Westminster Hall

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 17 December 2025

[Dr Rupa Huq in the Chair]

Asylum Reforms: Protected Characteristics

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential impact of proposed asylum reforms on people with protected characteristics seeking asylum.

There have been a lot of announcements in relation to immigration policy in the year and a half since this Government came into office. There has been a startling lack of equality impact assessments alongside those announcements, and I want to draw the House’s attention to the disproportionate and negative impact on people with protected characteristics of some—in fact, most—of the announcements the UK Government have made since July 2024. I am going to focus on certain groups of people with protected characteristics: women, queer folk and disabled people, and I will also touch on very young and very elderly people.

Some of the changes to asylum policy announced by the Home Office, particularly in the “Restoring Order and Control: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy” in November 2025, have failed to take account of the fact that the negative impacts are not felt uniformly across the board. They have failed to take account of the fact that many people in groups with protected characteristics already face a level of discrimination and increased barriers simply as a result of being a member of a group with protected characteristics.

Before I come to the substance of my speech, I want to thank a number of organisations that have provided a significant amount of information and done a huge amount of research. Those are Women for Refugee Women, Rainbow Migration, the Helen Bamber Foundation, whose briefing was truly excellent and really heartbreaking, and the Scottish Refugee Council.

As I say, many of the changes made will have a significant negative impact, such as the change to the length of time that people have to stay and the requirement to contribute in order for people to be granted leave to remain. The requirement to contribute is not well defined and has a disadvantaging impact on those who are not able to work or study in the normal sense. For example, a disabled person might struggle to access full-time employment, and therefore the UK Government might consider that they have not contributed in the same way as other people, so they might be more likely to be refused leave to remain.

The same issue applies to women, particularly those with caring responsibilities. For a woman who has come here from Afghanistan, for example, who could not learn when they were in Afghanistan because they were banned from education—certainly further or higher education—or because of the circumstances they were living in, with an abusive family or a requirement for women to stay in the home and not do any learning, it is even more difficult to get into work or study, because they simply do not have the skills due to those gaps in their education.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. I agree with the point she is making. She mentions Afghanistan. One constituent of mine arrived here under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, having served with British armed forces in Afghanistan. We have worked incredibly hard to bring her sisters over—thankfully, successfully—both of whom were under threat of being forced into marriage with members of the Taliban, but her brother, who is in hiding in Pakistan, is currently not able to join them. Does she agree that when it comes to people who have supported British troops, worked with us and helped us in Afghanistan, we have a duty and a responsibility to bring them here and take care of them?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree, and there was a very similar case in my constituency. There was a woman here with her young child, and it had been agreed that her husband was eligible for reunification with his family here under the ARAP scheme, but he was in hiding in Pakistan. No matter how much we pressed the Home Office, the woman and her young child were left here without their husband and dad. He was unable to come over, because the Home Office refused to take action. Part of the issue is the lack of humanity and consideration for individual circumstances created by the Home Office machine. Blanket policies discriminate against people in protected groups, not taking into account that there are nuances, differences and family circumstances that need to be in place.

Going back to the requirement to contribute, that will cause particular issues for those who cannot, or find it difficult to, contribute in the classical sense. The UK Government said there would be special consideration of vulnerable groups, but have not laid out what those will be and what the consideration looks like. Not making clear who those vulnerable groups are and how those considerations will work risks significantly disadvantaging people.

It is worth noting that, eight years on from receiving asylum and the right to work, the average income of refugees in Scotland is only £13,000, which is significantly lower than the median income. That is partly because refugees, by their nature, have suffered trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and are unable to work full time in many cases, through no fault of their own. Due to that level of discrimination, and partly because they may not have long-term settled status, employers may be less keen to take them on. People who are trying to work, or have even been working full time for eight years, are earning significantly less than average. If we try to measure contribution, compared with people who were born here and have had a settled life—white men, for example—it will be difficult for any refugee from a protected characteristic group to meet that bar.

Other issues include regular reapplications and a reduction in appeals. There will be a 30-month period to reapply for status. We know that 50% of appeals from women win. A reduction in the number of appeals, allowing only one and no subsequent appeal, will entrench the fact that the Home Office makes wrong decisions. If 50% of appeals win, the Home Office has clearly made wrong decisions in half the cases that go to appeal. The people more likely to appeal, whose cases are negatively looked at, have more complicated pasts and issues with disclosing what they have faced.

Regarding trauma and violence against women and girls, the UK Government have suggested that not disclosing trauma early in the process will likely have a negative impact on their case. If people do not disclose their protected characteristics, there will likely be a negative consideration from the Home Office. People born here who have experienced sexual violence can take 20 years to come to terms with the situation and raise it with the authorities. We are expecting refugees, who have been through significant trauma, to disclose that information to a legal aid lawyer they do not know. He could be a man from their community who looks like an authority figure or the person who abused them, or might be part of the religious community that perpetrated the abuse. We will punish them for not being able to disclose the sexual violence they faced, or their sexual orientation to someone they do not know.

We also know that when it comes to legal aid, for example, the increase in the number of appeals will significantly gum up the system, and the system is already significantly gummed up. The UK Government inherited a system that was a mess in terms of the length of time that asylum decisions took. Adding in a significant number of extra reassessments at 30-month periods is simply unworkable. We are already waiting years for people to get decisions—even children who are supposed to have special consideration and who are supposed to receive decisions more quickly.

We got an email from a constituent this week whose children have still not received a decision. We have had a number of emails from constituents about asylum decisions, but the one that struck me came in yesterday. We had spoken to the Home Office about it and the email said, “Could you please tell us what is happening with this case?” And the Home Office said, “No. If you have not heard anything by December, get back to us.” The person still has not had a decision, despite the fact that children are supposed to be considered more quickly. If the UK Government cannot meet their obligations now, how will they meet their obligations within a 30-month period? What will they do about legal aid to ensure that legal aid lawyers are willing to take on the more complicated cases, the cases of sexual or domestic violence, or where the individual presenting is LGBTQI? At the moment, legal aid lawyers often look at those cases and say, “No, it is too complicated. The legal aid money does not cover it. Why would I bother doing that when I can do an easier case?” There is a significant problem. If the Government are going to make sweeping changes, especially the significant number of reassessments, they need to fix the legal aid system, or people with protected characteristics will be negatively impacted even more than the people without protected characteristics.

Going back to the family reunification changes that are being suggested, Home Office figures tell us that 92% of the people who receive grants under family reunification are women and girls—92%. On the massive reduction in the number of family reunification applications that are accepted or in family reunification routes, 92% are women and girls. I do not understand how the Government can suggest there is not a disproportionate impact on people with protected characteristics when just this one specific measure has a massive impact on women and girls specifically. I understand why the Government have not produced an equality impact assessment. They do not want to see what is in such an assessment, but they should produce one. They have a public sector equality duty to do so. The Home Office is still bound by the public sector equality duty. It does not not apply to the Home Office. It applies to the public sector and it has not published one.

On the length of time and the possibility of people being required to wait 20 years to receive leave to remain, we know that the lack of stability adds a significant negative impact on people. We know that that lack of stability is multilayered in the impacts that it has. I have already touched on the issues with employment. Employers are less likely to take people on if they do not have permanent leave to remain. Employers do not necessarily understand the immigration system. Good employers can be terrified of falling foul of the Home Office. If they can see that somebody was born in another country and does not have citizenship yet, they decide not to employ them. That means people are stuck in limbo for a significantly longer time because of the Government’ s decision—much longer than in some other countries, by the way.

Not enabling people to work at 12 months makes us an outlier in Europe. In some EU countries, people can work from day one. In many countries they can work from two months. That gives an increased level of stability than if requiring people to be out of work for 12 months, and then only able to access jobs on the occupation shortage list or immigration list. Some of those jobs are not as acceptable or not as possible for people who have protected characteristics. A disabled person may not be able to access some of those roles. If we are more flexible in the roles that people can access, we are more likely to have people able to contribute, because they will be more able to do jobs that work for them.

That lack of stability also means, potentially, that people will have no recourse to public funds for a significant length of time. No recourse to public funds is horrific and should be cancelled, particularly for those people with dependants. I never again want to see a family come in to my office whose children are malnourished because the UK Government have said that they have no recourse to public funds, or who are being threatened with homelessness because they are unable to claim anything. I had a family come in whose four children had not eaten fruit for days. How is it acceptable that the UK Government can decide that people have no recourse to public funds, and then keep them in limbo for such a long period?

Women for Refugee Women looked at the number of destitute women and spoke to them about what destitution meant for them in the asylum system. Of the women in the asylum system who had no recourse to public funds, 38% had stayed in an abusive relationship because of their inability to access public funds and the fear that they would be homeless or destitute as a result of leaving that relationship. A further 38% of those women who stayed in abusive relationships were raped as a result. The UK Government’s policies are forcing women into destitution and unsafe situations and relationships. Among women in that group who were destitute as a result of the UK Government’s policies, 8% were forced into sex work to get enough money to feed themselves or their children, or to clothe their children. How is this a humane situation when it is negatively impacting women more than men and where those protected characteristics are not being protected?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. There have been incidents in the last year, which I am sure the hon. Lady is aware of, where women have been trafficked into the United Kingdom. They have been brought in illegally and when they are sometimes able to escape from their captors or kidnappers—their pimps or whatever they call them—they then find themselves in an unbelievable circumstance where they are here illegally. However, that is not by their own choice but through the coercion of others. Does the hon. Lady feel that there must be some methodology to help those people who are victims and find themselves in unbelievable circumstances?

[Kirsty Blackman]

There should be some methodology, but the Government are going the wrong way on this. They are looking to tighten up the modern slavery and trafficking regulations and make it more difficult for women to claim that they have been trafficked—even when they have. We know that there are women that have been held in Yarl’s Wood or detention centres after being trafficked because they do not have the correct paperwork. Of course they do not have the correct paperwork; they have been trafficked, used in sex work and forced into these horrific situations, and the Government are putting them in a detention centre and then saying that they will not get a visa because they did not have the right documentation.

We have a responsibility to protect people. It says in “Restoring Order and Control” that there are some rules in relation to the European convention on human rights and the Refugee convention around which there are not discretionary powers. For some—for example, in relation to family life—the public interest can be balanced against that requirement. However, when it comes to trafficking, the Government do not have that discretion. If they refuse to believe trafficked people, and it is later agreed that those people have been trafficked, the UK Government are putting them through more trauma. They are putting people who have experienced worse things than most of us could ever imagine through more trauma because they refuse to believe them. Then, because they may disclose this late, as they do not want to talk about the sex work that they have been forced into and the rapes they have suffered—because it is very difficult to talk about those things—the UK Government say to them, “Well, you didn’t disclose this in time, so you can’t be a true asylum seeker. You can’t be a true refugee because you didn’t come forward and talk about the most horrific moments in your life to a man that you don’t know.” That is in relation to legal aid support.

There are major issues with the continuing lack of stability. The changes away from hotel accommodation to some of the accommodation at barracks can mean that people are more isolated and less able to access support. In Aberdeen, we have little in the way of lawyers who can cover asylum cases—and immigration lawyers in general, actually—and people are having to travel significant lengths in order to get that, on their £7 or £9 a week. Someone cannot get from Aberdeen to Glasgow on seven quid a week—it cannot be done for less than about 30 quid, unless it is on a Megabus, and even that can be quite dear.

Accommodation does not take into account the fact that provision is not there. If people are going to be put in Cameron barracks in Inverness, for example, it is even more difficult for them to get to Glasgow or Edinburgh in order to speak to the right lawyer who will be able to help and be willing to take on their immigration case. Creating that extra level of isolation for people who are already struggling—putting people in an isolated community in the Cameron barracks, rather than in a community setting where they can integrate—means that people who are isolated will become even more so, and people who are at risk will become even more at risk.

We know that even in hotels, people suffer as a result of their protected characteristics, and who are at risk of harm as a result of unsafe situations. That is multiplied when people are moved out of hotels into places such as barracks.

I have a few more things to cover. In relation to the assessment of safe countries for removal, the blanket designation of a country as safe is inherently incredibly risky. It may be safe for some people to be in Syria right now, but it is not safe for everyone. It is not safe for a Syrian woman who came here as a result of gender-based violence to go back to her family in Syria—or to go back to Syria at all—because of the likelihood that her family would take action against her. It is not safe for a gay person who fled because they were correctively raped to go back to Syria.

The decision about blanket designations is really difficult, considering the Government are saying that they are looking at vulnerable groups and talking about individuals. Creating a blanket safe designation that can be changed at any point in that 20-year period means they can suddenly say to someone, “You are going to have to go back to this country where you were correctively raped, because the UK Government have now decided—with very little in the way of parliamentary scrutiny—that this country is safe.” The problem is that we have not got that information. The Minister may feel that there will be special categories in place, but we have not been told that. We have not been given the impact assessment for how that will look. We have not been told what those provisions will be. Somebody who is living here, who is terrified about being sent back, has no comfort right now, because they do not know whether their case will be considered separately or whether their country will just be deemed safe and they will be sent back.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The hon. Member speaks very passionately about this issue. Does she agree that the same can be said of those who have been engaged in rape and criminal activity in Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole, but that they should be sent back? It is a real bugbear for people that there seems to be some protection for people who engage in those types of activity, so that they are not sent back to where they came from.

[Kirsty Blackman]

The UK Government have said that they are looking at increasing the number of countries they have returns agreements with, so that people who have committed crimes can be sent back.

Let me talk once more about the LGBT issue. If a trans or gay refugee is here, and it is illegal for them to be trans in their country—they are likely to be beaten up or correctively raped as a result of being, for instance, a lesbian in their country—the UK Government expect them to live openly here, in the sexuality that they are, but with the threat of their country becoming a safe country and their being sent back. People will now know that they are gay, because they have had to live openly here, and that threat of return will now continue for a significantly longer period of time. Gay and trans people are now in a horrific Catch-22: they are forced to live openly here to have their refugee status agreed, but if their country is designated as a safe country, they may be sent back.

Pakistan is apparently safe for trans people because, according to the UK Government, people face only discrimination, not persecution, for being trans in Pakistan, despite the fact that somebody can come here as a trans refugee having been persecuted in Pakistan. The UK Government say, “It is okay, because it’s a discrimination thing, not persecution thing; don’t worry—you’ll be fine.” The Government expect them to live as an out trans person here—knowing that their cousin might see them on Facebook, or that somebody might hear about them living their real life and being themselves here—but, as a result of the UK Government’s policies, they will be forced to go back to somewhere where they are at an even higher risk of persecution.

On the Equality Act 2010, the public sector equality duty says that public sector organisations must have due regard to protected characteristics and try to ensure that people are not discriminated against because of those characteristics, despite the fact that the Government’s policies will more negatively impact people with protected characteristics. I have asked questions about the special consideration of vulnerable groups, because we need significantly more information about that. I do not expect the Minister to provide all that today, but I would like a commitment that that information will be forthcoming; otherwise, people will be terrified because they will have, hanging over them, the possibility that the Government will not take into account whether someone is trans or has suffered from gender-based violence in other places.

On the length of time before disclosure, I just do not believe that we can set a time limit when it comes to violence against women and girls or gender-based violence. We cannot tell people that they have to disclose things within a certain period of time or they will not be granted refugee status. That is not something we can force on victims. Changes need to be made in that regard.

There has been no impact assessment. I asked written parliamentary questions about equalities impact assessments, and we were told that they would come in due course. When? When will we get the equality impact assessments? I would love the Home Office to act in a trauma-informed way, but it seems that we are not going to do so. For some reason, the public interest—which is, apparently, in deporting as many people as possible—cannot be balanced with the need to look after people who, through no fault of their own, have gone through unimaginable horrors. That will have a detrimental impact on all those who are seeking asylum.

On the legal aid crisis, I would love reassurance from the Minister that the Government are going to make changes to legal aid. I do not understand how they are possibly going to manage a 30-month time period when they cannot manage the current time period.

I finish with a statement from Layla, who spoke to Women for Refugee Women about why she came to the UK and what her experiences were here. The UK Government talk about removing the pull factors, but the pull factors are not the economy or the fact that people can get jobs. Layla puts it better than I ever could. She said:

“I didn’t see the UK as a cruel type of country. The idea is that the UK is a Great Britain: we will save you, especially women’s rights, human rights. We initiate all the law, international law, you name it. The UK is a very outstanding country. But when I came here, I feel like it’s a fake, because why do you need to show that you are so good in the eyes of the world, but you are treating asylum seekers like this? It’s hypocrisy.”

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to speak, so we can calculate the time limit on speeches. I call John McDonnell, with no time limit.

10:00

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I have no time limit, Dr Huq, but I have only a limited number of questions. This debate is sparsely attended, but I do not think the Minister should interpret that as a lack of interest in the issue. It might well be because of where we are at in the parliamentary cycle—it is the day before our break, and there might not be the whipping on this penultimate day that there is on other days. In addition, people might not have understood the breadth of the potential of this debate when we talk about protected characteristics.

I want to talk about the protected characteristic of age, which includes children and young people. We identified age as a protected characteristic and we have signed up to the UN convention on the rights of the child. A group of 100 organisations, the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, have come together to provide an excellent briefing—I will send to the Minister, if he has not received it. Their main objective is to protect the rights and safety of young migrants and refugee children. I do not think I can get across the depth of concern among those who have been engaged in dealing with refugee children in particular over the years.

I have to say—I am trying to be as diplomatic as I can on this—that some of the language used by Ministers has been a disgrace. A Minister putting out tweets saying, “Deport. Deport. Deport.”, does not reflect what we are about across the House and all parties. That is not what we are intending to do. We are trying to uphold the British tradition of welcoming people here who seek sanctuary and to put in place a system that deals with their needs. Many of us have argued that the best way of doing that is safe routes, fast processing and more support for integration. I am not sure, and I think many people are anxious about this, that some of the statements made by Ministers reflect the view of the House overall—as I say, across all parties. I regret that. I was shocked even by some of the language used by the Secretary of State on the day that the statement on asylum policy was made.

Maybe I have repeated this too often, but in my constituency, I have two detention centres, and I have been dealing with them now since when I was a councillor in the Greater London Council—40 years. There are 2,500 asylum seekers in hotels in my constituency, and I welcome them. My community has held together very well on that; we rub together pretty well. There have been some recent demonstrations in one small area of my constituency, but that has largely been provoked by outsiders pursuing their own political ambitions. Overall, we have welcomed asylum seekers.

I congratulate my community on the work that they have put in. Various local community organisations and religious groups, across the whole field of religion, have provided support. From that experience, when we have discussed over the years those who have suffered the most, in many instances it has always been the children. I welcome Government Ministers to sit down with some of the professionals who are working with these children. I declare an interest: my wife is an educational psychologist and she works in the schools in our community that asylum children go to. Many of these children are deeply traumatised by their experience in their country of origin and by their journey here. Now they are being traumatised by some of the treatment they are receiving as a result of some of the political campaigns going on in our society.

There can be nothing worse for a child or family than to look out of their hotel window and see baying crowds outside, demanding that they go or that they be evicted. A few weeks ago, we even had a group of masked men who turned up at one of these hotels and tried to break into it. The police valiantly addressed that situation, but some of them were injured as a result.

Those children have gone through experiences that none of us would ever want our own children to go through. I am worried that we are in the process of introducing reforms that could retraumatise them in a way that some of them will never recover from.

The Government are on the first steps of the path of the new system that they are proposing, but a lot more debate and discussion needs to take place. I think this debate is about trying to make it clear to the Government some of the issues that we need more information about and that need to be addressed in a much wider-ranging consultation, not only with MPs, but with those on the frontline who have to deal with them.

Basically, I have five specific issues that I want to raise today. The first is indefinite leave. The second is family reunion and the third, linked to that, the review of article 8, which we have been told will happen. The fourth is financial support and the final one is appeals. I am sorry if some of what I am about to say repeats anything that has already been mentioned by other hon. Members.

On indefinite leave, the Government are now introducing this core protection status. I chair the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary group. PCS includes the civil service workers who process these claims, and I have not yet met one of them who thinks we have the ability or resources in place to conduct a review of every case every two and a half years, because that is what we are talking about. We cannot process the cases as they are now.

I congratulate the Government on the work that they are doing to speed up the processing. The reason we are in such difficulty is that the previous Government had started to speed up the process—I actually went on to the Floor of the House and congratulated a Tory Minister on doing so—but then they introduced the Rwanda scheme and everything stopped. It is no wonder that we now have a backlog. This Government are speeding up the processing, which I welcome, but then to load on to that system a new review every two and a half years—it just cannot be done. No one believes that it can be done. The proposal has no credibility

There is also the issue with regard to the individual country reviews. Exactly as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) said, it is about more than individual countries; we are talking about case-by-case reviews, which will be necessary. In addition, some of the Foreign Office assessments of individual countries are either out of date, or do not reflect the reality of what is happening on the ground there now. As a result, the system will place people here in positions of immense vulnerability.

We should try to walk in that child’s footsteps. What will it be like for that child to know that, every 30 months, they will not necessarily be going to the same school, living in the same place, or having the same friends, but will risk being shipped back to a country of origin that some of them barely know? We need to think.

The hon. Member talked about working with those who are trauma-experienced. It is vital that the Government now do that, and sit down to discuss with professionals in this field the worries and fears that they have. Indeed, it is also worth the Government sitting down with some of the asylum seekers themselves, just to get an understanding of what they have gone through: the trauma that they have experienced is not only caused by what happened in their country of origin; the traumatising journey that they have had to make is also bad and, as I have said, when they get here they have been faced, under previous Governments in particular, with a “hostile environment”. That insecurity has led to deep psychological concerns. For us to revisit all that on children on a regular basis is cruel as well as unworkable.

Regarding the process itself, I still have not got my head around the way people can qualify for reduced routes—the five-year route, or the 15-year route. There is real anxiety that, if anyone receives any form of public assistance by way of social security, benefits or even accommodation, they will somehow be debarred from the 20-year route. There was even an example reported in the press a few weeks ago where someone had been trying to borrow money to pay back the benefits that they thought they had received because that would disqualify them and force them into the 20-year route. There needs to be a great deal more clarity about how that works.

As the hon. Member said, 92% to 93% of family reunion visas—I think about 1,200—in the last year were for wives and children. In my experience of dealing with asylum seekers over the years, the family has simply sat down and taken the decision that it will be the male who will seek refuge first because they are concerned that the female and the children will not survive the route. If we consider our own families, that is exactly what we would do: we would try to get at least someone to safety, and often it would be the one who has the best overall chance of surviving. Once that person is here, they want their family to join them. That is not exploiting the system; that is how the system should work. That is how refugee systems work across the world. By denying any element of family reunion—I look forward to the detail of the review on that—we are penalising the child by preventing them from being with their parents in the future.

[Carla Lockhart]

I have to disagree with the right hon. Member. I believe that if he were fleeing a war-torn country, he would want to see his wife and family—particularly his family—brought to safety first. Sadly, we do not see that. We see young males making that trip. That is not right and they should be sent back.

[John McDonnell]

The hon. Lady and I will have to disagree on that. In my experience, the decision for the male to come here is often made on the basis of the family itself asking, “Who can get here? Who can survive that journey? Who can get through?”. That provides some hope that the family can join them. There is a difference with those that move into the next country in close proximity—but, again, we have to fulfil our responsibility to the whole family. I am concerned that if we start in any way undermining that right to family reunion, the people who will be penalised most will be the children deprived of being brought up with their parents.

We are told that the article 8 review will take place in 2026. It would be invaluable to have the earliest and broadest consultation possible. Exactly as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North said, we need early impact assessments on all the decisions being made so that we have the detail of what the impact could be. We can consult the wider public. A lot of false information goes out into communities about the whole asylum process and causes resentment. If we are going to review article 8, we need to explain how it operates now, what its intentions are, what changes could be made when it is reviewed and what impact that would have. I am hoping that the review is about beneficial impact, rather than being a prejudicial attempt to prevent family reunion from taking place overall.

Let me explain very crudely my anxieties about financial support. The Government are going to revoke the legal duty to provide housing and financial support and make it discretionary for some bodies. I have a Conservative council. Its housing policy at the moment has changed the length of time that someone has to be within the area. It was five years; it is now 10 years to be able to even get on the housing waiting list. As a result, I have families who wait 10 years and, by the time a property is allocated to them some of their children have grown up and they no longer qualify as a family. We go through that process. If we make it discretionary, we need to know from the Government what happens to the organisations, such as my council, that are not willing to fulfil some basic duties and responsibilities.

I have one final point—I can see, Dr Huq, that you are getting anxious about time. On the replacement of judges with adjudicators in appeals, we need to see the detail, such as adjudicators’ qualification and training, and how they will be selected and monitored. The adjudicator is only one process, however. Unless there is proper representation and resourcing, particularly of legal aid access, the system will grind to a halt, there will be bad decisions and we will be back to appeals. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North said, the bulk of victories will be on appeal because the system is not working effectively. I hope for a response from the Government and for detailed consultation, as rapidly as possible, on all these matters.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. I am obliged to call the Front Benchers at 10.28, so if Members keep their remarks to seven minutes, everyone will get in.

10:15

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair again, Dr Huq. You can be assured that I plan to be brief. I am horrified by the proposed changes to the asylum system set out last month, which seem to be performative cruelty, and I am deeply concerned about their impact on all asylum seekers. I welcome this opportunity to focus on how the Secretary of State’s reforms will affect those with protected characteristics, and thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing the debate. I will focus on women and LGBTQ people especially.

I will start with women asylum seekers, who are often survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Tomorrow, the Government will proudly publish their strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, and I look forward to it, but their asylum reforms are putting refugee women at risk. Requiring refugees—not asylum seekers who are waiting for their decision, but refugees who the Government have certified as legitimately fleeing persecution—to wait 20 years before they can apply to settle permanently, with their refugee status subject to reviews every two and a half years, alongside a ban on working and meagre weekly allowances, leaves women in an extremely vulnerable situation. As we heard earlier, research by Women for Refugee Women found that, shockingly, 38% of women in the asylum system were pushed into or stayed in an unwanted or abusive situation or relationship, and 8% were forced into sex work. Given that appalling data, will the Minister reconsider the 20-year wait for settlement and give all asylum seekers the right to work?

We also need more transparency to help us to tackle the vulnerabilities that survivors of sexual violence face in the asylum system. I wrote to the Minister in the last few days—I understand that he will not yet have had chance to act, but I take this opportunity to highlight it—to ask that his Department publish disaggregated asylum statistics for claims based on sexual and gender-based violence. Similar data is already published on sexual orientation so I hope that that request is non-controversial and that the Minister can take it forward—I think it will be constructive.

LGBTQ people also face unique impacts from the proposed asylum reforms. The new safe return reviews of refugee status make it harder for people to integrate. The Home Office expects those seeking asylum because of gender or sexuality to be living openly, yet it simultaneously dangles the constant threat of being returned to the country that they were persecuted in. Some claim that asylum seekers need to integrate better into British society, but how can they? How can they build lives, friendships and communities when creating an authentic life in the UK puts their safety at risk, given the prospect of being returned home?

I want to highlight a specific issue in my constituency that has been brought to my attention, though I am certain it does not exist in Bristol alone. Refugee organisations in Bristol have told me that they are seriously concerned about the state of accommodation and support for LGBTQ+ people seeking sanctuary in our city. Some individuals have faced hate crime while in asylum accommodation, and have attempted suicide as a result. What are the Government doing to ensure that LGBTQ+ asylum seekers get the specialist support that they need? Will he consider providing separate, safe accommodation for particularly vulnerable LGBTQ+ asylum seekers?

In this debate, we have heard heart-wrenching stories about how asylum seekers with protected characteristics are hit by the Government’s callous new policies. However, I will conclude on a small but hopeful note by thanking those who are working tirelessly to defend the rights of asylum seekers, including Women for Refugee Women—which has been mentioned multiple and times and does fantastic work—Rainbow Migration, Praxis, and Stand Against Racism & Inequality, which is based in Bristol. Their advocacy inspires me in my role here, and I will continue fighting alongside them for a compassionate, just and workable asylum system.

10:20

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I say a big “thank you” to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing this debate. She has—I say this with great kindness—a wonderful, warm heart. I always enjoy her contributions, and today is another example of just that.

It is always a joy to see the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, the hon. Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), who is a good and dear friend to us all. I know that he understand the issues incredibly well. It is in his very nature to endeavour to give us the answers he can, within the confines of his departmental brief.

Members will have no doubt about my views on immigration, about which I have great concerns. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, so I understand that many people across the world flee persecution and human rights abuses, and look for a country of sanctuary. I believe that our country can be that sanctuary, but I have genuine concerns about the abuse of the asylum system—my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) referred to some of them.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that, whether on straightforward illegal immigration or on protected characteristics, part of the problem is that there are concerns in wider society about the United Kingdom’s stagnant economy and expanding population. That lead to protests and to demands that we close our borders so that we do not further exacerbate the problems of a growing population and a shrinking economy.

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend and colleague is absolutely right—I will refer to those matters shortly. There is no use saying that what he refers to is not happening or that there is a small number of asylum seekers—that is not the case. The images of small boats show overwhelmingly that they carry young men. They are more economic migrants—most of them look extremely fit and well. They are illegal immigrants coming by the backdoor to seek greater help in the benefits system, rather than the families I want to stand up for, who are fleeing oppression and threat to life.

[Carla Lockhart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his speech; he is doing an excellent job. Does he agree that people are concerned about spiralling costs? Asylum seeker accommodation costs are set to rise to £15.3 billion across the UK over the next decade, including from £100 million to £400 million in Northern Ireland. When our services are already at breaking point, that is frustrating people. Surely the Government have a duty to look after the people who are born and raised here before committing to that spend.

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend and colleague is right. I know that the Minister will consider all these matters, and I hope that he will give us an answer to that question. I can understand why so many are outraged that we would take winter fuel payments away from our own hard-working pensioners while doing nothing about migrants who seem to want an easy way of life. People have that perception about those who come along on plastic boats from Calais to Dover. I want us to put those migrants aside very quickly.

I try to be compassionate and understanding in everything I do in this House—although I am no better than anybody else—but I see a very clear difference between an economic migrant who wants to use the benefits system and a family who have no safe place to be. That must be highlighted. As a member of APPG for international freedom of religion or belief, Dr Huq, you will understand only too well that many Christians are persecuted in Syria and across the middle east, and in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Myanmar. All being well, on 8 January we will have a Westminster Hall debate on the persecution of Christians in Myanmar.

The previous Government had a Syrian resettlement scheme, and six Syrian families came to Newtownards. They did not have a big grasp of the language, but our community drew together and supported them. Those six families are still there. They have had children there, they have jobs, they have learned the language, they have children at school, and they have houses. They did so by their own bootstraps, so to speak, and that should be recognised as something good that happens.

I believe that the Government must make changes to the system and take a hard line, returning those young men back to France or wherever they have travelled from or through, but I have a genuine fear that these changes may prevent those who are truly in need of asylum from claiming it. By the end of 2024, 132 million people had been forced to flee their homes. I have a large number of figures here, and I do not have time to mention them all, but there are 42.7 million refugees, 5.8 million people in need of international protection and 4.4 million stateless persons. It is clear that we cannot take them all in. That is why we must have a robust system in place to provide foreign aid to help where we can and take those who specifically need our help.

We cannot and must not allow the abuse of the system to end the system in its entirety—the goodness of the system that the Minister and the Government are trying to bring in—in the same way that we do not allow the abuse of drugs to prevent doctors from using the rules and regulations to prescribe them. Across the world, there are almost 74 million internally displaced people and 8.4 million asylum seekers. Again, we cannot take them all, but we can take some—I think we have a duty to do so.

We need a fit-for-purpose system that allows those who are persecuted for their faith to find a refuge and build a life with their families, such as those Syrian families who came to Newtownards eight or nine years ago. They are integrated—part of us—and contributing to society there. They want to assimilate, become British and espouse our values. We must remind ourselves of our all-important British values of tolerance and compassion as we address this problem without literally throwing the babies out with the bathwater—or English channel water, as the case may be. I thank the Minister in anticipation of his answer. I also thank the two Opposition spokespeople, who I know will make valuable contributions. I wish you, Dr Huq, and all colleagues a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

10:25

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing this important debate and for the passionate way in which she introduced it; it is clear that this matter is close to her heart.

Refugees are some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. They are often fleeing their home following a civil war or being targeted by an authoritarian regime. Refugees with protected characteristics, such as disabled people, those who are pregnant, children and women, are especially vulnerable. That is why the Liberal Democrats believe that people seeking protection must be treated with dignity and humanity, according to their individual situation. Many asylum applicants already face hostility in the process, and disbelief from decision makers can have serious consequences for their safety if they are returned to the countries where they face persecution. No one should ever be expected to hide elements of their identity, like their sexuality, in order to avoid violence or discrimination. There are far too many countries in the world that are openly hostile to some protected characteristics.

This debate is calling for disabled people, those who are pregnant, women and children never to be detained or deported. Although I have a lot of sympathy with that, the entire detention system needs thorough reform. In previous debates, my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have outlined what reforms we want in the system. Immigration detention should only be used as a last resort for anyone—absolutely anyone. It should be subject to clear time limits. We support a maximum of 28 days, with judicial oversight after 72 hours. We tabled amendments to the Conservatives’ Illegal Migration Bill to secure such reforms, including a ban on child detention and an end to indefinite detention. The Conservative Government rejected those amendments, but the Liberal Democrats remain committed to them.

The detention of children is particularly controversial. In the summer of 2010, honouring the Liberal Democrats’ election manifesto, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that the UK would end its practice of child detention after years of strong criticism from current and former detainees, the voluntary sector, medical professionals, politicians, academics and legal professionals. My party and I are very proud of that.

There are particular risks for women and survivors of gender-based violence in the proposals that the Home Secretary announced recently. The plan to remove the legal duty to provide accommodation while asylum seekers remain banned from working risks pushing vulnerable people into destitution. Women fleeing persecution and domestic abuse are at heightened risk if support is unpredictable and, worse, if it is withdrawn entirely. The Liberal Democrats are committed to fully implementing the Istanbul convention, which Britain has signed, which contains a commitment to protect women and girls, regardless of their nationality or immigration status. Will the Minister tell us if and when the Government will sign up to the Istanbul convention? Women seeking asylum who have experienced gender-based violence need a system that understands the trauma that they have been through and responds according to that need. Any reforms that prioritise speed over safety will worsen the harm for those vulnerable people.

The Government’s plans to overhaul modern slavery rules also create serious dangers. Forcing victims to disclose everything at the point at which they arrive risks playing directly into the hands of traffickers and organised criminal groups. Many victims remain under gang control when they first come forward. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that. Has he met domestic worker charities to understand the impact that the proposals could have on vulnerable hidden workers in our society?

Recent announcements from the Home Secretary include temporary refugee status, more frequent reviews, restrictions on rights-based appeals and the removal of guarantees on housing, benefits and support. Those changes will fall hardest on those with protected characteristics and those already facing discrimination. People fleeing persecution due to race, religion or nationality may find themselves at increased risk before safety is secured. Disabled applicants and those with serious health conditions may struggle with the accelerated deadlines that the Government want to introduce. Women with children, and pregnant women in particular, may face hardship if safe accommodation is no longer guaranteed—yet again, it could be withdrawn entirely. The proposals also include controversial tools for age assessment and a reduction in access to legal aid.

Those changes risk harming children and young people, and will make the system even harder for them to navigate as they cope with their mental health and the trauma issues that they bring with them. A shift to long-term permissions with no clear path to settlement will entrench insecurity for already vulnerable people and will completely undermine the Government’s integration plans. The Liberal Democrats believe that there is a better way forward. The previous Conservative Government allowed our asylum system to fall into ruins and permitted a backlog to grow. The answer to the crisis is competent decision making and efficient administration, not punitive actions against some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

The Government are clearly concerned about trying to persuade Reform voters back into their fold. The fact that there is not a representative of Reform here today suggests that they want to shout about immigration, but they have no solutions. There is an immigration problem in this country: the Conservatives wrecked the system and deliberately ran up an asylum backlog of 90,000 to put people off. That has cost taxpayers dearly and is hurting people, but the solution is not going after the vulnerable and chasing hateful rhetoric. I hope the Minister is sympathetic and understands that, and is a quiet voice in his Department trying to change his bosses’ minds.

The Liberal Democrats have set out a practical plan to fix the system while protecting vulnerable people with protected characteristics. We would clear the backlog within six months by using Nightingale-style processing centres. We would allow asylum seekers to work after three months. We would maintain our commitment to the European convention on human rights, which protects dignity, fairness and the rule of law. Above all, we would focus on accurate and timely decisions so that people are not left in limbo for years.

In this debate, we are discussing individuals with protected characteristics who are at real risk if the system fails them. These reforms must not weaken rights or increase harm; they must not create barriers for women, survivors of trauma, children, disabled applicants or victims of trafficking. I urge the Government to reconsider their approach. A safe and functioning, humane asylum system is achievable, and they must deliver it.

10:35

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

Thank you, Dr Huq, for chairing this debate. As we approach the end of the calendar year, I would like to acknowledge the work of Members who have participated in today’s debate, and those across the House who scrutinise the Government’s proposals on immigration and asylum. In the main Chamber, Westminster Hall and the various Committees I have been part of, there have been numerous robust debates considering the Government’s proposals. That has included significant work to put pressure on the Government, for example to ensure that the settlement period for those on British national overseas visas is continued.

I recognise those contributions because what has typically defined those debates is the question being examined today: what does it mean to have a migration and asylum system that is fair to both the British people and those who want to claim asylum in the UK? Members will find it unsurprising that the Opposition’s view of what is fair to the British people is very different from some of the arguments passionately put forward today.

We need an asylum system that ensures consistent and fair treatment for all those who present claims, and for all those who wish to claim asylum in the UK. To focus on one protected characteristic that has been mentioned today, sexual orientation, data from the Home Office in 2024 showed that the 2023 grant rate for claims where sexual orientation was part of the claim was 62%, similar to the grant rate for non-LGB asylum claims in that period. I believe that the country rightly expects us to treat these people as individuals and to ensure that our asylum system works for everyone.

That means we must take steps to make changes to our existing system so that it acts at speed and provides answers for all people, including those with protected characteristics. That matters because, after almost a year and a half of a Labour Government, we have seen small boat crossings up nearly 50% on the same period before the election, asylum cases at an all-time high, and increases in asylum accommodation.

At last, the Government have decided to set out some detailed proposals to crack down on illegal immigration. It is a necessary step, but one taken only after the problems in our immigration system have become much worse. To respond to comments that these problems emerged during the last Government, let me be clear: the Leader of the Opposition has stated from the outset that we are not only learning from the mistakes that were made in the past, but putting forward a new approach. That recognises that far more needed to be done.

To quantify the impact of those changes, we can observe the scale of the challenges that emanate from illegal migration. The number of small boat crossings since the election has been well over 60,000 people, and this year has already seen 40,000 cross. In addition, 110,051 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending September 2025, which was 13% more than in the previous year and 7% more than the previous peak of 103,081 in 2002. For context, between 2004 and 2020, there were between 22,000 and 46,000 people claiming asylum in the UK each year.

Members may imply that we should be cautious about tying illegal migration to the challenges facing our asylum system; however, they are clearly linked. Government statistics show that claims from small boat arrivals were at a record high in the latest year, with more than half of asylum seekers in the latest year having arrived in the UK through irregular routes, which typically means those who arrived in the UK in small boats. Another 38% of asylum seekers had previously entered the UK on a visa or with other leave with relevant documentation. Therefore, we as an Opposition agree that there is a case for significant reforms.

When reforms were put to the House, my colleague the Leader of the Opposition said that the Home Secretary

“seems to get what many on the Labour Benches refuse to accept, and she is right to say that if we fail to deal with the crisis, we will draw more people to a path that starts with anger and ends in hatred.”

The current system

“is not fair on British citizens, it is not fair on those who come here legally”,

and it is often not fair on the many people we are discussing today:

“those in genuine need who are pushed to the back of the queue because the system is overwhelmed.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2025; Vol. 775, c. 513.]

That is why the Opposition have promised our support to the Government to get elements of the proposals passed. It is also why our own borders plan sets out systematic changes across our asylum system, which would apply a consistency, so that all individuals who cross the channel and those who are in the UK illegally will be removed at speed. In doing so, we will go back to the original principles that we signed up to in the 1951 refugee convention, so that the Home Secretary will grant refugee status only to those whose countries’ Governments are trying or threatening to kill, torture or persecute them for a reason set out in the convention. It would not, for instance, apply on the basis that the welfare state in a country is less generous than the UK’s. It is a tough plan, but one that I believe is truly fair to the British people and would still allow the UK to create a much more effective asylum system.

If we could end the mass scale of illegal migration, we could look at implementing limited discretionary non-asylum humanitarian schemes such as the Ukraine scheme, which the last Government created. We have said clearly that any such scheme would prioritise women and children who are in genuine need. That would be in stark contrast to today’s data, where over 72% of asylum claims in the past year were submitted by men. That overrepresentation should be a clear sign that our asylum system is skewed in the wrong direction when it comes to protected characteristics, with many women and children being pushed aside.

Ultimately, I think we can all recognise why people want to come to the UK. Our policies towards Ukraine and Hong Kong demonstrate how open and welcoming the UK can be to those under threat. I want our country to be able to demonstrate those values, but they must be accompanied by an end to illegal migration. The number of asylum applications are in excess of historic trends, and we should support changes that adapt our system to deal with the problems we continue to face. Although the Government have often said they will take no lectures from the Opposition, it is clear they have moved towards many of the ideas set out by our party and rejected by the Government during the passage of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025. As we move forward, the most positive impact the Government can make is to implement proposals that create changes to our asylum system as quickly as possible.

10:42

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Alex Norris)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing this debate, which has been very interesting. Colleagues have spoken with real passion and purpose, which reflects how strongly they and their constituents feel about the UK being a nation that is able to provide people with sanctuary, treating them with dignity and ensuring a fair balance so that we can sustain our obligations in the long term. That has been a theme throughout the debate. She and colleagues raised many points, which I will seek to cover shortly. I just want to set out where we are starting from today and perhaps demonstrate the objectives of the reforms that we are pushing.

I think it is a point of consensus that the system we inherited in 2024 was a broken one. Reflecting on that any further in the time available is probably undesirable, but it is understood. It is an expensive system and, for the individuals in it, not a good one. It helped and pleased nobody, so fixing it is a top priority for us. That is why we have doubled the rate of decision making, which has resulted in a record high number of decisions. We have already reduced the number of people awaiting initial decision by 39% in the last year alone.

Hotels are a very visible sign of failure. We have reduced the cost of those by some £500 million, and £1 billion overall has been taken out of the system in the process of improving it. That is really crucial for public confidence. Parliament recently passed the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, which will give us more tools to make sure our border is strengthened, improving our asylum and immigration system. In the last 12 months alone we have removed 37,000 people who have no right to be here, including 5,000 foreign offenders. That degree of pace shows our intent, but this is a big piece of work. We still live with the signs of failure, which is why last month we published “Restoring Order and Control”, our blueprint for the asylum system.

I will talk about that in due course, but in simple terms, the heart of the plan is to do what the public expect, which is to reduce the number of those coming here illegally and increase the removal of those who have no right to be here. That is vital for public confidence and the only way to have a fair, effective and functioning system that maintains our long and proud tradition of helping those fleeing peril.

A theme of the hon. Member’s contribution was a fear that in our plans the Government are insufficiently reflecting on protected characteristics. I know that she will need to see in concrete terms that our policies pass her test, but I think she will find that they do. There is no system of Government more concerned, at its root, with protected characteristics than this one; it is the whole point of assessing someone’s claim for asylum.

The hon. Member said that I might not be able to give her the assurances she sought on safe countries. I can, actually, in the sense that an individual’s case will always be assessed on its individual merits. Syria, which colleagues have mentioned, is a good example: the grant rate in relation to Syria has gone from about 90% to about 10% because of significant and profound changes there. Nevertheless, a country changing from unsafe to safe will not mean that a blanket decision is made about a collective group of people and their claims. Every claim, and any reassessment of a claim, will be based on the individual’s circumstances. I am aware, as a white and probably now middle-aged cisgender heterosexual man, that parts of the world might be safe for me but would not be safe for a colleague who might look, sound and be like me in every way except for, say, their sexuality. The system will always have that at its heart.

The hon. Member is right to remind us that the Home Office is very much within the scope of the public sector equality duty. We are very mindful of that, and it is considered throughout the policymaking process. We will always comply with that duty; similarly, we will always comply with our responsibilities with regard to equality impact assessments. As we bring forward the concrete policies that sit within the frame of “Restoring Order and Control”, colleagues will have access to that information so that they can be part of Parliament’s crucial role of scrutinising the plans of the Government of the day.

The point about appeals is really important. Many colleagues have talked about effective and swift decision making, of which appeals are a big part. At the moment, the average wait is about 54 weeks. As is to be expected, as we have rapidly increased the initial decision making, more stress is being created in the appeals system because there are more cases in which decisions are being appealed. Our intent, in the policy package that we set out, is to have the most streamlined system possible.

As a trade unionist who has sat countless times with members and helped them with their issues at work, I know that the fullest statement of case as early as possible is always in their interests, because that is the best way to get the treatment that they are afforded under the law. I accept the hon. Member’s point that that is sometimes hard for an individual; if the basis of a claim relates to sexuality, say, that is a very individual journey in respect of what someone is or is not comfortable saying.

The challenge, which I hope the hon. Member accepts, is that we can only make assessments based on the information in front of us. We cannot foresee future disclosures. As a result, we have a system in which a lot of extra information appears later in the process. I accept that there can be good reasons for that, but there is a danger that the system may be gamed with the constant addition of new material. It is about trying to find the balance whereby we get the fullest information as early as possible, but an individual has opportunities to disclose later in the process.

I cannot agree with the point that the hon. Member and other colleagues have made about work. We know—not least because we see it in the marketing materials of the traffickers—that the sense that people can work illegally in Britain is already a significant factor in people finding it an attractive country to come to illegally. Simply allowing that would only turbocharge it, so that is not something that we plan to do.

The hon. Member and others also made an important point about core protection status. I will return to that point once I have dealt with some other issues raised.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made a characteristically thoughtful contribution. I always listen to what he says about the issue, because I know that he and his community are at the sharp end of it. He speaks with a lot of experience, informed by the experience both of the individuals who come to this country and of the communities who live with the impact, so I listened very carefully. He said that he wants a system with safer routes, faster processing and better integration. Actually, we can have that system. The ability to have that system, with safe and legal routes and community sponsorship, is there in the policy document—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made thoughtful remarks about that, to which I will return shortly—but I say gently to my right hon. Friend that we cannot have one without the other.

We have to be intolerant on dangerous journeys across continents and across channels for children. The right number for that is nil. The right number of children in hotels is nil. The one thing missing from this debate—

[John McDonnell]

rose—

[Alex Norris]

I will take an intervention from my right hon. Friend before I go off on a tangent.

[John McDonnell]

It is nice to be buttered up, but that usually means that the Minister is ignoring me. On safer routes, the Government have put forward sponsored routes. Those are different from some of the proposals put forward by the PCS and others for specific visa routes, but we can debate the detail of that.

One issue that I did not raise, because I got an answer from the Secretary of State, was the detention of children. I gave the example of how I used to visit Harmondsworth to see children there, which was distressing, and the Secretary of State gave an assurance that there would be no detention of children. There needs to be more clarity on the removal of families in particular and on how that process will be dealt with. That was happening under the previous Government, and at one point it drifted into the detention of children for long periods.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the Minister that Kirsty Blackman needs time to conclude the debate.

[Alex Norris]

Thank you, Dr Huq. I have a lot of things to say today, but I am basically not going to say any of them. I will try to respond instead to what colleagues have said, because I think it makes for a more interesting debate.

There are no children in detention. We have no intention to detain children. I take pelters in the main Chamber when I say what I am about to say, which is that the best level for voluntary returns is 100%. I would happily have every return be voluntary, and that is particularly true in the case of families—that is why we are seeking to improve the support for that—but detention is not in our plans. I hope that that gives my right hon. Friend a degree of assurance.

What I am most surprised not to have heard in this debate is that the people who have the most agency in our system at the moment are human traffickers. The worst people on the planet—the people who have the most callous indifference to harm, the people who will exploit any pain to monetise it—have the most agency over who comes to this country. We should be really angry about that, and we should be resolute in changing it. Of course our important work around organised crime and the provisions in the Act will help us in that regard, but we have to change the demand. That is at the root of the changes to the protection model, which I will come to momentarily.

The hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) made a point about the 20-year period. I will come back to that point, because my carriage is going to turn into a pumpkin shortly.

The hon. Member for Strangford made an interesting contribution about the experience of people in Newtownards. I know only a little about Newtownards, mostly from our conversations about it, but I know that it is not that dissimilar to my community, and that it can therefore be at the crunchy end of the immigration conversation. What he points out is exactly the same for my community. When the schemes were ordered and controlled—be that the Syria scheme, as in his example; Afghan resettlement, which other colleagues have mentioned; Homes for Ukraine, as the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) said; or the Hong Kong BNO scheme—my community leaned into them because they were confident that we knew which people were coming and that they needed our protection. They stepped up.

We want to capture that spirit outside individual country circumstances, because there are other people around the world who would benefit from such protection. I think my community will step up to that, but they will not do that while they feel that the people with the greatest agency are human traffickers and there is a lack of control over who comes and crosses our borders. I think that that is right, which is why I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and to colleagues that we cannot have one without the other.

We cannot have a new, orderly, humane, dignified system with safe and legal routes and maintain public confidence if we are not willing to say that we have zero acceptance of people coming through trafficking routes and across the channel on dangerous journeys, and that the right number for that is nil. That informs our point around protection in “Restoring Order and Control”.

The 20-year route is for a person who comes to this country illegally and then chooses not to learn the language and not to work or contribute. We want everybody to switch out of that core offer and on to a protected work and study route. If people learn the language, work or contribute, they will be able to earn a reduction in that period to 11 years. Moreover, if they enter the system through safe and legal means, their starting point is 10 years, and they can earn a reduction to five years. Those numbers are not coincidental. At all points, the goal is to dissuade people from making dangerous irregular journeys and instead ensure that doing the right thing—whether that is contributing in-country or coming via regular means—is always in their best interests.

[Carla Denyer]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alex Norris]

I am happy to give way, but I remind the hon. Lady that we are very short on time.

[Carla Denyer]

I just want to inquire exactly what the Minister meant when he spoke about those who “choose” not to contribute. How does that relate to disabled people, for example, who the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) raised in her opening speech?

[Alex Norris]

That is a really important point, which I was coming to. There will be cases in which, whether because of the nature of the trauma that people have suffered on their journey or because of other issues such as disability, they are not able to work in those ways. There are other ways to contribute, and that is reflected in our earned settlement consultation, which is ongoing. That will look at how to do that right, but of course there will be protection for people in those cases.

What I cannot agree with in the opening speech by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North is that because some people will struggle to make that contribution and will need a different type of support within the system, nobody should therefore have to contribute. Under the system we have at the moment, no matter what someone does, they can come to this country and get protection. No matter whether they break the law or sit at home instead of going to work or learning the language, they are treated exactly the same as someone who goes to work, learns the language and integrates into their community. I do not think that is right. I accept that that may well be a point of difference, but I do not believe that it is right.

I hope that what hon. Members have heard from me today, and from the Home Secretary when she introduced this package, is that individual policies will come forward, with all the equality impact data that colleagues would expect, but that there is time and space to shape it. If we had published our final policy position some four weeks ago when the Home Secretary stood up, colleagues would rightly have said, “Who did you talk to? Why did you not have people helping to craft it who are experts by experience, or organisations that work with them?” It is slightly challenging to have people say, “There’s not enough detail here.” That is the whole point of developing policy and seeking to work with people in doing so. It is right that we have set our framing for what we are seeking to achieve, but we will have those conversations in this place and I will be very happy to engage with any and all colleagues who are interested in telling us how they feel about the issue.

I hope that I have given a degree of comfort to colleagues on some points. There is a lot more to do, and I have no doubt that we will have many more opportunities to discuss it. I will always do so with the fullest candour.

10:58

[Kirsty Blackman]

Thank you for chairing this debate, Dr Huq. I thank all Members for contributing.

I did not say that nobody should have to contribute—I will thank the Minister not to put words in my mouth in that regard. I do believe, however, that worthiness as a human being should not be determined by the ability to contribute economically. We are talking about humans who have been broken, those who have been persecuted and, specifically in this debate, those who have protected characteristics and have been through absolutely unimaginable horrors.

I appreciate the Minister giving some level of clarity that there will be special considerations. We will be looking very closely at what comes forward in the equality impact assessment and on the special considerations. I believe that the Minister did not quite answer the question about improvements in legal aid; if he could write to us about what will happen on that, it would be appreciated.

I thank all Members for their contributions today, and those who are standing up for people who have suffered unimaginable horrors.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential impact of proposed asylum reforms on people with protected characteristics seeking asylum.

Palliative Care: North Derbyshire

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Ashgate Hospice and palliative care in north Derbyshire.

In late June of this year, my fiancé Amanda and I found ourselves, along with 3,000 others, dressed in bright-pink t-shirts, wearing flashy-pink bunny ears, setting out from Chesterfield football stadium on the annual Sparkle Night Walk, a fundraiser for Ashgate hospice in north Derbyshire. Fundraisers raised over £385,000 that night—another reminder of the precious place that Ashgate hospice has in the hearts of the people of north Derbyshire.

It is often said that everyone in north Derbyshire knows someone who has been helped by the hospice. It is impossible to overstate the affection for it, or the commitment that local people demonstrate to raising funds for it. Ashgate is a charitable hospice providing specialist palliative and end-of-life care for about 2,600 people each year across north Derbyshire. In October came the devastating announcement that Ashgate was consulting on making as many as 52 posts redundant, and planning to close 60% of its in-patient beds.

[Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)]

I have received so many emails from really concerned constituents about this issue. There was one that stuck out: it was from a serving member of the armed forces, who wrote to me about her elderly mother who recently passed away at Ashgate. She was stationed abroad, but flew home to be with her mum, and was able to spend five days and nights with her—her mother’s last moments. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should all be extremely thankful for the high-quality care that Ashgate hospice gives to our constituents and others, and that we should all be concerned about the reduction in beds and the loss of jobs?

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a reason why Ashgate holds a dear place in people’s hearts. It is because at the lowest ebb, Ashgate has been there to provide love, care and support when all else is lost. This is a story that we hear so many times.

While the announcement caused shockwaves across the community, it did not entirely come as a surprise to Derbyshire MPs, who had for many weeks been attempting to get clarity between the then Derbyshire integrated care board and the hospice on a number of issues.

[John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned other Derbyshire MPs. Many of my constituents have told me how Ashgate hospice has been there for them in their darkest moments. Paula Reeve told me that what Ashgate did for her mother, Joan Dempsey,

“felt nothing short of miraculous...That time was a very precious gift and my family remain in the debt of all the staff at Ashgate”.

Does my hon. Friend agree that we owe it to individuals like Paula to ensure that Ashgate hospice gets the funding it needs to continue these valued and vital services?

[Mr Perkins]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is important to say that a half-hour debate is primarily an opportunity for a single Member to raise something with the Minister, and to get a ministerial response, but as my hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) and for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) made clear, it is an issue that is felt incredibly passionately right across the north Derbyshire community. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Sandher-Jones) would also have been here if she was not on Ministry of Defence duty in Gibraltar. It is an issue that many of us feel passionately about.

It is important to get across that, in those meetings, we wanted to establish what exactly the ICB’s current funding was paying for and how that benchmarked against the overall level of funding that hospices were receiving in other areas, and to get an agreement on an interim level of funding to enable the hospice to continue providing the current level of care while a more detailed investigation into the current cost of care was commissioned.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. I spoke to him beforehand to suggest a helpful intervention. He rightly said that fundraising is important for the hospice, but NHS funding never covers more than a fraction of the cost. There are four distinct hospices in Northern Ireland that provide instrumental support in terms of end-of-life care for those who require it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there must be a national minimum NHS funding level for hospice care to ensure that services across this whole nation are not depleting as a result of lack of funding?

[Mr Perkins]

I absolutely agree. One of the frustrations that many of us in Derbyshire have felt is that there is no clarity on what a reasonable level of funding is and what the expectation is. There are rumours flying left, right and centre. In the middle of all this, the staff, the patients and the fundraisers are left wondering who to believe and what the situation is. I hope that, when we hear from the Minister, we will learn more about that.

In the summer, the ICB produced a comparison with NHS-funded care in the south of the county in an effort to show MPs that Ashgate hospice was too expensive, but has now disowned that comparison. After several months of pretty unsatisfactory discussions at which the two sides never reached a settled position even on what was currently being spent, the move from Derbyshire to a three-county ICB model saw a sudden withdrawal by the ICB of any suggestion of interim funding, forcing the hospice to go ahead with plans to make redundancies.

Our hospices receive an average of just a third of their funding from Government via the NHS and are reliant on fundraising for the rest. The Government contribution fell dramatically under the 14 years of the previous Government, leaving the gap for charitable hospices to make up even larger. Year on year, hospices such as Ashgate have expended any fat in reserve and are now faced with intolerable financial pressures. In today’s debate, I am seeking to make the case for a more equitable funding settlement for all hospices to gain greater clarity about the particular situation in Derbyshire and see whether anything can be done to stave off these terrible service closures and nurse redundancies in an institution that provides outstanding palliative care.

Let me touch on the national context. Hospice UK published research last month showing that 57% of hospices ended the last financial year in deficit, with 20% recording a deficit of over £1 million. That is actually a slight improvement on the staggering 62% of hospices that recorded a deficit a year before, thanks to the emergency £100 million of additional funding provided by this Government. A health system that relies on a sector so chronically underfunded that 57% of hospices are in deficit to provide care is simply not functioning. The Government are right to make it a priority to assist hospices such as Ashgate to get back on their feet.

Although it is true that this crisis evolved under the previous Government and sat there on the ballooning list of things to do when this Government came to power, many hospices like Ashgate had spent year after year dipping into their reserves and had no fat left to cut when the Government’s welcome increase in funding was accompanied by the rising employer’s national insurance, the minimum wage increases and the NHS pay increase, which is obviously relevant to the wider health community. Many hospices are on the brink. I join the call of many other MPs from across the country for a more generous funding settlement that recognises the crucial role that hospices play in our health system.

Turning to the local situation, it is immensely frustrating to all the Derbyshire MPs, to staff, to unions and to local fundraisers that even at this stage there seems to be a lack of clarity about the current cost of care and how that benchmarks against hospices nationally. A letter I received yesterday from the ICB repeats the suggestion that it has offered to commission an independent review and provide some financial mitigation linked to specific and agreed service mitigations, funded up to £100,000. Indeed, the ICB repeats its view that those financial investigations will be necessary if sustainable solutions are to be found to funding palliative care. Ashgate’s view is that there is no lack of clarity about what money is being spent on, and that it demonstrated that to the ICB’s director of finance at a recent visit.

The situation seems largely unchanged since late October, but many staff face the threat of redundancy, and in the run-up to Christmas some have reluctantly and heartbreakingly chosen to leave the hospice. For any member of staff in any profession, a job being under threat before Christmas would be deeply worrying, but it is important to stress that nurses in the in-patient wards at Ashgate hospice are not just any members of staff. As we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover and for Derbyshire Dales, they provide support for patients and families at their very darkest hour, when all else is lost and all that remains is the comfort provided by the knowledge that a dying loved one is comfortable and cared for in a beautiful, high-quality and caring environment. The emotional strain on those nurses is huge, and the public empathy and affection for them is widely felt. Their professionalism and compassion is renowned, and the effect of the threatened job cuts on them has been devastating.

Although in-patient wards deal with far fewer patients than out-patient and at-home services, many see them as the front door of Ashgate hospice, but they face the biggest cuts: there is a plan to reduce palliative care beds from 15 to six. In response, there has been an outpouring of support for Ashgate hospice from the community. Nearly £250,000 was raised in just two weeks, including an incredible £50,000 from the owner of a Chesterfield-based business, Peter Kelsey. Those funds will allow the hospice to keep open two additional beds for another six months, and care for perhaps another 25 patients near the end of their lives.

Hundreds of my constituents have contacted me and my colleagues to voice their concerns about the situation at Ashgate hospice, and many have also written directly to the ICB to make the case. Despite the claims and counter-claims, there is now widespread distrust that urgently needs clearing up. The ICB continues to imply that Ashgate services are too expensive, although there has been no formal update following the director of finance’s visit to the hospice on 1 December. Staff and unions have been left confused and concerned about the implication that the finances are not straightforward, and remain frustrated about the process. They have questions about whether every step has been taken to reduce costs.

Staff at Ashgate have been alarmed at communications coming out of the ICB, which they believe undermine their reputation for professionalism and financial prudence. If trust in Ashgate’s ability to run its operations is diminished, it will have grave consequences for future fundraising.

What is not in question is that the care that Ashgate provides is outstanding and that, as of this new year, dozens of north Derbyshire’s most gravely ill patients, who would previously have been able to obtain a bed at Ashgate, will die either at home in less comfort, with family members put in intolerable situations, or in an acute bed in the local hospital sector, possibly at greater cost and in less comfort than was the case last year. I want all my constituents to receive the best end-of-life care possible, so it is hugely disappointing that palliative care patients in north Derbyshire will lose access to those beds, and that nurses at the hospices will be worrying about whether they still have a job.

I want to shed light on the distressing and unacceptable situation of service cuts and redundancies at Ashgate hospice, and I seek further clarity and transparency about the funding situation for palliative care in Derbyshire to see whether anything can be done to hold at bay cuts to services at Ashgate.

Although charitable income will always play a vital role in hospice care, allowing hospices to deliver holistic care that goes way beyond NHS provision, hospices need fair and consistent Government funding, which needs to be transparent and clearly linked to contracts. Crucially, it must reflect local need. Whether a person lives in Chesterfield, across wider north Derbyshire or elsewhere in the country, they and their family should have access to quality palliative care when they need it most. I would therefore appreciate hearing the Minister’s response on several points.

First, will he join me in lamenting the devastating cuts at Ashgate hospice? Does he agree that this situation, whereby in-patient palliative care services in north Derbyshire are being reduced, is unacceptable? Will he or his office intervene to ensure that Ashgate hospice and the local ICB reach a transparent and agreed position on the current funding situation, and examine how that position compares with national expectations about funding of palliative care?

More broadly, will the Minister set out the Government’s plans to ensure sufficient and sustainable funding for hospices in the future? Can he confirm whether he has any concerns about the cost of care at Ashgate hospice? If he cannot, will he get this matter on the public record, so that people across north Derbyshire can be confident that the money they have raised through fundraising—hard-earned money—is being prudently spent?

Does the Minister agree that, six months after the beginning of discussions locally, it is completely unacceptable that there is still a lack of agreement about exactly how much is being spent on care by the ICB and how much commissioned care the ICB is funding? Can he do anything to provide clarity about this situation?

Since 1988, Ashgate hospice has provided exemplary care to thousands of dying patients in north Derbyshire. It must go on. Its nurses deserve better than to lose their jobs and to worry about whether something else could have been done. I implore the Minister to ensure that the hospice sector is given the support it needs to play its crucial role, and that locally in north Derbyshire every avenue is explored to save jobs and beds at this wonderful institution.

11:16

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and I really thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) for raising this important issue.

This year, I have seen at first hand—at the Wigan and Leigh hospice, the Noah’s Ark Children’s hospice in Barnet, and Katherine House hospice in Staffordshire—the vital role that hospices play in our communities, so I completely understand why my hon. Friend speaks so passionately about Ashgate hospice. And I will take a moment to thank everyone working or volunteering in the hospice care sector over Christmas, especially those who are spending Christmas day away from their own families just to bring a bit of joy to the people they care for.

This Government want a society where every person receives high-quality and compassionate care, from diagnosis through to the end of life. Hospices and wider palliative and end-of-life care services will play a key part in our efforts to shift more care out of hospitals and into the community. However, we inherited a palliative and end-of-life care system that is under pressure and we absolutely recognise the financial challenges that hospices face as a result of rising costs and reduced charitable income.

Let me echo what my hon. Friend said by also commending his constituents who came together to put their time, effort and money into fundraising. The fact that they managed to save two beds at Ashgate hospice from closing shows how important the hospice is to the wider community, even if challenges clearly remain.

Most hospices are charitable and independent organisations that receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding that charitable hospices receive varies, both within and between ICB areas. Such variation can often be explained by the level of demand in a particular area, but it can also be explained by the totality and the type of provision from both NHS services and non-NHS services, including charitable hospices, within each ICB area.

Although the majority of palliative and end-of-life care is provided by NHS staff and services, of course voluntary sector organisations also play a vital part in supporting people at the end of their life. That is why a year ago, almost to the day, we announced a £100 million capital funding boost for adult hospices and children’s hospices, in order to ensure that they have the best physical environment in which to provide care.

Ashgate hospice is receiving over £845,000 of that money over the two years of funding and Blythe House hospice, another hospice in north Derbyshire, is receiving just under £160,000. All of this capital funding is a once in a generation investment into hospices in England, which will guarantee future savings by making them more sustainable, including by fixing draughty windows, repairing old boilers, installing solar panels, fixing roofs, etc.

We are also providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices that serve north Derbyshire. This year, Bluebell Wood children’s hospice is receiving £986,000, and Rainbows hospice for children and young people is receiving £1,462,000. Our priority was to protect children’s hospices from facing a cliff edge of yearly funding cycles through multi-year settlements, so we were delighted to confirm that this funding would be in place for the next three financial years. This money will be at least £26 million each year, adjusted for inflation, allocated via ICBs to children’s hospices in England, or around £80 million over the three years in total.

Having said all that, I do not for one second want to give the impression that I am downplaying the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield has raised, nor do I believe that this money is a silver bullet for all the issues we face. As he points out, integrated care boards are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care services to meet the needs of the people they serve. My understanding is that what NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB calls its core contract value—the baseline funding in the contract with Ashgate hospice—has increased by 55% since 2022, which represents a higher share compared with uplifts the ICB has provided for other NHS services through its hospital trusts and other providers.

I am aware that the ICB has been working with the Ashgate team over several months to understand why their costs have risen significantly over the last financial year. It has also offered £100,000 towards an independent review, which would be linked to a future service specification—in other words, the way in which the ICB provides funding to the hospice in future. Derby and Derbyshire ICB has committed to develop a new service specification for palliative and end-of-life care to inform its contracting going into 2026-27, and to engage on a new model of palliative and end-of-life care across the ICB cluster, aligning to the three shifts set out in the 10-year plan and delivered through the neighbourhood health model of delivery.

However, it is clear from my hon. Friend’s speech that there are two sides to this story. It appears that there is a gulf in understanding between the ICB on the one hand and the management team of Ashgate and the community on the other—that is clear from everything my hon. Friend has said and from other interventions. I would therefore be more than happy to broker a discussion between the ICB, concerned Members of Parliament and the hospice to get to the bottom of what is going on, so that everyone is on the same page as to what is happening with the costs, where the problems lie in terms of provision and ensuring we do everything we can to retain this vital service. It feels like the dialogue between the ICB and the management team at the hospice is not working, and I am more than happy to intervene, to help to make that work. Perhaps I could sit down and discuss that further with my hon. Friend and other colleagues.

As I said earlier, the delivery of healthcare is largely devolved in England, and ICBs are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care services to meet the needs of local people. Beyond the £100 million of capital funding and the £80 million of revenue funding for children’s hospices, we are not able to offer additional funding from the centre as things stand, although we are looking at and exploring other opportunities. As I told the sector in a speech to the Hospice UK conference in Liverpool last month, I know that this is not the message the sector wants to hear, and it is certainly not the message that I want to deliver. But with the public finances in the state they are in—the state that we inherited them in—I have to recognise that the Chancellor has made some tough trade-offs to support our public services, especially the NHS, in the context of our debt interest payments surpassing the entirety of our education budget as things stand.

In these challenging circumstances, we are trying to support the sector in other ways. We are developing the first ever palliative care and end-of-life care modern service framework, or MSF, for England. That will be aligned with the ambitions set out in our 10-year health plan. We will closely monitor the shift towards strategic commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services to ensure that services start bringing down variation in access and quality. While there is a lot of diversity in contracting models across the hospice sector, we will consider contracting and commissioning arrangements as part of this framework. In the long term, this will aid sustainability and help hospices to plan ahead.

The MSF will not just drive improvements to services that patients receive at the end of life; it will start helping ICBs to address challenges and variation in access, quality and sustainability. Further support is being provided to ICBs through the recent publication of NHS England’s strategic commissioning framework and medium-term planning guidance, which set out in black and white how ICBs should understand current and projected demand on services and associated costs, creating an overall plan to more effectively meet these needs through neighbourhood health. The medium-term planning guidance acknowledges the importance of high-quality palliative and end-of-life care. The guidance makes it clear that, from April next year, ICBs and providers must focus on reducing unnecessary non-elective admissions and bed days from high-priority cohorts—which include, importantly, people with palliative care and end-of-life care needs—and on enabling patients who require planned care to receive specialised support closer to home. That will be at the heart of the neighbourhood health service that we look to build. It is important to emphasise that the cohort of people who are reaching the end of life is a prioritised cohort within the framework of the shift to a neighbourhood health model.

I hope that those measures will reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield of this Government’s commitment to the sustainability of the palliative and end-of-life care sector, including hospices such as Ashgate hospice. We will continue to work with NHS England in supporting ICBs to effectively commission the palliative and end-of-life care that is needed by their local populations. The work that our hospices do to support people in the sunset of their lives, to support families in their grief and to give such families bereavement counselling at their most vulnerable moments is utterly priceless. It is a sad reflection of the dire fiscal position that we inherited and the dire state of our public services in general that we cannot give more than the extra support that I have outlined, but we are doing everything that we can to support the sustainability of the sector in the long term while tackling inequalities and unwarranted variation in the quality and quantity of service provision.

To sum up, strategic commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services is not working anything like as well as we want, frankly, across the country. It is clear that where there are gaps in an ICB’s understanding of the totality of the health and care needs of its population and in the capacity of partners and stakeholders in its ICB area to meet those needs, that process is not working as well as it needs to. That is what the modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care seeks to address. We do not have many MSFs—we have commissioned, I think, three or four in total across the entirety of what the Department of Health and Social Care is doing—so that MSF reflects the importance that we attach to palliative and end-of-life care.

In the medium-term planning guidance, we have also emphasised that the palliative and end-of-life care cohort will be a top priority for our neighbourhood health strategy and the shift from hospital to community. That is what is happening at the strategic level, but I understand that at the constituency level, it also matters what is really happening for the community of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield and the worrying issues around Ashgate hospice. On the detail of what is going on there, I would be very happy to work with him to see what we can do with the ICB and other key players and stakeholders to address the specifics of that issue. There is a strategic challenge, but also an opportunity, for us and a more specific issue on which I would be happy to work with him. Dr Huq, I am happy to give the floor back to my hon. Friend for any closing remarks he wishes to make.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

This is a 30-minute debate so, as I said in the preamble, a wind-up speech is prohibited, but the two of you can confer after the debate.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Oh, okay. Does my hon. Friend wish to intervene?

[Mr Perkins]

I welcome tremendously what the Minister said. It is important to get on record the 55% increase since 2022 because many people contact me to say, “Why have you made cuts?”. Actually, though Ashgate has a £250,000 a month shortfall in what it is spending, there have not been any cuts—it is important that people understand that. I welcome the Minister’s intention to broker a discussion; I am keen to take him up on that offer. Neither staff nor fundraisers are sure of what they know on this issue. They would welcome someone independent coming in to provide that space between the ICB and the hospice. I welcome what the Minister said about the neighbourhood funding model and his recognition that the sector is in crisis, but right now we need, on a local basis, to address the matters that he has raised. I thank him for his commitment to do so.

[Stephen Kinnock]

We have a plan for next steps and I look forward to discussing those with him further.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

11:29

Sitting suspended.

Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg in the Chair]

14:30

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the cumulative impacts of housing development. 

It is good to see you presiding once again, Mr Twigg. Let me start with the obvious statement that in this country, and in all of our localities, we need more housing. There has been population growth, and in our constituencies we want there to be customers for shops and people to work in them, and places for people growing up locally to be able to move into. We also recognise that people move, which is important for labour mobility. Part of the population growth is about net immigration, but a big part is about increasing longevity—people living longer—and part of the need for more housing is the tendency of people to live in smaller households.

Overall, the record of housing delivery for both Labour and Conservative Governments has had its ups and downs. Both Labour and Conservative Governments suffered from major disruptions—in the case of Labour, the crash of 2007-08, and in the case of the Conservatives, covid-19. However, the peak of the modern era in net additions to housing was the 249,000 achieved just before covid under a Conservative Government, against the peak of 224,000 under Labour just before the crash. The target the new Government have in place is one that has not been achieved since the 1970s, and they are falling far short right now. The provisional number for 2024-25 is 209,000, which is a 6% fall on the previous year of 2023-24.

There are aspects of what the Minister outlined in his announcement yesterday that could help to address the shortfall, but I believe that it is inconsistent with the way that the formula currently skews development towards rural areas. What do I mean by that skew and how does it come about? Overall, the Government require a 50% uplift in housing numbers, but in the 58 mainly or largely rural local authorities, the average increase was 70%. In East Hampshire, which I represent, the target doubled, from 575 a year to 1,100.

Meanwhile, urban and major conurbations saw a much lower increase, at around 16% to 17% on average, and quite a few places saw a fall, including much of London and Birmingham. To be clear, that is not correcting a historical imbalance. Looking back over 20 years, the proportionate addition of dwellings per 1,000 households has been greater in predominantly rural areas than in predominantly urban ones. We also know from analysis by the Resolution Foundation that tilting development towards cities is good for economic growth.

Why is it a problem to have a skew towards rural areas? First, let us acknowledge that when we talk about rural land, this is not land that is typically sitting there doing nothing. It is not idle; often, it is farmland. Of course, these days we are more acutely conscious than ever of the necessity for food security. It is also the home for nature, and important to biodiversity. The countryside is an amenity for everyone, whether they live in the countryside or in a town. We will be back in Westminster Hall tomorrow to debate the legacy and significance of Jane Austen. The countryside of the constituency that I represent is what inspired Jane to write her great novels, and it still brings many people to the area.

Yes, there are protected areas of countryside, but it is not only about areas of outstanding natural beauty or national parks—the majority of rural areas are not in one—nor is it about the green belt. In East Hampshire there is a lot of green, but there is no green belt. We have a further complication, in that the district of East Hampshire is shared in Parliament between myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford). The South Downs national park represents 26% or 27% of pre-existing housing and population in the district, but represents only 15% of housing completions in East Hampshire since it came into being. That creates extra pressure just outside the national park, in places such as Alton Holybourne, Four Marks and Medstead, which I will come back to, and in Horndean, Clanfield and parts of Rowlands Castle.

The Minister and I have had an opportunity to discuss this issue previously and I am grateful to him for his constructive engagement with it. I think that East Hampshire district council is right to assume that in the future there will be a split in housing development, reflecting where the pre-existing population and housing were. There is a 74% and 26% split. However, the council cannot do that for affordability. Unaffordability is significantly more acute inside the national park than outside it. However, I am not here today to talk about the national park primarily, because the bigger problem that is driving these issues is the total target.

We now also have effects of the duty to co-operate. It is possible that even with that split between 74% and 26%, the part of East Hampshire that is outside the national park might still get asked by the part that is inside the national park to take on more of its burden, and it is obliged to engage in those discussions constructively. However, we also now have other nearby authorities asking East Hampshire, and by the way a couple of other more rural authorities, to take on more of their housing numbers. So, we have this crazy situation whereby, with all the targets having gone up, people are looking to a district such as the one I represent to take more of their housing. But I should also say that none of those authorities have had an increase in their housing target as large as the one that East Hampshire has had.

We also have looming over us the effect of local government reorganisation. I think that some people see local government reorganisation—the merging of districts and boroughs into larger unitary authorities—as an opportunity and a way to address some of these problems. I fear that that might be a false hope. In fact, the creation of these large authorities might deepen or even embed some of these issues, with more housing being moved into countryside that will then be lost forever.

I will briefly give a case study of one area; it is not the only area where this situation applies, but it is a particularly striking example. It is Four Marks and Medstead. There is a grouping called Four Marks and South Medstead—it is called that in the planning document—and it is in tier three in the settlement hierarchy. It has already had a great deal of housing development. In the 2014 local plan, Four Marks and South Medstead had 2,030 houses and the target in the plan for the period to 2028 was 175 houses. The total number of new houses that have been built since 2014 is in fact 592, which is three times the original target. However, with further permissions and applications, there could be a great deal more houses. Indeed, there could be up to eight times the target and a two-thirds increase in the size of the settlement, and we even hear of further applications on top of all that.

What are the effects of that extra development? It takes a lot for a single housing development to change a local environment, but cumulatively a number of smaller developments can change the whole character of an area, which is at odds with paragraph 187 of the NPPF. And this is not just about character and landscape. It is also about practical matters, such as the A31 and being able to turn right on to it, or the capacity of the waste water treatment plant and the electricity substation at Alton.

I have talked about Four Marks and South Medstead. In the other part of the parish of Medstead, Medstead village itself and its surroundings are in tier four in the settlement hierarchy. There was no specific target for it in the plan, because Medstead village was put together with other villages. However, I have seen speculative applications for a number of sites in that area, particularly in the new land availability assessment.

So why is cumulative impact not being considered in all these developments and proposals? The main time that cumulative development is taken into account is, of course, at the time of plan-making. With speculative developments, when the cumulative effect is not considered, there is a risk that the developments do not meet the economic, social and environmental objectives set out in paragraph 8 of the NPPF.

The East Hampshire district local plan was adopted in 2014 for the period up to 2028, and the update process started in 2018. There have been some delays, including most notably as a result of covid. The key point is that under the old, pre-2024 housing targets, East Hampshire had a five-year housing land supply and the 5% buffer. We then got a rapid doubling of the housing targets. There is now no five-year housing land supply—there is a 2.9-year housing land supply. Given that we have doubled it, the only way we could still have a five-year land supply is if we had previously had a 10-year land supply, and I doubt that many local authorities can say that. That is why, although I am talking about East Hampshire, other colleagues may mention other areas; East Hampshire is clearly not alone.

Since the big increases in a number of the targets for different areas, I understand that most councils do not have both an up-to-date local plan and the five-year housing land supply. Speculative development is therefore probably happening in lots of places around the country, but it is especially concentrated in our rural areas, because they have had the biggest increases in targets.

East Hampshire is currently developing its new local plan. It expects to reach regulation 19 stage in the summer of 2026 and for the plan to be operational in August the following year. Until the local plan is finalised, the tilted balance principle means that the council is required to approve sites unless they can be said to be not sustainable development—a high bar indeed. Each application can be considered only on its own merits and in relation to its individual impact on traffic, sewerage and the rest of it. The council cannot consider the cumulative effect of, say, five smaller developments that might together be the equivalent of one big one. It cannot say, “Because we have already allowed these four, we are not going to allow the fifth.”

While I have the floor, I want to mention something that I have mentioned in passing to the Minister before: that the way the formula works does not encourage a change in the housing mix towards more actually affordable homes. To be clear, in areas like mine, we want more affordable homes. When I say “affordable”, I mean it in both senses of the word. What I call “capital-A Affordable” is the sense known to the public sector: social rent and part ownership. There is also “affordable” in the common English sense of the word—the affordability of housing as it is often expressed to us by our constituents in our surgeries, which is to say homes that young families can afford. Although not everybody does, most aspire to home ownership; I would wager that most hon. Members in the Grand Committee Room today had that aspiration to become home owners and did so.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

On affordability, I was at an open event for a development plan—a large development, as it happens—north of Dorchester, which will fundamentally change the natural characteristics of the town. On the display presented by the developers, the phrase “affordable housing” was actually in quotation marks. That was almost an acknowledgment of how ludicrous that statement is in relation to what is actually affordable for local people. Does the right hon. Gentleman think we need a better definition of what is affordable that is based on what is locally achievable?

[Damian Hinds]

I know the hon. Gentleman’s constituency quite well—he is my mother-in-law’s MP. I know what a fantastic and beautiful area it is, as well as some of the challenges with the local economy. He makes a very good point.

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that affordability is linked to supply and demand? That is part of the reason why the Government wish to increase the supply, which in turn will bring prices down.

[Damian Hinds]

Of course, I agree. It is sometimes frustrating to talk to people who say there is no link between aggregate supply and the price of housing. Of course there is, but there is also the question of the mix, which is what I want to come to.

Other things being equal, the best returns for developers tend to be on larger, costlier homes, and new builds are generally more expensive than the existing stock of housing. In East Hampshire, the median price of the current housing stock is an expensive £430,000, but the median price of new houses is £530,000. With development and the increase in stock at a local level, median house prices therefore go up. The formula then calls for more of the same because of how it measures and treats affordability, so it becomes a cycle in which we still do not get the lower-cost homes we need. It could even be said that developers have an incentive to keep the unaffordability ratio increasing, because that extends the pipeline further into the future. I ask Ministers to look again to create incentives for quality, lower-priced housing.

I have three straightforward, reasonable asks of the Minister. The first and most important is, of course, to rebalance the formula away from rural—not so there is no rural, but so the balance is right and we do not have targets that mean an unrealistic amount is put into the countryside. It is about having that balance, which requires changing the formula.

I asked that of the Minister yesterday, and he was good enough to give me a pithy and clear single-word answer, which was no. I get that, unless and until it changes, the policy is what the policy is, so the answer is no. However, I ask him to reflect further and think about it, not to conflict with Government policy but to complement and support Government policy. A change in the formula—moving back towards the urban, from the rural—would actually support what he is trying to do, including the spirit of what he outlined in yesterday’s statement.

My second ask is to change the way the formula works on affordability, to remove the perverse affordability factor I mentioned. Affordability looms large in the overall formula, as it has had its weighting increased, but this is specifically about removing the perverse effect I just mentioned, whereby building more actually makes an area more unaffordable in the eyes of the formula, which therefore increases the target. I think the Minister will say that local authorities can do that in their plan making, but we need it to be systematised to find a way to require a change in the mix of housing so that we get homes that are more in reach of people growing up in rural areas.

Finally, in the meantime, as the targets have increased so much and so quickly—the five-year housing land supply in many areas could not possibly have increased nearly so quickly—we have a lot of speculative development. Therefore, pending the change in the formula, will the Minister give guidance stating that local authorities should consider the cumulative impact of all developments together?

14:48

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate.

First of all, the right hon. Gentleman spoke about supply, and eventually land prices will drop, given supply and demand. House builders are having to keep house prices up because they bought in at a higher land price, and we hope that supply increases will drive prices down. In my experience, there will always be compromise in development. It will need pragmatic and collegiate teamwork between local authorities and, I dare say, Members of Parliament.

I will focus on a particular aspect of house building, which is jobs. The country needs more homes, more of the jobs that will be created, and the investment, infrastructure and services that come with that. The Environmental Audit Committee reported last month on its investigation into cumulative impacts, and I was privileged to participate in its comprehensive and cogent analysis.

I particularly want to focus on the importance of jobs and careers in the house building sector. As well as jobs for tradespeople, there is also a need for planners, surveyors and ecologists. As many in this House know, I spent my career before Parliament as a surveyor, latterly involved in large, mixed-use sustainable brownfield development as a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. I have spoken before of the importance of skills, training and, especially, apprenticeships, which is unfortunately an area that the previous Government allowed to decline. Although the need for housing is urgent, it is clear that meeting that need comes with many challenges. Solving those challenges begins with understanding them and refocusing our effort to overcome them.

I know from visiting West College Scotland in my constituency that local colleges are enthusiastic to meet the challenges of training and skills. They are ready to adapt and deliver, and they are resourceful and innovative. They will rise to the challenge of delivering the new skills and emerging approaches needed to assess and address the cumulative environmental impacts, managing data and collaborative working. Employers need confidence to recruit apprentices across the board, including many trade apprentices. I hope to see many more level 7 apprenticeships in planning, ecology and surveying skills.

I have seen at first hand the value to employers of apprenticeships over traditional routes into surveying. I have seen young apprentices thrive in the workplace while making a real contribution to real projects alongside their learning. With the foundation of a good apprenticeship, the lives of hundreds of young people will be transformed. Although I appreciate how much more needs to be done to ensure that we protect the environment while building the houses our country needs, the rewards to the United Kingdom go well beyond building homes. Let us not forget the significant beneficial cumulative impacts of housing development.

14:52

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair today, Mr Twigg.

We all recognise the need for genuinely affordable housing, but progress cannot be measured in house numbers alone if it leaves communities worse off. Wing Commander Ian Derbyshire from Payhembury recently contacted me after his wife, who is in her mid-70s, received a letter from her GP surgery in Cullompton to inform her that she had been removed from registration. She had been registered as a patient at Payhembury for over 20 years. Wing Commander Ian and Mrs Derbyshire had written twice to the Cullompton practice to find an explanation for why they had been removed from the surgery’s list, and they were advised to register with a practice that would perhaps be more distant from them. The reason they had to move was simply that new housing had been built between them and the GP surgery to which they were registered.

This is not a unique case. Another resident of Payhembury, aged 89, received an identical letter. It was only after my office made contact with the GP practice that the surgery explained the reason for these residents being reallocated. Mrs Derbyshire has significant memory problems. She finds comfort and reassurance in familiarity, and the prospect of moving GP surgeries, having to retell her medical history, navigating new systems and building trust from scratch fills her with dread. Indeed, this is where joined-up government has to come in, because the NHS knows it is good practice in primary care for patients to see the same doctor over time.

Wing Commander Derbyshire served as an RAF officer for decades. He and his wife moved around the world for 34 years, repeatedly being uprooted by service to our country. Now in later life, when they look for some stability, they are being displaced once more, not by a posting or indeed war, but by a lack of anticipation.

When houses are approved, built and occupied, GP provision lags behind. When surgeries reach breaking point, their current patients pay the price. That cannot be right, particularly in places that have been identified for significant additional housing, as in Cullompton, where we anticipate that over 5,000 new homes will be built as part of Culm garden village in the decades to come.

Under the current planning system, house builders are not automatically required to meet the capital costs associated with additional GP capacity. Local authorities can negotiate section 106 planning obligations with developers to secure financial contributions, but that is not built in. Indeed, these obligations are not obligations; they are discretionary and must meet strict legal tests of relevance, necessity and proportionality. In practice, that means housing growth outpaces the delivery of new or expanded GP facilities in places such as Cullompton.

We must not allow new housing to undermine the provision of healthcare, nor can we allow it to undermine the natural spaces that play a role in keeping people healthy and easing pressure on the health service. A report in The Guardian in October put the UK down as the fifth worst country in Europe for access to green space, because of the loss of it due to development. New housing must not come at the expense of nature or of protected landscapes, and any attempt by the Government to dilute these safeguards will be met with firm and determined opposition. We can and must build new homes for this country, but not by forcing the elderly from their GPs, by eroding our green spaces or by displacing the very communities those homes are meant to serve.

14:56

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), my constituency neighbour, for securing this debate.

Housing and planning are among the issues I hear about most from my constituents across Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere, Liphook and the surrounding villages. I do not hear about it in the abstract or as a theory, but in the very practical terms of pressure on schools, GP surgeries, roads and the character of their towns and villages. As my right hon. Friend said, this debate is not really about whether we need more homes. Of course we do; it is about where, how and at what cost.

Targets that ignore local reality do not solve the housing problem; they export it. In my constituency, which spans East Hampshire and Waverley councils, housing targets have more than doubled under the Government’s planning framework. Councils are left with a stark choice: rewrite their local plans at speed or have them overridden by the system. In East Hampshire, the annual requirement has jumped from around 570 homes a year to well over 1,100. In Waverley, it has risen from over 700 to nearly 1,500 homes a year. That is not gentle growth; it is a near doubling of development in a predominantly rural or semi-rural area.

The consequences are entirely predictable. Schools are already full. GP practices are struggling to recruit. Hospitals are under strain. Roads designed for villages and market towns are now expected to function like urban arteries. Yet the infrastructure is simply not there. We are being asked to build the homes first and hope that the roads, schools and GP surgeries turn up later.

What makes matters worse is the sheer imbalance in where this pressure is being applied, as has already been mentioned in this debate. In London, housing targets have been significantly reduced, in some cases by around half, despite London facing the greatest housing demand in the country. Cities are best placed to absorb growth—higher density, established public transport, major hospitals and universities, and the ability to scale infrastructure alongside development. By contrast, market towns and rural districts are being told to carry a disproportionate burden. That does not fix the problem; it just shifts it on to communities that are least able to cope.

Take East Hampshire. Around 57% of the district lies within the South Downs national park, which means the remaining land outside the park is absorbing an ever-greater concentration of development. Places like Liphook in my constituency are being stretched to breaking point, and even towns that are ripe for development, such as Whitehill and Bordon, are under pressure because housing development is accelerating faster than services can keep up. Protected countryside on one side, relentless development on the other—that is not planning; it is pressure cooking our communities.

If we are serious about meeting housing need, targets must be fair, realistic and aligned with local capacity. Growth should go where infrastructure already exists, not where it is weakest.

There is also a serious issue of public confidence. Where councils cannot demonstrate a five-year housing land supply, the Planning Inspectorate almost invariably sides with the developers, regardless of the strength of local objection. In those circumstances, residents rely on their local authority to defend them robustly. I was deeply concerned when a controversial development in Haslemere was approved on appeal, despite well-documented objections and its location within the Surrey hills national landscape. What compounded that concern was the response of the Liberal Democrat leadership of Waverley borough council, which wrote to residents telling them to “move on” before all reasonable avenues to challenge the decision had been explored. That is simply unacceptable. When residents are fighting for their community, “move on” is not leadership; it is surrender.

Labour’s new targets risk collapsing trust in the planning system, rather than restoring it. Councils that claim to stand up for local people must actually do so when it matters. We will not build the homes we need by riding roughshod over communities, overwhelming infrastructure and eroding faith in our local democracy. We need a planning system that is credible, balanced and rooted in reality—one that builds homes in the right places and at the right pace, with the infrastructure alongside them. If we fail to do that, we will not just fail to meet the housing need, we will leave communities paying the price for decades to come.

15:01

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for bringing attention to this important issue. As far as local planning authorities are concerned, what matters is not the national target for housing but the local target as set by the standard method. At heart, the standard method compares local house prices with local wages. With a little jiggery pokery, that produces a number allegedly related to local needs. Unfortunately, the standard method is an especially bad way to devise a housing strategy. It was bad when the Conservatives invented it, and it is no better now under Labour, now that the numbers have been tweaked to produce even higher results. Far from solving the housing crisis, the standard method is the direct reason why we now have 1.4 million unbuilt permissions—wrong permissions in the wrong places at unsaleable prices. The more we load further badly allocated permissions on to what is already there, the worse it will get.

My constituency of Horsham will be granting new fantasy permissions on the edges of estates that do not exist yet and may not do so for decades to come. Multiple new estates will be attempting to attract customers within a few miles of each other. Of course, each new estate slows down the build-out rate for what is already there, so the net gain in housing delivery is questionable. It is also the most wasteful way to use land that one could possibly come up with. Most local planning authorities, like Horsham, are obliged to choose from whatever sites private developers promote to them. As a result, we are plagued with edge-of-town suburban developments that cost too much when they are built, and take up too much land in the process. Relying on private developers to bring down house prices always was a grossly over-optimistic strategy. And guess what? It is not working.

In Horsham, we have also been faced with a unique additional circumstance called water neutrality. This started with a ruling by Natural England that came out of the blue, prohibiting any increase in water abstraction from our main source in the Arun valley, in case it compromised a rare wetland habitat. For a four-year period, Horsham district council was not allowed to approve any new development at all if it increased water consumption by so much as a single litre. Needless to say, that was a stiff challenge to meet. As a result, the council slipped from being one of the best in class for housing delivery to one of the worst today. Extraordinarily, throughout this whole period, planning inspectors continued to assess HDC against its centrally mandated house building target of a little more than 900 a year. They took no account at all of the reason why the houses could not be built. It was literally against the law for Horsham to obey the law, and that was a gross injustice that remains uncorrected.

A few weeks ago, just as abruptly as the water neutrality was imposed, it was lifted. Horsham has now been left exposed to almost unlimited speculative development because we are so very far from being able to show a five-year land supply—it is probably under one year now. The immediate major consequence has been the approval at appeal for 800 houses at a site known as Horsham golf and fitness village. That development was not included in the emerging local plan, because it was judged to fatally undermine the green gap between Horsham and Southwater. It has no school or clinic and is on the wrong side of a dual carriageway. It is also barely half a mile from a much larger potential site for 1,200 homes, known as West of Southwater. The Southwater site is in the local plan and does have the relevant facilities. That is the site that should be built on.

Because the Government have thus far refused to help Horsham out of its unique problem, we have a chaotic situation of planning by appeal. The whole strategic logic of plan-led development is in jeopardy in my area. There is no present way for Horsham district council to argue the impact of cumulative housing development, because there is always a presumption in favour of development for almost anything that comes forward, as previous speakers have mentioned.

In the worst case scenario, it could be several years before Horsham has an approved local plan, by which time untold damage will have been done to our strategic planning and countryside. Under the previous Government, Ministers seemed to confuse water neutrality with nutrient neutrality and nothing was done. To his credit, the current Minister understands the situation perfectly well. We still do not have a solution, however.

That is very disappointing because a solution would be easy to implement and could be done without compromising the Government’s overall housing ambitions. In fact, I believe it would deliver the Minster’s intentions more completely. The Minister has already kindly agreed to meet me in the new year. I hope we can have a satisfactory conversation and find a solution to this problem, which is grossly unfair to the people of Horsham. There has to be a way forward.

15:07

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for setting the scene so well. I will obviously bring a Northern Ireland perspective on the impacts of housing development. I want to be fairly positive about how we do things; it is important to understand what we are doing in Northern Ireland and for us to understand what is happening here across the water.

Housing developments are foundations for social stability and improving the economy. I have a close working relationship with many of the developers back home, especially in Newtownards, where there is substantial development in Comber and Ballynahinch at present. There will always be difficulties. By their nature, housing developments bring imponderables to the local communities and associations. It is about how we address those things. I have often had meetings with the developers and local community groups to try to iron out some of the problems. We understand that the planners are independent; they sit between and make the decisions. Representations can also be made to planners as an individual. By and large, we have found those meetings to have gone well.

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on healthy homes and buildings, which is committed to ensuring that homes are healthy, better environmentally and more efficient, and that they have green areas, playgrounds, car accessibility and charging points. All those are part of building somewhere that people can have as a family home for a lifetime, which is what we are trying to achieve. I make that point because there is a real need for social housing, which I want to illustrate. Housing should never be for private development alone. There has to be a social housing trend, portion or section.

As of March to September 2025, there were 49,000 applicants on the Northern Ireland Housing Executive waiting list, with 38,000 in housing stress with immediate need. That gives an idea of the situation. I have been fortunate to have 400 social housing units built in my constituency, although that does not really reach the need. When we have developments, there needs to be an understanding that there must be some commitment from the developer for social housing needs within that. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts here on the mainland about what is being done to ensure opportunities for those who are more likely to rent a house than to buy one.

The other issue in Northern Ireland, particularly in my constituency, is that house prices have risen more than in other parts of the United Kingdom. In my constituency of Strangford, house prices are among the highest in the whole of Northern Ireland. I can speak for my constituency, and the house price increase is shocking. The other issue I have found is that mortgages are quite clearly almost beyond the reach of those who want to buy a house. I know that the Government have committed to ensuring that there is help for first-time buyers, but in Northern Ireland I do not see much of that help. I ask the Minister, respectfully as always: what can be done to help first-time buyers to get on the first rung of the ladder?

I bought my house back in 1987, which is when I finished it. When I tell Members how much I built it for, they will say, “My goodness me. Is that possible?” It cost £27,000 then and today it is worth over £325,000. That house is no longer mine—it is my brother’s; I have moved to the farmhouse—but the point is that there were opportunities to build a house at that price umpteen years ago. I remember very well that when I left school, there was a man who came to Ballywalter to live. He bought my father’s coal business, and I got to know him—I was only 16, so the couple were “Mr and Mrs”. He built his house—in 1971, so not yesterday—for £3,750. A four-bed house—my goodness. I remember saying to him—as we did in those young days, at 16 years old—“Mr Dowds, how will you ever be able to pay your house back?” How wrong was I? In 1971, the price of houses was much smaller, and if he had been able to buy two of them, he would definitely have been quids in.

[Alison Taylor]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. When it comes to young people wanting to get on to the housing ladder, does he agree that five cuts to interest rates is a good start for this Government?

I also totally agree with the hon. Gentleman about more positivity in terms of working with local authorities to find solutions. After a 30-year career in property development, I know that development is never easy. It is about finding pragmatic solutions and working together, and there is a role for the MP to get involved, working with our local authorities.

[Jim Shannon]

I intervened on the hon. Lady in the Chamber yesterday and she has returned the compliment today in Westminster Hall. I recognise what she say—and by the way, I do not take anything away from the Government. I support their target of 1.5 million houses, whether or not they reach it, because it is important to have housing and opportunity, whether for social housing or first-time buyers. I welcome the Government’s commitment. It is not about negativity; it is about how we can take it forward in a positive way.

There are many positive impacts of housing developments, including job creation, local economic growth and investment attraction. However, there are some other crucial aspects that must be taken into consideration. For example, with new housing, there will be a loss of green space. I understand that, but I also understand that people need to have housing to live in. There will be water and air quality issues, pollution, traffic congestion, new infrastructure in the form of roads, clinics, schools and maybe small shops as well. They are all part of this, but if we work with developers and have that in our plans and work with councils, then hopefully we can agree a way forward.

Multiple new developments can overwhelm roads, junctions and parking, leading to congestion and increased travel times. A whole new ring road is being built outside my town, Newtownards, which will open up housing on both sides and create opportunity. Another development in Newtownards, which will have 670 houses, will connect to the last part of that ring road, which is really important —[Interruption.] Sorry, Mr Twigg. I am coming to an end. We also have to get water, electricity, gas, broadband and waste disposal.

Although housing development is essential to meet the needs of a growing population and support economic growth, we cannot overlook the cumulative impacts of multiple developments. Only by balancing the benefits of new homes with careful consideration of their combined impact will we create resilient, thriving communities where people want to live, work, grow and play.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts. He is very assiduous and always gives us good answers to our questions. I am keen to hear whether he has had an opportunity to talk to the Minister back home in the Northern Ireland Assembly—I know he does not have responsibility for what happens here in England—to see whether we can learn from each other.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Before I call the last two Back Benchers, let me say that I will be calling the Lib Dem spokesman no later than 3.30 pm.

15:15

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for securing this debate.

We have heard several contributions about the cumulative impacts, which is an important term. Although the impacts come within the planning remit, they are often not given the priority that they ought to have. In fact, they ought to be the prime consideration in any new development.

I welcome the Government’s proposal to develop more than 1.5 million homes over the next five years, because in the city of Birmingham and my constituency, Birmingham Perry Barr, the housing shortage is an enormous problem. Somewhere in the region of 25,000 families are living in temporary accommodation. I often hear about split families, with the husband and some children living in one part of the city and the wife and some children living in another part, so housing is an important and desperate need.

Building new homes is not just about the bricks and mortar. Other hon. Members have eloquently set out the other important infrastructure necessities, so I will not repeat that, but I want to talk about a development in my constituency. The athletes’ village was meant to be a legacy project. It cost somewhere in the region of half a billion pounds, and it was meant to deliver 1,200 to 1,400 family units. It was originally meant to be used by the athletes arriving to participate in the Commonwealth games, and after that the properties were, in tranches, going to become social and affordable homes.

Hon. Members have already talked about the word “affordable”. When I graduated, I started my first job on an income of, I think, about £14,000. I purchased my first home at the cost of £30,000, and I was able to pay off the complete mortgage within a number of years. Developers now give people the option of purchasing 50:50, so they get a mortgage for half the value of the property. “Value” is the buzzword, because the value of the property is determined by the area in which it is built. Affordable homes are not really affordable; that word often gets used to make it seem like people can get on to the property ladder, but they are not really offered much.

The athletes’ village was, at first sight, an extremely welcome development. It would provide extra units that we desperately needed in that inner-city area, but the problems are now emerging. It was not planned very well. In London, it is acceptable for tower blocks with many units to be built because there is the transport infrastructure, and people are used to going out and doing small amounts of shopping—that is the lifestyle—but for residents of Birmingham it is an enormous challenge. The families who live there were essentially blackmailed into taking on those properties. If a band A homeless person is given the option of taking on a new home, they will bite the council’s hand because they would rather be living in a permanent new home than temporary accommodation. Some of that temporary accommodation is absolutely awful.

The families are now struggling, because they have no parking spaces. Residents on one neighbouring street are up in arms, because some of their parking spaces have been taken. It is becoming very toxic, and a number of vehicles have been vandalised. It is causing serious problems in the local community. I have taken the issue up with the acting chief executive of Birmingham city council, and we are looking at ways to deal with the matter.

I will not take up much more time, but I would welcome a meeting with the Minister, or a member of his team, to see how we can resolve this issue in Birmingham Perry Barr. It will require additional support—perhaps to acquire some land so that we can resolve parking issues. This is just one of the issues we get when we do not think properly about the cumulative impact. That should be paramount. Once again, I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire for securing this valuable debate.

15:24

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for securing the debate.

The subject of cumulative development has reared its head in my constituency very recently. On Saturday, I hosted a public meeting about plans by Martin Grant Homes to build more than 200 homes on the area known as Saunders Lane—green-belt land between Hook Heath and Mayford in Woking. The venue for the meeting was Mayford village hall, and people were queueing out the door. There were hundreds of people—standing room only. The response was overwhelming, and the message from my community was clear: people are united in not wanting to lose these green-belt fields forever.

The area is already poorly connected and struggling with weak infrastructure as it is—let alone with significant housing development. My residents are deeply concerned about the impact on the local environment, the transport system, wider public services and the character of the area.

On top of the objections to the Saunders Lane plans, there are concerns about the cumulative impact. Only on the next road, Egley Road, 86 homes and a 62-bed care home are under construction, and there is a planning application for 74 new properties. In the very same village, about half a mile down the road, there is planning application for 200 retirement homes and a further care home on Sutton Green golf club. Because all the applications are speculative, the cumulative impact has not been considered.

My local authority, Woking borough council, has started to draft a new local plan, in which locally elected councillors and local people can decide where we build the homes we need. The developers, including Martin Grant, are wrong to pre-empt that fair and democratic process and take away the right of my constituents to shape the future of our area. Because they are pre-empting it, we cannot assess the cumulative impact.

I will be writing to the council and the developer to summarise what happened at Saturday’s meeting and urge everyone to put forward their views. It is blindingly clear that local people feel strongly about where they live. The community is very much alive and well in Mayford, and I am proud that I could respond to and lead the community in such a manner.

Woking is keen to build homes. We have given planning permission for well over 2,000 properties, which are not being built. Planning permission is not the problem in Woking and many other constituencies; the problems are in the construction sector. Will the Minister reassure me and my constituents that we in Woking can be allowed to shape our area, agree which green fields the local plan will protect, and say where development should happen, without being overturned by decisions from Whitehall?

15:24

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate. It is a truth universally acknowledged that an MP in possession of a majority, however big, must be in want of a debate, so I am full of admiration for the right hon. Gentleman staying tomorrow to debate Jane Austen in Westminster Hall. As for myself, I am hoping to get away before that, so this will be my last appearance before Christmas. I therefore take the opportunity to wish hon. Members, the House staff who look after us so amazingly well, the officials, yourself, Mr Twigg, and even the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) a very merry Christmas, although I know he would prefer that my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) were here instead of me.

I say with some hesitation that I am hoping to go home before that, because it has been something of a week for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I am not quite sure how the Minister is still standing—he is sitting down now, but must need a break. Knowing the Minister’s prodigious amount of activity this week, perhaps tomorrow we will have three Bills and two White Papers coming out and I will be brought back here, but hopefully not. Yesterday, we were debating quarrying and planning—it was a blast. I did not know that I would be getting up and sitting down so many times on MCHLG business this week, but one could say that the Chairman of Ways and Means shapes our destinies, rough-hew them as we may.

I will move on to the more serious points of the debate about the cumulative impact of housing development. I fear that it is worse than the right hon. Member for East Hampshire surmises, because although I remember from my A-level economics that, in a perfect market, increasing supply should reduce price, we need to remember that in any locality in the country, we do not have a perfect market in house building. We have usually one supplier, maybe two, controlling the supply of homes to the market, drip-feeding them to sustain their prices. Any private house builder that went into business to reduce prices would rightly be punished by their shareholders. Putting private house builders in charge of reducing house prices is a bit like putting Herod in charge of childcare. As another seasonal reference, I am forced to consider what would be the cumulative impact of stables being used under permitted development for change of use to emergency temporary accommodation for young mothers.

The point that I think the right hon. Gentleman is really getting to with cumulative impact is the prolific number of permissions that are coming about outside the plan-led process. The plan-led process is so important because it is where cumulative impacts can be properly gauged and established. Any development that is not in the local plan, unless it has an environmental impact assessment, is not going to carry out a cumulative impact assessment. That is why we are so concerned that the Government’s recent announcements will undermine that plan-led process, with so many loopholes. To take one example, there is the abolition of the town centre-first approach for retail development, but there are many others that will undermine that plan-led process.

There is a particular need to look at the cumulative impact when it comes to flooding. The Environmental Audit Committee has recommended that the Government revise the guidance on the cumulative impact for flooding for this very reason. Many of the developments being discussed will not carry out cumulative impact assessments because they are outside the local plan or are sub-EIA development. I ask the Minister whether and to what extent the Government will carry out that review. Flooding is a massive issue for Rockwell Green and Hilly Head in my Taunton and Wellington constituency, which has been flooded twice in the last five to 10 years. We need to see a proper cumulative impact assessment of flood impact and flood risk.

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

The cumulative impact of development in Tewkesbury is nothing less than a threat to the continuing viability of Tewkesbury as a permanent settlement. The Environmental Audit Committee recently produced a report on flood resilience in England. Would my hon. Friend join me in asking the Government if they will implement recommendation 89 to make water bodies statutory consultees on development?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend makes a massively important point—absolutely, they should be statutory consultees. He gives me the opportunity to raise an even more serious concern. From careful reading of the Government’s snappily titled consultation on statutory consultees, alongside the ministerial statement of 10 March this year, it appears—I hope the Minister can put me right—that they are considering cancelling and withdrawing the direction that prevents councils from granting planning permission, against the advice of the Environment Agency, in flood risk areas. They are certainly consulting on that basis, so I hope the Minister will clarify whether that is the intended approach and how many homes in flood risk areas he expects will be permitted, against the advice of the Environment Agency, if they go ahead with that change. It is a very serious matter and could affect areas across the country—not only Rockwell Green in my constituency, but places far further afield.

My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) made excellent points about the need for cumulative impact to be properly considered. My hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) felt that plan-led development in his constituency was in jeopardy. I agree: after yesterday’s announcement, I feel that plan-led development is in jeopardy everywhere. The Saunders Lane development in Woking is a classic example of where proper consideration of cumulative impact is required.

The Liberal Democrats would pursue a different approach. Cognisant of the market conditions that exist in relation to private house building, we would focus on public investment in a programme of 150,000 social and council rent homes. In fact, we have never met the housing figure of 300,000 per year, except when we have had a big programme of council and social housing. With that element missing, private house building has bubbled along at more or less similar levels; third sector housing has increased somewhat. The big missing element has been council and publicly funded social homes.

For the reasons that I have set out, without a massive injection of such homes, we cannot rely on private house builders to increase supply in any meaningful way, however many permissions above and beyond the 1.4 million homes that have planning permission already, but are not being built, are given out. That figure, as my hon. Friends have explained, so clearly and starkly demonstrates why the challenge is not the issuing of planning permissions, but how to get those permissions built out. We urge the Minister to use much stronger “use it or lose it” measures to tackle unbuilt permissions. I welcomed the statement that he made in the summer about taking forward such measures, but we have yet to see anything really happen in that regard.

We need to remember those who cannot afford homes, and that however many private house builders provide more private homes, 99% of them will be out of reach of people who cannot afford a first home. That is why we need there to be social homes, but we also need a new generation of rent-to-own homes, so that people can get on the home ownership ladder at an early stage in life.

With that, Mr Twigg, I once again wish you a merry Christmas.

15:33

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on raising this important issue for debate today. He and I—as well as our hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) —represent stunning Hampshire constituencies, with renowned countryside walking routes and picturesque towns and villages. I still reckon I have the better deal, as my constituents have the “Costa del Hamble”, but I know that my right hon. Friend would definitely say the same about his patch.

May I briefly respond to something that the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), said? I do not know whether he planned it as an early Christmas present for me, but the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) walked in while he was speaking. That was a good thing to see.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire has instilled in me a sense of déjà vu, which demonstrates the length of time that he has been campaigning on these issues for his constituency. We had a Westminster Hall debate before, and he is right that he cross-examined the Minister, who gave a very pithy response yesterday in the NPPF statement. I know that my right hon. Friend works very hard for his constituents, to make sure that he can get them the acquiescence that they seek from the Government.

I congratulate East Hampshire council on developing a local plan and, now, taking the responsible step of renewing it. That shows the kind of leadership that is needed. However, my right hon. Friend raised a number of important points, and I hope that the Minister will answer them. First, he asked about affordability, and about the rise in speculative development because of the lack of five-year housing supply, but the new targets have completely ripped up and undermined the plan-led approach to spatial planning, which the Government are rightly seeking and which I would argue forms the backbone of the planning system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon said that planning is a huge issue in his postbag. I, too, have that issue, and I suspect that Members from across the House who made brilliant speeches this afternoon also have that issue in their constituencies. It is love of our communities and respect for their unique characters that brought us all here to the Chamber today.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire and I know that our constituents are not against building more homes in principle—there is a clear need to build many more houses up and down the country; that is a simple fact—but people are asking for the right houses to be built in the right places, and for community resources and infrastructure to be invested in to sustain a growing population, a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon made in his contribution. That is why it is so important that we properly assess the impacts of housing development. When multiple housing developments are lumped together, they overwhelm communities, stretch scarce resources and dilute the character of our towns. Over time, people begin to lose their vital sense of belonging and communities lose their identity.

The house building sector makes a substantial contribution to the economy. In 2023, new house building generated £53.3 billion in economic output across Great Britain, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in house building firms and their contractors, as well as the wider supply chain. But economic benefit depends on stability, confidence and deliverability, and an approach that relies on unrealistic targets, rising costs and declining affordability risks undermining the very industry the Government claim to champion.

The impacts of housing developments manifest in numerous key areas. One huge concern, which I receive countless emails about from my constituents—no doubt all Members present can say the same—is the environmental impact of housing developments. The Government had the chance to address such concerns through Lords amendments 38 and 40 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which my Conservative colleagues in the other Chamber supported. However, the Government chose to ignore them, leaving unanswered questions about the environmental harm of their planning process.

We know and agree that ripping up the green belt is not the answer. Once the green belt is lost, it is lost forever, and that is why my Conservative colleagues and I have called for the swift redevelopment of brownfield sites, something that—to give the Minister credit—he did address yesterday in the NPPF update. The Campaign to Protect Rural England’s “State of Brownfield” report showed that we have more brownfield land now than in previous years. It highlighted that in a substantial number of local authorities, there is enough brownfield land with planning permission to meet the housing targets set by the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need for at least the next five years.

The Government’s plan for new homes disproportionately places the responsibility on rural communities to reach their target, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire outlined. The 2024 reforms to the national planning policy framework, introducing mandatory housing targets and a new standard method for calculating local housing need, redistributed top-down housing targets to rural areas from urban areas by Government diktat. As my right hon. Friend outlined, East Hampshire council’s targets doubled, while London’s housing allocations were cut by 11%, Birmingham’s by 38% and Coventry’s by 55%. In Eastleigh in my constituency, which has already built more than is required, the allocation is up by 42%, and in Fareham in the other half of my constituency, it is up by 62%.

That is particularly concerning given that, as my right hon. Friend outlined, many younger people whom we want to achieve and get on the housing ladder want to live in metropolitan urban centres. I am pleased that the Government listened to the calls of the Conservative Opposition on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill Committee. We called for an incentive for densification in urban centres; it was rejected by the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), but now the Government have come forward with one, which we welcome.

The point that my right hon. Friend made is that Government regulations and Government legislation are competing against each other. I hope that the Minister will answer my right hon. Friend’s challenge. The new NPPF will designate and allow urban densification, but housing targets in rural areas have massively increased, acting as a competing objective. Which is more important—the NPPF or the housing targets? If housing in towns, in which it is much easier to regenerate and to increase housing numbers, is to be increased, housing targets cannot be uplifted greatly in rural areas but reduced in urban centres.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

In my constituency we have had a 113% increase in our housing targets. A seven-year land supply has now dropped to little over three and a half years, making us susceptible to the very speculative developments that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Does he share my concern that in the circumstances in which speculative developments come forward, we lose the opportunity to plan strategically the infrastructure upgrades that a community needs, and each development brings only a small, incremental increase?

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon made that point, I was about to make it, and the hon. Gentleman’s Liberal Democrat colleagues also made it, so there is universal acclaim for his claim, but it is also absolutely correct. I hope the Minister addresses that.

As the amount of housing increases, community infrastructure and resources must be expanded accordingly. That means more schools, GP surgeries, train and bus stations, hospitals, paved roads, bin collections and street lighting, to name just a few of the essentials. The list goes on and on; those are just some of the things we need to consider when looking at where to build. We must get better at prioritising those vital services, while recognising that not every development is right for the area it is proposed for.

We all know that under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, as amended, local authorities can secure investment to fund new services and infrastructure in the local area, but the system is struggling to keep up with demand. Over a third of all section 106 agreements took longer than 12 months to finalise. Some 76% of local authorities reported an average timeline exceeding a year, and in over a third of councils it was over 500 days. In 2024-25, 45% of local planning authorities had agreements finalised that had taken over 1,000 days to complete. Dose the Minister agree that in order to unlock some of the housing that is needed, we need a simplified and standardised method for section 106 notices across the country? [Interruption.] He says yes from a sedentary position. I look forward to his affirming that in his comments shortly, but we would support that.

[John Milne]

I very much agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the lack of infrastructure provision and with his previous comments on the failure to prioritise brownfield, but does he recognise that all those errors were inherent in the previous system under the Conservative Government? The problem is that they have not been corrected. They were always there, and that is why MPs across the country have been complaining.

[Paul Holmes]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman slightly. I remember that in the last Parliament, under the Conservative Government, there absolutely was a commitment from Planning Ministers and Secretaries of State to prioritise brownfield development. That was announced during our time in government by the former Prime Minister but three, and by a number of Ministers in the MHCLG.

[Cameron Thomas]

How many was that?

[Paul Holmes]

Well, I believe the hon. Gentleman will have watched the news. I would be the first to acknowledge that we had quite a few in the last Parliament, but there absolutely was prioritisation of brownfield sites first. We prioritised building houses where they were needed, not where they were not.

What steps do the Government plan to take to protect rural communities feeling the adverse effects of increased housing development? If the Government are serious about building homes and maintaining public confidence in the planning system, they must take cumulative impacts seriously, plan infrastructure properly and ensure that developments work with communities, not against them—something that the Liberal Democrats and my party have been very clear will be removed by the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the English devolution Bill.

I have been very clear about my concerns regarding the Government’s housing targets and the credibility of the 1.5 million homes ambition, which is now being questioned by a number of experts. If the Government are serious about supporting the house building sector and securing its economic benefits, they must ensure that housing delivery is realistic, properly planned and supported by the necessary infrastructure. Crucially, this requires a far greater focus on the cumulative impact of development so that growth is sustainable, communities are supported, and the long-term economic and social benefits of house building are not undermined.

Finally, Mr Twigg, I wish you, the Clerks and staff, the Minister, and even the Liberal Democrats a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

15:45

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate today, and for introducing it with his customary clarity and civility. It has been a thoughtful and considered debate and I thank all other hon. Members for the contributions they have made. Whether it is simply the result of good fortune or the product of the right hon. Member’s powers of persuasion, this is not the first time we have debated house building in his constituency this year. We also had—as he made reference to—what I hope he will agree was a useful meeting back in March with officers from East Hampshire district council to discuss the challenges his local planning authority faces in setting housing requirements, given the proportion of it covered by the South Downs national park.

In the time I have available to me I intend to address the main points raised by the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members, with the usual caveat that I am unable to comment on individual local plans or planning applications, given the role of MHCLG Ministers in the planning system.

I will start with some general comments on housing targets, given that the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly clear in his remarks that they are at the heart of his concerns, but I will also touch on the interesting points made on affordability more generally and on tenure mix. In the NPPF published on 12 December last year, we restored mandatory housing targets that were abolished by the previous Government. We restored them, as our manifesto committed us to doing. It means local authorities must use the standard method as the basis for determining housing requirements in their local plans.

However, we have almost always made it clear that a mandatory method is insufficient if the method itself is not adequate to meet housing need. That is why the NPPF, published last year, introduced a new standard method for assessing housing need that is aligned to our stretching plan for change target of building 1.5 million new safe and decent homes in England by the end of this Parliament. I gently say to the shadow Minister: if he calls that number unrealistic, in his own manifesto, in the bidding war that was pursued during the general election, his own party came out with a 1.6 million number. How a Conservative Government would have set about achieving that is a question for another day.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned affordability with both a capital and a lower case “a”; in its lowercase sense, I say to him that boosting the supply of homes of all tenures has to be at the heart of any strategy to address affordability. There is a wealth of evidence that building more housing for private market sale makes other types of housing more affordable now. Such is the mismatch between housing supply and demand—the result of successive Governments not building enough homes of all tenures, and I include my own party as well as his in that. Tenure obviously still matters. We look primarily to local planning authorities to set the tenure mix in their own local areas, but the draft framework that we published yesterday includes firmer expectations in relation particularly to housing sites over 150 units. We want to see the right type of housing come forward.

[Damian Hinds]

The Minister is very good to give way; I thank him. To be clear, when I was talking about the mix, I was not talking solely or even mainly about the tenure mix, but about the price points and the way that the formula works—he gets the point.

[Matthew Pennycook]

The point was well made and well understood, and I will address it shortly. The new standard method that we introduced relies on a baseline set at a percentage of existing housing stock levels to better reflect housing pressures right across the country. It uses a stronger affordability multiplier to focus additional growth on the places facing the biggest affordability challenge. In general terms, it is a vast improvement on the standard method it replaced, which was based on household projections that were volatile, subject to change every few years and subject to unevidenced and arbitrary adjustments, with the result that local planning authorities found it extremely difficult to plan for housing over their 10 to 15-year plan periods.

I did, in response to the question put to me yesterday by the right hon. Gentleman, give a pithy and straightforward answer. The Government have no intention of withdrawing or modifying the standard method that is now in operation. On the specific point he raised, where affordability ratios fall, the uplift would also fall because it applies over an affordability ratio of 5:1—that is the Office for National Statistics affordability threshold.

I think I understood the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the short-term impact, but the only way to bring the affordability ratio down is to build many more homes of all types, and that is what the target is intended to do. However, it is a complex and technical point and he may wish to write to me on it.

[Damian Hinds]

I will write to the Minister in more detail—but if, in adding to the stock, we raise the median house price, that has an adverse effect on affordability. We get this ironic situation where the more we build, the less affordable it looks.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I do not think that is correct—at least not in the medium to long term. Going back to the point I just made about supply and demand, we have to build sufficient volumes of homes to arrest the steady rise over many years in house prices and start to gently bring them down over time. We are some way away from that, but the affordability uplift should respond over time if we start to build, in a high and sustainable manner, the large number of homes we need.

I will now address the rural-urban balance, which was raised by a number of colleagues. We have had this debate before. We recognise that the targets we have introduced are ambitious and they do mean uplifts in many areas, but such is the severity of the housing crisis in England that all parts of the country, including rural areas, must play their part in providing the volume of homes the country needs.

However, it is not the case that the new formula directs housing growth away from large urban areas. We scrapped the arbitrary 35% urban uplift that the previous Government applied to the 20 largest cities and urban centres—and the core of those centres, as was mentioned. However, across city regions, the new standard method increases targets by 20%. Through it, housing growth is directed to a wider range of urban areas, including smaller cities and urban areas as well as larger city areas.

London was referenced; under the previous Government, housing targets in London were deliberately set at entirely unrealistic levels because that arbitrary 35% standard method was applied not just to the core of our capital city, but to every London borough. We have revised that number down, but London still has a stretching house building target, which we increased in response to feedback to the consultation we received.

In the draft framework yesterday, as the shadow Minister and other hon. Members recognised, we also gave more support for a brownfield-first approach to housing. We welcome responses to the draft framework, through which we now have in-principle support for development within settlements, subject to specified exemptions where there could be unacceptable impacts. We have built on that with the announcement of a default “yes” for development on land within reasonable walking distance around train stations.

Local plans have been mentioned a number of times; in some ways, this gets to the heart of the matter. I would first say to the Liberal Democrat spokesman that, far from undermining the plan-led system, the announcements we made yesterday will strengthen the plan-led system. The clear, rules-based policies in that new draft framework will make it easier for local authorities to come forward under the new system of local plan making and get those plans in place more quickly and effectively.

Why do they need to be in place more quickly and effectively? Because authorities with an up-to-date local plan will typically meet the five-year housing land supply, which is what is required to pass the examination in the first place. Having a local plan in place supports a much more comprehensive approach to considering cumulative impacts of development, so we need those local plans in place across the country. It is not my party’s fault that we do not have universal coverage of local plans. I remember standing for years where the shadow Minister is now, telling Conservative Housing Ministers on this side of the Chamber to take effective action to use the full range of their intervention powers to drive up local plans. We are not there, but this Government are committed to doing that.

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire knows about this, as we have discussed it before: local authorities are able to justify a lower housing requirement than the figure that the standard method sets, on the basis of local constraints on land and delivery, such as natural landscapes, protected habitats and flood-risk areas.

[Cameron Thomas]

I thank the Minister very much for giving way, and I wish him a merry Christmas. Nothing would empower my local authority more than the Government implementing recommendation 89 of the EAC’s report into flood resilience in England. Will his Department do that?

[Matthew Pennycook]

We will respond in due course to that report, in the usual way. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about flood risk; I am trying to set out that local constraints can be taken into account in the context of local plans. Government provide flexibility in policy for areas that have such local constraints when calculating housing needs and setting targets, and we provided further guidance on the matter alongside the December 2024 NPPF.

East Hampshire district council is availing itself of that flexibility through the use of a locally determined method, as part of its efforts to progress towards submitting its plan for examination. My officials have been actively supporting that process, including by facilitating an advisory visit for the Planning Inspectorate, and I will continue to meet with officers to discuss any further support.

Several hon. Members mentioned the duty to co-operate. Local authorities often face pressure from neighbouring authorities to meet unmet housing needs under the duty. I recently announced that the duty as a legal provision will cease to exist once the new planning system regulations come into force early next year. However, East Hampshire and neighbouring authorities will still be expected to show that they have collaborated across boundaries, including on meeting unmet need, in line with the current and draft NPPF, which set out policies on maintaining effective co-operation.

I understand hon. Members’ long-standing concerns about infrastructure. The Government are aware that there is more to do across Government and with the sector to ensure that the right infrastructure gets built. I draw hon. Members’ attention to the remarks I made in the statement yesterday. The previous NPPF, from December 2024, strengthened the support for infrastructure —particularly essential infrastructure such as health services and schools—and the latest draft, which we published yesterday, consolidates and strengthens that. On top of that, through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which should receive Royal Assent this week, we are streamlining the delivery of nationally critical infrastructure, from rail to roads to reservoirs, across the country.

The shadow Minister asked me about section 106. We want to see a simpler, more transparent and more robust section 106 system. That should include standardised templates. As the NPPF published yesterday shows, we think that, in the first instance, that should be rolled out on medium sites.

To conclude, I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire once again for giving the House an opportunity to discuss this important range of matters. As in our debate earlier this year, I appreciate that I will not have convinced him of the merits of the Government’s approach to planning reform or the standard method, but I hope that I have provided him and other hon. Members with sufficient reassurance in respect of local plans, infrastructure and other important matters. I too wish all hon. Members, you, Mr Twigg, House staff and officials a merry Christmas. I hope that everyone has a well-deserved break.

15:59

[Damian Hinds]

I thank the Minister for his considered remarks and for his constructive approach to date—the cumulative effect, one might say, of the Minister’s approach. However, I hope that after today he will think further. The Government should issue guidance to local authorities to the effect that, at least in circumstances where they face huge increases in their housing targets in short order, and it is not viable or realistic to suddenly have a five-year land supply available, they should be able to consider the cumulative impact of speculative developments that come along.

The Government should also change the way the target itself is set, so that we get the affordable homes we need, but with the totals rebalanced among local authorities—back towards urban areas and away somewhat from rural ones—so that we end up with reasonable and realistic targets for East Hampshire and areas like it. That would be entirely consistent with—indeed supportive of—what the Government are trying to do on overall housing supply, but it would be a sustainable way of providing the services and infrastructure that people need, fostering community, promoting economic growth, and maintaining the public amenity and productive capacity of our countryside.

I conclude, as others have, in the spirit of the season by wishing you, Mr Twigg, all colleagues from across the House, and House staff a very happy Christmas.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the cumulative impacts of housing development.

Neurodiversity in the Workplace

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

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

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered neurodiversity in the workplace.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. Neurodiversity is still too often misunderstood, overlooked or treated as a marginal issue, when in reality it affects millions of people across our workforce, across every sector and across every part of the country. This debate is about fairness, dignity at work and whether our workplaces are genuinely designed for the people who work in them.

I also requested this debate for a more personal reason. I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as an adult, and like many people who are diagnosed later in life, that diagnosis did not change who I am, but it clarified things. It helped me understand why some environments drained me, why others energised me, and why I had spent years adapting myself to systems that were never designed with people like me in mind.

Since I became a Member of Parliament, many constituents have written to me with experiences that echoed that same story. This included people who have spent years masking, people who have been labelled difficult or unreliable, and people who have quietly left jobs they were good at because the barriers became too much. So when we talk about neurodiversity at work, we are not talking about abstract theory; we are talking about real people, real workplaces and real lost potential.

Around one in seven people in the UK are neurodivergent, including autistic people, and people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other conditions. Many neurodivergent people will qualify as disabled under the Equality Act 2010, which means that they are legally entitled to reasonable adjustments at work.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this matter forward, and I spoke to her beforehand. By way of encouragement, in Northern Ireland, we have done a lot of work on this issue, and I am very impressed by what we have done. There has been a significant push towards neuro-inclusion through governmental toolkits and specialised training programmes. That fits in well with our legal landscape in Northern Ireland, as it should, but there is one thing that we fall short on, and the hon. Lady might wish to ask the Minister about it. Small businesses do not have human resources sections and, as such, they are unable to do the work that HR departments do. Does she feel that that is something we could improve on, not just here but back home?

[Sarah Hall]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention; I absolutely agree. I echo his comments about the fantastic work that is being done in Northern Ireland on inclusion, and I am sure that the Minister will address the points he made in her closing remarks.

It is also important to say this clearly: not all neurodivergent people have a diagnosis, and many are diagnosed far later in life. In some parts of the country, people wait years for assessment. During that time, they are still expected to work, cope and perform, often without any understanding of why things feel harder than they should. We cannot design workplace support around a system that is already overstretched and inconsistent. Support has to be based on need and not on paperwork.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for her very personal testimony. Does she agree with me and PACT for Autism, which is based in my constituency, that we should not only support people in work, but support people into work? The application process for some roles is often so complicated that people who are neurodiverse are put off even applying for them, which means that they cannot realise their potential.

[Sarah Hall]

I could not agree more. My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found that one in five neurodivergent workers have experienced harassment or discrimination at work because of their neurodivergence.

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member agree that, in the workplace, the way that neurodiverse traits are observed and received can vary between men and women? Women can suffer the consequences of unconscious bias. As my constituent Zaphira recently explained, decisiveness and spontaneity in men can be viewed as emotional or impulsive in women.

[Sarah Hall]

I agree and feel that the hon. Member is describing me a little bit in that. So yes, I absolutely agree with that characterisation.

Just as concerning is the fact that nearly a third of neurodivergent workers have not told their manager or HR department at all, not because they do not need support, but because they fear stigma, stereotypes or the impact that disclosure could have on their career. That tells us something fundamental: the problem is not difference, but the environment that people are expected to work in. Neurodiversity describes the natural differences in how people’s brains behave and process information. We all think, learn and act differently and have different strengths and challenges. That is normal and human, yet the world of work is still too often built around a very narrow idea of what is typical. When workplaces are designed around that narrow norm, barriers are created.

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

Merry Christmas to you, Mr Twigg, and all the House staff. I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on a topic that is close to my heart, and close to the hearts of many of my constituents. My union, the GMB, has done a lot of work on this issue through the “Thinking Differently at Work” campaign. Does my hon. Friend agree that when workplaces are inclusive by design, and there are clear routes for reasonable adjustments to be made, employers benefit because they get the best out of all the talents in their workforce?

[Sarah Hall]

I could not agree more. I will come on to some of the work that GMB, Unison and USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers— are doing in this area.

The barriers that I mentioned are what disable people. Too often, neurodiversity is still approached through the medical model of disability, focusing on what is wrong with the individual, what they cannot do or how they fall short of an assumed standard. That approach creates low expectations and leaves people feeling pitied, patronised or quietly excluded. The social model of disability offers a different and more honest lens. It recognises that people are disabled not by their impairment or condition, but by barriers created by society: inflexible systems, poor understanding and rigid attitudes.

Let me ground that in a practical example. An autistic retail worker struggled with constant changes to their working hours not because they did not want to work, but because of unpredictability, increased anxiety and sensory overload. What they needed was a stable shift pattern. Predictability gave them control and made work possible. Under the medical model, the problem would have been framed as the worker. Under the social model, the problem was the demand for unlimited flexibility. When the employer agreed to a stable shift pattern, it meant the difference between staying in work or having to give up their job altogether. There was no grand intervention, just a reasonable adjustment.

[Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

The number of education, health and care plans for children with autism has more than tripled over the past decade. When we combine that with rigid recruitment procedures and inflexible working practices, as my hon. Friend outlined, it creates a significant challenge. Does she agree that the Minister should address how the Government are working with employers, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business and Trade to make workplaces genuinely neuro-inclusive, supporting individuals and helping more young people into work?

[Sarah Hall]

I agree, and I will come on to that point in my asks of the Minister.

Something that I hear repeatedly from constituents is the lack of consistency around reasonable adjustments. Support agreed with one manager often disappears when roles change, teams move or a restructure happens. People are forced to re-explain themselves, re-justify their needs and start again. That is not dignity at work. Adjustments should travel with the worker and not depend on who happens to be in charge that month.

A constituent who contacted me described a stark contrast between workplaces that created barriers and those that removed them. In early roles, including in a warehouse and later in a café, my constituent was keen to work and learn, but support was minimal. Tasks were not adapted, opportunities to build skills were restricted and they were left without support. In more recent roles, they now volunteer as a radio presenter and at the Lowry theatre, and are also employed as a trainer delivering the Oliver McGowan mandatory training programme. My constituent tells me that she loves the reasonable adjustments that they have put in place for her, compared with the very little that was in place in earlier roles.

Another constituent, a new mother, contacted me about her attempt to return to work following maternity leave. She is autistic and requested reasonable adjustments to support her return. Instead of support, she was met with suggestions, including from HR, that needing reasonable adjustments meant that she is not fit for work at all. That response is deeply concerning, and it speaks to a wider problem about how disabled workers are too often treated.

[Cameron Thomas]

I have spoken before about how neurodiversity is still an opportunity to be fully exploited by the workplace and that it is significantly inhibited by the education system. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Disabled Children’s Partnership “Fight for Ordinary” campaign presents an opportunity to create educational and working spaces that fully harness diversity?

[Sarah Hall]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I am passionate about inclusion in the workplace and for children in schools. I would be happy to work with him on driving that forward.

The response to my constituent was not inclusion, but exclusion, and it shows how neurodivergent women can be pushed out of work at exactly the moment that they most need understanding and flexibility. Many neurodivergent people are still met with damaging assumptions that they lack empathy, cannot understand humour, struggle socially or are somehow less capable or reliable. None of that is true, but those assumptions shape recruitment processes, performance management and workplace culture in ways that quietly exclude people before their abilities are ever recognised. The National Autistic Society has been clear that the biggest barriers that autistic workers face are a lack of understanding, negative stereotypes and failures by employers to adapt.

[Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)]

I left school at 16. I did extremely badly at school and seem to have been fine ever since, largely. It is now very clear to me that people who are neurodiverse in many ways contribute far more than normal people. If they were given a chance, they would succeed. Just 30 seconds on the internet produces the names Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, Richard Branson, Emma Watson, Steve Jobs and many other people who have clearly excelled, all of whom would describe themselves as extremely neurodiverse. Employers should understand what they can contribute to an organisation.

[Sarah Hall]

I absolutely agree. Some neurodiverse people would describe it as a superpower; some do not like that term, but there are so many wonderful assets and abilities that we in the neurodiverse community have. If only we were given a chance, we could make a real difference and be fantastic in whatever we choose to do.

Recruitment processes often reward confidence over competence, eye contact over ability and social performance over skill. Vague job descriptions, ambiguous questions and high-pressure interviews screen people out before they have had a chance to show what they can actually do. We also need to talk about masking. Many neurodivergent people hide parts of who they are at work to fit in. Sometimes, they do not even realise they are doing it, but masking is exhausting. It contributes to anxiety, isolation, burnout and poor mental health. I recognise that experience myself, and I know from constituents how common it is. People might not need to mask so much if workplaces were designed with difference in mind.

Although this debate rightly spans all sectors, I want to be clear that the public sector must lead by example. Unison has been clear that, despite legal protections, many public sector workplaces still lack awareness and fail to implement inclusive practices. Rigid recruitment processes, inflexible performance systems and delays or refusals in reasonable adjustments cause stress, sickness absence and employment disputes that could be avoided. There is also a gendered dimension to this. Neurodivergent women often face compounded discrimination. Unison has called for neurodiversity to be embedded properly within equality and diversity frameworks, backed by training for managers and reps, stronger enforcement of Equality Act duties and better access to support schemes such as Access to Work. Those calls matter, because without enforcement, rights are theoretical, and without adequate funding, inclusion becomes optional.

Trade unions have been vital in driving this agenda, and I want to highlight the role of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—the retail trade union. Across the UK, thousands of shop workers, warehouse staff and reps are having conversations about neurodiversity. Many USDAW members are neurodivergent themselves. Many others are parents or carers of neurodivergent children and adults, juggling paid work with caring responsibilities in sectors where flexibility is often in short supply. USDAW talks about neurodiversity in the same way that we talk about physical difference. Some people are taller, some are stronger, some have more stamina. We accept those differences without question, and our brains are no different.

I also highlight the work that the GMB has done through its “Thinking Differently at Work” toolkit on neurodiversity, which I value because it is practical and designed for real workplaces, covering understanding neurodivergence, good employment practice, the law, reasonable adjustments and more.

Clear, accessible guidance is what too many workplaces are missing. It shows how much progress can be made when knowledge is shared early, rather than after problems escalate. Without neurodivergent minds, the world would be a poorer place. We would miss out on different ways of seeing problems, spotting patterns and challenging assumptions. That is true on a shopfloor, in a hospital, in a classroom and here in Parliament, which is why I have joined other MPs who are neurodivergent or disabled to support work on modernising Parliament, not just to make it more accessible for those of us already here but to encourage more people from different backgrounds to come into politics in the first place.

Neurodiversity should never be a barrier to ambition, public service or opportunity. Earlier this year, the TUC passed a motion calling for stronger national action on neurodiversity at work, calling for: clearer rights to reasonable adjustments, including for those waiting for a diagnosis; recruitment reform that assesses ability rather than social performance; investment in inclusive apprenticeships and work experience; better workforce data; and a national neurodiversity strategy co-created with disabled people. Those serious, practical proposals are grounded in lived experience. Supporting neurodiversity early is not a “nice to have”. It is a prevention that benefits everyone.

I have six asks of the Minister. First, will she commit to strengthening compliance mechanisms for how the Equality Act duty to make reasonable adjustments is understood and enforced in practice? Secondly, will she set out what the Government will do to make sure that people can access support at work, based on need not paperwork, including those who are waiting for or do not have a formal diagnosis? We cannot build workplace inclusion around a system where people may wait years for an assessment.

Thirdly, will the Minister commit to improving Access to Work, with clearer signposting for employers and employees, a simpler process and faster decisions, so that support arrives when it is needed and not months later? Fourthly, will she ensure that the public sector shows leadership by adopting consistent neuroinclusion standards, including manager training, so that reasonable adjustments are not left to chance or the good will of individual teams?

Fifthly, will the Minister commit to collecting and publishing workforce data on neurodivergent employees, so that progress can be tracked? At the moment, too much of the conversation relies on anecdote rather than evidence. Transparency matters and what gets measured gets improved. If we are serious about accountability, workforce data must be part of the picture.

Finally, will the Minister commit to ensuring that neurodivergent workers’ voices are central to this work, based on the principle of “nothing about us without us”, so that policy is shaped with people and not done to them?

Neurodivergent people should not have to work harder than everyone else just to stay afloat. They should not have to mask, explain themselves repeatedly or wait until they are in crisis before support appears. We should design work that works for people, not expect people to endlessly adapt to systems that were not designed with them in mind. If we want our workplaces and our Parliament to reflect society as a whole, neurodivergent people must be able to see a future for themselves. I hope today’s debate helps to push us towards inclusive workplaces, where difference is expected, supported and valued, and not tolerated as an exception.

16:19

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Dame Diana Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) on securing the debate and her powerful and eloquent speech. A number of excellent interventions made important points. I have noted them, even if I do not have the chance to respond to them all.

My hon. Friend has previously spoken about her ADHD diagnosis and her determination to use her platform to make Parliament, and politics more generally, more welcoming for neurodiverse people. I am pleased that she has given us the opportunity to talk about how we can achieve that in other workplaces across the country too. At the moment, only 34% of autistic people, for example, are in any sort of employment, compared with around 55% of disabled people overall. As a country, we can and must do better.

My hon. Friend is living proof that neurodiversity does not have to be a barrier to achievement, but as she has previously highlighted, the right support makes a huge difference, whether in education or the workplace. It is important that good practice becomes standard practice—not only does everyone deserve the chance to fulfil their potential, but a more inclusive labour market is a stronger labour market. I will endeavour to answer her questions, but if I miss anything, I am very happy to write to her with further details.

This January, we launched an independent panel of academics, chosen because of their expertise and lived experience of neurodiversity, to consider why neurodivergent people can have poor experiences in work and a low overall employment rate. I am grateful to the panel for their dedication and the evidence they gathered, which will help us—both the Government and employers—to understand how we can improve the workplace experiences of neurodivergent people. The panel was led by Professor Amanda Kirby, who I am pleased to be meeting tomorrow to discuss her recommendations.

I am also pleased to hear about the excellent work that unions have been undertaking in this area, the GMB and USDAW in particular, to expand the understanding of neurodiversity in the workplace.

[Laurence Turner]

One problem experienced by neurodivergent workers is that, when reasonable adjustments are put in place, the manager changes and they have to start again. The TUC did some very good work on a reasonable adjustments passport, as did the civil service unions. I encourage all colleagues to look at that work to see if it can be adopted more widely.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge of this area. Showing our commitment to raising awareness of neurodiversity, ACAS will be offering free masterclasses to small and medium-sized employers in early 2026, which goes to the point that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made about small businesses being able to access information.

As we all know, ACAS specialises in providing free, impartial advice on workplace rights, rules and best practice. Earlier this year, we worked closely with its campaign to improve understanding and support for neurodivergent workers. The new free masterclasses will go further, helping small and medium-sized employers to build confidence, acknowledge the skills and expertise needed to support neurodivergent employees, and address the challenges those employees can face, such as barriers in recruitment, workplace adjustments and retention.

We are also setting in motion a broader mission to deliver change through the “Keep Britain Working” review, led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, which represents a pivotal moment in our mission to create genuine opportunity for all, fundamentally reshaping how we support people to stay healthy, stay in work and build better futures for themselves and their families.

We know that successful businesses and healthy workers go hand in hand, and the vanguard phase of “Keep Britain Working” is seeking partnership with employers to establish what good looks like. “Keep Britain Working” recommends developing a healthy working life cycle of best practice accompanied by a certified standard. Although it is not condition-specific, it will include best practice for early conversations between employers and employees about specific needs, and supporting all parties to navigate making the best adjustments where reasonable.

We know that supporting employers is central if we are to see real improvement in this area. That is why, in addition to our work with ACAS, we also have a suite of measures in place to support managers. We want to start making changes to ensure that we are maximising the opportunities to create accessible and inclusive workplaces for all.

We continue to oversee the voluntary Disability Confident scheme, which encourages employers to create disability-inclusive workplaces, including for people with hidden disabilities. My colleague the Minister for Social Security and Disability is leading work to strengthen that scheme to help it realise its full potential.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South raised Access to Work. We absolutely agree that it needs to work better, and we are doing something about that. We recently concluded the Access to Work collaboration committees, in which we engaged with a range of stakeholders, including representatives of disabled people’s organisations and people with lived experience, to provide discussion, experience and challenge to the design of the future Access to Work scheme. Although the committees have now ended, we will seek opportunities to engage with stakeholders as we move forward with policy development in recognition of the value of their input and experience.

I want to say a few words about the support in place for neurodivergent people who face barriers to getting into work. We know that disabled people and people with health conditions are a very diverse group, so the right work and health support in the right place at the right time is absolutely vital. We therefore have a range of specialist initiatives to support individuals to stay in work and get back into work, including initiatives to join up employment and health systems. They include our new voluntary, locally led supported employment programme for neurodivergent people, the Connect to Work scheme, which has a specialist pathway that is dedicated to supporting those facing particularly complex barriers.

In our jobcentres across England, Scotland and Wales, since August there have been more than 1,000 full-time equivalent Pathways to Work advisers, who provide one-to-one, personalised support to disabled customers and those with health conditions to help them move towards and into work. That intensive support aims to enable disabled people, including neurodivergent people, to gain access to employment, wider skills support and Department for Work and Pensions employment programmes.

My hon. Friend asked about strengthening the Equality Act duty. That is a matter for the Cabinet Office, but I am of course very happy to relay her points to ministerial colleagues.

My hon. Friend also raised diagnosis for neurodivergent people. The Equality Act is clear that an employee does not need a diagnosis to meet the definition of disability. Our digital support with employee health and disability service helps employers to understand these legal obligations. It includes guidance on making reasonable adjustments, and links to other helpful services and sources of guidance. It also includes questions of disclosure, equipping employers to feel confident in having conversations to better understand their employees’ needs.

We are deeply concerned that many adults, young people and children with mental health conditions, ADHD and autism have been let down by services and are not receiving timely or appropriate support and treatment. I am therefore very pleased to welcome the independent review, launched by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 4 December, into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, ADHD and autism.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South also asked about neurodiversity in the public sector. I absolutely agree that the public sector should lead the way in raising awareness of neurodiversity. I am pleased to say that more than 700 public sector organisations are signed up to the Disability Confident scheme, and that all main ministerial Departments have achieved Disability Confident leader status at level 3. We are also committed to ensuring that our frontline staff have the skills and awareness to support neurodivergent people appropriately. There is a range of other commitments in place, and I am happy to write to my hon. Friend about them.

My hon. Friend raised workforce data. Our main source of data is the annual population survey, which does not contain detailed breakdowns of neurodivergent conditions beyond autism and learning difficulties, so we have limited data on employment outcomes for specific neurodivergent conditions. I will write to my hon. Friend with further details about that.

On self-advocacy, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the new independent disability advisory panel will provide that lived experience and make sure that policies take it into account. Zara Todd was appointed the chair of the panel in August. I am keen to show that this Government are taking action. We hear what people are saying about the need to address the particular concerns of neurodivergent people.

Finally, I wish all hon. Members and House staff a very merry Christmas.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Membership-based Charity Organisations

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for membership-based charity organisations.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg.

Membership organisations play a central role in protecting and enhancing the things that we consider important to our national character. The great British countryside is maintained and safeguarded for future generations by conservation charities such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wildlife Trusts and the Woodland Trust. The most iconic landscapes, sold around the world as the backdrop of British soft power—reminding visitors of the iconic settings for Jane Austen, Dickens and Harry Potter, as well as the paintings of Constable and Turner—are kept open to the public by membership charities such as the Youth Hostels Association and the Canal and River Trust.

Speaking of Turner and Constable, membership charities are the stewards of our country’s heritage. They look after the artefacts, artworks and architecture that make us proud to be British. Between them, charities such as the National Gallery, Tate, the National Trust and English Heritage have millions of members. If I were to ask everyone in this room and in this building whether they have ever been a member of one of these charities, I would be surprised if anyone could say truthfully that they had not. The National Trust, for example, has nearly 6 million members. English Heritage and the RSPB have 1.2 million each. Those are numbers that political parties can only dream of.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

The hon. Member mentioned the National Trust and preserving our national heritage. West Dorset’s most famous feature is the Cerne Abbas giant. The National Trust, which looks after it, has just launched a fundraiser to raise £330,000 to buy the land around the Cerne Abbas giant to improve access. Does she agree that membership-based organisations and charities preserve such institutions?

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman has done beautifully to put that on the record. He is absolutely right that these incredible membership charities preserve our national heritage.

If we were to ask people why they support such charities, I expect they would not say that they do so just to get access to some of the venues and the fantastic historic treasures they promote. They would probably say that they value the mission of those charities, whether conserving the countryside, protecting our heritage or serving the vulnerable. They want to support those missions; they are members because they value what those organisations do.

In doing those things, the charities provide significant benefits to the Government. All told, the voluntary sector delivers £14 billion of public services to the Government and directly contributes £70 billion to the UK economy. Much of that is delivered by membership organisations. All that is without mentioning the indirect benefits that many membership-based charities provide: for example the health benefits to the public of maintaining hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, the demonstrable mental health impact of engaging with arts and culture, and all the educational enrichment they offer.

But all that is under threat. Charities are under more strain than ever. It is a question of time and money. Telegraph readers were recently outraged that the National Trust, in order to save on costs, is replacing homemade scones—however one prefers to pronounce them—at some of its properties, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, or the jam on top of the cream, depending on which way one prefers one’s scones.

Billions of pounds of additional financial pressure has been put on charities at a time when the demand for their services is rising and income streams are drying up. The biggest impact, as we know, is through national insurance contribution changes, which have collectively added £1.4 billion to the charity sector’s bills, but our art institutions are set to see huge rises to their business rates as well, and many heritage organisations have seen the cost of maintenance far outstrip inflation.

Meanwhile, so many are seeing demand for their services skyrocketing. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for example, tells me that rescues are operating at 120% of their capacity, and Cats Protection says that, in the last three years, it has seen a 71% increase in the number of cats being abandoned. The wider trend is clear. Around 83% of charities recorded an increase in demand for their services over the last 12 months, but even those pressures might be bearable were it not for the fact that the stability of the funding model itself is being called into question.

Fewer people are donating to charity, and while the average donation is increasing, this highlights the narrowing of the base from which membership charities can secure funds. Those donations are not coming from the places one might expect, such as the wealthy London constituencies of Kensington and Bayswater, Chelsea and Fulham or Holborn and St Pancras, all of which form the three least generous constituencies as a percentage of their income in the UK. In real terms, the amount donated by British businesses has declined as well, with the number of FTSE 100 companies donating more than 1% of their profits falling by 14%.

Money is not the only thing that charities rely on; they rely on people donating their time. However, long-term trends in hours spent volunteering are in decline as well—from 45% in 2013-14 to 28% in 2024-25. People put that down to a whole range of things, such as the bureaucracy and paperwork involved in volunteering and the cost of living pressures that people are under. I will not attempt to understate it: this is a full-blown crisis in the charity sector.

It is no wonder a majority of charity leaders say they would not be confident that they would be able to cope if they saw a decline in their income streams. However, and I know the Minister is aware of this, a decline in their income streams is exactly what we will discuss today, and it is why I asked for this debate.

Membership charities at the moment are able to claim gift aid on memberships that are currently deemed donations by the Government. That settlement is a direct expression of the way that charity members regard their relationship with charities. It is one of the supports that people can give to the aims and the work of the fantastic charities, many of which I have already discussed. They are not private services; their work supports the public good and, in many cases, saves a lot of money for the Government.

I know that the Government see it that way too and the Minister will tell me how much he values the work of membership charities and how much store the Government put into that value, but the truth is that the Government have been very slow to tweak well-meaning and necessary consumer protection legislation despite the imminent impact of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 on membership charities’ cashflows.

Fundamentally, the Act alters the way that membership charities process memberships and the benefits of them, leading to a potentially huge loss in revenues at a time when charities’ finances are already overstretched. The provisions of the Act move us away from a place where we view a charity membership as an expression of support. If, for the purposes of the DMCCA, refundable memberships are no longer considered to be donations due to the Government insisting on applying a 14-day cooling off period, the result is that gift aid can no longer be claimed.

Let me provide a bit of perspective on that: national insurance contributions added more than £10 million to the National Trust’s wage bill. That has been devastating. Gift aid is worth five times that for the National Trust. The story is the same for English Heritage, on which I must declare an interest as I am a member. While it has seen a £1.7 million cost increase due to national insurance contributions, the impact of losing gift aid on their memberships would be more than five times that—valued at around £10 million.

I am no fortune teller, but I have an idea of what the Minister might say. She might say the Government have issued guidance that means membership charities will continue to be able to claim gift aid. But the fact is, as things currently stand, that is not what the law says, and that is creating confusion not just for the big players but for the small ones as well, because charity practice is currently at odds with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and at odds with consumer law. Due to the widespread confusion of three very conflicting pieces of legislation, the Chartered Institute of Fundraising has written to the Department for Business and Trade. I know that is not the Minister’s Department, but I hope that she will convey this message. The institute has written to the Department offering to draft legal advice for small charities so that the Government can just sign it off, but it has had no response to that letter. Will the Minister speak to her colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade to chase that up, please, because small charities are very worried?

Perhaps the lack of response is because there is no clarity about who is affected. The CIF has told me that even it does not know the exact number of membership charities that could fall foul of the change. What is concerning is that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs believes that only primary legislation can really sort out the legal contradiction between current consumer law, charity practice and the provisions of the DMCCA. Again, I do not want to put words in the Minister’s mouth, but I expect she might tell me that the Government have committed to passing legislation about this in the future. However, we know that the wheels of Government can move quite slowly, so when she says that, she probably means establishing certainty for charities by 2027 at the earliest, but it needs to be sooner than that. So, working with colleagues across Government, can the Minister find a suitable legislative vehicle to provide the certainty that the Government say they want? I am not asking her to do anything the Government have not already articulated a need for. And that has to start with reconvening the roundtable of membership charities that was cancelled due to the reshuffle. I would welcome that being reconvened, and I know the sector would, too. Will the Minister commit to that today?

Membership charities have told me that the best possible solution lies in classifying charitable memberships as excluded contracts in secondary legislation. In recognition of their unique nature, their charitable membership should be placed in that category. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that today if she can. It is not unprecedented. Streaming subscription services, for example, have been given waivers from the 14-day cooling-off period. Membership charities should at least be able to expect the same support as users of streaming subscription services.

I will give an example of how this could work perversely for membership charities. Why should someone buy membership of something like the National Gallery? It has sell-out exhibitions such as the very popular Van Gogh exhibition. We could potentially buy ourselves membership, skip the queue, be able to get into sell-out exhibitions, receive a discount for the ticket while we are at it, and then cancel the membership once we have seen the exhibition and received an almost total refund.

The same could be said of the National Trust or English Heritage sites. As things stand, I could purchase membership, visit half a dozen sites for free over a week’s holiday, and then cancel my membership for almost a total refund. English Heritage told me that its membership works out at around 22p a day. Is that the rate at which the membership charity should reimburse a departing member? Will the Minister say on what basis she wants charities to offer proportionate refunds in such instances? If not, maybe she could commit to giving membership charities the freedom to calculate themselves what a proportional refund might look like.

The National Trust believes, for example, that based on current guidance alone, every 1% of its membership that takes advantage of the loophole will lose it £3 million. Even if a tiny number of its members takes advantage of the new loophole in the law, that is a huge and significant impact on its finances, and that means less money spent on its core mission, which is to conserve our heritage.

We expect our charities to do so much. They provide so much for our nation and they do it really well. But membership charities need a vote of support from the Government now. They need this albatross removed from around their necks. And in light of the billions of pounds of tax rises that charities have already seen, there is an incentive for the Government to provide legal clarity. I hope that that is what the Minister will be able to provide in her remarks today.

16:44

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg, for the third time this afternoon—I enjoy your company so much. You are kind and patient as a Chair—thank you very much.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on securing us the opportunity to sow into this debate. She made an excellent speech and presentation. I learnt something from her—I always do, of course—and I have a better idea of her ask of the Minister. It is also a pleasure to see the Minister in her place. I thank her for all her hard work and all the answers she has given us over the past year in her role.

When we bear in mind that some of the UK’s most well-known charities are member-based charitable organisations, it is clear why we must ask, and ensure that, the Government work alongside such organisations that offer so much to our communities. The hon. Member for Gosport clearly outlined the issue. I am a member of the National Trust and the British Legion, and a past member of the Scouts—those are the three I would be aware of. The point I am making is that those are partnerships that I believe the Government can work better with, although I think the Minister recognises the good work that the organisations do. The hon. Lady for Gosport referred to English Heritage, and its work on houses, land, and preserving our history and our culture. All those things are incredibly important. All such British institutions operate from a charitable position, to effect change in individual and community lives.

I am going to give a wee bit of information about the National Trust in Northern Ireland and what it does, just as an example. Such organisations do not simply stand in shopping centres shaking a tin at passers-by; they are more than that. They are intricately involved in the lives of constituents, their aim to enhance those lives effectively throughout the Province and the United Kingdom as a whole. The National Trust, for example, provides employment for some 500 people across Northern Ireland in all the estates, lands and places that it looks after.

I think right away of the incomparable Mount Stewart in Strangford. It is definitely—not just because it is in my constituency—the jewel in the crown of the National Trust. It is the gateway to the Ards peninsula, where the National Trust has other places such as Kearney in Portaferry and Saintfield, where the headquarters are. It also has places further down, across Northern Ireland, and right over as far as Enniskillen in the west of the Province.

Mount Stewart has one of UNESCO’s top 10 gardens in the world. That does not happen just by clicking fingers and seeing how it grows; it happens because the volunteers—the workers—work hard in the gardens. That is why Mount Stewart is so well renowned: the hard work that individuals put in to plant the trees and preserve the gardens. The volunteers have also undertaken projects such as rewetting peatlands and planting native trees to help absorb carbon emissions, build climate resilience and protect the surrounding landscape from flooding. Those are all things that have been done by the National Trust, by volunteers and by contributions from individuals.

The trust has planted hundreds of thousands of trees in Northern Ireland, with a goal of establishing half a million trees by 2030. That is not that far away. That goal will help this great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to be good stewards of our planet and our environment. The trust works towards our environmental goals, which must be welcomed. Those are all things that the Government and the Minister want to see achieved as well. We should work together to make them happen.

The trust seeks to educate, to inform and to involve all who come. It is about not simply preserving the past, although that is incredibly important, but protecting the future. I always think that what we have today is in trust for those who come after. What the National Trust and others do is important because of that. All within the charitable confines help the Government to achieve their aims without the need for Government control or Government responsibility. It is one of those win-wins for the Minister and for Government.

Clearly, organisations such as the National Trust and the British Legion—just two—are foundational ones in the United Kingdom. Their relationship with Government is a two-way street, one that works well when both work well together.

[Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene. I wonder if the Minister would consider the following. I was the vice-president of the National Trust for Scotland for the majority of 10 years and I know the senior management there very well. They have been extremely hurt by the national insurance increase, particularly on people who do part—

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Order. It is an intervention on the Member, not the Minister.

[Mr MacDonald]

Yes—sorry. Does the hon. Member agree that when the Government introduce legislation on, for example, national insurance and people doing part-time work, and now this gift aid issue, they should consider charities as separate organisations?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. The knowledge that he has developed over the years is an important addition to this debate. I know that the Minister is listening when we make our asks, as the hon. Member for Gosport has done and as I will do now.

The service that these organisations provide needs the support that the Government can give, from charitable taxation to gift aid facility. However, there now seems to be a question mark over how gift aid will work. I seek clarification about how the Government can ensure that it continues in some way, so that charities can enjoy the advantages it brings. I did not know the figures involved, which the hon. Member for Gosport referred to. The gift aid facility gives massive help to charities, but I never knew that the amount raised was anywhere near the amount that she mentioned in relation to charitable taxation.

Such support by Government is essential to allow these charities to operate and to make a difference, so it must be enhanced. I understand the need for transparency and openness, and I agree with Government scrutiny when that is necessary. Such scrutiny must continue. However, we must always be aware that for every penny lost in tax, so much more is gained in local economies making an investment, which is a worthwhile investment.

As the reach of these organisations extends so far, it is wonderful for us to work in a mutually beneficial partnership. I ask the Minister for assurances that the work carried out in the charitable and voluntary sector will be fostered, supported and encouraged by Government. If that happens, the concerns of the hon. Member for Gosport, of the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), and indeed of all of us who are here today can be alleviated in some way. We look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the debate.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I call the Lib Dem spokesman.

16:52

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on securing this important debate. It is also a pleasure to serve with her on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

I begin by paying tribute to some of our fantastic membership-based charities, including the National Trust, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and English Heritage, which play a central role in our national story and do so much to enrich the country’s cultural, social and environmental life. Liberal Democrats recognise that membership-based charities safeguard our cultural and natural heritage, strengthen community life, and provide vital service that the Government alone cannot deliver.

Last month, in response to my question at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s pre-appointment hearing for the chair of the Charity Commission, the successful applicant, Dame Julia Unwin, said that the hike to employer national insurance contributions was:

“a crushing blow for many charities.”

We are already seeing the consequences. In July, the National Trust announced plans to cut 6% of its current workforce, or around 550 jobs. At a time of sustained financial pressure across the charity sector, the Government should not be adding additional burdens and barriers.

As we have heard, gift aid for membership-based charities is crucial, supporting organisations in increasing their fundraising income and financial stability, and enabling them to have a greater impact. In the tax year ending April 2025, UK charities received £1.7 billion in gift aid, but only around half of the value of gift aid payments went to charities that received less than £1 million each.

There is concern among membership-based charities that the implementation of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act 2024, which was introduced by the previous Government, risks jeopardising the ability of those charities to claim gift aid on membership subscriptions. Organisations including the Tate, the Royal Horticultural Society, the Royal British Legion and the Wildlife Trusts have penned a letter to the Prime Minister stating that risking charities’ ability to claim gift aid on membership would increase cost pressures and could lead to them having to reduce their services. Will the Minister commit to bringing forward the necessary secondary legislation without delay to close the loophole in the Act and guarantee that eligible membership subscriptions continue to qualify for gift aid so that charities can plan ahead and protect the services our communities rely on?

Before concluding, I would just like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to some of the amazing charities in my constituency, such as the Pavilion on the Park, Citizens Advice, YMCA Eastleigh, Age UK, Two Saints housing, Guide Dogs, the Asian Welfare and Cultural Association Eastleigh, the Blue Cross and 1Community. I urge the Government to look again at what more they can do to support those charities, including reversing the increase to employer’s national insurance contributions.

Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s commitment to greater engagement with civil society as part of the civil society covenant. However, we urge the Government to make that covenant a reality and look again at policies that run counter to its spirit. I hope that the Minister will engage in further discussion with organisations such as the National Trust, which is facing a potential cost of around £50 million in income if it can no longer claim gift aid on membership subscriptions.

At a time of rising costs, pressures and increased demand, the Government must do all they can to avoid adding additional burdens and barriers on our incredible membership-based charity organisations. Protecting gift aid, fundamentally addressing the crisis in charity funding, and honouring the commitments set out in the covenant are essential steps forward. Small and large membership-based charities safeguard our cultural and natural heritage, support vulnerable young people and families, strengthen community life and provide the services that the state all too often fails to cover. I urge the Government to take all necessary steps to support charities so that they can maximise their impact for the people and communities who depend on them.

16:56

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. It is also a pleasure to take part in this important debate on Government support for membership-based charity organisation. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing such an important debate and for her opening remarks. It was apparent on hearing my hon. Friend speak just how important some of our national treasures are, what it is to be British, and how those treasures are entrusted to—and very often in the care of—membership-based charities.

As someone who used to work for a charity for six years before entering this place, I know the amazing work they do in all aspects of life. Many charities, particularly those in the cultural and heritage sectors, continue to be some of the largest membership-based organisations in the UK. Museums, galleries and libraries also contributed over £1.1 billion in gross value added to the UK economy in 2023 and employed nearly 100,000 people in 2024, while civil society contributed £18.5 billion and employed nearly 1 million people.

However, many membership-based charities are now facing growing financial challenges because of impending regulatory changes, the knock-on effect of Government cuts to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s budget and the continued effect of Labour’s increases to employer’s national insurance contributions.

One of the most immediate challenges facing membership-based charity organisations is the impending changes to subscription contracts as a result of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024—as we have heard—and the Government’s failure so far to close a loophole that was identified when that Act was taken through Parliament. The introduction of a 14-day cooling-off period jeopardises the future value of membership as a sustainable income as it will create a loophole allowing people to gain access to venues, exhibitions or creative content and then cancel their membership after enjoying all the benefits within the first 14 days. My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport articulated that problem perfectly. Those cancelled memberships also mean that charities will lose their ability to claim gift aid on membership income.

As I said, that problem was identified when the Act was going through Parliament and the last Conservative Government committed to solve it by introducing regulations to close that loophole. Multiple times throughout the year, Ministers in the current Government have announced their intention to amend Gift Aid rules to ensure that charities can continue to claim it on membership subscriptions after the DMCCA comes into force. However, it is disappointing that legislation to that effect is still yet to materialise a year and a half after the change of Government. Can the Minister therefore confirm whether new legislation will in fact be necessary? If so, when we can expect to see it?

In July, some of the UK’s most prominent charities and cultural organisations, including the National Trust, the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Historic Royal Palaces, the Royal Horticultural Society, the Royal British Legion and the Wildlife Trusts, wrote to the Prime Minister to highlight the impact of the problem on their valuable work. Has the Prime Minister replied to the letter, and what action have the Government outlined to remedy the issue?

Although the Government have consulted on the implementation of the new subscription contracts regime, the consultation closed almost a year ago and those who contributed are still waiting for a response. The uncertainty for charities and cultural organisations, which need to set their budgets and make plans for next year and beyond, is having a chilling effect on some of the most cherished organisations in our country. Can the Minister therefore confirm whether the Government intend to waive the cooling-off period for cancelling a subscription for membership-based charities? When will they introduce legislation to do that if they consider it necessary?

Shortly before the Chancellor’s jobs tax took effect—which the National Council for Voluntary Organisations warned would cost charities £1.4 billion—we in the Opposition warned about the crushing effect of these new taxes. It is disappointing that the Government chose to press on with them, which has forced charities to reduce their staff numbers and scale back their services. Ministers have so far declined to outline what assessment, if any, the Government have made of the effect of their tax increases insofar as they affect the charity sector.

I urge the Minister to use this opportunity to provide much-needed and long-overdue certainty for membership-based charities on how the Government will support them and ensure they are not taken advantage of as a result of the new subscription rules. I endorse all the questions put to the Minister by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport.

17:02

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stephanie Peacock)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and I am glad to respond to this debate. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on securing this important debate. The hon. Lady’s support for membership-based charities is evident from her speech and through her work as the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Of course, it is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I thank him for his kind words. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who work, volunteer and donate to charities across the country.

The UK has many notable membership charities, including our great national museums and galleries, such as the V&A and the Tate, the caretakers of our heritage, including the National Trust and English Heritage, and our celebrated arts organisations, from the National Theatre to the English National Opera. The hon. Lady gave so many powerful examples, as did other Members. She rightly highlighted the huge number of people across the country who are supporters and members of these organisations.

The Government highly value the work that the sector does and the social value it delivers. It is an incredible force for public good. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to visit and meet with many charities, including the Samaritans, Citizens Advice, London Plus and the NCVO, to name just a few. Each has reminded me of the vital and inspiring work that charities do each day.

I will address the main concerns that the hon. Lady has rightly and understandably raised, and then talk about some of the broader support that the Government are offering the sector. I recognise, and I am very sympathetic to, the concerns raised by the hon. Lady about the implications of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act for charities with membership schemes.

Just two weeks ago, I spoke to some of our national museums about that very issue. I know that funds raised from membership schemes are a vital source of income for membership-based charities. Earlier this year, the Department for Business and Trade consulted on the secondary legislation that would be required and has since been engaging regularly with the sector to understand its concerns better and make sure its voices are heard. I am very grateful to the charitable sector for its engagement so far with the Department for Business and Trade on those proposals. I reassure hon. Members and charities that the Government continue to carefully consider these issues, particularly the cooling-off period and the additional administrative costs.

It is important to say that I did meet and speak to the relevant Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), and I would be very happy—she would be as well—to meet the hon. Member for Gosport to discuss this issue further. She will understand that this is not my policy area, but I have relayed the concerns to the DBT. I am confident that we will be able to find an acceptable solution, because the DBT will shortly publish the Government response to the consultation on subscription regulations, and we are committed to continuing close engagement with charities. Although I acknowledge that it is not my Department, I want to specifically address the point about the response to the letter, and a date for the roundtable, that she references. I will endeavour to get both those issues dealt with as soon as possible, to get her a date and a response. There is also the offer of a meeting with me and the relevant Minister.

On a related note, I hope that the charity sector will be reassured by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ guidance, which has been changed to set out its interim position, so that charities can continue to claim gift aid on eligible membership subscriptions. The Government’s intention remains that eligible charities can continue to claim gift aid on the same basis as now.

I acknowledge the concerns that Members have raised about the impact of national insurance contribution increases on charities. I have met representatives from the sector to discuss the NICs changes on more than one occasion, and of course we debated the issue in this Chamber in January. As part of last year’s Budget, the Government took a number of difficult decisions on tax, welfare and spending, to fix the public finances, fund public services and restore economic stability. In her open letter to the voluntary sector on the issue, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that raising the rate of employer national insurance contributions for charities was one of the most difficult decisions that she had to take in that Budget.

The Government recognise the need to protect the smallest businesses and charities, which is why we more than doubled the employment allowance, taking it from £5,000 to £10,500. That means that more than half of employers—including charities—with NICs liabilities will either gain or see no change this year, and eligible employers will be able to employ up to four full-time workers on the national living wage and pay no employer NICs. In addition, we expanded eligibility for the employment allowance by removing the £100,000 eligibility threshold, to simplify and reform employer NICs so that all eligible employers now benefit, and all charities are eligible for the EA, even if they are wholly or mainly carrying out functions of a public nature.

I will now move on to some of the broader support that the Government are giving. I know that in recent years charities have faced significant challenges, including a difficult funding situation. I have seen that at first hand in my own constituency, where I am a patron of BIADS—Barnsley Independent Alzheimer’s and Dementia Support—which is a charity supporting people across the area. I recently met its representatives, alongside my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis)—the Minister for Security—to discuss its challenging circumstances. It is one of a number of brilliant Barnsley charities that support local people; its challenges are reflected across the borough.

The Government are committed to supporting the sector in a number of ways, including direct funding to aid its vital work. That includes the £270 million arts everywhere fund, which delivers on the Government’s “Plan for Change” to support growth and increase opportunities. It can provide support for organisations in need of urgent financial support and infrastructure work. In June, the DCMS published the Government’s first ever dormant assets strategy, setting out our ambitions for boosting participation, ensuring its continued good governance and illustrating how the next £440 million of funding will be distributed. In July, the Chancellor announced £500 million for the better futures fund—the largest outcome fund of its kind in the world—to support 200,000 struggling children, young people and their families through innovative impact funding projects.

Alongside direct funding, the Government continue to support charities via tax reliefs and exemptions. Charities and their donors received about £6.7 billion in tax reliefs in the 2024-25 tax year. The long-running gift aid scheme paid out more than £1.7 billion during that timeframe alone, benefiting more than 67,000 organisations. Charities also benefit from a range of VAT reliefs, estimated to be worth more than £1 billion annually. The Government are committed to removing tax barriers where possible. The Chancellor announced in the Budget that we are introducing a new VAT relief for business donations of goods to charities for onward distribution or use in their services. The new relief will boost the supply of essential items to charities, enabling them to reach the people and communities who need them most.

Cultural organisations, many of which are charities, also benefit from tax reliefs, which help to ensure that they can share their world-class productions, performances and arts with more people across the country. Since April 2025, theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries have benefited from higher tax relief rates of 40% for non-touring productions, and 45% for orchestral and touring productions. Finally, museums and galleries exhibition tax relief was also made permanent.

Charitable giving is one of the most commendable characteristics of British society, and the Government recognise the importance of fundraising to the charity sector. It would be remiss of me not to highlight the remarkable work being done across the impact economy sector and the vast potential for increasing funds for civil society. Charitable giving and philanthropic investment build on the British spirit of generosity. A remarkable £15 billion was donated to charities last year.

I have often heard that more can be done to grow philanthropic investment. That is why earlier this year I outlined how the Government will better connect, unlock and partner with philanthropists. As part of this work, the Secretary of State has committed to the development of a place-based philanthropy strategy. It will set out how the Government can create an environment that encourages philanthropists to support local communities and ensure that the benefits of philanthropy are felt nationwide.

We are going even further to promote investment in civil society. The recently launched Office for the Impact Economy provides a front door for investors and purpose-driven business to partner with Government to extend their social impact across the nation. DCMS will be working closely with the office to build capacity and capability, driving cross-Government strategy at all levels of government to make every pound of public funding go further.

As well as providing funding to the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, the Government have committed to reducing administrative burdens on businesses, including charities, by 25% by the end of this Parliament. That is why in October I set out a series of changes that we will make next year to the financial thresholds for charities. Updating the financial thresholds will save charities an average of £47 million each year, while ensuring that the regulation of the sector remains proportionate and effective.

All that work is underpinned by the civil society covenant, which represents a fundamental shift in how the Government work with the sector. It is a recognition of the value that civil society brings, and a commitment to work in partnership to deliver better for citizens and communities. I was pleased to meet a number of civil society organisations at London City Hall a few weeks ago to discuss how the civil society covenant can help the Government to connect across the whole sector.

I am delighted that No. 10 this week announced plans for the civil society council, which will work in partnership with Government at the highest level to drive and oversee implementation of the covenant. Kate Lee, the chief executive officer of NCVO, will chair the council, and an expression of interest process, which opens this week, will identify members from across the diversity of civil society.

I again thank the hon. Member for Gosport, the Chair of the Select Committee, for securing this important debate and giving us all the opportunity to raise the profile of this important subject. I want to continue to further Government support for membership-based charities, whether that is direct or indirect financial assistance, improving the philanthropic environment, or bringing in charities to work more closely in partnership with the Government. I have heard the serious points she made, and I am happy to follow up with her after the debate.

17:13

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I am also grateful to her for advocating on my behalf, and on behalf of membership charities, with the Department for Business and Trade on the issue, which we have been wrestling with today, of trying to get clarity about the roundtable and the response to the letter.

The Minister talked about the Government carefully considering, but what the sector needs is action. It needs certainty and clarity, and it needs them fast. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act will start impacting them next year, and they cannot wait till 2027 for this to be solved. They are facing a perfect storm: the real unintended consequences of the national insurance rises, which are impacting charities and the amazing work they do, and now the impact of the Act.

The Government say that they care deeply about this issue, but they need to follow up those words with action. I am grateful to the Minister for helping to try to deliver that action. When she advocates for us with DBT, she needs to be in the room. The silos of Government and things falling between the stools are one of the biggest issues in trying to resolve these issues for charities, which our constituents and our country depend on.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Government support for membership-based charity organisations.

17:15

Sitting adjourned.