up reuse in UK grocery retail. That work showed end-to-end system cost savings of up to £577 million a year, highlighting the economic viability of reuse in the UK. In response to that research, major grocery retailers have committed to working together to scale reusable packaging systems. Innovate UK has commissioned a scoping study to develop the blueprint for the first wave of this bold multi-retailer reuse scheme, so change will be coming in this sector pretty fast.

[Dr Hudson]

The Minister is talking about economic viability. I mentioned that the Government said in the Budget yesterday that they will consult on the EPR scheme, and she has repeated that. The Conservatives are calling for an urgent review. A consultation is not good enough; proverbially, that just kicks the steel can down the track. Will the Government commit to an urgent review so that businesses do not suffer in the coming months?

[Mary Creagh]

There are two things at play here. One is the recycling assessment methodology. The proposed changes for year two of the scheme are on the website already, and we will be legislating for them. I held a roundtable with packaging producers in July, and we spent the summer looking at different options. People have mentioned the different fees in Germany. Germany has a very large reliance on bring sites, so people bring their glass bottles to a place; they are not collected from the home. It is our household waste collection that makes our fees necessarily higher.

We have looked at dual-use packaging, and various proposals have been put forward, but not a single proposal had unanimous agreement. We are trying to hold the ring between packaging producers, microbreweries, supermarkets and local waste authorities. There is no simple solution to this complex problem—[Interruption.] It is hard. The previous Government devised and put forward legislation on this, and, of course, as soon as that is brought in, all the issues with it come out. We are working on that and we are meeting with them. In my box, I have a submission on proposals for how we carry on looking at that, so today’s debate will genuinely feed into my decision making on it.

[Jim Shannon]

In my contribution I referred to DAERA in Northern Ireland. Can the Minister engage with them—I know she probably does already—so that we can work together on progress going forward?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. I know that one of the issues in Northern Ireland is doing the behaviour change and driving up recycling rates. Communication is one of the most important things, and I take on board the official Opposition’s comments about the communications on this issue. It is incredibly complicated; civil servants are dealing with a massive change programme and everyone is trying to say what matters and how it changes.

Through the simpler recycling reforms, we are asking for everyone to be able to recycle the same things in every local authority and every workplace across the country. That is a massive system change, so there will be some confusion. There will need to be management and communication of that change, and for that we are essentially reliant on our local authority partners to get those messages across. I think I am meeting with Minister Muir shortly—we meet quite a lot to discuss these issues.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) told a story about his grandchildren. In 2002, when we brought in the landfill tax, we had one bin—it was a black bin, and everything went in it—and the question was, “Is this ever going to work? Will recycling ever happen?”. I take great encouragement from the fact that when we tell people, “This is your bit. This is what you can do locally in your home and your kitchen to help to tackle climate change and reduce carbon emissions,” the vast majority of people want to do the right thing—even, like the hon. Gentleman, by going and picking out the things out of the bin that should be recycled; and if he has not done it, then his grandchildren will do it for him. There are a lot of encouraging stories of hope that we can tell here.

We are looking at the German model and the Austrian model as part of how we might develop on these issues in the future. This package of measures will be the foundation for unlocking the transition to a circular economy in the UK. We hope to publish our circular economy plan in short order. Everything that is in our bins affects us, but we need to look at textiles, construction and waste electricals—there are huge volumes of materials flowing through the economy that we are not capturing.

[Sarah Dyke]

I want to push the Minister on the plight of our struggling hospitality sector. I asked if she could consider exempting pubs from the EPR scheme at this stage to give a chance to review the scheme and help support our struggling hospitality sector.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

Very briefly, Minister.

[Mary Creagh]

I have to be brief. As I say, we are keeping all our policies under review. The EPR scheme will not be sorted out quickly—it only went live in October, and here we are in November, asking for a big change. We have also heard that businesses need certainty, so I do not want to set any hares running by saying, “This is all going to change next year.” We need to do it in slow time, by consensus and by working with industry. I thank Members for their valuable contributions to the debate; this feedback will genuinely help us to create a fair transition to a circular economy, as we continue with these important reforms and build a world where the UK leads in innovation and sustainability.

15:09

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank all Members for their contributions, and the Minister for her response. Swansea council is the second-best local authority in the UK, I believe—I do not know if one of the Minister’s special advisers can get that fact for me. I invite the Minister to speak to the all-party parliamentary beer group in the near future, because I know that that conversation would be important.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of extended producer responsibility for packaging.

Domestic Abuse: Children

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

15:10

[Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of protecting children from domestic abuse.

You will be pleased to know what a marvellous pleasure it is to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I would like to begin where we typically end our debates in Westminster Hall, and that is by thanking all hon. Members present. I am well aware that, on a topic such as this, what often compels people to speak is painful lived experience; so I sincerely thank everyone who has come here today, whether to bravely share their own experience or to represent the children in their constituency who otherwise do not have a voice in this place. It is appreciated and truly important.

This debate unfortunately stems from deep tragedy and systemic failure. As many will know, I have tabled it in honour of the 19 children killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse between 2015 and 2024. Their stories are solemn reminders of the danger of placing an outdated emphasis on parental contact above all else.

I recognise that there have been important strides in recent months, and I want to sincerely commend the work of my Government in repealing the presumption of parental contact in family courts and introducing a new police duty to notify schools of domestic abuse incidents. Those are significant steps forward, but we cannot stop here.

While I have rightly praised this Government, I also want to acknowledge the previous Government for introducing the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. We are here today because, for the first time, children were recognised as victims in their own right in that legislation. That Act was a vital step forward. It diagnosed the problem we face, but it did not provide an adequate cure.

Paragon, which does incredible work in my constituency of Isle of Wight West, told me:

“As children are now being recognised in their own right as victims of domestic abuse, we are seeing an increase in referrals for support. We have had no increase in funding to provide additional capacity to support children and young people and as a result we have a short waitlist in place. Waiting for this crucial support is not ideal.”

This reality is grimly reflected in the national picture. Women’s Aid’s “On Track” data reveals that there are more children than adults living in refuge spaces, but accessing a refuge does not mean that life returns to normal for those children. Further research by Women’s Aid shows that extended stays in refuge often disrupt education, school and routines. Many still face significant barriers to securing a school place after moving, because their mothers often have to cross local authority boundaries to stay safe. For those children, safety often comes at the cost of stability.

I am deeply grateful to have spoken with abuse survivors, including one of my constituents whose experience illustrates why prevention is so vital. As both a child victim and later a victim in her own relationship, she would have benefited enormously from early intervention. She has bravely agreed for me to share her story today. The following words are hers:

“Before I had even started primary school, domestic abuse had already shaped me. When home isn’t safe, fear becomes your earliest teacher. You don’t play freely in the world—you withdraw from it. Trust feels dangerous, friendships feel risky, and when every day is lived in the shadow of survival, confidence has no chance to bloom, nor your dreams any chance to grow. And in the classroom where children would feel free to learn and explore, that same fear follows you. Concentration becomes impossible, achievement feels out of reach, and you fall behind long before anyone realises, you’re not struggling with the work, you’re struggling with the trauma.

And, like so many children, I became part of a cycle that I never chose. After watching my mother suffer abuse, I unknowingly followed the same pattern. My daughter was born into a home where she, too, witnessed fear, control, and harm—things no child should ever see. Left unchecked, domestic abuse doesn’t just scar one generation; it echoes through the next.

What’s even more tragic is that my abuser had once been a child victim himself. He grew up watching violence without the support, education or therapy he so desperately needed. Without intervention, he grew into the only model he had ever known.

The cycle only ends when children are supported—when they are protected, when they learn about healthy relationships, are given tools to recognise abuse, and helped to heal from the trauma they witness. When they are shown that the devastating effects of domestic abuse do not have to be their inheritance.

I count myself lucky to live on the Isle of Wight, where support for my daughter exists—support that can quite literally save children’s futures. But across the country, too many children do not have this help. And without it, they stand little chance of breaking the cycle themselves.”

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that, given that the concept of parental alienation—largely used by fathers against mothers in cases involving domestic violence in the family courts—does not have a robust, methodologically sound or scientific basis, the use of regulated and unregulated experts on it should be prohibited in the family courts?

[Mr Quigley]

There is very little I can add, other than to say that I wholeheartedly agree. That is a very important part of this debate, so I thank my hon. Friend sincerely.

That survivor’s story is, heartbreakingly, just one among many that I know will echo across our communities. In the year ending March 2024, an estimated 1.8 million children in England were affected by domestic abuse. Although 70% of affected children have stated that they would seek support for domestic abuse, 61% state that they would not know where to go to find it. The Government’s commitment to halving violence against women and girls is noble, but we must ensure that every child is protected, that court-ordered safeguards are robust, and that trauma support for newly single parents is properly funded. Education and community support must play a central role in breaking the cycle of intergenerational abuse, empowering future generations to prevent harm, protect potential victims and stop abusers before they begin to engage in this behaviour.

I therefore call on the Government to take the following actions: to amend the Children Act 1989 to reflect better the lived experience of children and young people affected by domestic abuse, and to embed our enhanced understanding of abuse, making it clear that coercive control constitutes harm to children; to publish a clear timeline for implementing the family court reforms recommended in the Ministry of Justice harm panel review of 2020; to roll out mandatory multi-agency training on domestic abuse across the family justice system; and to invest in the design and delivery of the violence against women and girls prevention programmes in schools and other educational settings. The political will is there, and I believe that we have the right voices in charge to enact the change that we need and that our children deserve, but we must take decisive action to stop this silent crisis from escalating into a catastrophe. We owe it not only to survivors, but to the women and children who are no longer with us. Their stories cannot be in vain.

15:17

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Ms Jardine. I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for securing the debate. I had thought that I might need to intervene on him to allow him to catch his breath, but he managed to share some deeply emotional stories very well.

I am here to talk about Sara Sharif, a constituent of mine who was abused, tortured and murdered by those who should have loved her. The safeguarding report was published earlier this month. I will not read it all, but I want to highlight some particular issues to shape the debate, and I hope the Minister will respond to them. The safeguarding report had 15 recommendations, some national and some local. I would like the Minister to confirm that she and her team will read the safeguarding report and act on those recommendations with the urgency they deserve. We need to set a precedent that safeguarding reports with national implications are responded to by the Government as a matter of policy and urgency. That has not happened yet.

I hope that the Minister will take away the lessons learned on the home-schooling rules that were highlighted in the safeguarding report. Home-schooling is hugely beneficial for some children, but Sara Sharif’s father used those loopholes to hide the abuse. I hope that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will ensure that we register all children and that any parent suspected of abusing their child loses their right to home-schooling. People should have a right, but not when there are safeguarding concerns. Lots of amendments have been tabled to the Bill, and I hope that that one is taken forward.

Will the Minister comment on the inadequacies not only of Surrey county council’s children’s services, but of under-pressure children’s services across the country? Vulnerable children are being looked after by overworked social workers who need better training—the safeguarding report says so. We should train and support them better. They wanted to take Sara Sharif away from her family before she was born, but they were convinced otherwise. Can we learn those lessons and empower people to protect our future generation?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

Order. I am confident that we will get everybody in if speakers can keep themselves to five or six minutes.

15:20

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for securing this debate. It is incredibly emotional, and he opened it passionately and well.

There are children in my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages, and across our country, whose lives are being shaped, often silently, by domestic abuse. In Stafford borough, one in four women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. And across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, in a three-month period between April and June this year, nearly 500 children needed support from a local domestic abuse service. Yet, despite the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognising children as victims in their own right, less than a third of children whose guardian sought help were able to access support. There is legislation, but it is not doing enough or translating to change.

There are ways in which we are fortunate in Stafford. Organisations such as Staffordshire Women’s Aid and the integrated local services supporting victims and their children do extraordinary and often unseen work. Their leadership shows what it takes to make legislation real. I pay special tribute to Charlotte Almond, the exceptional chief executive officer of Staffordshire Women’s Aid. Charlotte has been unwavering in her communications with me, and yesterday she raised the hidden harm that children face through post-separation abuse where perpetrators continue their coercive control through family courts and the children themselves. She told me:

“Every service must see and hear the child as a victim in their own right.”

She is correct.

I acknowledge that the Government have made significant progress. The Ministry of Justice’s commitment to repeal the presumption of parental involvement is a landmark moment. The family courts have long been a site of acute harm for women and children. Ending the assumption that contact with both parents is automatically in a child’s best interests is not just welcome; it is saving lives. This is a huge win for victims and for the frontline organisations that have fought for it. Every one of them deserves incredible respect.

I have been told that our mission to halve violence against women and girls has made waves among those fighting to prevent violence. For the first time in decades, there is a genuine sense of hope in the sector. I was told by an activist that, for the first time in their life, change feels like it is on the horizon. But ambition must become action. All of our agencies—the police, social care, health and education—must look at risk-based assessments and whether they are taking into account the needs of children. We must ensure that every process is child-centred and that the non-abusing parent is supported, not blamed. We must hear children’s voices in every decision that is made.

A constituent of mine, whose identity I will protect, wrote to me recently. She told me of her daughter, a 10-year-old child in clear distress. The child documented her fear and wrote a secret letter begging not to go with a father who frightens her. He tore it up in front of her. Despite repeated reports, evidence and professional concerns, my constituent’s concerns were dismissed by agencies.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is giving some personal stories, which are always very hard to tell because their seriousness and trauma always lies with us in our hearts. I wish the hon. Lady well as she pursues her case, and I support her.

[Leigh Ingham]

The hon. Member is correct that these are really emotional subjects. It is happening to too many children across our country, and my constituent says it better than I could:

“This is not just about my family; it highlights a much wider and deeply concerning issue. Too many parents are silenced and disbelieved when trying to protect their children from post-separation abuse. Agencies are quick to label these cases as ‘conflict’ or ‘parental alienation’, rather than recognising patterns of coercive control that continue long after relationships end.”

Until this Government ended the presumption of parental involvement, those abusers could continue to weaponise their children against their own parent, forcing the victim who left them to continue to be held to their abuser’s will. That has to end. I will follow the progress very closely.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely powerful speech. Does she agree that children who have suffered abuse and neglect can exhibit behaviours at school and other social settings that would have them punished or excluded from those settings? Abuse has knock-on effects and a wider impact on the whole of a child’s life.

[Leigh Ingham]

It is a widely acknowledged fact that if a young person or child experiences abuse, it continues to have a wide range of impacts throughout their life. It is important that this Government have set the direction. The legislation is there, the ambition is there and the sector is ready. We must match ambition with investment, law with implementation, and promises with performance, because children cannot wait. They deserve safety, stability and a childhood free from fear.

15:26

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing this important debate. This is a heartbreaking topic. Tackling and preventing the harms being caused to children in their home demands urgent attention.

When I think about domestic abuse against children, my mind often goes back to the posters we had when I was growing up, and that we may have seen recently in shopping centres and train stations, with two adults arguing and a child crouched in the corner and watching in fear. That image is everywhere when we talk about children and domestic abuse: the child on the sidelines, quietly absorbing the trauma around them.

The reality is far worse than that familiar picture, because children are not just witnesses: 1.8 million children in the UK are experiencing domestic abuse right now. Women’s Aid has found that, in the last 30 years, 67 children have been killed by a parent who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse, often during contact arrangements. That statistic and the fact it could happen during contact arrangements genuinely stopped me in my tracks. The more recent National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children briefing on child deaths due to abuse or neglect from July of this year estimates that at least one child a week is killed through abuse or neglect. In our country—in any country—that is completely unacceptable.

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognises children as victims in their own right, which was the right move. However, I came across another troubling fact during research for this debate. In 2022, after that legal change, less than a third of survivors who wanted support for their children were able to get it. That demonstrates that changing the law does not automatically cause tangible change. If we do not fund the services or create spaces for children to heal and feel safe, the law is just a line on a page.

I was disappointed not to hear anything about funding for tackling domestic child abuse and violence against women and girls in the Budget this week. It is important that the Government back up their intentions and ambitions to tackle this with real resources and funding.

I thank organisations such as the NSPCC and the Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, which work across Kirklees and West Yorkshire. My office often refers families to them, whether for counselling, for children recovering from abuse or for support when navigating domestic abuse cases. However, it is disheartening that we rely so heavily on charities to do the work that should be backed by proper Government strategy and funding.

This year, the proportion of organisations providing children’s domestic abuse services without dedicated funding has doubled from 15.7% to 31.4%. That tells us everything about the state of the system. It is truly worrying after hearing last year about the Government’s commitment to halving violence against women and girls. Many of the women who come to my office with cases of domestic violence would have fled to a refuge with their children due to abuse from a partner.

These issues of violence against women and girls, and protecting children from domestic abuse, go hand in hand. Yet when the number of organisations supporting children without any dedicated funding has doubled, it is hard to believe that those commitments are being matched by action. If anything, it shows that children are still an afterthought in a system that claims to protect them. Therefore, will the Minister please confirm what specific extra funding, resources and procedural changes the Government are planning or have allocated to this space?

We were told by the Department for Education that, by the end of 2025, there would be a road map for a child protection authority—a recommendation that the Government received from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse—but we have heard very little since. The commitments are there and the reports all show the urgent need for long-term systemic change, yet we are not seeing that change actually happening. Will the Minister confirm when the road map for a child protection authority can be expected?

Children deserve better than posters of fear and a system that waits until harm has already been done; they deserve to be protected, to recover and to grow up feeling safe and loved. Right now, too many are falling through the cracks, and we owe it to them to fix that.

15:31

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing this important debate and on his powerful opening speech.

For far too long, our understanding of the impact of domestic abuse on children failed to recognise the reality. Children do not simply witness domestic abuse, they experience it, they suffer it and they are profoundly affected by it. Living in a home in which domestic abuse is taking place is traumatising for children. It makes them feel frightened, insecure, sad and alone. It undermines the essential security that the home environment should provide. It affects children’s understanding of relationships and what is normal, and children often take on a completely misplaced sense of responsibility for what is happening or for protecting other members of the family.

These issues are, sadly, very widespread. One in seven children and young people will have an experience of domestic abuse at some point during their childhood. The Office for National Statistics records that, in 32% of domestic abuse cases, there was at least one child under the age of 16 living in the household.

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s recent report, “Victims in Their Own Right? Babies, children and young people’s experiences of domestic abuse”, is a sobering read. The commissioner listened extensively to children and young people affected by domestic abuse. They told her it is important that they are listened to, that they are taught how to recognise domestic abuse and that they receive proper support to recover from it.

They also told the commissioner about some of the barriers they experience in getting support, including failing to recognise that abuse is taking place and the influence of other family members. They also cited unwanted contact arrangements as a barrier. I therefore welcome the Government’s recent decision to end the presumption of contact, and I pay tribute to Claire Throssell, who has campaigned so hard in the name of her sons, Jack and Paul, to see this change in the law.

Claire’s case is utterly heartbreaking. The Education Committee was privileged to hear from her directly earlier this year during our inquiry into children’s social care. Jack and Paul’s father was abusive to Claire. It was one of the reasons—which they clearly expressed—that they did not want contact with him. They were murdered by their father on a contact visit mandated by the court. Jack and Paul were not listened to, and Claire was not listened to when she clearly warned of the danger—the tragedy of Jack and Paul’s deaths was the consequence.

The removal of the presumption of contact in cases of domestic abuse is a landmark moment in the protection of children from domestic abuse. It recognises that children are victims of domestic abuse in their own right, and that domestic abuse occurring in the home is also a significant risk factor for children. Women’s Aid reports that, over the past 30 years, 67 children have been killed by a parent who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse in circumstances related to child contact arrangements, including Jack and Paul. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West pointed out, 19 of those children were murdered between 2015 and 2024.

[Apsana Begum]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important, following the removal of the presumption of contact, to now launch an expedited parliamentary audit to assess evidence of forced child removals? It something that Right to Equality and the Survivor Family Network have pulled together evidence around and are advocating for.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that in her remarks.

We have a children’s social care system, and the tragic case of Sara Sharif—which the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) spoke very powerfully about—is an important case in point where the arrangements that should be in place to protect children, decide the right outcome for them and provide an environment in which they can be safe too often fail to do that. That speaks to the need for reform. The removal of the presumption of contact puts children’s experiences, their voices and safety, back at the heart of contact decisions, where they should always have been.

I want to turn to the question of support for children who have experienced domestic abuse. Research by Women’s Aid found that 70% of children said that they would seek help in a situation of domestic abuse, but that 61% did not know where to go to find any help. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner also found that fewer than a third of victims and survivors of abuse who wanted support for their own children were able to get it—so more than two thirds were unable to access that support. Setting that against the very significant funding pressures experienced by both domestic abuse support services and children’s social care, it is clear that access to support is not currently adequate.

I am particularly concerned to read Women’s Aid’s findings from its 2025 annual audit that the proportion of organisations running children and young people’s domestic abuse services in the community without dedicated funding doubled from 15.7% to 31.4% this year. There are always costs to failing to meet the needs of children. The costs of children not being able to access support to recover from domestic abuse are seen in ongoing harm to victims and also in additional need for health services, because people who have experienced domestic abuse as children have higher mental and physical health needs, especially if they are not supported.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to ensure that the views of child victims of domestic abuse are considered when developing policy and designing services, but it is important that that translates into changes that increase awareness of abuse among children, make it easier to disclose abuse and seek help, and which make support more readily available so that children can recover.

Finally, it is important that we focus on not only what happens when abuse occurs, but how we reduce incidents of abuse in the first place. The Education Committee has emphasised the need to improve early intervention by strengthening and increasing funding for the Families First partnership. We welcome the announcement of increased funding this week. I also welcome the Government’s commitment to improve how children learn about healthy relationships at school through relationships, sex and health education and the commitment to tackle misogyny in schools. That requires tackling the pernicious information that young people are accessing online and equipping them with the skills and values to challenge such information among their peers. I hope that the Minister can set out today some further information on how those commitments will be implemented.

Tackling this issue and ensuring that every child grows up knowing how to keep themselves safe and with a good understanding of what makes for a healthy relationship, along with the ability to spot when that is not happening around them, and the ability to access help and support when they need it is a vital part of creating a country where every child can thrive.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that if we are going to get everyone in, please keep to five minutes.

15:39

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. Many thanks to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for leading this debate on a difficult subject.

Sometimes debates like these are a realisation of the sad reality of life across the United Kingdom. I will try to give a quick Northern Ireland perspective. I am always shocked to read the stats and facts about the situation back home. We all have family and friends, and we can sometimes be quite sheltered from the real issues for so many families across the nation. How do we improve that?

It is always important to tell the story of the situation back home. In 2024, more than 5,000 children in Northern Ireland were referred to social services on the grounds of domestic abuse concerns. The Department of Health concludes that neglect and physical abuse remain the main reasons for registration on the child protection list. They account for 84% of all registrations—that is almost 4,400 young children.

Children who experience physical abuse are at a significantly higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and developmental delays. Data from the Police Service of Northern Ireland refers to some 30,000 domestic abuse incidents in the year to March 2025. That is a shocking figure, but many of us suspect that it is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are many more. Women’s Aid, which does a fantastic service back home in providing support for victims of domestic abuse, concludes that in 90% of domestic abuse incidents, children are in the same or an adjacent room when violence happens.

I have spoken to a social worker, and I want to tell hon. Members some of what they said. First, I thank social workers for all they do in supporting young children and taking on the incredibly heavy role that they have; I imagine that in most cases what they have to hear is not easy to listen to. The social worker stated that the mental health impact is huge, from depression to anxiety, self-harm and substance abuse. It is not always immediate: it can progress from a childhood to adolescence and into the young adult stage. In some cases, there is a reflection: children will see the role models in their life display certain behaviours, and they almost replicate them, because this is what they deem to be normal. This can be physical, verbal, emotional and, unfortunately, sexual abuse. That is not in any way to say that all children who witness abuse will turn into abusers—I am not saying that—but children who witness it are socialised into thinking that it is normal and okay, and that that is how adults behave. Many traits and challenging behaviours in young children may come from trauma that children witness over the years. This is a clear example of how violence in a household can be very confusing for them.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), who is no longer in her place, commented on the issue of parental alienation, which is a form of domestic abuse that is not often talked about but has a direct impact on the development of a child. It occurs when a child is systematically manipulated, pressured or influenced by one parent into rejecting or fearing the other parent without legitimate justification, leading to a breakdown in the relationship between the child and the parent. I am keen to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the issue, and on how legislation can be strengthened to ensure that parents are not unnecessarily alienated from their children through the manipulation of another parent.

It is imperative that we protect children. This issue genuinely saddens me, as it saddens everybody in this House. We all have personal stories of those we know and have met over the years. We all want children to have the support they need. It is a sad and unfortunate reality that we will probably never be able to protect every child, although we would love to, from the devastation of this world. I know that the Minister, who is a sympathetic and compassionate lady, will answer our questions.

What can we do? We can talk about this issue and normalise the conversation. We can provide support and properly fund our social services, who go above and beyond to protect children. What they do is sometimes forgotten. It should not be. They are the backbone, and their work should not go unnoticed.

15:43

[Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing this important debate.

Domestic abuse does not just claim adult lives; it devastates children. Lybah, a child survivor of domestic abuse and a SafeLives changemaker, said:

“As a child I felt like I was often overlooked and was never really acknowledged as a victim of DA. Rather than helping me process what happened to me I was told by services to write down my thoughts and feelings and draw a picture of what a ‘happy family’ should look like.”

Some 71% of adult survivors are unable to access specialist support for their children, according to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. That is why the work of Foundations in finding what works to support child victims—including piloting Bounce Back 4 Kids, a therapeutic programme supporting child recovery—is so important. Every year, around 200 children in the UK are bereaved by domestic homicide. Shockingly, we still do not know the actual number, because it is not officially recorded. Those children are the hidden victims behind the headlines.

Survivor Debrah prevented her father from murdering her mother by hitting him on the head with a poker. He told her that she “had better kill him” or he would kill her as well. A week and a half later, he succeeded in killing her mother. From prison, her father was able to block Debrah from living with her mother’s sister, instead sending her either to his own family or to live with a grandparent who had previously molested her. Her siblings were forced by social workers to visit him in prison. After just 14 months, her father was released and her younger siblings were made to live with him. They were beaten and starved and, within a year, he attempted to kill a new girlfriend. Debrah is one of the many children behind the shocking headlines we see far too often. I pay tribute to the tireless work of the Joanna Simpson Foundation and Children Heard and Seen, which I was honoured to host in Parliament recently, and do so much to support many of these children and the adults they become.

Many of these children face a double loss: one parent to bereavement and one parent to prison. They do so while carrying the stigma of their parent’s actions and the deeply conflicting emotions that come with it. Professionals working with these children often struggle with the language to explain what has happened. They were simply not trained to approach this subject. As there is no statutory mechanism to identify and support children when a parent goes to prison, schools frequently have no idea what a child is living through. Under current UK law, a parent convicted of killing their partner can retain parental responsibility, allowing them to influence important decisions about their children’s lives, causing deep distress for the families and caregivers who are supporting the children left behind.

Jade’s law was meant to change that, and was passed by Parliament in May 2024, but it has still not been implemented. I urge the Government to fast-track this, as families like that of Kennedi Westcarr-Sabaroche are still facing challenges from convicted murderers who continue to exert coercive control over their children from prison. Furthermore, the support they and their carers receive is patchy, short-term and inconsistent. Carers, often grandparents or extended family, are left to navigate grief, financial strain and complex legal processes with little help. Jodie Edith, the grieving mother of Kennedi Westcarr-Sabaroche, said:

“In April 2024, our world went dark after receiving the knock at the door that no parent could ever imagine, telling me that my beloved daughter Kennedi had been killed by her partner of nine years, leaving a child behind. With limited emotional trauma-informed support from counselling services for me, the caregiver, and my grandchild, it left us unable to grieve.”

That is why I hope the Government, in their VAWG strategy, will consider creating a dedicated, specialist national service providing wraparound support for children bereaved by domestic homicide and their carers, alongside a guarantee for every bereaved child to have an independent advocate to ensure their voice is heard in all decisions about their care and future. We also need specialist training for all professionals in contact with these children. Finally, we need to introduce a statutory duty to commission specialist services for child victims of domestic abuse. I proposed that in a debate on the Victims and Courts Bill, and I hope the Government will look at it again as the Bill moves to the House of Lords. I will finish with the words of child survivor Roann Court, who said:

“I watched my mum being brutally killed when I was 15, and the support was virtually non-existent for me and my family, which has had a lasting impact for us all. Children need support—we are as much victims as our parent who is killed.”

15:49

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for securing this timely and poignant debate, highlighting that children in their own right are victims of domestic abuse, and sharing some powerful words from his constituents. That is never easy to do, and I commend him for that. Children should be growing up in a safe and loving home, free from violence and fear, and that is not the case for so many. The hon. Member shared a really powerful phrase—domestic abuse does not affect one generation; it echoes through the next. By the end of my speech today, the police will have recorded 11 more instances of domestic abuse. Every 40 seconds, a call is made to the authorities reporting a domestic abuse incident, but analysis shows that only one in five victims of domestic abuse will actually make a report.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that there were nearly 4 million victims in the year ending March 2025; 800,000 cases were recorded in that year. Of those 800,000 cases, only 41,000 offenders were actually convicted. Behind those shocking statistics are women and men who are living in fear, and children, scared for their parent and often for themselves and their siblings. As the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) said, these are often our nation’s hidden children.

Failure to protect children should be at the forefront of our minds as policymakers. That is why I absolutely share the Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls throughout the duration of this Parliament, thus protecting more children from harm.

The Liberal Democrat campaign, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde), who grew up in a household experiencing domestic abuse, led to the Government introducing a domestic abuse identifier at sentencing. I thank the Government for working so constructively with my hon. Friend to see that realised in the Sentencing Bill. It will allow the Government to track the data more efficiently and to understand how many domestic abuse perpetrators are currently serving a custodial sentence. It will allow the Government to exclude those abusers from any future early release schemes, and it will show whether the Government’s reducing reoffending programmes are leading to a reduction in reoffending rates of domestic abuse.

We Liberal Democrats have also called for an expansion of the high-quality perpetrator programmes within prison settings to prevent repeated harm. That is not the end of our ambition to better protect victims of domestic abuse. I hope that the collaborative relationship to tackle the issue continues across the House, because there is so much more that can be done.

The system to protect victims and their children is currently disjointed. Often, the gaps in provision are filled by the incredible voluntary sector and charitable organisations. In my constituency of Chichester, organisations such as My Sisters’ House, Paragon and Safe in Sussex, as well as Lifecentre, provide exceptional support to those who have suffered at the hands of domestic abusers.

The reality of increased costs associated with running those organisations, alongside an increasing number of cases, means that those organisations recognise that they could be supporting so many more victims. As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West alluded to, with more families coming forward and children being rightly identified as victims of domestic abuse, the numbers are rising.

We need sustainable funding for support services for survivors, including multi-year settlements, so that organisations can plan for longer term programmes, rather than waiting to find out if they can continue to support victims in their area every year.

[Mr Forster]

Surrey is further advanced than Sussex in local government reorganisation. Something I am experiencing in my constituency that I fear my hon. Friend will soon see in hers is that charities such as Woking’s Your Sanctuary women’s refuge are really nervous about LGR. We do not yet have multi-year settlements, and it is almost impossible to even get a one-year settlement out of an authority that does not yet exist or is about to wound up. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister needs to take that point away and ensure that LGR does not hurt the funding that supports women and girls?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point about local government reorganisation. Voluntary and charitable sector organisations rely on local authority funding and Government funding—they rely on multiple streams of income. I plead with the Minister to make sure that the Government funding, at least, is secured beyond one year, so that these organisations have the reassurance during LGR that they will be able to maintain their provision in some sense.

We also need a statutory definition of honour-based abuse, and better training for police, social care and education professionals. In every police force, we need specialist violence against women and girls taskforces, and every force should undergo training via Naturewatch on the links between domestic abuse and the abuse of animals. Perpetrators of domestic abuse identify the special bond people build with their pets and can use that to exert control over partners or children. Across the country, we have seen cases where warning signs were missed, reports were ignored and opportunities to intervene were tragically lost. The programme run by Naturewatch has been taken up by police forces across the country, including the Metropolitan police and Sussex police, but we should encourage every force to take it on, as there is a direct link between the treatment of animals and domestic abuse. We must set up support services so that they are in the ideal position to listen to a child crying out for help, no matter how hard it is to hear them.

We in the Liberal Democrats are also extremely concerned by the chronic underfunding of children’s social care. After a decade of cuts to local authority budgets under Conservative Governments, many councils have been forced to scale back their early intervention services. I have been told by those working in the sector that they feel like they are firefighting every day, rather than spending the time they so desperately want to spend with the families they could prevent from entering crisis. Instead, they are dealing with mounting caseloads, burnout and an inability to resource their departments properly. This is short-sighted and dangerous. Tragically, too often, the consequences are felt too late.

The report into the heartbreaking case of Sara Sharif is a damning indictment of Surrey county council’s failure to protect a young girl from her abusers. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) made a passionate plea for the recommendations of the safeguarding review to be explored by the Government so that lessons can be learned nationally. Early support does prevent crises from escalating, it protects children who witness domestic abuse in their household, and it identifies risks at the earliest opportunity.

The Liberal Democrats have long called for greater integration between health and social care, with far more involvement from local authorities in the planning, commissioning and delivery of services. This must include education settings, which play a vital role in identifying situations where abuse may be present. We need to ensure that training and support for teachers is readily available, so that they can spot the signs and call for help. Teachers have an increasingly challenging role in our complex environment: they are not only teachers but, quite often, caregivers and social workers. They may be the only lifeline that a child has, so they need to be able to spot the signs of domestic abuse, be they misbehaviour, withdrawal or a failure to engage in the classroom. In addition, as the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) mentioned, it is so important to have education campaigns so that children understand and can spot the signs of what is not a happy household, and understand what is normal and what is not, and what they should and should not put up with.

Another vital part of the picture is the family court system, which plays a key role in protecting children from situations where domestic abuse is present while also considering the importance of keeping families together. It is a desperately difficult job, yet there have been a number of situations where the system has failed and, frankly, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I thank the Government for their recent steps, including removing parental responsibility from those convicted of the most serious sexual offences, as was mentioned by the hon. Members for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and for Dulwich and West Norwood. Campaigners fought hard for that change, and it is welcome. Could we also consider removing parental responsibility from those on bail, to ensure that individuals capable of committing horrendous abuse are kept away from their children as early as possible?

With that in mind, what are the Government doing to integrate health and social care services across the country to ensure that as much protection as possible is provided for vulnerable children and families? What are the Government doing to raise awareness of the warning signs of a child living in a household with domestic abuse? When will we see further legislation to deal with the rising issues in our family court system? Will the Government consider specific measures to keep those on bail on charges of offences against children away from their children? The Liberal Democrats stand ready to work with Members in all parts of the House to ensure that every child is protected, every survivor is heard and every perpetrator is held to account.

15:59

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak on behalf of the Opposition in this debate on such an important issue, and I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing it.

This is an area in which Parliament must work with clarity, evidence and determination. The stakes are high. Almost all of us will work with constituents who have children affected by domestic abuse, and sadly many of us will have family or friends who have been affected. One in five children in the UK experiences domestic abuse, and almost four in five children living in homes with domestic abuse are directly harmed by the perpetrator, on top of the harm of witnessing the abuse. According to the National Centre for Domestic Violence, more than 105,000 children live in homes assessed as high risk. Those figures should focus minds across all parties.

As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West said, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 was introduced by the previous Government. I had the pleasure of serving on the Bill Committee for that genuinely groundbreaking legislation, which transformed the legal framework for tackling domestic abuse. The Act established a new statutory definition of domestic abuse in England and Wales, which recognises that abusive behaviour is not limited to physical violence but also includes emotional, controlling, coercive and economic abuse. As has been said, under section 3, children under 18 are explicitly recognised as victims if they see, hear, or experience the effects of, abuse against a related adult—for example, by witnessing abuse between their parents. Although abuse by or against children under 16 is treated under child protection law rather than domestic abuse laws, 16 to 18-year-olds may fall under both frameworks.

The statutory definition was designed to ensure that domestic abuse is understood across all statutory agencies, as well as by the public, as unacceptable. It also provides operational clarity for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service in identifying and flagging domestic abuse cases, supported by Home Office statutory guidance.

The Conservative Government commissioned the independent review of children’s social care, the report of which was published in May 2022 and highlighted gaps in support for children affected by domestic abuse. I am pleased that, building on that, this Government have rolled out the Families First partnership programme, which integrates family help and multi-agency child protection teams. The teams include social workers, family support workers and domestic abuse specialists, promoting early intervention and tailored support.

The family courts are of course critical in safeguarding children where domestic abuse is involved, and the Conservative Government took several steps to address long-standing concerns. The 2020 report “Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases” identified systemic failures, including a pro-contact culture, siloed working, adversarial processes and insufficient recognition of abuse. Of course we all want parents to be able to see their children, but we do not want children to be used as weapons in relationship breakdowns. The welfare of children has to come first; that must be the priority.

In response to that report, barring orders were introduced under section 91A of the Children Act 1989 to prevent abusive parents from repeatedly returning to court. Pathfinder courts, piloted from March 2022, promote a much more investigative, child-focused approach, improving multi-agency collaboration, prioritising children’s voices and reducing conflict. I understand that the presumption of parental involvement is under review and is set to be repealed to ensure that child safety takes precedence. We obviously understand the reasons for that decision.

The tragic case of Sara Sharif, which hon. Members have referred to, demonstrates the consequence of the disconnect between law and practice. Despite children being recognised as victims in their own right, the review shows how gaps in co-ordination, oversight and early intervention can still leave a child without the protection that they need. The recent child safeguarding practice review into that murder exposed a series of systemic failings. The findings underline issues that were not isolated to one local authority, but reinforce the need for wider action.

A child cruelty register was first proposed by the Opposition during the Commons Committee stage of the Sentencing Bill. I thank the shadow Solicitor General, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant), for championing this issue so consistently and effectively. Although the amendment did not pass in the Commons, the concerns that it highlighted remain pressing, so the proposal must be examined again during the Bill’s Committee stage in the other place.

The case of Tony Hudgell is a clear example of why such a mechanism continues to require serious consideration. Tony was just 41 days old when he was so severely abused by his birth parents that both his legs were later required to be amputated. His abusers received sentences of 10 years, of which they will serve eight. Once their licence period ends, there will be no ongoing monitoring or reporting requirements, despite the seriousness of their offence.

We need a register to require individuals convicted of specified child cruelty offences, as well as those within the domestic abuse framework, to provide information to the police. That would allow that information to be retained and used to manage ongoing risk after the end of the formal sentence. It would operate in a similar way to the sex offenders register, and would ensure that offenders cannot evade oversight by changing identity, relocating or avoiding engagement with services. Evidence from police and practitioners shows that those who commit serious abuse often move across local authority boundaries or deliberately avoid contact with health and social care. A targeted, proportionate register could help to close a clear loophole in the system, and could increase our ability to protect and safeguard children’s welfare.

We support reforms that are practical, evidence-based and focused squarely on preventing harm. The priority must be to ensure that children are visible to the systems designed to protect them and that professionals have the tools, information and statutory backing they need to intervene early and effectively. We therefore support improved information-sharing duties with clear accountability. We support enhanced multi-agency working, including consistent national standards, and we argue for the introduction of a child cruelty register.

The Government recently announced that police and crime commissioner roles in England and Wales will be scrapped. That raises important questions about how continuity of support for victims, including children affected by domestic abuse, will be delivered during and after the transition. We would be grateful if the Government could confirm what measures they will put in place to ensure that the abolition of PCCs does not disrupt or weaken the support available to child victims of domestic abuse, and that existing services can continue to work seamlessly throughout the period of change. We must ensure that no child can disappear from view, and that known risks are managed effectively across agencies.

Protecting children from domestic abuse requires consistent professional curiosity, coherent information sharing and reliable oversight mechanisms. The cases of Sara Sharif and Tony Hudgell illustrate different aspects of system failure—failure that Parliament has a duty to address. I look forward to working across the House to strengthen the measures that will be brought before us and ensure that our child protection system meets the standards that the public expect and that our children deserve.

16:09

[The Minister for Courts and Legal Services (Sarah Sackman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing a debate on this important subject. I thank all Members who contributed to this wide-ranging and incredibly sensitive and important debate; their contributions were outstanding. I also thank my hon. Friend’s constituent for sharing her story, which takes courage, and all those who shared personal stories.

I want to make absolutely clear how seriously I take the matters that have been raised today. Every child deserves to grow up in a home filled with love and safety, yet, as we have heard, for too many children a home that is meant to be a place of sanctuary can become a place of fear. It is the Government’s mission to protect children, support victims and ensure that abusers are held accountable. The Ministry of Justice is working with partners across Government to strengthen protections for children from domestic abuse. Many of today’s questions and interventions touch on the need for not just cross-Government working, but working across multiple agencies and interaction between central and local government. It is critical that the whole system works together in the endeavour of stamping out domestic abuse and protecting children.

I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West says about our laws, reflecting the experience of children and young people who have suffered domestic abuse. He is, of course, right that we must ensure that those children, who are among the most vulnerable in society, are properly served and protected by the law. Other Members, including the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), have mentioned the importance of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021; I pay tribute to the previous Government for that legislation, which already recognises the profound impact that domestic abuse can have on children.

Section 3 of that Act makes clear that where a child sees, hears or experiences the effects of domestic abuse perpetrated by or against a parent or relative, that child will also be treated as a victim of domestic abuse themselves. That is vital, because it makes it easier for children to access support such as mental health services. Looking more widely, the statutory guidance recently published by the Home Office on coercive and controlling behaviour clarifies that controlling or coercive behaviour has a significant impact on children and young people in relation to parental or other family member relationships. Taken together, those measures provide a clear recognition that abuse, even when it is not directed at them, can have a severe impact on a child. That is critical in underpinning the Government’s response to these crimes.

I want to take up the point raised by the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster), who is a tireless champion on these issues. The murder of Sara Sharif is remembered with profound sadness. Although Sara’s father and stepmother are rightly serving life sentences for their appalling crimes, it is clear that the Government’s response to that tragedy cannot stop there. The local child safeguarding practice review into the case by Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership is an important part of that process. The hon. Gentleman will understand the importance of considering the findings of that review with care and delicacy.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has already begun to set out the detailed steps the Government are taking to strengthen safeguarding and to keep children safe. The hon. Member for Woking will know that some of those measures are making progress in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, such as obligations on local authorities to set up registers of children who are not educated in school and to consider the home environment when considering whether children should be permitted to be educated at home. I assure him and colleagues that we will continue to look at the recommendations of the review and identify ways to improve child protection in this country to mitigate the risk of such a tragic murder happening again, and I thank him for his tireless work in that regard.

Turning to the reform of the family justice system, my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West rightly brings to our attention the many vulnerable children in the family court system who have been harmed or are at risk of being harmed by domestic abuse. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who raised important points on family courts. As others have said, family judges and family courts have a very difficult job to do and for the most part do that job well—but no child should miss out on the chance of a safe and stable childhood because the system is too slow or complicated, or does not provide the right help at the right time. The Government are acting to make sure that when families struggle, the services around them respond with compassion, speed and fairness.

At the heart of our family justice strategy is putting children first. That means making sure that their voices are centred and their safety is protected, and that decisions are focused on giving them the best possible chance to grow up in a stable and supportive home. I am pleased to hear others welcome the Government’s announcement on the repeal of the presumption of parental involvement; I recognise that many Members and the people they represent have been campaigning for that for a very long time.

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood in paying tribute to the incredibly brave work, for some 11 years now, of Claire Throssell to vindicate the legacy of her sons Jack and Paul, who were murdered. Claire’s story is a heartbreaking reminder of what is at stake when the system fails children. Her courage and tireless campaigning demonstrate the need for the family courts to protect children from abuse. It has been an honour getting to know Claire, and I hope that this change in our law will mark a culture change in our family courts.

Of course, achieving that culture change is not just about the presumption, and it is important to recognise the centrality of the welfare checklist in the Children’s Act 1989. That looks at the wishes and feelings of the child concerned, the impact on the child of any changes in circumstances, how capable each parent is of meeting the child’s needs, and any harm the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering, which could include any harm from witnessing domestic abuse.

As well as those changes in the law, we are not stopping at that announcement. As a Government, we have chosen to continue to build on the excellent results of the pathfinder model in private law children’s proceedings to improve the experiences and outcomes for all survivors of domestic abuse, including children. That work built on the findings of the harm panel report, and the feedback we have had from practitioners, and particularly from children and parents, is that they feel better heard and supported under this new approach. Alongside that, referrals to independent domestic violence advisers for a risk assessment, and better join-up between the court and local authorities and police, give the court a clearer assessment of the risk to children when they are making decisions.

Pathfinder courts are already operating across Wales, Dorset, Birmingham, West Yorkshire, Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Worcester, and we want to go further. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West will be delighted to hear that pathfinder courts will commence on the Isle of Wight in January 2026, and we hope that that will make a real difference.

I want to pick up on the points made by the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) in relation to Jade’s law and parental responsibility. We are working with partners across the criminal and family justice system to implement Jade’s law, which would provide for the automatic restriction of the exercise of parental responsibility in cases where one parent has killed the other. We are currently working through the details of implementation with a wide range of family justice stakeholders. The mechanism is novel and it is important that we take the time to get it right.

Hon. Members will know that we are going further as part of the Victims and Courts Bill. That Bill includes two critical measures: first, we will restrict the exercise of parental responsibility for offenders sentenced to four or more years’ imprisonment for serious sexual abuse against a child, and secondly, we will ensure that, where a perpetrator is sentenced for rape and that crime has led to the birth of a child, they will have their parental responsibility for that child restricted from the moment they are sentenced. I appreciate that that does not go as far as the hon. Member for Chichester urged, but these are novel pieces of law, and we need to see how they operate before going further. I feel assured that, taken together, the measures will protect thousands of children, ensuring that perpetrators who have committed some of the most serious crimes cannot continue to insert themselves into children’s lives and seek to exercise their parental responsibility from prison.

A number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed), asked about spending on domestic abuse specialist services. I echo the comments made by hon. Members about the importance of charitable and third sector services in that regard. We know the sterling work that those services do, and that they fill a gap all too often left by shortcomings in state support. I pay tribute to them, but it is not right that they work in an environment where they have to pick up so many of the pieces, so investment in specialist services and in child protection is important.

The Department for Education is rolling out the Families First partnership programme—which will be important—with an investment of £541 million in ’25-26. It will give families and children access to better local support services to enable earlier intervention, which we know is so important to enable families to stay together, where it is safe to do so. The Department for Education is also developing post-qualifying standards and social work induction to further strengthen early career support. That will help improve the quality of practice, and the retention of children and families social workers. We expect that domestic abuse, including coercive and controlling behaviour, will feature prominently in the new programme. That work is coupled across Government with a £5.3 million investment by the Home Office into community-based support for children affected by domestic abuse.

I reassure hon. Members that the announced abolition of PCCs will not disrupt the provision of those community-based services. The structure may change, but the support and the investment in that support will not. In response to the specific point raised by the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley, I note that the Government are committed to consulting on the establishment of a child protection authority before the end of this year.

Finally, I note the point raised by the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire about the campaign by the shadow Solicitor General, the hon. Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant)—which she makes on behalf of her constituent and Tony Hudgell—for a child risk register. The Government have heard that case loud and clear; while we were not able to support a specific amendment in the Commons, we are considering it with great care because we recognise that there is a gap there.

All of us, as I have heard this afternoon, share a deep commitment to safeguarding children and ensuring that they are fully protected and supported. That is why we will continue to work with partners across Government, with frontline agencies, with the courts and with third sector groups to protect children affected by the scourge of domestic abuse. I hope my remarks have reassured my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West, and all hon. Members who have made such thoughtful and sensitive contributions to the debate, that we have a legislative framework in place that recognises the impact that domestic abuse has on children, and that Departments across Government are taking action to make sure that the right support, help and protection is in place for them. We need to keep doing that, and I know that everybody here will continue to hold us to account, and to push us to go further and do better.

I reaffirm the Government’s commitment to protect children, support victims and ensure that abusers are held accountable. Quite simply, all children deserve to grow up free from fear and abuse. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West again for securing a debate on such an important subject.

16:23

[Mr Quigley]

I sincerely thank the Minister for her response, for the steps that have already been taken by this Government to protect children from domestic abuse, and for the commencement of the Pathfinder programme in 2026 on the Isle of Wight. I also thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

As Women’s Aid reminds us, children do not just passively witness abuse; they absorb it. It becomes a weight that they carry every day, following them into school, into their friendships and, most damagingly, into adulthood. One survivor told me that, as a child, their Friday afternoons at school were not spent counting down to the weekend, like other kids; instead, they were silently begging the clock to slow down, dreading the moment they would have to go home and hoping that Monday would come back round quickly.

Some 50% of young people who access our child and adolescent mental health services say that they have witnessed domestic abuse. There is a clear moral and economic case to get this issue right. Women’s Aid estimates that support from specialist domestic abuse services can save the NHS well over £150,000 per survivor, which includes the cost of visits to A&E, hospital treatment and appointments with GPs and other professionals. Protecting children from domestic abuse is about not just safeguarding their present, but securing their future. Every child deserves a home that feels safe, not one that they fear to return to. Let us make sure that no child is left silently begging the clock to slow down.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of protecting children from domestic abuse.

16:25

Sitting adjourned.