House of Commons
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Torsten Bell)
I am glad that the hon. Member and I have had the chance to discuss this issue on a number of occasions, and, more importantly, that we had the chance to do so with his constituent Staff Sergeant Pauline Cole, who served our country and campaigned on behalf of other veterans. I know that she has sadly passed away since our meeting, so I wish to put on the record my condolences to her family—not least to her son Les, on whose behalf my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) has been in touch in recent days. As the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) is aware, exactly because of the service of our armed forces, £10 per week of any armed forces compensation scheme award is disregarded when calculating pension credit entitlement.
Josh Babarinde
The Minister will remember that Pauline was a veteran who was awarded military compensation for injuries sustained in her service, but that led to her pension credit being cut from £77 a week to £10 a week, because military compensation is considered income by the Department for Work and Pensions. I have introduced Pauline’s law—the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and War Pension Scheme (Report) Bill—to ask the DWP to correct that injustice and disregard military compensation in those calculations. Will the Minister work with me, and with Pauline’s sons, Les and Simon Haffenden, to conduct a review into the merits of disregarding that income in order to protect our veterans in future?
Torsten Bell
I recognise the powerful arguments that the hon. Member and Pauline made in our meeting. Our position today reflects the balance between recognising service injuries and being consistent across the welfare system. Pension credit is a means-tested benefit, the goal of which is to top up pensioners’ income to a guaranteed minimum level, so in order to ensure consistency, most forms of income—including those he refers to—are taken into account. However, as I said, there is a partial disregard in order to recognise veterans’ service, and the value of lump-sum payments received in respect of personal injury are fully disregarded.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)
Headline unemployment is below its average rate under the previous Government, and inactivity is falling as more people actively seek work. Some 381,000 more people have moved into work over the past year. However, there is a long-term challenge in youth unemployment, which we are responding to through the youth guarantee, more youth apprenticeship starts and other measures.
John Cooper
Youth unemployment is, in fact, spiking at nearly 5.3%, which is heartbreaking, particularly for young people who cannot get that all-important first job. The Government like to pretend that they are a cork in a storm-tossed sea and unable to do anything about this, but they could reconsider employer national insurance contributions and the disastrous Employment Rights Act 2025, which is driving up youth unemployment.
Pat McFadden
The hon. Member will be aware of the national insurance tax break under which no employer national insurance contributions are payable for workers under 21, unless they earn more than £50,000, which not too many workers under the age of 21 do.
Jerome Mayhew
The Minister answered a question about unemployment by giving data about employment, so let us focus on unemployment numbers. By how much has general unemployment increased since July 2024?
Pat McFadden
I did talk about unemployment. As I said, the unemployment figures are lower, on average, than when the hon. Gentleman’s party was in power. We are, of course, doing everything we can to help people into work, which is why I referred to the measures that we are taking, including the youth guarantee and increased apprenticeship starts. That is a much more active approach than the one carried out by the previous Government, who saw rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training but did precisely nothing about it.
Sir Desmond Swayne
The Government loaded costs on to employers while the benefits bill let rip. What on earth did they think would happen?
Pat McFadden
As I said, no employer national insurance contributions are payable for workers under the age of 21, and we believe that workers should be decently paid for the work they do. We are responding to the particular challenge of youth unemployment, which I acknowledge is there, and was there when the Conservative party was in power, with active measures such as the youth guarantee and more youth apprenticeship starts. I remind the House that youth apprenticeship starts fell by 40% while the Conservatives were in power.
Alison Griffiths
I recently launched my Bognor Regis and Littlehampton business club. Many who joined are independent hospitality and leisure businesses, and their No.1 concern is how difficult it is to take on new staff under this Government. What assessment has the Department made of the impact of the Treasury’s new jobs tax, and the Government’s new employment regulations, on job creation in coastal constituencies such as mine? What steps is the Secretary of State taking to mitigate those effects?
Pat McFadden
I congratulate the business club—such organisations play a valuable role in our constituencies. The hon. Lady asks what measures we are taking, and I am grateful to the Chancellor for the extra funding made available in the Budget for the youth guarantee. That will gives hundreds of thousands more training and work experience places to young people and, importantly, will provide funding for the long-term youth unemployed to gain six months’ work, paid at the national minimum wage for 25 hours a week, so that young people get used to the discipline and duty of turning up, doing a job, and experiencing the sense of pride and purpose that comes with having a job.
Lauren Edwards (Rochester and Strood) (Lab)
Net migration has fallen to the lowest level since 2021, which will have a significant impact on our labour market and economy if we do not train and support unemployed people in the UK into jobs in key sectors. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to target back-to-work programmes, especially those for young people who are not in work, education or training, to fill skills shortages in crucial areas such as health and social care?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend asks an excellent question. The fact that net migration is falling to lower levels than we have seen for some time gives added urgency to a question that has often been posed: why do we not do more to train our own workers? That is precisely why I am prioritising youth apprenticeship starts, which fell by 40% under the previous Government. We must arrest that decline and ensure that we respond to the new situation of falling levels of net migration by training more of our own young people.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State outline what exactly the youth guarantee means for young people in my constituency of Mansfield?
Pat McFadden
What it will mean for young people in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and many others, is intensive work coach training, and the chance of training or work experience. If that does not get them into a job, ultimately it will mean a subsidised job, where they get six months of work experience, paid at the national minimum wage for 25 hours a week. The last thing we want is people leaving education and going on to a life on benefits.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State will know that the level of young people not in education, employment or training in Harlow has gone down, due to the hard work of Harlow College, working in partnership with local schools such as Passmores Academy and Burnt Mill Academy, which I visited this morning. Businesses and the local chamber of commerce are telling me that the No.1 challenge for getting young people into employment is the skills they have upon leaving school. What work is the Secretary of State doing with the Department for Education to ensure that we have a curriculum that incorporates the skills that employers so desperately need?
Pat McFadden
I am relieved to hear that the number of young people not in education, employment or training is dropping in Harlow. The number of such people rose by a quarter of a million in the last few years of the Conservative party’s time in government, and they did absolutely nothing about it. Bringing skills into the Department for Work and Pensions gives us the chance to bring skills policy and labour market policy closer together, to help young people get that vital chance of a first job.
Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
When this Government came into office, unemployment stood at 4.2%. After a brutal 18 months of job-destroying, anti-business, anti-growth policies, it now stands at 5.2%, with young people bearing the brunt—1 million of them are not in employment, education or training. We Conservatives believe in being in work and off welfare, and that is the best path to eradicating poverty. Will the Secretary of State break with the mistakes of all previous Labour Governments and commit that unemployment will be lower at the end of this Parliament than it was at the start?
Pat McFadden
I believe this may be the first time that the hon. Member has appeared at the Dispatch Box in his capacity as shadow Minister—if I am wrong about that, I am sorry; but if I am right, I welcome him to his position. He asks about the forecast for the future. It was published alongside the spring statement a couple of weeks ago, and in it the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast employment to rise in every year of the forecast period.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
Politics is all about choices. Last week, the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box with a choice: she could have chosen to reverse the jobs tax that is costing thousands of jobs for young people up and down the United Kingdom. Why she did she not make that choice?
Pat McFadden
Whatever Department I am in, I hear the same question from the Liberal Democrats. They support all the extra spending that is funded by revenue-raising measures, but they oppose all the revenue-raising measures themselves. If the hon. Gentleman wants NHS waiting lists to fall and if he calls for more spending every week, then he has to support the revenue-raising measures that make that possible.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
Universal credit is primarily reserved for people settled in the UK. With regard to trends, overall the proportion of universal credit claimants in this country who are foreign nationals has fallen from 17% in January 2025 to 15.5% in the latest statistics from January 2026.
John Lamont
According to the Government’s own figures, most foreign nationals who are claiming universal credit are not in work. The Government do not seem to want to do anything to bring that figure down, so will the Minister tell us how much this is costing the UK taxpayer?
Andrew Western
The hon. Gentleman may be unaware that the proportion of foreign nationals claiming universal credit who are in work is one third higher than the proportion for people who are British or Irish claiming—[Interruption.] If he prefers to put the figures into the context that he has just suggested from a sedentary position, the figure is 10% lower in terms of people who are not in work. It is often difficult to extrapolate a specific number because universal credit figures, such as these, are calculated on a per household basis rather than on an individual basis. If I am able to provide the specific number, I will follow up with him in writing.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
The working-age benefits bill is set to reach £171 billion by the end of this Parliament, yet the Government are doing nothing to get it under control. In fact, by scrapping the two-child cap, they have added another £3 billion. It is time to stop spending and get saving. The Conservatives would stop benefits for foreign nationals and save £7 billion a year. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world. With war in Ukraine and now in the middle east, we must boost our national security, so why are the Government continuing to bankroll benefits for migrants rather than investing in defence?
Andrew Western
The hon. Lady will be aware that the Conservatives created this system. On her specific question about what we are doing to restrict access to the benefits system by foreign nationals, she will also be aware that the Home Secretary has brought forward proposals to extend the period before somebody can achieve settlement from five to 10 years, and there is a consultation under way to move that point from the point of settlement to the point of citizenship. However, if it is the Conservatives’ position to suggest that somebody who has worked here for decades, contributed to the system and made a positive contribution to this country should have absolutely no access to support, we have a fundamentally different point of view.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)
Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)
Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)
The statistics for the second half of 2024 show the scale of the situation that we inherited from the previous Government. The number of young people not in education, employment or training had increased by around 300,000 since 2021, but, unlike the last Government, we are doing something about that. Over three years, the Government will invest some £1.5 billion to improve opportunities for young people through both the youth guarantee and more youth apprenticeships. We are expanding the number of youth hubs to more areas of the country, and we aim to add about 50,000 more starts through the change to youth apprenticeships. That is in stark contrast to the situation we inherited.
Mr Rand
I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to Wiseup Networks, an organisation, based in my constituency, that enables employers across Manchester and London to provide young people with work experience and mentoring opportunities for those with social and economic barriers to work, including young people with special educational needs. Those opportunities lead to job offers, increased confidence and new career options for the participants. Given this Government’s commitment to social mobility and ensuring that young people are earning or learning, will the Secretary of State meet me and Wiseup Networks to discuss how we can support its vital work?
Pat McFadden
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the valuable work of Wiseup Networks. He is absolutely right; work experience and mentoring can play a very important role in helping young people to find work. Confidence can be an issue for young people, so building that up is really important. I am happy to arrange a meeting between him and a Minister from this team.
Linsey Farnsworth
I am delighted that the Secretary of State is planning to visit the David Nieper Academy in Alfreton later this year. The school recently achieved zero NEETs at age 18 for the second year running by working closely with local industry and teaching employability skills. Local initiatives such as that should be complemented by national programmes. Will the Secretary of State provide an update on the results of the Wakefield pathfinder, which is seeking to trial a new, locally led approach to jobseeker support? Given our success in Alfreton, can he confirm whether Amber Valley could be considered as a location for the next pathfinder?
Pat McFadden
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the excellent work of the David Nieper Academy in achieving NEET zero, and I congratulate it on doing so. She mentions the career service pathfinder in Wakefield, which was launched in April 2025. We are testing more personalised employment support, and evaluation is under way to understand how this approach works. It is right that we approach these matters with flexibility and innovation, and do not always do what we have always done.
Josh Dean
A young person with undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is more likely not to be in education, employment or training. That is driven by a lack of recognition, treatment and tailored support. The expert-led NHS ADHD taskforce estimates that the cost to the UK economy of unsupported ADHD is £17 billion each year, but, with the right support, young people with ADHD can thrive. Will the Secretary of State set out how the Department is working across Government, including through the Milburn review, to ensure that young people with ADHD can access the support they need to thrive in work and reach their potential?
Pat McFadden
I know that my hon. Friend has spoken movingly about his own experience with ADHD. I assure him that Alan Milburn, a former Health Secretary who is carrying out this report for us, is in regular contact with the chair and secretariat of the independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, ADHD and autism, which is being carried out by the Department of Health and Social Care. More broadly, we should support young people, try to increase their confidence and ensure they do not conclude that a diagnosis means that they cannot work, because that should not be the conclusion reached. Many people who do have a diagnosis can go on to have very productive working lives.
Anneliese Midgley
Last week I met with Knowsley chamber of commerce, and we all welcomed the Government’s youth guarantee. Some 55,000 placements is a great start, but no scheme starts are currently planned in Knowsley, where the likelihood of young people not being in employment, education or training is higher than average. Will the Secretary of State commit to expanding the scheme and meet me and Knowsley chamber of commerce to discuss how we can get more young people into good jobs in Knowsley?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend has spoken powerfully of how unemployment in her constituency has scarred generations. I assure her that the youth guarantee will become nationwide by the end of the year. We have to break the cycle of intergenerational unemployment that she has spoken about, and I share her desire to be more ambitious in that area. I am very happy to keep up a dialogue with her and to meet with her, or to have a fellow Minister in the team do so.
Alex McIntyre
Gloucestershire Gateway Trust does vital work in my constituency, helping those not in employment, education or training back into work. It runs the Bridging the Gap programme, which provides an employability skills course and a guaranteed interview at the country’s best motorway services, Gloucester services. It also ran the Going the Extra Mile project, which supported over 2,000 local residents who were furthest from employment. It is exactly the kind of organisation we need to work with to tackle the challenges we face, but the GEM project was stopped under the previous Government due to a lack of funding. Can the Secretary of State visit my constituency to see the work that Gloucestershire Gateway Trust is doing, and to discuss how we can work with community and voluntary organisations to tackle these challenges from the ground up?
Pat McFadden
I suspect we could be here for some time talking about what the best service station in the country is, but I have to say that Rugby services, between London and Wolverhampton, has taken things to another level. Gloucestershire Gateway Trust has helped create over 400 jobs for local residents. It continues to provide invaluable support, and I am very happy to take the opportunity to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency at some point—diary permitting, as they say.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Might the Secretary of State perhaps come up to Long Riston in my constituency and go to Oasis services, where I went on Friday? It faces a fivefold increase in its business rates, as well as the impact of the more than £4,000 increase in the cost of hiring a young person. Some people may welcome this national youth guarantee from the Government, but does it not remind you, Madam Deputy Speaker, of what Ronald Reagan said about the left? If something is moving, they tax it; if it keeps moving, they regulate it; and when it stops moving, they subsidise it.
Pat McFadden
The truth is that the Conservatives presided over a huge post-covid rise in the number of young people not in education, employment or training, and they did precisely nothing about it. They also presided over a huge rise in the number of young people going on to sickness and disability benefits and did precisely nothing about it. They have discovered a thirst for change only after leaving office—they have no credibility and no plan on this issue. In contrast, we are responding through the youth guarantee, through changes to the apprenticeship system, and by giving young people more hope that the Government will help give them a chance in life.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
A recent report from Adzuna, a large job search agency, shows youth unemployment at an 11-year high and vacancies plummeting. Jobseekers urgently need the new “jobcentre in your pocket” digital service. Given that current timeframes suggest that it will not be ready until 2028, will the Secretary of State assure us that all options are on the table to accelerate delivery—including leveraging the private sector and technology—so that we can support jobseekers now, rather than years down the line?
Pat McFadden
We do want to support jobseekers now. As I said, there is a long-term challenge with youth unemployment, which we are responding to through the measures I have outlined. If we can be more ambitious than those measures in the future, we very much will.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The Centre for Social Justice found that as of the end of last year, 707,000 young people with a university degree were out of work and on benefits. That statistic comes at the same time that employers in my constituency, from the furniture makers in Princes Risborough to the rocket scientists and space sector in Westcott, are saying that they do not want graduates any more—they want apprentices. What is the Secretary of State doing in conjunction with the Department for Education to better signpost young people into pathways for learning and education that will actually help them get a job further down the line?
Pat McFadden
The hon. Gentleman will find that graduate unemployment is an international issue. If we want more non-higher education skills, he should support our plans to stop the decline that we saw in youth apprenticeship starts when his party was in power and to direct more money to youth apprenticeship starts. That is precisely what we will do.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
MYTIME Young Carers in Dorset works to identify and support young people with caring responsibilities, as without information on their whereabouts, it is hard to target them for initiatives. In a recent national youth voice survey, one in three young carers aged 16 to 18 reported that they were not in education, employment or training. That is eight times the rate of the rest of their peers. What steps is the Department taking to level the playing field for young carers alongside their peers, so that they can fulfil their potential?
Pat McFadden
The hon. Lady makes a good point. When we look at the total number of NEETs, within that is what we might regard as standard unemployment cases, a lot of health, sickness and disability cases and a significant number of young carers. One of the things we are doing is expanding childcare support through free breakfast clubs and extending the number of free hours so that we can support young parents to get into work after they have had a child.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
I recently visited Ventrolla, a specialist heritage window manufacturer in my constituency. It was concerned by the recent announcements of apprenticeship reform and the impact that will have on its apprentices. It has signed a cross-party and cross-organisation letter from industry leaders and experts to the Prime Minister about the sector’s concerns about the changes to apprenticeships. They think those changes will undermine the Government’s ambition to generate economic growth. What conversations are Ministers having with businesses such as Ventrolla to ensure that these changes do not adversely impact the sector and rob young people of these opportunities and apprenticeships?
Pat McFadden
We have a lot of dialogue with businesses about the nature of the growth and skills levy and how it is used. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that we are making a choice to prioritise young people. It is precisely because the previous Government did not prioritise young people that we saw a 40% decline in apprenticeship starts. I do not think that is an argument for the status quo; it is an argument for change. That is the slogan upon which we were elected, and it is change to the system that we will bring.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
When the Secretary of State and I last met like this, he lauded the roll-out of youth hubs and the introduction of the youth guarantee as the solution to tackling the scale of young people not in education, employment or training. Since then, however, apprenticeship figures have been updated. The latest figures show that apprenticeship vacancies and adverts have significantly decreased since the Labour Government took office. If we compare the latest figures from this academic year with the same period in 2024-25, apprenticeship adverts have fallen by 27% and the number of vacancies has fallen by 22%. How can the Secretary of State make the promise of a youth guarantee with this alarming reduction in the number of available apprenticeships?
Pat McFadden
Precisely because we are tilting the funding more towards youth apprenticeship starts, we will arrest the decline that happened when the hon. Lady’s party were in power. Change needs to come to the system if we want to do that, and I believe it is the right choice. The effect on young people who come off education and go on to benefits can be lifelong, so it is right that we prioritise them in the system.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)
The right hon. Alan Milburn is making progress on his report. He brings valuable experience as a former Secretary of State for Health and former chair of the Government’s Social Mobility Commission. He is engaging with stakeholders across the country to increase the understanding of what has driven the increase in NEETs in recent years, and his interim report is due later in the spring.
Adam Thompson
With almost 8% of 16 and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training, Derbyshire is the worst county in the east midlands for NEET. In New Stanton Park in Ilkeston, on the former site of a once-famous ironworks, major investments are bringing good manufacturing jobs back to Erewash. Will the Secretary of State share the work he is doing to ensure that apprenticeships are available to disadvantaged young people so that they can thrive, instead of being left behind?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend brings valuable experience to this matter, including his experience of teaching engineering apprentices at the University of Nottingham. We are committed to ensuring that disadvantaged young people have access to high-quality apprenticeships and can benefit from the new jobs being created in places such as Erewash as a result of the changes in how the growth and skills levy is used—as I have explained in response to earlier questions—and the extension of youth hubs in the region to give young people who may not be claiming benefit or undertaking an apprenticeship the chance of finding that vital first job.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
Sophia, whom I spoke to in my constituency office in Winchester this morning, is one of many recent graduates—often with really good degrees from really good universities—who have been applying for hundreds of jobs and not even receiving replies. Has the Department carried out an assessment of the impact of artificial intelligence, in all its forms, on graduate employment prospects over the next few years? What work has been done with universities and institutions that offer apprenticeships to ensure that young people are graduating with the right set of skills to be able to work in this era of artificial intelligence?
Pat McFadden
The hon. Member has posed a very good and important question, and the issue of graduate unemployment is by no means confined to the UK. In the United States, for example, a similar debate about graduate unemployment is taking place. The truth is that structural developments are happening in the labour market. Technology is undergoing a big shift, and I think that all Governments must ask themselves how to help young people through this transition. The one thing that we cannot do is abandon them to it: we have to train people, and we have to ensure that the UK is best placed to take advantage of this big technological shift.
Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Dame Diana Johnson)
Under the last Government an additional 900,000 children became part of the child poverty statistics, but as a result of our Child Poverty Strategy, published in December, 550,000 will be lifted out of poverty by the end of the current Parliament—the largest number ever in a single Parliament. The removal of the two-child limit from April, for instance, could benefit about 4,710 children in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Kirith Entwistle
I am proud that this Labour Government will lift more than 4,500 children in my constituency out of poverty by scrapping the two-child limit, but what further measures are the Government implementing to tackle child poverty and support families in my constituency?
Dame Diana Johnson
Reducing child poverty is a moral imperative for us all, and for this Government in particular. We know that growing up in poverty damages children’s health, education and future employment prospects. We have just been discussing the number of NEETs, and many of those children could become NEETs, so child poverty is bad for the UK’s economic prosperity as well. We had not just been waiting for the strategy in December; we had already introduced the extension of free school meals eligibility, tripled access to breakfast clubs and supported the holiday activities and food programme, and we have put £1 billion into the reforming crisis and resilience fund.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)
The yearly amount of the full new state pension is projected to rise by about £2,100 a year over the current Parliament. That reflects the Government’s commitment to the triple lock for the duration of the Parliament. Payments of both the basic and new state pensions will increase by 4.8% in a few weeks’ time, boosting pensioners’ incomes by up to £575 a year.
Peter Prinsley
I declare an interest, in that I receive a state pension. [Hon. Members: “No! No way!”] We welcome the Government’s commitment to the triple lock, but some pensioners in my constituency continue to live in poverty and isolation, and are in need of food banks. What specific measures can the Government take to reduce social isolation and tackle poverty in this group of people?
Torsten Bell
I thank my hon. Friend for his question—and for the shocking news of his age. He is absolutely right to highlight both these issues. Pensioner poverty halved under the last Labour Government, but it has risen more recently. That is why it is so important that, as well as increasing the state pension, we have put in place the biggest-ever take-up campaign for pension credit and focused on the cost of essentials—most importantly, energy, where new measures will come into place in the next few weeks.
My hon. Friend is also right to focus not just on poverty, but on isolation. I am sure that all Members of the House, when we are out knocking on doors at the weekend, meet some younger, but also some older, constituents who are too isolated. They might not be happy to see the Member who comes to knock on their door, but they might be. Whatever people think about politicians knocking on their doors, we all have organisations and charities in our constituencies—such as Age Cymru in Wales and, I am sure, many in my hon. Friend’s constituency—that do important work in tackling isolation among all our communities.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I declare a similar interest to that of the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley). I read this weekend that if we grapple with the increase in pensions and benefits, we might be able to afford 15 new frigates. It is easy for Opposition Members to attack in-work benefits; it is more difficult to question the state pension. Has the Minister seen the paper from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that says we should consider moving to a smoothed earnings link for state pensions, which would ensure that they never fall in real terms but, in the long term, always rise with earnings? He will not give me an answer now, but perhaps he can write to me about how we are going to buttress the long-term sustainability of the state pension.
Torsten Bell
The right hon. Member is right to recognise the challenge. We have around 12 million pensioners at the moment, but that will rise to 18 million over the next 50 years. Our view is that having the triple lock drive above-inflation increases, on average, among pensioners is the right thing to do for this Parliament. That is why we set it out in our manifesto, and that is what is driving the increases in the state pension. When it comes to affording the cost of frigates, I merely point him to the fact that defence spending under this Government is higher in every year than it was in a single year under the Conservative party.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
Helping millions of people ensure financial security in their retirement is a cornerstone of the Minister’s Department, but in the Government’s first 18 months, they have disincentivised pension savings by introducing inheritance tax on pensions, removing pensions from their lifetime ISA reforms, forcing pension trustees into mandation and, most recently, introducing a cap on salary sacrifice savings incentives. Through their actions, this Government are pushing people to be more reliant on the state pension, rather than encouraging people to take control of their own financial future. Which will be the next Government U-turn: cancelling mandation, or abandoning salary sacrifice caps?
Torsten Bell
That was just a bit sad, because the U-turn that we are seeing is from the hon. Member, who declined to vote against the Pensions Schemes Bill at Second Reading and on Report. I will quote him back to himself. He told me that “the Minister”—that is me—
“will be pleased to hear that there is cross-party consensus on many of the planned changes.”
[Interruption.] Wait a second. He then got even more excited—back in his reasonable days, before he had been leant on by the “looney tunes” who will wander off to Reform—and told us that
“we broadly support the measures in the Bill”.—[Official Report, 7 July 2025; Vol. 770, c. 722-723.]
The U-turn has been done by the hon. Member, who has let himself down.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The Health and Safety Executive is working to ensure that employers know their duties under COSHH—the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2022, as amended. Those regulations require a risk assessment and the prevention of, or adequate control of, exposure of employees to hazardous medicinal products.
Luke Akehurst
Will the Minister consider developing a clear statutory definition of “hazardous medicinal products” and subsequently mandate the development, publication and ongoing maintenance of a comprehensive UK list of hazardous medicinal products?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend make an interesting suggestion, and I know there has been some campaigning around this issue. The Health and Safety Executive has not seen evidence that the current arrangements are inadequate. They appear to be robust and well established, and they seem to be doing the job that is needed. If there is evidence of a problem to which my hon. Friend is able to draw attention, the HSE will certainly look at that very seriously. For now, though, the focus is on making sure that NHS trusts and others know their obligations under the current regulations.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answers. I do not know whether he had a chance to see in the paper last week some figures for poisonings of those over 50 years of age on a number of occasions, although whether those were the unexpected effects of medicinal products or arose from lifestyle is not yet known. As a result of the uncertainty and the rising number of such poisonings, will the Minister look into this issue and come back to the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), me and the House on whether there is a connection? I think there may well be one.
Sir Stephen Timms
I do not think I have seen the report the hon. Gentleman refers to. From what I have seen, there is no evidence of a problem with the current arrangements. There may be some pointers in the information he referred to, and if there are, I would be keen to have a look at them.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)
The Scottish unemployment rate is 3.8%, and overall economic inactivity in Scotland is higher than in the UK as a whole. However, I am pleased to say that Scotland has had the biggest increase in funding since devolution began. It will benefit from major defence contracts, including the £10 billion contract to build five new frigates for the Norwegian navy, and from the trade deals we have negotiated over the past year, which will be of particular benefit to Scotland’s whisky and food industries.
Kirsty Blackman
One in three—or more than one in three—people in my constituency are employed directly or indirectly or in induced jobs in the offshore energies industries. Given the continuation of the tax system for oil and gas, investment in that industry has reduced. Is the Secretary of State confident that the Government’s measure of the number of jobs lost, particularly in the oil and gas industry, is truly accurate, given that people are generally not signing on for universal credit but rather doing things such as moving to Dubai and Doha?
Pat McFadden
That is of course a hugely important industry for the UK. The hon. Member will be aware that a transition is taking place, but oil and gas will be part of the mix for a long time to come. The Chancellor met those in the industry last week, and I assure the hon. Member and her constituents that the industry’s importance is recognised and hugely valued by the Government.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
Last year, the SNP Government in Holyrood funded nearly 9,000 fewer apprenticeships than colleges and industry asked for, robbing thousands of Scots of opportunities and starving businesses of skilled workers. Meanwhile, youth unemployment in Scotland is rising; more than one in eight young people in Scotland are unemployed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the solutions to that problem is electing a new Government in Holyrood in May, under Anas Sarwar of the Labour party?
Pat McFadden
I very much agree with my hon. Friend’s final point. I think Anas Sarwar would make an excellent First Minister, and I look forward to supporting him in the campaign to come. The youth guarantee, to which I have referred, extends to Scotland. We want young people in Scotland to have as many opportunities and as good opportunities as young people anywhere else in the UK, and in particular not to fall into the pattern of leaving education and going on to a life on benefits.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The hon. Lady’s hon. Friend, the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) raised this important concern in a Westminster Hall debate last week. A backlog of reassessments for the work capability assessment did build up during 2024. I am pleased to say that that backlog will have been almost entirely cleared by the end of this month.
Manuela Perteghella
Research from Scope found that, in 2025, only 7% of work capability assessments carried out were reassessments for existing claimants, compared with 19% the previous year. One of my constituents has experienced a significant deterioration in their health and urgently requires reassessment to determine whether they should now receive the limited capability for work and work-related activity element of universal credit. What further urgent actions will the Minister take to reduce waiting times and ensure that disabled people are not left without financial support?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Lady is right to raise this matter. She is also right that the Department prioritises initial assessments, so that people without any support at all get it as soon as possible. Reassessments are then carried out when there is capacity. As I said, the backlog that built up towards the end of 2024 will have been almost entirely cleared by the end of this month. If there is still a problem in the case of her constituent, I would be grateful if she dropped me a line.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)
Since the last Work and Pensions questions, we have had Apprenticeships Week, when I visited Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead and London Underground’s Acton Works in west London. I attended the youth guarantee jobs fair in Blackpool, which connected over 3,000 local people with 90 employers; had a roundtable with business at which, for example, Make UK reported 50,000 vacancies in the engineering and manufacturing sectors; and we extended the Connect to Work programme to give employment support to more than 75,000 more people with disabilities or long-term sickness—people far too often in the past simply signed off and written off.
Sarah Dyke
Skills bootcamps in Somerset give businesses in Glastonbury and Somerton the opportunity to collaborate with training providers. This helps to address persistent skills shortages. However, changes to funding allocations could see Somerset lose nearly 70% of its funding. Will the Minister urgently review the skills bootcamp funding methodology? Without it, an important pathway for residents to gain valuable skills and to support economic prosperity in Somerset will be compromised.
Pat McFadden
I appreciate the value of skills bootcamps. They can play an important role in the mix of policies we are talking about today. I hear the representations the hon. Lady has made for more funding. All I would say to her and her party is that if we have more funding, I hope they support whatever revenue-raising measures that have to be put in place for it.
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Dame Diana Johnson)
My hon. Friend is exactly right. This is why we need to ensure that jobcentres have really good engagement with local employers, including manufacturers. She will be pleased to know that there will be an employer roundtable at the Manufacturing Centre in West Bromwich on 17 March, with Sandwell college and manufacturing employers. There will also be an employer breakfast on 29 April, again at Sandwell college, about jobcentres and what they can offer, particularly around SWAPS—sector-based work academy programmes—and manufacturing SWAPS, which are so important.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, you are no doubt familiar with the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s gun: if there is a gun on the wall in the first act, it will be fired by the final scene. Ministers say that the mandation power in the Pension Schemes Bill is merely a backstop that they do not intend to use, but once they have a power in law like a gun on the wall, how long will that intention last? Will the Secretary of State make a commitment to the House that the mandation gun will never be fired at the expense of UK pension savers?
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She will know that the industry itself set out in the Mansion House accord that it thinks there needs to be change in the pattern of investment in our largest defined contribution schemes. It says that because it is in the interests of savers, and that is why the previous hon. Member for Hexham, the longest-lasting Conservative Pensions Minister, labelled it a good thing. All the Pension Schemes Bill does is put in place the mechanism to make sure that change, which the industry has said is in the interest of members, actually happens.
Helen Whately
Given that the savings of millions of people are at stake, I am disappointed that the Secretary of State did not rise to answer this important question. The Pensions Minister needs to stop conflating the voluntary Mansion House agreement with changing the law to give Government the power to direct pension fund investments. The two are not the same. Both the Association of British Insurers and Pensions UK are urging the Government to drop the mandation power from the Bill. The Pensions Minister has a tendency to think he always knows best, but he is not always right; apparently, the Ed stone was his idea. Let us not have people’s retirements savings suffer the same fate as the quest of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) to become Prime Minister. The Government should not be giving themselves control over how people’s retirement savings are invested, but that is what mandation does. I am against it, the pensions sector is against it, and savers are against it. Will he listen and change tack?
Torsten Bell
The hon. Lady is going to be absolutely furious when she finds out what those on the Opposition Front Bench did when the Pensions Schemes Bill came through this House. There is all this sound and fury now, but, when it came to choosing whether to vote against the very power she now says is incredibly dangerous, she went for a snooze on both Second and Third Reading. She is going to be even angrier when she finds out what her right hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury (John Glen) and for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) have called for, which is the mandation of pensions schemes in the UK to invest—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I remind Members and Ministers that this is topical questions—we should have short questions and short answers.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
Dame Diana Johnson
With the Minister for Skills now working jointly across the DFE and DWP, we have very clear collaboration. We have already launched eight youth guarantee trailblazers, which are testing innovative approaches to localised support for young people who are NEET or at risk of becoming NEET, including targeted SEND support. We also have the Milburn review into young people and work and how better to support them.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
Last week, Citizens Advice shared a report into Access to Work which confirmed many things that we know from our own postbags relating to disturbing delays in the system on both processing applications and reimbursement. Will the Minister share with us what recovery plan he has in place and when the Government will get up to a 28-day turnaround for these important issues?
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The new disability advisory panel—chaired by Zara Todd, whom the hon. Gentleman may know—will be working with us on reform of Access to Work. We have increased the number of staff working on this from 500 to 650 in the past couple of years, which is reducing some of the delays that we saw as a result of the big surge in applications. I would be glad to keep the hon. Gentleman posted on further progress, including our proposals for reform, which we will bring forward as soon as we are able to do so.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
I recently met my constituent Dean, who is in his 60s and wants to return to full-time work after a bit of ill health. With more than 15 years’ experience in human resources, he is struggling to get over the line and get that next job. He feels he is being turned away not just because of his age, but because of his medical condition, which means he needs a cane to walk. What is the Minister doing to support people with health conditions, such as Dean, back into work?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is right to raise this matter. She might know of the Connect to Work service we have introduced, which will be available across the whole country by summer. The methodology for it has been designed centrally, but it is being commissioned entirely locally. The feedback we are seeing so far is that it is doing a very good job in supporting people in exactly the kind of circumstances that my hon. Friend describes.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Sir Stephen Timms
I would be very grateful if the hon. Gentleman would drop me a line about that case so that I can look into what has happened.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
I know that the Minister has been making progress with the review of the personal independence payment assessment. I hear from many people who struggle with the complexity and mistakes in the current system, including one lady with severe spinal and nerve conditions who had her payments reduced after the DWP did not receive the medical evidence that she had sent. Does the Minister agree that any changes to the system must be humane and fair, and that it must become easier to navigate and easier for people to trust?
Sir Stephen Timms
Yes, I do agree. As my hon. Friend will know, we have set up a review of personal independence payment, which is under way at the moment. We have a steering group of 12 individuals, almost all of whom are disabled people, plus me and two other co-chairs, and we had our third full-day, in-person meeting last week. The issues that my hon. Friend raises are exactly the ones that we want to work through in the course of the review, which will report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in the autumn.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Pat McFadden
The hon. Member is right to point to the disparity of information that there sometimes is for apprenticeships compared with university courses. It is something that we need to address by improving the information available and ensuring that young people embarking on an apprenticeship are treated with just as much esteem and respect as those who undertake a university course. Information is very much part of the changes that we are pursuing.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
Sadly, I have been contacted by a number of constituents who are facing a hidden problem in the child maintenance system: their ex-partner has found ways of hiding their income to avoid having their monthly payments increased or paying the arrears that they owe. Can the Minister share with me the work that the Department is doing to ensure that income assessment of paying parents is accurate, agile and serves the children it is meant to support?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that a range of interventions are under way, including reviewing the child maintenance calculation across the piece. If there are specific cases that are causing her concern, she can share them with me and I will ensure that they are referred to our specialist financial investigation unit, which looks into cases where we fear that there is hidden income.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
Powering Futures is a fantastic social enterprise based in Falkirk, and its oven-ready project will deliver at least £1.6 million in quantifiable social outcomes, including addressing youth unemployment in every local authority in Scotland. Funders have been identified, so will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss what support his Department may be able to offer Powering Futures?
Pat McFadden
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I am very happy to make sure that he gets a meeting with me or another Minister in the team.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
Pat McFadden
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the retraining scheme that he is running for former Conservative MPs, although I am not convinced that a change of colour is really a change of heart. Let me come to the heart of his question. We do believe that if people have worked here and have contributed over the years, they are entitled to the benefits that the state provides. The logical conclusion of his position would be to deny that to many people who have lived and contributed here, sometimes for decades.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State will know that working in the visitor economy is so good for young people’s confidence. The extensive Cornish hospitality sector would like to be part of the youth guarantee pilot. Will he consider meeting us to discuss that?
Pat McFadden
We are all going to have busy diaries after this session. I pay tribute to the Cornish hospitality sector. My hon. Friend is right that those are great opportunities for young people, and I will make sure she gets a meeting with someone.
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
Torsten Bell
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the policy on overseas uprating is long standing under Governments of all parties, including the Liberal Democrat coalition Government. I am not going to make promises that will not be delivered. We will not be changing that policy in the near future.
Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge) (Lab)
Today, The Guardian published an article showing that up to 13,000 survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes living in Britain today could lose their compensation payments if they accept the redress scheme from the Irish Government. My campaign for Philomena’s law is backed by public figures including Dara Ó Briain, Siobhán McSweeney and Steve Coogan. It would resolve the issue by ensuring that the payments are ringfenced. Will the Secretary of State consider the merits of the case and agree to meet me to discuss it further?
Pat McFadden
The whole House will be aware that the women who lived in the mother and baby homes sometimes went through terrible experiences. I commend my hon. Friend for his campaign for some measure of justice for those women. We are examining what we can do in those cases. A small number of those women live in the UK, and I assure him that help is under active consideration.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
My constituent Michael, who is autistic, lost his personal independence payment in January when he was moved to employment and support allowance without explanation. He is attempting to appeal that decision. Given warnings from the National Autistic Society about barriers that autistic people face in navigating the benefits system, what steps is the Department taking to improve communication and staff training to better support neurodiverse claimants?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that matter. It is fair to say that the PIP application process is old-fashioned, clunky and difficult for many. I mentioned earlier the review of PIP that is being undertaken. Members of the steering group have described applying for PIP as “dehumanising”. The health transformation programme is under way, and we are improving the process, including by making claims fully online in a trial number of postcode areas. I hope that a broadly much better approach will come out of the review.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
An important component of the Government’s drive to reduce the number of NEETs is encouraging Jobcentre Plus to work innovatively in constituencies such as mine. Will the Secretary of State join me in commending its work in organising with me a jobs fair on 16 April from 10 am till 1 pm at the Indian community centre in Rugby? Of course, he or his Ministers would be very welcome to come and see that innovation in practice.
Pat McFadden
I have already praised Rugby once during this session; let me do so a second time. I cannot promise to attend my hon. Friend’s jobs fair, but I can say that such fairs play a valuable role in bringing together employers who need staff with potential employees who need jobs. I saw that myself in the very sizeable Blackpool jobs fair that I attended a week or so ago.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Emma from Abbots Langley in my constituency has to comply with strict timeframes for her job as a frontline worker within a local government adult care service. Despite that, the video relay service allowance that she receives as a deaf person has been reduced by over 75%, meaning that it is significantly below her working hours. Given that the waiting period for Access to Work reconsideration cases can span up to several months, how can the Minister assure my constituent that the delay will not undermine her ability to work?
Sir Stephen Timms
There is a serious problem with Access to Work delays—on 16 February, the application backlog was 66,699—which is why we have substantially increased the number of staff working on it. Those who have a job in the offing are prioritised for applications. If the hon. Member would like to drop me a line about the particular case he has in mind, I will gladly look into it.
Immigration Policy
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. Before we come to the urgent question on immigration rules, I should say that time is tight today as there is an important Bill to be discussed as well as the three statements that the Government have chosen to make. However, I must put on record in the strongest terms my disappointment that the Home Secretary did not come to the House last week to make a statement on immigration. This follows a week of drip feeding announcements to the media and a major speech outside this place. It is simply not good enough. If that is the impact of the reported changes to the Government’s comms grid, it needs a rethink. It is unacceptable for important policy announcements to be made to the media before the House is informed.
I call the shadow Home Secretary.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on her recently announced immigration policy.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Alex Norris)
The British public expect and deserve an immigration system with order and control. In November, the Home Secretary announced the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration since the second world war, and last week the Government took concrete steps to implement those necessary changes. I hear clearly the strong message from the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and of course we would never mean any discourtesy to you or to your colleagues.
Features of the steps taken last week include that refugee status will now be reviewed every 30 months. At a 30-month review, refugees with a continuing need for protection will have that protection renewed, while those who no longer have a protection need will be expected to return home.
Further, we are introducing targeted measures known as a visa brake to help protect the integrity of the UK immigration system. As such, from 26 March we will refuse applications for specific visa routes from nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, where evidence shows a consistently high number and proportion of visa-linked asylum claims. This is the beginning; other nationalities may face similar measures in the future.
Due to the number of asylum claims from nationals of Nicaragua and St Lucia, we have also introduced visit visa requirements and direct airside transit visa requirements on those countries to prevent visitor visa misuse. Those came into force on 5 March.
We have tabled further legislative changes to revoke the current legal duty to provide support to asylum seekers, instead restoring it to a power to provide support so that those who can support themselves do so. We are also amending existing conditions of support legislation to enable the suspension or discontinuation of asylum support when an asylum seeker is working illegally.
We have started a consultation on our approach to family returns, exploring reforms to the support available to families with no legal basis to remain in the UK and the approach used when enforcing the returns of families who have not departed voluntarily.
After years of chaos and crisis, it has fallen to this Government to fix the broken systems we inherited. I know this country, and I know the protection that people want to provide to those who need it—we have seen that with the Syrian scheme, Afghan resettlement, Hong Kong British national overseas passport holders and Homes for Ukraine—but we can do that only when there is confidence that the system has order and control. These reforms restore order and build the system that the British people deserve.
Chris Philp
It is disappointing the Government did not come here voluntarily to announce their policies, and I notice that there was no apology, but given the scale of their failure, this is not surprising. Since the election, 67,000 people have entered the UK illegally, a 45% increase compared with the same period before the election. Many of those 67,000 have since committed serious crimes, including murder and rape. In the last six days alone, 900 illegal immigrants have crossed the English channel. The Government’s promises lie in tatters: the gangs are not smashed; the French are not intercepting boats near the shores, as we were promised last year; and the so-called one in, one out deal saw 41,000 illegal immigrants come in across the channel last year and only 300 go out.
The Government are now resorting to bribing illegal immigrants with £40,000 per family to leave—that is more than most working people here earn in a year. British workers should not have to pay record high taxes for this Government to give their money away to illegal immigrants. It is frankly disgraceful. Instead, the Government should now agree to our plan to leave the European convention on human rights, which would enable them to rapidly deport all illegal immigrants. The crossings would then quickly stop and there would be no need to bribe illegal immigrants to leave.
Let me turn now to indefinite leave to remain. When we proposed a 10-year path, the Government voted against it, but I am delighted that they have now done yet another U-turn and adopted our policy. We do not agree with every detail in their plans, but we agree with the substance. However, I am sorry to hear that some of the Minister’s own MPs are apparently unconvinced, so let me help him. Given that the Government appear to need our votes to pass these ILR changes, we will support them. Will the Minister confirm whether the ILR changes will be made in primary legislation or via the rules? If the Government use primary legislation, that will take some time to pass, by which time the 2021 and 2022 arrivals will have ILR, so we would also support him to pass emergency legislation if he will accept that offer—
Alex Norris
It is a challenge to be lectured on the need for apologies from the architects of the Trussonomics that mean my constituents are paying more on their mortgages month on month. However, we have seen more of that mathematics from the right hon. Gentleman, because he says that spending an average of £158,000 on families in hotel accommodation who now have no right to be here because they have finished making their way through the asylum system is better value than spending £40,000 in order for them to return home and to build their lives again. I am not surprised.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about gangs, but he will know that there has been a record level of interventions—more than 4,000. He talked about our work with the French, but he will know that 40,000 crossings have been prevented. He also mentioned returns. He will know that 60,000 people have been returned under this Government, a 31% increase on his time in the Home Department. He offers criticism, but the only answer that he offers in lieu is to tear up international agreements with no sense of what change that would drive. It would merely set back that returns work and lead us back to years of debate and no action. I will not do that.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned ILR, but of course that was not the nature of the announcement last week. That related to the closing of an important consultation on earned settlement in this country. We will be having those conversations with Parliament, and measures will be laid in the usual way in the weeks and months ahead.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Could the Minister update us on the discussions about people who arrived in this country pursuing leave for five years, or whatever period their visa stated, to get status in the UK, and who are approaching the end of that period? I have a number of constituents who will reach that point in April, and they are concerned that they will have to start all over again under a new process. Could he update the House on their position?
Alex Norris
I believe that my hon. Friend is referring to earned settlement. It has always been the case that the immigration rules in force at the point of application, rather than at the point of entry to the country, are the ones that are germane to the conditions an individual has to meet. Nevertheless, she will know that we consulted on what transition protections there could be, and that consultation closed last month. There is an important reality for all colleagues to wrestle with here. In the first five years of this decade we saw unprecedented levels of migration through legal means as a result of the Conservatives’ open borders experiment, which means that one in 30 people in this country came in during that window. That means that those people will become eligible for social housing and other benefits at the same time, which represents a significant challenge to the taxpayer and to public services. Nevertheless, that consultation took place and we will be coming back to respond in the usual way.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
It is deeply disappointing that these changes were pushed through without an explanation in this Chamber. The same Home Secretary who emphasised the importance of scrutiny from MPs at the Institute for Public Policy Research has denied this House the chance to question her reforms. That is not good enough. Does the Minister think that reviewing each refugee’s status every two and a half years for 20 years will really fix the asylum system? That is estimated to cost £725 million over the next decade, so what plans do the Government have to fund this, and can they give a cast-iron guarantee that it will not cause the asylum backlog to further increase? Taxpayers are paying £6 million a day for asylum hotels—a legacy of the Conservative Government. Will the Minister back Liberal Democrat plans to end the processing through faster claims, such as Nightingale processing centres, or set out their own plan? Finally, will the Government confirm their plan for lifting the ban on asylum seekers working? Why have they chosen a year, not six months?
Alex Norris
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not remember the statement in November on these very issues. I can assure him that one of his Front-Bench colleagues remembers it well and thinks about it quite a bit.
On the 30 months, let me be clear about how the system will work. We do not want people to come to the country and get that good news of their claim for refuge being accepted, and then be at home and not take part in British life. We are saying that if people do that, their claims will be assessed every 30 months. However, they will be offered the chance to move to a protected work and study route, which means that if they are taking part in work or study, learning the language and not committing crimes, they are outwith that. I do not recognise the points on how many decisions would have to be made or the spend—that is not accurate.
The hon. Gentleman talks about quicker decisions. Last year was the best year since records began on initial decisions, so we are operating that system effectively. Nevertheless, significant demand issues mean that applications are down significantly across the EU and up significantly in the UK. Until and unless those issues are addressed, any process changes would simply be overwhelmed.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
As other colleagues have said, some people came here under one system, but now the system is changing, so have the Government done any assessment of where those people are working? In my constituency, a large number of people are now in their fourth year before their cases were about to conclude, hopefully, to secure status. They work in the care sector and without them, to be frank, the care sector in my constituency would collapse.
Alex Norris
We know where these people are working because they came to this country on work visas, so we are clear on where they are. On the assessment, that was the point of the consultation that ended last month. We got more than 200,000 responses—that shows the strength of feeling. We are looking at that in the usual way, and we will come back with our plans after that in the usual way.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
May I quote approvingly the remarks of my constituency neighbour and Labour MP, the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White)? She said that if Labour is to win its battle against Reform, it has to do much more on illegal boats. I am sorry that she is not here, but I have warned her that I was going to ask this question. Specifically, she makes the good point that people should only be allowed to claim asylum abroad. If that were the case, surely there is an argument that if people arrived here illegally, they would not be able to claim asylum and would not be covered by the convention, and they could be detained and deported.
Alex Norris
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman in that I always agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White). I have known her for a very long time, and have found that being disagreeable to her is a bad idea. The third chapter of our November statement is about safe and legal routes. The Home Secretary has talked about our first foray in that endeavour being a study route, to provide options for people to seek sanctuary in this country—to the degree to which our communities can sustain that—from outside the country, so that they do not make dangerous journeys and we do not see people crossing the channel. I think that is in everybody’s interests, and I am glad to see it drawing consensus.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
My constituent came to this country after leaving a very good job and uprooting his whole family, including young children, on the promise that he would be allowed to work and contribute to our NHS, which he has done for the past four years. However, because of the Government’s harsh and hostile policies, not only is his future now uncertain, but his children may not even be able to go to university. Does the Minister not understand the hostility and unfairness of this?
Alex Norris
I think we all recognise the absolutely important role that people from outside the UK have played in the NHS for decades. My hon. Friend will know that our proposals set out that working in the NHS and other public services was one proposed way in which people could earn that route to settlement. As I have said to other colleagues, we are looking at the consultation closely. We must understand that there is a real challenge beneath this, and that the immigration rules have always been applied at the point of application, rather than at the point of entry. Nevertheless, I have heard the point that he and other hon. Members have made with vigour.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
Has the Home Office made an assessment of the number of people who will be affected, and of the amount that will be saved, by moving from a statutory duty to support asylum seekers to a discretionary power?
Alex Norris
The overall supported population is 107,000. The decisions of approximately half of those people are now more than a year old, so they can access work in many cases. Similarly, a smaller proportion retain the right to work because they have overstayed their work visas. We are now doing the work of considering all those people individually to see who could work and therefore pay towards their own support costs, on the basis that if people can pay for their own support, they ought to—like our constituents—so that the cost does not fall on the taxpayer and we can reduce the burden.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
In my constituency, people of all faiths and backgrounds live, learn and work next to each other. Unlike many other European countries, the UK has a good reputation on integration, so can the Minister reassure me that these reforms will not lead to the UK becoming like our European neighbours with much poorer records?
Alex Norris
I absolutely can. I saw my own community in my hon. Friend’s description of hers. All our reforms seek to promote integration. With regards to illegal migration, for example, when people seek refuge and have their claim accepted, they should enter work or study, and learn the language, which is crucial for integration. We also have important work to do across Government on social cohesion, of which the Home Office has a significant component. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government will make a statement later about the important cohesion work to make this a brilliant, integrated and multicultural place, like Hounslow, Nottingham and the rest of the country.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
There are thousands of Ukrainians in this country—most of them women and children—who are effectively stateless. They did not come here as asylum seekers; they came as refugees. They do not know whether they are coming or going. They cannot return to their country, and there is no prospect of them being able to in the short or medium term. They need to be able to determine accommodation, education and employment, so what will the Government do to create some sort of proper settled status for Ukrainian refugees?
Alex Norris
I am grateful for that question. It is really important that colleagues appreciate that the Homes for Ukraine scheme—the way by which people came to this country from Ukraine—was never intended as a settlement scheme. That was part of our engagement with the Government of Ukraine at the time. Nevertheless, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, we have extended that period of protection for longer, in line with the challenges that people are facing. We want those people to live fully while they are here, and I hear the challenges that he describes, but, as I said, that scheme was never designed as a settlement scheme.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his response to the urgent question. On work visas and people integrating into our communities, will he say something about the abuses that we hear of—including how sponsors control the situation for these people—and about the potential damage that will be caused, especially to our public services, if the thresholds are unobtainable to many of our key workers, especially those in our health service?
Alex Norris
I absolutely recognise the characterisation offered by my hon. Friend. We know there was abuse of that scheme by unscrupulous employers. We have been working with trade unions—indeed, I met their representatives only this morning—on what a future model could look like to avoid such abuse, so that if people come to this country, they are not so precariously reliant on one employer, who therefore has a very unhelpful amount of power over them and their lives—it is an imbalance. We are looking at that closely.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
In Afghanistan, women and girls are being persecuted on grounds of their gender. They cannot work, they cannot study, and by law their husbands can punish them however they see fit. Last year the Home Office closed safe and legal routes for Afghan women to come to the UK, and last week it closed the door for both professionals and students. The work of the Linda Norgrove Foundation means that a number of female medical students are currently studying at Scottish universities, including St Andrews. What hope is there for others to complete their studies and support the maternal healthcare crisis that is under way in Afghanistan?
Alex Norris
We take our obligations and commitment to Afghans very seriously; since 2021, over 37,000 have come here via resettlement schemes. The change last week is because we have a student visa system that is being used as a de facto immigration system, which cannot be right. Of the 3,730 visas issued to students from Afghanistan, there were 3,454 claims for asylum. That is not an orderly system. I feel the power and passion with which the hon. Lady speaks, but to accept that premise is to say that we believe universities ought to set our asylum system, which cannot be right. I hope she will recognise that, taken in concert with what we have announced about a safe and legal study route, these measures must be a much better way, so that we as a Government accountable to Parliament know who is coming, what their protection need is, what their institution is and what they are learning while they are here. I think that is the right balance.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. Members should be aware that I am hoping to finish this urgent question by around half-past 4, because we have three statements to follow, so please keep questions and answers short.
Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)
The Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile has found that restrictive policies have had an insignificant effect on the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Denmark. Instead, the discrimination and constant uncertainty make it harder for young refugees to learn, build relationships or plan for their futures. Will the Minister commit to keeping permanently the five years’ leave for unaccompanied children, to create stability for the most vulnerable asylum seekers?
Alex Norris
I can give my hon. Friend succour in that regard. Our 30-month protection announcement last week does not include unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and we take our responsibilities to children very seriously. I have optimism in our new system. We need those children to study and then get into work, as well as to learn the language, as they have the most to benefit so that, so the protected work and study route will be particularly important for them.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The Minister and the Government are to be commended for trying to wrestle with this issue, and where there can be cross-party consensus, let us build on and foster it. Lots of groups of people who come to this country generate complaints, but one group that does not are those who come from New Zealand and Australia to help our sheep farmers at shearing time. May I urge the Minister to rethink the measure in this regard, as not a single rural Member of Parliament is calling for it? Those people should be allowed in. This is an animal welfare issue, and it is important for our food security and agricultural sector.
Alex Norris
The announcements about illegal migration that we made in November were the most sweeping since the second world war, and they were unpacked last week as well, but they were not so sweeping or broad as to include sheep shearing, although I know that that has become a pertinent point for some. The Minister for Migration and Citizenship and I are having conversations with rural MPs, and we have heard clearly the hon. Gentleman’s words.
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
In response to the urgent question, the Minister did not mention the announcement last week that people from four countries—Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Cameroon—will no longer be able to apply for a student visa. Many students who applied for such visas and came to study here subsequently found that the situation in their country had materially changed, so they then applied for asylum. I am very concerned that when things materially change, we will change the policy on student applications. We are seeing a war in the middle east now, and the situation in Ukraine, and I am concerned that this is now the Government’s policy. We should take it in good faith that people who come here to study do so—that they study and contribute, and that they can go back to their countries to contribute there when things have settled. We should not be cutting off student visas for people from countries in conflict.
Alex Norris
I hate to correct my hon. Friend, but I did mention those countries. No matter what reforms we announced in November and the impact of any element, everybody will have their claim individually assessed on the basis of their own individual circumstances. If someone has come here for a three-year course, I accept totally that the circumstances at home could have materially changed during that period. I say gently to my hon. Friend that when that is happening, in virtually every case, those systems cease to be merely a study route and become a de facto asylum route, and it is better that these routes are organised and co-ordinated by the Government rather than academic institutions.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
The Minister is unhappy that we are conflating two different announcements, but the issue is that the Home Secretary has not actually made an announcement about this matter—she has not come to the Chamber, set out the position and made an announcement. The Government are planning to make these changes without parliamentary approval, because the changes will not come before the House for debate. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that all hon. Members can have a voice, that the changes are not made through a negative statutory instrument, and that MPs from across the House will be able to make our points clear in order to ensure that the goalposts will not be moved after refugees have arrived here?
Alex Norris
I hate to disagree with the hon. Lady, but I am not unhappy at all. The way I look at it, I get to give the answers, and right hon. Members and hon. Members get to ask the questions—I do not get to do both—so colleagues can raise whatever issues they wish to raise. On her point about scrutiny of the policies, as she will be aware, there has been a public consultation that with very good participation. There were two statements in November, one relating to restoring order and control—our asylum policy statement—and one relating to earned settlement, and colleagues had the opportunity for debate then. She will know that there has subsequently been at least one debate in Westminster Hall; I am sure there will be more. I have no doubt that colleagues will find parliamentary opportunities to debate these policies and any others of the Home Department.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
On the issue of indefinite leave to remain, the Minister said from the Dispatch Box that there will be “close consideration” of the public consultation that concluded last month, and yet last week the Home Secretary said that she is determined to push ahead with those changes to retrospective indefinite leave to remain. Which is true? This is about people who are working here and people who are contributing in many ways, not just financially.
Alex Norris
At the outset of the consultation, we were very clear that there were certain non-negotiable elements that we had decided prior to the consultation, including moving to a system with a default 10 years that could be reduced to five on the basis of the people’s contribution to their community and in relation to speaking English. Within the consultation, there were also questions about transitional protections. We are looking at all those issues in the round and I do not see an inconsistency in the two positions.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Where will we send an illegal entrant with no right to remain but whose country of origin is unsafe?
Alex Norris
The right hon. Gentleman will know that this Government have removed 60,000 people with no right to be in this country—a 31% increase on our predecessors. It is not possible to effect return in every case; everybody knows that. There are certain countries to which we are unable to do so. In those cases, we are not effecting returns, but we have to have a system that has a backstop of removal. I think that is an accepted principle.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
I acknowledge the considerable challenge that the Government have in winning back public confidence in the asylum system. The Home Office published a report last year concluding that there was insufficient evidence that restrictive asylum policies reduce claims, so will the Home Office publish evidence to show that cutting refugee leave from five years down to 30 months will deter claims in the UK? Does the Minister accept that a substantial settlement pathway of 20 years-plus is also unlikely to deter those claims?
Alex Norris
My hon. and learned Friend knows that we bring forward our impact assessments alongside the policies as we publish them, and as we seek to debate or implement them. He knows about the case that we made in our document in November as well. With regard to whether these policies work, I would gently say that Germany and Denmark have a similar period of time for protection, and both are seeing reductions in asylum claims. In the UK, there have been over 80,000 asylum claims for the last two years; for the previous decade, claims averaged 27,500. I do not think we can say that no change is an option.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
My constituent is a hard-working taxpayer, but his wife and daughter remain in Iran because the family reunion route has effectively been closed since September. Does the Minister accept that failing to provide controlled, safe and legal routes not only lets down families like this one, but fuels the use of dangerous routes?
Alex Norris
That route is paused for now. The hon. Lady will know that over the last four or five years, we have seen a huge increase—fivefold, I think—in the use of that route. Given the significant changes, it is right that the Government ensure that the system is effective. We are looking at it closely and we appreciate the importance of family reunion. She will have heard what I said about safe and legal means.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Given these changes, what changes to the national referral mechanism in relation to modern slavery does the Minister expect to see? What does the switch from a duty to a power for housing people waiting for asylum mean for the national dispersal method, including for places that have routinely had more people than was agreed, such as Stoke-on-Trent—and, if there are no changes, will he look at funding integration work in those places?
Alex Norris
My hon. Friend will know about my work on modern slavery over my years in this place. We know that is a constantly moving picture. We want to make sure that the protections for victims of slavery are robust—I think there is a consensus here on that—and that the system is being used properly. I also take his point on dispersal. The Department’s view is that there should be full dispersal, meaning that communities share the challenge across their means. With regard to payments, we pay £1,200 per head to help that integration work.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
Paying illegal asylum seekers £40,000 to leave the United Kingdom is a kick in the teeth for my hard-working constituents. Why are we not using that money to build a detention centre so that we can detain and immediately deport those who arrive in this country illegally?
Alex Norris
See, this is funny, Mr Speaker: when the hon. Gentleman was in my office saying he wanted the hotel in his constituency closed, he was saying, “Make sure we get a grip and get them closed”, but then when he sees the proposals to do so, he does not want them. He cannot have those two things together.
Damien Egan (Bristol North East) (Lab)
We see reports of armed criminal gangs operating with confidence along the northern coastline of France. My constituents ask what the French authorities are actually doing to deal with the issue. Can the Minister give an update on the ongoing discussions that he is having with his French counterparts? What will change on the back of these reforms?
Alex Norris
This is an important point. The gangs are well embedded; they had a head start of a good six-plus years on this Government. It is not easy for the French authorities, which we work very closely with. Through the Sandhurst agreement, we have seen 40,000 preventions, but we are in active negotiations about where we go next to tackle that pernicious threat.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Aside from the cruelty of asking people who have fled war and persecution to re-justify their already-recognised refugee status every 30 months, how does the Minister plan to pay for this huge additional administrative burden? As we have heard, the Refugee Council has estimated that it will cost £725 million over 10 years, but he contests that estimate. Perhaps he can tell us how much he thinks it will cost, and why—when our NHS and schools are crying out for funding—he is spending taxpayers’ money on scapegoating migrants instead.
Alex Norris
I gently say to the hon. Lady that we will not be asking those who come to this country, have a protection need, enter into work and study, learn the language and do not commit crimes to re-justify their protection need. I think that strikes the right balance between the taxpayer and the individual, and I do not recognise or accept the figures that she cites. Turning to the issue of cost, we must recognise that we in this country support a significantly bigger supported population than we have traditionally. That number needs to reduce—we need to break that attractiveness—which is why we have proposed these reforms.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
Last week, the Home Secretary mentioned that our immigration policy needed to be based on the idea of fairness. Is it fair to change the rules on indefinite leave to remain for those who are already making a contribution to our society and came here under the old rules? Will the Minister give those individuals some assurance that they will get some transitional protection?
Alex Norris
I am grateful for that question. On fairness, the applicable rules have always been those in force at the point of application, rather than at the point of entry, so I do not accept that that in itself represents a lack of fairness. Nevertheless, I have heard the point that my hon. Friend and other colleagues have made, which is why we carried out the consultation in the way we did.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
There have often been occasions on which somebody has leaked in advance the contents of a statement that they are going to make to the House of Commons, or part of its contents, but this is the first time I have seen a total revelation in the press of something that the Government had no intention of making a statement about to the House of Commons. Why is that, and what will these measures do to deter people from breaking into this country illegally, with it then being impossible to deport them?
Alex Norris
On the deterrence point, as I have said, we are receiving applications at an unprecedented level, and at a time when our European Union counterparts are seeing fewer applications. There is an attractiveness to this country, which is why we are changing the protection package and carrying out record levels of enforcement against illegal working. Those are the changes we are making to break those pull factors to this country.
Turning to announcements, we would of course mean no discourtesy to the House, and the right hon. Gentleman will have heard the apology I made at the outset. However, we stated our policy in November, and what we are now doing is building it out.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
South Norfolk expects our immigration system to be fair, open and transparent. The one problem we have come across, unfortunately, is that there is a lot of confusion online, as has been expertly shown by the shadow Home Secretary today. Can the Minister clarify that the process we are looking at will save the taxpayer £20 million, instead of spending money to keep open asylum hotels?
Alex Norris
My hon. Friend is exactly right. With regard to family returns, I hear from Conservative Members that they would rather pay a family with no prospect of staying in the country an average of £158,000 to stay in a hotel, rather than pay that £40,000. There are 150 families in the pilot; if we were to be successful with all of them, that would save the British taxpayer £20 million. I think we would be doing right by them in doing so.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Yesterday we marked International Women’s Day with the statistic that women hold fewer than two thirds of the rights enjoyed by men globally. Afghan women are already barred from secondary and higher education, and they now face further violence and discrimination under the Taliban’s new criminal regulations. What is the Secretary of State doing? She is stopping them from applying to study at our universities. Does the Minister not agree that the aim of ending violence against women and girls extends beyond borders, and that his Government have a moral duty to help women fulfil their potential in safety?
Alex Norris
I totally agree, which is why we have offered sanctuary to over 37,000 Afghans via resettlement schemes since 2021, as well as those who have come via the asylum system. I do not think that the point of difference between the right hon. Lady and me is about the substance; it is about whether those sorts of routes to provide sanctuary to people who want to study and have their protection needs met should be run by universities on our behalf, without the scrutiny of Parliament, or by the Government themselves. I cannot agree with her on that.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his updates. The Home Secretary was absolutely right last week that the public expect a controlled and orderly immigration system. I fully support her plans, but can the Minister say more about how quickly the measures announced will be implemented, and how the Home Office will ensure that they are properly enforced in practice?
Alex Norris
I know that the public are eager to see change. We were able to make some immediate changes in November when we announced the policies, and last Thursday we tabled statutory instruments that we hope will effect further changes. Similarly, we made changes to the immigration rules last week, and we will do so at future opportunities when the need arises. Of course, where there is the need for primary legislation—particularly on important appeals reform—that will come in front of the House in the usual way.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The only country that has successfully tackled illegal boat crossings similar to ours is Australia, and it did so not by paying people £40,000 per family to leave, but by sending them to a safe third country. I noticed that the Minister completely failed to answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). Does the Minister accept the reality that the only way to tackle this problem will be to get on with having a safe third country to deport these people to?
Alex Norris
I follow the hon. Gentleman’s work. He always says no to large sites and no to hotels, and then proposes fantastical third countries that he is not capable of naming. Ultimately, this is the choice: do people want fantasy, more empty rhetoric and argument, or do they want change and action with this Government? I know what I choose.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Along with Home Affairs Committee colleagues, I spent time in northern France last year seeing the challenges of intercepting small boats. The French maritime doctrine has clearly been an obstacle to adopting the more assertive tactics that my constituents wish and expect to see. Can the Minister outline the progress in getting the French to change their tactics, and will he make the continuation of Sandhurst funding dependent on that?
Alex Norris
From my perspective, with regards to action in northern France, what works is what works. It is a matter of record that we have enthusiasm about maritime doctrine-type tactics, but there are other things prior to that which need to work as well, particularly our work with the French to disrupt organised crime, which is having a significant impact. My hon. Friend mentions Sandhurst, which we are in the process of negotiating. I can absolutely assure him that all of that will be seen through the prism of bringing forward effective action.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
If the Government are serious about stopping dangerous small boats crossings and smashing the gangs, there must be safe routes for those fleeing war and persecution. I remind the House that bombs are falling right now in the Gulf and in the middle east. What progress has the Home Secretary made in establishing safe and legal routes for refugees, so that people do not risk their lives crossing the channel?
Alex Norris
The hon. Lady will know from our announcements in November that we believe in safe and legal alternatives. She will know that the “one in, one out” work with France is itself a safe and legal route. She will also know of the announcements we have made about a refugee study route. We are getting on with those things, alongside the difficult decisions we have made in front of Parliament in relation to the balance in disrupting that model and changing those behaviours from irregular and dangerous to safe and legal.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
Like many towns, Long Eaton is home to an asylum seeker hotel. It was gifted to us by the last Tory Government, but I know the Minister is doing everything in his power to close it as soon as possible. A secondary effect of the Tories’ hotels, however, is illegal work associated with the exploitation of local asylum seekers. Can the Minister elaborate on how measures announced recently will help to end illegal work in Erewash?
Alex Norris
We know from the materials of the traffickers that illegal working is one of those advertising features used to suggest to people that they should try to come to the UK. The impact of that is then felt in communities such as Long Eaton, and it means that we have got hotels open, but we are changing that equation. We have extended the powers around illegal working to the gig economy in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, which is now coming into force. The message is clear: people will not be able to employ people illegally, and people will not be able to work illegally.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
We learn from the press, if not from the Minister, that up to £40,000 of taxpayers’ money will be used to reward illegal activity. Does that not make a mockery of the law? Would it not be far better to withdraw from the European convention on human rights, so that we can deport people who have no basis to be here?
Alex Norris
It is tricky, because the right hon. Gentleman talks with power and vigour that was lacking from his colleagues in their 14 years in government. Indeed, he may well know, as colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench certainly know, that they paid people to leave the country, because it is in the taxpayers’ interest. There are choices between measures that work and measures such as leaving the ECHR, which are fantastical and would just lead to years and years of arguing, disruption and no impact.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
Some say that this Government are controlling our borders in spite of our progressive values, but no, we are securing our borders because it is in line with our Labour values. In my constituency, residents want to feel safe, and they do not feel safe with our borders not yet controlled. In wanting to tackle illegal ads, will the Minister set out what this Government are doing to stop illegal working, particularly within Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats??
Alex Norris
My hon. Friend is right, and I make exactly the same assessment of the position in Nottingham that I make of the position in Bournemouth. Those are people who leant into the Afghan scheme, the Syrian scheme, the Hong Kong British national overseas scheme and the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but who are rightly fed up about the three hotels in Bournemouth and the impact on their community. My hon. Friend’s vigour in working for the closure of those hotels is well known. As for the question of illegal workers, to prevent them from using those facilities we have introduced new punishments. People who work in the gig economy and are using the substitution of labour to circumvent legal working rules will be caught and punished, and we are doing that at record levels.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
At lunch time today I chaired a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on fisheries, during which we heard about existential threats to the fishing industry across these islands. Will the Minister agree to attend a meeting of the APPG so that he can hear at first hand about some of the threats posed by his party’s immigration policies?
Alex Norris
I am sure that the subject of that meeting was not how to help people to work illegally in the fishing industry, which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we are discussing today, but of course I am always open to meetings with colleagues to hear about their important work and what they want to see from the Government.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s focus on closing the hotels, and I am delighted that the last remaining hotel in my constituency that was opened by the Conservatives will be closing in the coming weeks, but will the Minister recommit the efforts of the Home Office to recovering the excess profits made by the providers of the contracts that were so badly negotiated by the last Government?
Alex Norris
My hon. Friend has timed his question perfectly, enabling me to say, just as the Chancellor joins me, that we have recouped tens of millions of pounds from those contracts, not to mention reduction amounting to hundreds of millions as a result of our improvement in relation to hotels. Nevertheless, all those hotels will be closed—opened by the Tories, closed by Labour.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
Raising that point was useful, because many of the migrants are going into houses in multiple occupation, which is a real problem in my constituency. Along with my Liberal Democrat-run council, I have raised concerns not only about the impact on our community, but about where people are being placed. Those concerns have been raised with Serco, which is ignoring them. Will the Minister meet me so that I can discuss them with him? Those in my community are extremely concerned.
Alex Norris
Of course I will. I want to see equitable dispersal, and I am desperately trying to close the gap between the Home Office and local government so that there is better information sharing. Local authorities should not be surprised: there should be an early conversation about possible sites in their communities, not because they will have a veto but because they may have a better way of doing things.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I know that the Minister will agree that it is important for us to have a working and fair immigration system, but that, sadly, is not what we inherited. Constituents of mine in Harlow are rightly concerned that people who come to settle here should be law-abiding. Does the Minister agree that if they are not law-abiding, they will not be settling here?
Alex Norris
I totally agree. My hon. Friend can assure people in Harlow that every element of our system will incentivise people to come here and follow the rules, and if they do not, that will be a bar to citizenship. It will bar them from getting what they want from our settlement system. That is the right balance for the British people to ensure that our generosity is not abused.
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
I am very perplexed, and indeed I suspect that most Brits will be perplexed. We have more than 650,000 job vacancies, of which more than 165,000 are for unskilled workers. Why are we not dealing with the refugees—processing their applications, giving them training, putting them into jobs and enabling them to earn some money, rather than paying their hotel costs?
Alex Norris
The hon. Gentleman will have heard earlier that we in the Home Office are making decisions faster than ever without affecting the grant rate. We are making those quick decisions so that those who need protection can build their lives in this country. The hon. Gentleman may well have heard Question Time earlier today, when we were talking about the number of young people in Britain who are out of work. I cannot accept that so many young people in Britain can be out of work and the Government can have no aspiration for them to fill roles.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
My constituents want the Government to get off their back and get on their side, rather than using their hard-earned taxpayers’ money to spend up to £40,000 on removing illegal asylum seekers. Will the Minister rule that out?
Alex Norris
The hon. Gentleman has heard what I have said to his colleagues: the choice is between paying £158,000 for those families to live in hotels and paying £40,000 for them to leave the country. I do not know whether he needs a calculator, but I think that is a good equation.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Can the Minister tell us what modelling those in the Home Office have done in respect of whether these visa bans will actually affect the backlog of refugee and asylum seekers? Have they looked at the impact on local services in constituencies such as mine? People running care homes have told me that they are losing vital workforce members and may not be able to stay open.
Alex Norris
Of course we take a lens on reform. The hon. Lady will know that those seeking asylum cannot work in such environments, so they would not be germane to that conversation. We look very closely at the impacts of our policies and publish reviews at the appropriate moments.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The concept of paying someone who has come here illegally £40,000 to leave will stick in the throats of all taxpayers in this country. Notwithstanding the arguments that the Minister has put forward, what assessment has he made that making an offer of 40 grand will not act as a huge pull factor and cause more people to come here to collect our cash?
Alex Norris
First of all, I can offer the hon. Gentleman some degree of comfort: this is a targeted pilot at this stage. It cannot act as a pull factor, because people will not be eligible for it. Other countries that offer money, including Denmark, are seeing their numbers go down, which can also give him a degree of comfort.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
The Minister failed to answer the questions from my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan). In the absence of a third-country scheme, to where do we remove people when their countries are not safe or there are no returns agreements?
Alex Norris
As I have said to the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, the Rwanda scheme would not have removed those people; it would have removed a tiny proportion, at an eye-watering cost. We are ramping up removals of those who have no right to be here. If the hon. Gentleman is really saying that he wants to rip up the ECHR because he wants to send people back to countries that are not safe, he should name which ones.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Alongside last week’s announcements was the most welcome announcement that BNO passport holders will not be required to hold B2 language qualifications, but Hongkongers resident in Wimborne are really concerned about the income threshold. Can the Minister confirm whether that is also being exempted?
Alex Norris
As I have said to other colleagues, I can confirm that the income threshold, and particularly how it is resolved at a family unit level, was part of the consultation. We have had more than 200,000 replies, and we are looking at them closely.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
Over 330,000 people have signed a petition urging the Government to scrap the plan to increase the ILR period from five years to 10 years, especially the retrospective nature of it. This will have a detrimental effect on the core of our society, especially the NHS, and will exploit workers, who will be vulnerable to exploitative bosses. Does the Minister agree with many of his Back Benchers that the Government must stop this cruel proposal taking effect?
Alex Norris
As the hon. Gentleman knows, and as I have said previously, the governing criteria for settlement have always applied at the point of application, rather than at the point of entry. He will also have heard from me that one in 30 people in this country came during the last three or four years, so a significant problem must be resolved in terms of pressure on public services and fairness to the British taxpayer. That is why we are looking at this issue so closely.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Some time ago, there was a debate on fisheries in this Chamber. The Minister who replied for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that she would meet those of us who represent fishing villages. There is a need for visas for fishing crews, and it will not cost this country any money to have them here, as they contribute to it. Will the Minister please agree to a meeting?
Alex Norris
Whether it is with me or the Minister for Migration and Citizenship, I will ensure that a meeting on fisheries takes place.
Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)
My constituents are deeply alarmed that retrospective changes to ILR could leave long-term residents living in fear of deportation. Does the Minister accept that leaving families across this country in a state of profound uncertainty risks undermining the very sense of security and fairness that our immigration system is supposed to uphold?
Alex Norris
I cannot accept that. The hon. Gentleman will have seen that we were very clear in our settlement consultation that coming here, working hard, contributing, paying taxes, learning the language, taking part in the community and not committing crimes will get someone the best route to settlement. I think that gives people the security they need.
Mr Speaker
I believe the Minister had a telling-off earlier, and I just want to reiterate the problem. The scrapping of the communications grid may be of benefit to the Government, but it is not beneficial to this House. This House does not want to be drip-fed for seven days via the news; the Government should come here first. We have got it the wrong way round. I hope the message goes back that this should happen no more.
Middle East: Economic Update
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement about the Government’s preparedness and economic response to the conflict in the middle east. Let me begin by paying tribute to our armed forces, and by expressing my concern and sympathy for the British citizens whose lives have been disrupted by the conflict so far. I understand the anxiety felt by families and businesses during these incredibly uncertain times. This conflict affects us all, and we must respond to it.
As I have demonstrated time and again, I will take the necessary decisions to help families with the cost of living and protect the public finances. I am clear-eyed about my response to the current situation. My economic approach will be both responsive to a changing world and responsible in the national interest. The economic impact of the situation in the middle east will depend of course on its severity and its duration. The movements we have already seen are likely to put upward pressure on inflation in the coming months, but I also want to confirm to the House that our financial markets are functioning and that I am in regular touch with the Governor of the Bank of England.
This afternoon, I spoke with G7 Finance Ministers, setting out my priorities for the international co-operation needed. First, we are calling for immediate de-escalation and a return to the diplomatic process. Secondly, we must guarantee the security of vessels passing through the strait of Hormuz. Thirdly, I stand ready to support a co-ordinated release of collective International Energy Agency oil reserves. Fourthly, the UK will play its part as the global hub of maritime insurance. I am meeting the chair of Lloyd’s of London later today, when we will discuss how best to support the continued passage of maritime trade.
I want to assure the country that the fundamentals of Britain’s economy are strong. Every step that I have taken since the election has built our national resilience: stability in the public finances; investment in infrastructure in both defence and energy security; and reform to our economy. Last week, I updated the House about our progress in delivering that plan. We have cut inflation so that it is now at 3%, a lower base than at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I have prioritised economic growth to drive up living standards and I have stabilised the public finances. We have already reduced the deficit by £20 billion since last year, from 5.2% to 4.3% of GDP. We are due to reduce borrowing more over the rest of this Parliament, and by more than any other G7 economy, and I have increased our financial buffers, confirmed last week by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
I know that families and businesses will be concerned about the impact of this conflict on them, so I want to set out the action we have already taken and will take to protect them. I am prioritising energy security, investing in clean, home-grown energy. Our contracts for difference are already protecting consumers, ensuring that generators of low-carbon energy pay money back into the system when the wholesale prices are high, shielding bill payers from fossil fuel price shocks. I can confirm to the House that, in the coming days, we will publish the Government’s response to the Fingleton review of nuclear regulation to build nuclear power more quickly.
Our energy system is now more secure than it was at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In 2025, the UK imported 17% less gas than we did in 2021. While gas generation is estimated to have set the wholesale price of electricity in Britain around 90% of the time in the early 2020s, that has now fallen by around a third. As a result we are less reliant on and less exposed to volatile international energy prices than we were at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and that is welcome.
I recognise the role that North sea oil and gas will play in our economy for years to come. Last week, I met North sea industry leaders to discuss their role in jobs, investment and growth, and in energy supply. The energy profits levy currently remains in place and the electricity generator levy will also be activated if prices remain at high levels. I have set out the details of our successor regime to the energy profits levy, the oil and gas price mechanism, balancing providing certainty to business with fairly taxing windfall profits from energy companies.
I have also taken direct action on energy bills. Our supercharger discount on business electricity is increasing next month, cutting costs for around 500 of the most energy-intensive businesses by an additional £420 million per year. We are supporting the lowest-income families by investing £15 billion in our warm homes plan to improve the energy efficiency of people’s homes and reduce their bills, and, through the warm homes discount, taking £150 off bills for 6 million of the lowest-income households—a doubling of the number of people who will receive the warm home discount compared with the plans the previous Government had. That is in addition to the £117 drop in the price cap that Ofgem has confirmed from next month, thanks to the wider action on bills I took in the Budget.
I want to be clear to families at home that despite the movements we have seen in energy prices in the last few days, the price cap for domestic bills for April will not change, giving families immediate certainty on their bills until at least the end of June. However, I recognise that households who use heating oil face unique challenges, so I have asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to lead discussions with officials and rural and Northern Irish MPs to explore further action we can take. Those meetings will happen on Wednesday.
The current conflict only increases the importance of the action I took at the Budget to reduce energy bills. A rapid de-escalation in the middle east remains the best way to protect us from rising energy bills, but as the situation continues to unfold my priorities will continue to be helping families with the cost of living and protecting the public finances. I am also taking action to ensure that people pay the lowest possible price at the pump. In November, I extended the 5p per litre cut in fuel duty for a further five months and ensured that fuel duty will not increase in line with inflation this year. Petrol is more than 8p per litre cheaper today than it would have been under the plans we inherited at the election. That discount increases to 11p per litre next month once that extension takes effect.
The new cheap fuel finder that I confirmed at the Budget is currently being delivered, helping consumers find the cheapest price for their fuel. Almost 90% of petrol retailers have already registered for this and last week I instructed my officials to accelerate the integration of the cheaper fuel finder with map applications. This week, I am meeting petrol forecourt operators and I will not hesitate to call out retailers who fail to provide data to the fuel finder. I am clear that the best way to keep prices at the pump low is rapid de-escalation, and I will continue to monitor prices as the situation develops. I have also asked the Competition and Markets Authority to be vigilant across prices, including essentials such as road fuel and heating oil. Let me be absolutely clear: I will not tolerate any company exploiting the current crisis to make excess profits at consumers’ expense.
I am proud to be the Chancellor who is delivering the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war. I am committed to giving our military the resources they need. That is why I can confirm today that I approved access for the Ministry of Defence to the special reserve to deploy additional capabilities in the middle east, meaning that no net additional costs of these operations will be funded by the MOD, but instead will be funded by the Treasury.
We do not yet know how long the conflict will last or what further action will be required, but it is my duty to be responsive in an uncertain world and responsible in the national interest to protect the public finances and help families with the cost of living. That is what the Prime Minister is doing and that is what I will continue to do. I commend this statement to the House.
Sir Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I thank the Chancellor for advance sight of her statement and add the Opposition’s firm support for our armed forces.
As the Chancellor has made clear, these are very serious and concerning times, and developments in the middle east are already having profound consequences for our economy. Oil prices have surged above $100 a barrel for the first time since the 2022 energy crisis. That alone is enough to have huge knock-on effects for households and businesses: families filling up their car will already have noticed petrol prices increasing, and fixed-price energy tariffs have either been increased or pulled from the market. We are already seeing British households worse off as a result of this conflict.
I am grateful to the Chancellor for updating the House on her meetings with other G7 Finance Ministers, and I welcome her commitment to supporting action to ease pressure on global supply by using strategic oil reserves. That, however, will go only so far.
As the Chancellor has said, the longer this conflict continues, the more likely it is that we will see a sustained period of higher prices. That, in turn, will have implications for interest rates and our cost of borrowing. The longer that lasts, the more likely it is that higher inflationary expectations will become anchored. If that happens, monetary policy will need to adjust accordingly, which may mean higher mortgages for homeowners who have only just begun to see some relief.
Gilt markets have already been responding to these events, which could mean that the forecasts we were given just last week from the Office for Budget Responsibility end up looking very different. We must continue to monitor developments closely.
Where the Opposition clearly differ from the right hon. Lady is in her approach to the economy in the run-up to this crisis, as her gross mismanagement has left us far more vulnerable than would otherwise have been the case. She refers to inflation, which was bang on target when we left office; thanks to her choices, though, it rose back up to almost 4% last year—the highest in the G7—and remains elevated, which is far from ideal given the threat of a significant further spike in energy prices. Extraordinarily, the Chancellor has just now reconfirmed that the Government will press ahead with a rise in fuel duty later this year.
Borrowing is running higher than was forecast when the Government took office—we are spending well over £100 billion a year on debt interest alone. This leaves us far more vulnerable to rising borrowing costs. The Government are also continuing to impose ruinously high taxes on our oil and gas sector and choosing to rely on imports instead of maximising our own domestic energy supply. That is proving to be an incredibly short-sighted approach. However, as the right hon. Lady has just told us, there will be no change in direction. That is the wrong choice. More broadly, of course, business confidence has hit record lows, and unemployment has risen back to pandemic levels. Our economy is weaker as a direct result of this Chancellor.
Last week, at the spring statement, the right hon. Lady had an opportunity to change course; instead, we got no action at all, just breathtaking self-congratulation and denial. She had a vital opportunity to come to the House with a plan to get the economy growing, but she did not do so—not least because this weak Government have caved in to their own Back Benchers, who prefer higher welfare spending to fixing our economy.
Today, let me reiterate our offer to support the Government if—even at this late stage, and particularly given the gravity of the current global outlook—they do the right thing by showing some backbone and coming forward with a proper plan to cut welfare spending and strengthen our economy so that we can properly support hard-working families through this difficult time. That is the very least that the British people deserve.
Finally, let me ask the right hon. Lady the following questions. Will she urgently reconsider her decision to implement the first increase in fuel duty in 15 years? Likewise, will she urgently reconsider her decision to continue with the crippling taxes being imposed on North sea oil and gas producers? On the Fingleton review on nuclear, can she clarify whether the Government are accepting all the recommendations, as Ministers previously committed to accepting?
Will the right hon. Lady give further details on what additional economic action is under consideration internationally if the conflict continues? What measures are the Government considering to support households in the event of a sustained period of higher prices, and what action is being considered as part of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury’s work to support those reliant on heating oil?
Are the Government tracking the Iranian regime’s illegal funding sources to ensure that UK financial systems are not facilitating funds that are being used to support repression? Will the right hon. Lady confirm that there is sufficient resource available in the special reserve so that our brave servicemen and women have the support that they deserve?
Rachel Reeves
I thank the shadow Chancellor for his questions. The Government believe that the best way that we can protect families and businesses from this conflict is through de-escalation. We heard nothing in the shadow Chancellor’s response about what the Conservatives’ view is on de-escalation. We believe that it is important that we get back to the negotiating table and do not escalate this conflict, but I am not sure that that is the view of the Conservatives.
We know that commitment to greater energy security can help guard against shocks. After inaction and delay from the Conservatives while they were in government for 14 years, this Labour Government are committed to investing in and building new nuclear. That is why we are backing Sizewell C and small modular reactors— neither of which were funded by the previous Government, but both of which were funded at the spending review, because this Government are backing Britain’s energy security. This Labour Government are backing the industries of the future, such as carbon capture and storage—not funded by the Conservatives, but funded in the spending review, because we back Britain’s energy security. Through the National Wealth Fund, we are investing in floating offshore wind and our docks—not funded by the Conservatives, but funded in the spending review, because we back Britain’s energy security.
In 14 years the Tories did nothing. They failed when we needed new nuclear. They stood by and allowed the loss of gas storage facilities at Rough. They failed to fix the broken planning system to enable us to build renewables, and they had an effective moratorium on onshore wind, which is the cheapest form of energy. We are taking a different approach in the interests of our economy and energy security.
On energy bills, I urge the shadow Chancellor not to scaremonger. The £150 cut to energy bills that I announced in the Budget will continue, as has been confirmed by Ofgem. We removed the failed energy company obligation scheme, and we removed a number of levies from bills. On heating oil, those conversations will happen this week, and we are working closely with MPs and colleagues in Northern Ireland to make sure that things are working well. The Minister for Energy at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero met the heating oil sector on Friday and spoke this morning to the Competition and Markets Authority. There is not currently a problem with supply, but if Members have individual issues around supply, they should make sure that they get in contact with DESNZ.
The shadow Chancellor asked about fuel duty. Fuel duty would have risen by 8p if I had used the plans that I inherited from the Conservatives. We have had two Budgets in which the freeze on fuel duty was extended, and both times it was voted against by all Opposition parties. It is a little rich for the Tories now to say that they want to reduce fuel duty when they voted against Budgets that froze it.
On the energy profits levy, the shadow Chancellor must have a short memory, because he was in the Cabinet that introduced the energy profits levy. It was introduced for a reason. Windfall profits were being made by the energy companies and there was a need to help consumers with bills, which is exactly what we have done.
On the public finances, I am not sure the right hon. Gentleman listened to my statement last week or my statement today. The deficit has reduced from 5.3% to 4.2% of GDP. This is the first time in six years that the budget deficit has been less than 5% of GDP. In fact, in the 14 years that the Conservatives were in office, borrowing was higher than the G7 average; it is now lower than the G7 average, and it is coming down in every year of this Parliament. On inflation, I will not take any lessons from the party whose policy took inflation to more than 11%.
The right hon. Gentleman, as a former Work and Pensions Secretary, says that we should be spending less on welfare. Well, it would have been nice if he had done something about it when he was in charge. We are reforming the welfare system, which the Conservatives broke.
On Fingleton, we commissioned the Fingleton review because we are determined to build nuclear power, unlike the Conservative party. On oil reserves, we have reserves equivalent to 90 days of oil imports. As the G7 confirmed today, we will be making further announcements on that. On gas reserves, it was the Conservative party that closed the storage facilities at Rough. National Gas has confirmed today that our gas reserves are at a comparable level to last year and the year before that. The numbers that are being reported are utterly misleading, because gas comes from a number of sources—interconnectors, liquid natural gas and our storage facilities—so I would really rather the Conservative party did not scaremonger when people want certainty.
On money laundering, of course we have the very strictest rules. On the special reserve for defence, of course we will ensure that the Ministry of Defence has all the money it needs to provide support for our armed forces.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend is right to focus on the cost of living and de-escalation in the middle east. I am pleased to hear her confirm again that there is money for the Ministry of Defence and access to the special reserve to deploy additional capabilities to the middle east. Can she give us a figure or a range for how much money the Treasury is providing to the Ministry of Defence to deploy?
Rachel Reeves
It would not be right to disclose that sort of information. As I said, we will provide all the support that is needed for our operations in the middle east.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I am grateful to the Chancellor for advance sight of her statement, but it does not include a single concrete announcement, and in itself will not provide the reassurance that householders and businesses are looking for as they hear reports that energy bills are about to escalate. Last week, the Liberal Democrats asked the Chancellor whether she would consider scrapping the planned 1p increase in fuel duty, due in September. Will she confirm that that option is still on the table and has not been ruled out?
Last autumn, we Liberal Democrats called for a new energy security bank to roll out low-interest loans to households and small and medium-sized enterprises. We welcomed the Government’s warm homes plan in January, but will the Chancellor confirm that it could be extended from five to 10 years and that it will have a greater emphasis on home insulation? Could small businesses’ investment in energy-saving measures be excluded from business rates calculations?
In the long term, we need energy market reform. I urge the Chancellor and her Government to intervene to stop these unpredictable fluctuations in the gas market. We need urgently to develop a plan to delink gas and electricity prices, and move expensive old renewable subsidies from the renewables obligation to the much better and cheaper contracts for difference model.
I am glad that the Chancellor has written to the Competition and Markets Authority about keeping an eye on petrol pump prices, but last autumn I wrote to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade and asked him to instruct the CMA to investigate bad practices in the energy market that affect hospitality businesses and small businesses. The Federation of Small Businesses and UKHospitality have also asked for that investigation but, six months on, it still has not happened. Will the Chancellor please confirm that she will speak to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade?
Finally, on rural homes, we know that off-grid homes rely on oil, and they are already seeing prices go up as panic buying spreads. I am grateful that the Chancellor indicated that there will be a meeting on Wednesday. Will she confirm that an announcement will be forthcoming by the end of this week?
Rachel Reeves
The hon. Lady talks about energy security, but she has never once acknowledged her party’s failure when they were in government. In 2010, her then party leader Nick Clegg justified opposing new nuclear energy on the grounds that it would take until 2022 to become operational. Well, 2022 has been and gone, but what is here is another example of Britain paying a high price today for the choices of the Opposition parties.
I turn to the hon. Lady’s specific questions. We announced at the Budget that we will take £150 off bills—that will come in in April and continue until June—by taking the failed energy company obligation levy, over which the last Government presided, off bills. People on heating oil also use electricity in their homes and will benefit from reductions in their energy bills from April. As I said, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will meet relevant MPs this week.
The hon. Lady walked with her colleagues through the Lobby to oppose the Budget measures, which included freezing fuel duties, so it is a bit rich of her now to say that she wants us to cut fuel duty. On ensuring that homes are properly insulated, at the spending review last year I announced £15 billion for the warm homes plan, which is focused on lower-income families.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that contracts for difference are crucial in weaning ourselves off imported oil and gas. We are in a better place because of the CfD auctions we have been holding and the energy infrastructure we have been building, and which we can build because of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which Opposition parties opposed.
Finally, as I said in my statement, the Competition and Markets Authority has an important role in ensuring that markets are functioning properly on heating oil, on petrol forecourts and for small businesses. We will ensure that it fulfils that role so that people are not overcharged for the energy they use.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to giving us energy security by reducing our dependence on international fossil fuel markets and moving to clean energy instead. I also welcome what she said about her support for jobs and investment in the North sea, her commitment to protecting consumers through the warm home discount and the warm homes plan, and indeed the commitment she made in the Budget to take £117 off consumer bills.
My right hon. Friend rightly pointed out the dire record of Opposition parties on new nuclear—14 years in which they failed. Will she give a commitment that this Government will add to their already announced successes on Sizewell C and on small modular reactors, and give policy certainty to the industry through a fleet approach to both large-scale and small modular reactors?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. We have already signed off commitments to both Sizewell C—a publicly funded nuclear power station—and small modular reactors, which we will build with Rolls-Royce in north Wales. The purpose of the Fingleton review is to ensure that we can build those quickly and cheaply, as—more than ever—the current situation demands.
Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
When I was doing the Chancellor’s job, the Treasury rule of thumb was that a 20% increase in energy prices meant 1% more on inflation and 0.5% less on growth. The truth is that it is much too early to know whether the Chancellor will have to find £78 billion to help households with energy bills, as I had to do in 2022, but we do know that the world is much more dangerous and that there are big problems in our defence budget. I welcome the fact that the Government are now committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but nearly two years on from when the previous Government made the same commitment, it is clear that that is not enough. Will she unblock the arguments between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence and outline a timetable whereby defence spending increases to 3% of GDP and we are able to defend our interests in the middle east and our allies in Europe, as the whole House would wish?
Rachel Reeves
The right hon. Gentleman’s point about it being too early to tell the impact is really important. Of course we will take the necessary actions to protect consumers and businesses, but the most important thing we can do at the moment is to de-escalate the conflict and work with Lloyd’s of London and countries around the world to get those vessels flowing through the strait of Hormuz. That is absolutely key for containing the rises in energy prices.
On defence spending, the Conservative manifesto committed to getting to 2.5% by the end of the Parliament. We are going to get to 2.6% by April next year, and we have made further commitments to 3% and then 3.5%. Obviously, we have a spending review coming up next year where these decisions will be taken in the round.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I am planning to run this statement only until 5.45 pm, so I ask Members and the Chancellor to please help each other by making the questions very short.
John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)
The root cause of this issue in Britain is our excessive reliance on gas. That is why consumers in Glasgow East pay much more for their energy. The Conservatives had an offshore wind auction with no bids and an onshore wind moratorium, and the SNP is against any new nuclear power stations. Does my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer agree that we must double down on nuclear and on onshore and offshore wind to attack the root cause of our energy costs?
Rachel Reeves
We are building new nuclear in England and we are building new nuclear in Wales. We would love to build new nuclear in Scotland, but that will be possible only with a Labour Government in Scotland. On renewables, auction round 7 was very successful, and auction round 8 will take place later this year. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we need to wean ourselves off imported oil and gas and be more secure with our energy supplies here in the UK.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
The Chancellor has announced today that she is not really making any changes at this point, and that she is calling for a de-escalation. What would she say to my rural constituent who uses heating oil and has a virtually empty tank after a long winter, and is facing a 100% increase in the cost of heating oil? I did not hear anything that would help that particular constituent.
Rachel Reeves
As the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), said, it is too early to know the impact of this. The key is de-escalation and getting vessels flowing through the strait of Hormuz. The hon. Lady will have heard me say that heating oil is uniquely affected. People who use heating oil will get the benefits in their electricity bills, but I urge her to attend the meeting on Wednesday to put the case of her constituent to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor and Treasury officials for working closely with the Labour rural research group to discuss the heating oil troubles that we are facing right now, with prices going up by over 200% in some parts. Can she elaborate on what action will be taken with the Competition and Markets Authority to ensure that we are protecting our consumers from these price gouging effects?
Rachel Reeves
The point about price gouging is really important, and that is why we have today instructed the Competition and Markets Authority to ensure that heating oil and petrol retailers, for example, are not taking advantage of this situation to line their own pockets rather than thinking about the consumers they serve.
Chris Coghlan (Dorking and Horley) (LD)
This last week has underlined our perilous national security situation and the potential risks to growth. Does the Chancellor agree that now is the time to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP, perhaps funded by borrowing, along with our European and Canadian allies, to reassure the bond markets and to drive growth and protect our national security?
Rachel Reeves
I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman, who is on the Treasury Committee, but his party has opposed every increase in taxes that we have brought in to better fund our public services, including higher defence spending. Like me, he will be looking at what is happening in the financial markets. I am not convinced that this is the time to unleash more borrowing on the markets. That is what Liz Truss tried, and look where it got us.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
I welcome the Chancellor’s statement, particularly the focus on energy security and our plan for home-grown clean energy. It has been astonishing since the election to hear that the Conservatives’ lesson from the Ukraine crisis was that we needed to be more dependent on international fossil fuels, after it cost us £78 billion, as the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), just said. The Chancellor mentioned the electricity generator levy. Will she tell the House how and when that would be activated?
Rachel Reeves
The energy profits levy is still in place, and the higher prices go, the more windfall tax is paid. There is also the electricity generator levy, whereby if electricity prices go up because they are, in some cases, outside of contracts for difference and linked to gas prices, we will recoup money there. That is obviously important because if the situation goes badly, we will need to be able to better support consumers. That is why the EPL and the EGL were brought in in the first place, and why they are important parts of the architecture we have.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
When we are in the middle of a war, I am not sure that it achieves much to be overtly party political. The past is where we were; we are now in the present. Just to be helpful, I agree with the Chancellor on de-escalation and on defending our interests, not pursuing regime change, but the fact is that we have the highest energy costs in Europe. We are now in a crisis and potentially a war economy. I saw the Energy Secretary sitting next to her earlier. Whatever the good intentions on net zero, will she listen to the shadow Chancellor on North sea oil, because we are in this crisis now and have to meet it with every tool in the toolbox?
Rachel Reeves
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The best way to reduce prices for businesses and families in all our constituencies is to de-escalate and ensure that vessels can get through the strait of Hormuz, and that is our focus. But what this crisis, as well as Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, shows us is that we have to wean ourselves off oil and gas. We are better placed now than we were when Russia invaded Ukraine because we get more of our electricity through contracts for difference than we did then, and we are less reliant on gas prices to set our overall energy prices, but this shows that we need to do more to invest in both nuclear and home-grown renewables so that we are not so reliant on imports. However, as I said in my statement, I met North sea oil and gas leaders last week to talk about how we can support them during this time to ensure that we have access to the reserves we need.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for her statement. It is vital for residents in Dartford and across the country that they know the Government have their back when it comes to fuel bills going forward. Does she agree that the economic stability she set out last week in the spring statement means that the economy and consumers are much less vulnerable to the price shocks coming from the middle east than they otherwise would have been?
Rachel Reeves
We are in a better position than we were when Russia invaded Ukraine for two reasons. The first is our macroeconomic situation. For the first time since 2019, our deficit is below 5% of GDP. It came down by 1 percentage point of GDP just this year, and the OBR has forecast that it will fall every year, which gives us a bit more of a buffer. Of course, I set out how the headroom against the fiscal rules—both the stability rule and the investment rule—had increased at the spring forecast compared with the Budget. The other way we are better prepared is that more of our electricity comes from contracts for difference, which are not linked to the volatile and rising gas prices. That means that bills will be less affected, but I come back to the point that de-escalation will have the greatest impact on my hon. Friend’s constituents in Dartford and people elsewhere in getting their bills down.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Families are already struggling with the ongoing cost of living crisis, and the Chancellor has failed to bring down energy bills in the way that was promised in the manifesto. As prices continue to soar and international events cause people real anxiety as they look on, people are struggling and feeling the squeeze from the cost of living more than ever before. Will she now recognise that this is a crisis for families and put in real support to help them through the cost of living crisis?
Rachel Reeves
With respect to the hon. Lady, on 1 April, energy prices will fall by an average of £117 thanks to the action that I took in the Budget, and will be frozen at that point until the end of June. As the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), and other Members have said, the most important thing we can do now is de-escalate the crisis. If she really believes in energy security, she should back Labour’s plans to invest in nuclear energy, as well as the jobs that it would create in Scotland.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Chancellor’s reiteration of the British industry supercharger scheme, but she will know that it helps only 10% of this country’s energy-intensive industry—electro-intensive industry in particular. The price per therm of gas is pretty much double what it was last week, so will she set out what help might be available for gas-intensive industry and for electro-industry that is not part of the supercharger scheme? Although we all hope that de-escalation comes, if it does not, will she meet the energy-intensive industries impacted by gas prices to see how they can be given immediate relief?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. Five-hundred businesses will benefit from an increased discount through the supercharger, taking it from 60% to 90%, from April. Next April, the British industry competitiveness scheme comes in, and it will benefit around 7,000 businesses. Of course, we will continue to consider how we can support our energy-intensive industries if the situation in the middle east continues.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Given that it was promised at the start of June last year, when will the Chancellor sign off on the defence investment plan?
Rachel Reeves
I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman and the time he spent at the Treasury. As he knows, the previous Government committed to reaching 2.5% by the end of this Parliament. We are committing to bringing that forward, and by April next year we will be spending 2.6% of GDP. We will set out the defence investment plan based on our strategic defence review. Of course, the previous Government did not even bother to do a strategic defence review.
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Constituents in Weardale, Teesdale and Gaunless valley are already paying double what they would have paid for their heating oil a week ago, and some of them simply cannot afford to fill up their tanks. Thanks to the fiscal headroom that the Chancellor has created, there is money in the system to support them, so will she consider fixed-term payments in the short term, and an expansion of the warm homes local grant in the long term, to help people to transition to cheaper forms of fuel?
Rachel Reeves
As I set out in my statement, we put £15 billion into the warm homes plan at the spending review last year, to better insulate people’s homes and help them to move to cheaper forms of energy. However, I recognise the immediate problems relating to heating oil, which is why I have asked the Competition and Markets Authority to consider price gouging, and why the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will meet MPs on Wednesday. I hope that my hon. Friend will be there on behalf of his Bishop Auckland constituents.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Since the outbreak of the conflict in the middle east, heating oil prices have increased by over 100%. That is a harsh reminder that relying on volatile fossil fuel markets leaves households financially vulnerable. Many rural households are off the gas grid, so constituents such as Julian from East Lambrook are not protected by the energy price cap. Does the Chancellor agree that that is unfair on rural communities, and will she take steps to develop a mechanism to protect those householders from damaging global fossil fuel price shocks?
Rachel Reeves
Almost every household uses electricity to turn on the lights. They will benefit from some of the changes that will come in on 1 April. Some 4% of households in Great Britain, and more than 60% in Northern Ireland, rely on heating oil. We recognise the unique situation here. The increase in the price in the past few days does not reflect market conditions, which is why we have asked the Competition and Markets Authority to look urgently at extortionate prices. We are also ensuring that supply remains stable. Enough heating oil is available, and we do not want people to be priced out of it.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
I welcome the Chancellor’s statement and thank her for her work to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Will she say a little more about her long-term work to increase grid capacity and change the planning system to help invest in new nuclear and solar?
Rachel Reeves
We made changes to the national policy planning framework a few days into this Government, and at the end of last year we passed the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which makes it easier to build a range of infrastructure from housing to data centres and, crucially, energy infrastructure. That Act was opposed by the Opposition parties, who need to explain why they are against building the grid connections that will help us to benefit from cheaper energy.
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
I agree with the Chancellor that de-escalation is desirable, but this conflict is likely to go on for many months. She talks about reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, which I agree with, but businesses are operating in the here and now, and they want reassurance. Forget the 500 businesses that will benefit from the supercharger scheme; what message can she give to medium-sized businesses that are very concerned and are having to lay off staff?
Rachel Reeves
I recognise the concerns about businesses. As well as the supercharger, the British industrial competitiveness scheme is coming in next year, and we are monitoring the situation carefully to see what else might be necessary. De-escalation is so important. There is no reason why this conflict has to go on for months and months—nobody wants that, it is in no one’s interest, and we must quickly get vessels flowing through the strait of Hormuz. That is why I am meeting Lloyd’s of London later today, to work through what insurance products can be introduced, and it is why G7 Finance Ministers talked on the call this afternoon about how we can guarantee the safety of vessels flowing through the strait.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Tens of thousands of homes across Cornwall are still totally reliant on heating oil, so I am delighted that the Chancellor has confirmed that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will be meeting rural MPs, whose constituents are disproportionately affected by the crisis. Does she agree that in order to accelerate away from a fossil fuel-led economy, the British Business Bank, National Wealth Fund, and Great British Energy need to take a more dynamic attitude to risk when supporting renewable energy projects?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and the group of rural Labour MPs for contacting me over the weekend with their stories and suggestions. That is why the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will be meeting MPs on Wednesday this week. The National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank are already investing heavily in renewables, and we increased their budget for them to do so. I also recognise the important opportunities in Cornwall, not just the South Crofty tin mine in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but other energy projects, including geothermal energy, and I have asked the National Wealth Fund to look again at those opportunities.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Reform)
The British people are being clobbered. The Chancellor could have come here today and scrapped her hike in fuel duty. She could have come here, ended the insanity, and got drilling again in the North sea. Instead, she offered nothing—absolutely nothing. This crisis deserves a proper response. When will she finally understand that for now at least she is the Chancellor, not just a bystander?
Rachel Reeves
The freeze in fuel duty—Reform opposed it. The energy profits levy—the right hon. Gentleman introduced it when he was in the Conservative Government. I will take no lectures from him and the Tory tribute act sitting up there.
Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for her statement, for her support for the armed forces, and for acknowledging the anxiety of constituents abroad. Closer to home—at home, in fact—half of my constituents in Na h-Eileanan an Iar outside the town of Stornoway rely on heating oil to heat their homes. They face great uncertainty, with no guarantee of delivery, or of price on delivery. I hear what Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis fears regarding price gouging and price rises, so I welcome Treasury talks and hope that they will lead to further scrutiny and regulation of this unregulated industry. Otherwise, I will have to introduce the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to the old Lewis tradition of cutting peat for winter fuel.
Rachel Reeves
I recognise that my hon. Friend’s constituents will be affected more than most by worries about the delivery and price of heating oil. That is why I have instructed the Competition and Markets Authority to look at price gouging and why the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will be meeting my hon. Friend and other concerned MPs on Wednesday this week.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
Will the decisions that the Chancellor is making about the strategic reserve being used for defence include consideration about the availability of funding for the Royal Navy to prepare warships to go to sea? There has been rumour over the past few days that one reason why one of His Majesty’s ships is not ready is that the contractor is still working 9 to 5. Will she be able to fund this properly, so that all ships are available as quickly as possible?
Rachel Reeves
I can confirm that there are no financial impediments to warships going to the middle east. Money is available through the special reserve for personnel and contracts for all our operations in the middle east.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
As the Member of Parliament for the home of the British Army, I thank the Chancellor for her support for our armed forces. My constituency is also home to innovative defence and aerospace businesses, many of which are ambitious to expand and to play their part in strengthening our national security, but that depends on being able to access the investment that they need to scale up. Will the Chancellor reassure those businesses in my constituency that this Government will continue to work closely with the financial sector to ensure British defence and advanced manufacturing companies can access the capital that they need to invest, grow and create good, skilled jobs here in the UK?
Rachel Reeves
As my hon. Friend knows, we have increased the funding available to both UK Export Finance and the National Wealth Fund to invest and support our defence industry. I also support the work that she and my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) are doing in ensuring that the financial services sector also lends to defence businesses, including scale-up businesses.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
Almost two thirds of homes across Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe are dependent on heating oil, the price of which is now surging thanks to Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran. Will the Chancellor reassure my constituents that help will be on the way from the Government?
Rachel Reeves
The meeting with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will be open to all MPs and is taking place on Wednesday this week, and I urge the hon. Gentleman to attend that meeting. We are aware of the unique situation with heating oil. That is why I have instructed the Competition and Markets Authority, but I am also keen to hear directly from MPs.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The impacts of this spiralling conflict are serious and will fall on our constituents’ pockets, so I welcome the Chancellor’s statement and the measures that she has set out. Yet last week, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) was in the United States attempting to lobby against our national interests—with a comical lack of success. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the impact on living costs can only be compounded by continued, deeply unpatriotic interventions by Members of Reform UK?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his question and for his contribution to the debates last week. He knows how important it is to de-escalate, because it is our armed services personnel who would be at the frontline of any escalation of the crisis. De-escalation is also in the interests of all our constituents, whether because of heating oil, the price paid at petrol pumps or mortgage rates. That is why this Government are putting all our diplomatic efforts into de-escalating this crisis and reopening the strait of Hormuz.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
As heating oil and petrol prices go up in rural North Dorset, my constituents are hearing the Chancellor echo one of her predecessors in effectively saying, “Crisis? What crisis?” She needs to actively get a grip on this issue. Motorists in rural areas use their cars because they have to. The vast majority of my constituents are off grid and have no alternative to keep warm other than using heating oil. This is a crisis in costs taking place today that meetings with and letters to the CMA will not help or address. She has mentioned that this meeting has been organised on Wednesday and that invitations have gone out for it. [Interruption.] We do not need the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell) gesticulating like some—
Rachel Reeves
I have huge respect for the hon. Member. As the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), says, it is too early to know what the impact of this crisis will be. That is why I met with G7 Finance Minister colleagues today, which I am sure the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) welcomes. We discussed the release of the International Energy Agency’s strategic oil reserves, for example. What is needed to contain prices for all our constituents is to ensure that we have the oil and gas on the market that we need. That is why we are prioritising diplomatic routes to de-escalate this crisis.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for her statement, because this is a worrying time for not just our national security, but our economy. I am pleased to hear about the work going on with the Competition and Markets Authority in respect of consumers of heating oil, but may I suggest that she has a conversation with her colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to expedite the £1 billion-worth of community energy investment coming through the local power fund and focus it as quickly as possible into rural areas such as mine in Derbyshire? If this is going to be a protracted conflict, that could make a difference.
Rachel Reeves
In the spending review last year, I put in £1 billion for the community investment fund in local energy schemes to ensure that communities are more self-reliant for their basic energy needs. That is the lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it is also the lesson from this conflict in the middle east. We need to be more resilient and secure as an economy, and that is exactly what we are doing.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The Iran crisis highlights the urgent need to speed up the UK’s energy system transition to clean, green, cheap renewables and energy efficiency. The last time that energy prices went through the roof due to illegal international aggression, in 2022, normal people paid the price while huge energy giants raked in billions of pounds in windfall profits. Will the Chancellor guarantee that in responding to this crisis, she will do everything possible to protect ordinary households and ensure that no energy company makes profits from this war?
Rachel Reeves
The reason we have the energy profits levy and the electricity generator levy is to ensure just that. If the hon. Lady is really serious about energy security and investing in low-carbon energy, I really do not understand why her party opposes planning reforms so that we can build grid infrastructure, as well as both small modular reactors and new nuclear in Suffolk. All those things add to our energy security and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Why do the Greens oppose them?
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I respect the Conservatives who are calling for de-escalation, but they need to have a word with their leader, who wanted to sign Britain up to a war of choice with changing goals and no clear timescales, thereby contributing to the chaos and the worsening cost of living crisis. The Chancellor has a plan, and we are seeing inflation, interest rates and Government borrowing falling as a result. Will she commit to keeping to that plan to keep bringing down borrowing so that the country can live more within its means and get rid of the awful inheritance left by the Conservatives?
Rachel Reeves
Last week’s spring forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility showed inflation coming down, borrowing coming down and debt coming down. Our economy is fundamentally strong, but we all need to see a de-escalation of this conflict and the reopening of the strait of Hormuz to ensure that our constituents continue to benefit from falling energy bills and falling interest rates. That is why we are so focused on the diplomatic efforts.
Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
As the Chancellor has repeatedly said, at the root of the current economic crisis lies the closure of the strait of Hormuz. What conversations have the Government had with the Trump Administration, both about insurance and, more importantly, about deploying UK military assets to secure the reopening of the strait? Does she agree that a more robust approach might reassure our friends and allies in the Gulf who invest so much in the United Kingdom? Our presence there has been notable by its absence.
Rachel Reeves
There are two things that are needed to effectively reopen the strait. The first is security for vessels passing through it, which will require cross-country action involving the US, of course, but also the UK and France. We all stand ready to do that, and that was one of the things we discussed on our G7 Finance Ministers’ call today. Once that is provided, we also need to ensure that appropriate insurance products are in place, and we are working on that with Lloyd’s and the US Administration. We are the global leader in maritime insurance, so we have an important role to play to ensure those vessels are properly insured once they start to move again.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
The Chancellor has taken decisive action to bring down energy bills, but as she noted, those who rely on heating oil are often the most exposed to sudden price shocks. Even in my fairly urban constituency, there are hundreds of households in that position, and some of them have been on touch with me because the cost of heating oil has doubled in a week due to the effect of the Iran conflict. As the Chancellor works to shield the British public from the economic fallout, will she ensure that our households on heating oil are protected from the shocking increases we are currently seeing?
Rachel Reeves
It is important that the players in the heating oil sector behave responsibly and do not seek to profiteer from the current conflict. It is their customers who will lose out, which is why we have instructed the Competition and Markets Authority to guard against price gouging. I know that my hon. Friend will attend the meeting with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on Wednesday to make those representations, but the best thing we can do is de-escalate and get those vessels moving, in order to get that oil and gas flowing.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
One in three households in North Shropshire are dependent on heating oil—I declare an interest, because mine is one of them. Since last week, people have been in contact with me, concerned about the rapid escalation of heating oil costs. I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that she recognises that problem and wants to act on it, but can she outline in more detail what kind of remedy she envisages and how soon it might be put in place?
Rachel Reeves
I said in my statement that despite what we did in last year’s Budget to take £150 off domestic energy bills, there is a unique situation with regard to heating oil. That is why I was pleased to receive representations on that topic over the weekend—the Treasury is working through those proposals—and it is why the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will meet MPs this week. The reason prices are going up, though, is the challenges in getting oil and gas out of the middle east. That is why it is so important to de-escalate, but it is wrong for anyone to profiteer off the back of this crisis.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
Many of my constituents stranded in the middle east have been left out of pocket because of their travel insurance. In my view as a former regulator, those policies have overly broad exclusion terms. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on her meetings with the insurance sector, the Financial Conduct Authority and consumer groups, and will the City Minister meet me to discuss this issue?
Rachel Reeves
I am sure that the relevant Minister—whether that is a Minister in the Department for Transport or the Economic Secretary to the Treasury—will meet my hon. Friend. It is important that everybody who wants to get home from the middle east is able to do so. We welcome the work that airlines are doing with the support of the Government to get people home, but it is also important that people are not ripped off for that.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
For months now, we have heard the Chancellor and other Government Front Benchers saying that we will be using oil and gas for years to come. Of course we will—no matter how much they want to wish it away, we will be using oil and gas for years to come, so we must secure our supply. In her meeting this morning with G7 Finance Ministers, did any of them say that banning new oil and gas licences in the North sea was a good idea? Are any of them banning themselves from accessing their own energy resources?
Rachel Reeves
It was, of course, the hon. Lady’s party that introduced the energy profits levy in the first place, and it did so for a good reason. Many of the questions today have been about the impact on prices, and the way that support was given to consumers during the Russia-Ukraine crisis was through money from the energy profits levy being used to subsidise people’s bills. That is why we have the energy profits levy.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for her statement. She is absolutely right to take the action that she has on energy prices, particularly given that 20% of the world’s oil is transported via the strait of Hormuz. The strait of Hormuz also transports more than a third of the world’s urea, almost half its sulphur, and a significant amount of ammonia. What steps is the Chancellor taking to protect our farmers from spiking fertiliser prices at the same time as energy prices are rising?
Rachel Reeves
We are working closely with the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as business, to understand the different parts of industry that will be affected by protracted conflict. That is just another reason why it is so important to de-escalate. That is exactly what we are seeking to do, and it is also why we are working with G7 allies focused on reopening the strait of Hormuz, because that is the best thing we can do to bring down prices and ensure that supply continues to flow.
Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)
I welcome the Chancellor’s statement this afternoon. As she has outlined, Northern Ireland is uniquely exposed, with up to 70% of people across Northern Ireland reliant on home heating oil. Instead of meeting me, does she have plans this week to meet the Minister for the Economy and my ministerial colleagues in the Northern Ireland Executive to see how we can best support our people?
Rachel Reeves
It is important to understand the extent of the impacts on Northern Ireland. When we made the announcement in the Budget, we made money available for Northern Ireland to have its own scheme, recognising the slightly different energy market there. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is leading on this work at the Treasury, will meet his opposite numbers in the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that we understand the challenges there and what we can do to best support people.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for her statement, which underlines the importance of new nuclear to boost our energy security. Many of us who back new nuclear also care deeply about nature. Dungeness in my constituency is both a nationally important habitat site and a vital location for new nuclear. Does the Chancellor agree that we urgently need a reformed framework for habitat protection—along the lines proposed by the Fingleton review—so that we can safeguard the environment and welcome new nuclear back to places such as Dungeness?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for his pragmatic approach. We will be responding to Fingleton in the next few days and then legislating as quickly as possible to make it cheaper and quicker to build the energy infrastructure that we know we need.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
Defence industry supply chains are desperately in need of the defence investment plan. The Chancellor talks about the money being invested, but why is the Treasury not allowing the DIP to go forward? It is starting to become critical, and we need that infrastructure. The Secretary of State is desperate for that infrastructure. We need to know when it is coming forward. They are the Government’s self-imposed deadlines, nobody else’s.
Rachel Reeves
We published the strategic defence review earlier this year, and in the spending review last year, the biggest uplifts in spending were at the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Health and Social Care. The previous Government said that they would get to 2.5% at the end of the next Parliament. We will get to 2.6% by April next year, and that money is already being spent. The right hon. Gentleman does not need to worry about that.
Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituents in Derby will be worried about the devastation that they see across the middle east, and they will agree that de-escalation must remain a priority. They are also worried, though, about the impact on their weekly shopping bills, petrol prices and energy bills. Does the Chancellor agree that stability for our businesses and local people is vital, given the volatility we are seeing internationally?
Rachel Reeves
I am pleased that since I became Chancellor, the Bank of England has cut interest rates six times, and we have been able to take £150 off energy bills and freeze prescription charges and rail fares. My hon. Friend’s constituency contains Rolls-Royce, which will benefit from small modular reactors and also from the increased defence spending that is already going in.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)
Some 72% of households in my constituency have no connection to the mains gas grid. For those who filled their tanks over the weekend, the consequences of the Iran crisis have become very real, and those who are still to do so are anxious to learn when any potential support that may be agreed on Wednesday will be provided.
Rachel Reeves
I recognise that there are significant challenges in some areas of Wales, as indeed there are in Northern Ireland, and I urge the hon. Gentleman to attend the meeting with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. We have already had representations over the weekend about what is needed, and I want Members in all parties to be able to contribute to that, but the best way to reduce prices is to get that oil and gas flowing again, which is why it is so important to secure not only a military solution to get the strait of Hormuz open but an insurance solution, and I am working closely on that at the moment.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I thank the Chancellor for her statement. I appreciate that a lot of Members will be disappointed not to have been able to ask their questions. I will try to prioritise them during the next statement if that is at all possible.
Middle East: Defence
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)
With permission, I wish to make a statement to update the House on the middle east. As I trust the House will understand, there is a lot on which to update it.
Let me start by praising our armed forces who are working 24/7 to protect British lives and British interests in the region—from our 400-strong air defence teams in Cyprus, who I visited last week, to our counter-drone specialists in Iraq, our fast jet pilots in Qatar, our command specialists in the regional defence co-ordination centres, and everyone else who is working on this crisis, abroad and at home. Iran threatens us all, but it is our forces who feel this most acutely. I am sure that the whole House will join me in thanking them for their outstanding dedication and their professionalism, for protecting British lives and for keeping us safe. We want to say to them, “You are the best of Britain in action.” [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
The UK Government’s approach throughout the current developments in the middle east is founded on three principles. The first is defensive, which means taking the necessary action to strengthen our collective defence. We have taken steps since January, weeks before the current war with Iran began, to pre-position Typhoons, F-35s, counter-drone teams, radars and air defence in the region, and have sent additional military capability since last Saturday, when the Iranian retaliation attacks started. The second principle is co-ordination with allies. We do not work alone, so we are leading and co-ordinating our response with NATO allies and other partners, including the United States, E5 nations and the Gulf states. I am in daily contact with my counterparts, as is the Chief of the Defence Staff. The third principle is legal: we must have a legal basis for our decisions. That allows Ministers to make sound choices, and allows our military to operate with the fullest confidence. Our UK action is grounded in those principles, to protect British people, protect British bases and protect British allies.
In the last week, we have seen Iran lashing out with dangerous, indiscriminate and reckless strikes. On the first day alone, it attacked 10 countries with military and civilian targets, including hotels in Dubai and Bahrain and the Kuwaiti national airport. British troops stationed at a US base in Bahrain were within a few hundred yards of an Iranian strike, and a small drone hit our base in Cyprus, coming from Lebanon or Iraq—and Iraq has now fired over 500 ballistic and cruise missiles, and over 2,000 drones.
John Healey
I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I am grateful to him for paying such close attention to my statement; Iran has now fired 500 ballistic and cruise missiles, and over 2,000 drones.
Even after the Iranian President’s apology and promise to the Gulf states over the weekend, Iran struck multiple countries with drones and missiles, including Bahrain, where 32 civilians were injured in one attack and a desalination plant was hit in another. We totally condemn these attacks. They are putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk, including British nationals and members of our armed forces.
Although Iran’s current indiscriminate strikes began last Saturday, the Iranian regime has for decades been a source of evil, exporting violence across the middle east and beyond. It has supplied nearly 60,000 Shahed drones to Putin for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Here in the UK, Iran conducts aggressive cyber-attacks against us and has plotted assassination on Britain’s streets. The Iranian regime is a destructive force that has slaughtered protesters in its own streets and inflicts terrible suffering, especially against its own people. We want to see Iran stop its strikes, give up its nuclear ambitions and restart the negotiations.
As Defence Secretary, my No. 1 priority is protecting British people, military and civilian alike. Since January we have moved significant military assets into the region, ahead of the first US-Israeli strikes. Those preparations made a real difference and mean that we have conducted defensive military operations from day one. Our F-35s have destroyed Iranian drones over Jordan. Our Typhoons have shot down targets heading towards Qatar. Our counter-drone units have defeated further attacks against coalition bases in Iraq. We acted early to protect British people and British interests, and to support our allies.
As the Iranian response became clear last weekend, we adapted our actions to the changing circumstances, driven at all times by military advice. That is why we accepted a new US request for the use of British bases at RAF Fairford and on Diego Garcia last Sunday, and why I committed further resources to the region last week, including four extra Typhoons, three Wildcat helicopters, a Merlin helicopter and HMS Dragon. I can confirm today that Dragon will set sail in the next couple of days, and I want to personally thank all those who are working tirelessly—some for up to 22 hours a day—to get the ship ready. HMS Dragon will join US air defence destroyers to provide additional protection in the eastern Mediterranean.
Let me provide the House with the following operational update from last night. The UK is now conducting defensive air sorties in support of the United Arab Emirates. Typhoons successfully took out two drones—one over Jordan, and the second heading to Bahrain. The third Wildcat has arrived in Cyprus, and we have now deployed additional RAF operations experts to more than five countries in the region, helping to co-ordinate regional military and civilian airspace. The fragments of the drone that hit Akrotiri are being analysed for foreign military hardware by our experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.
British pilots have now racked up over 230 flying hours. We have eight jets in Qatar, including the joint Qatari-British squadron, which is flying in support of regional allies, and we have more jets in Cyprus than any other nation. I visited our 400-strong air defence team at our base in Cyprus on Thursday last week. They are there in addition to the 4,000 personnel regularly stationed on the island. I was subjected to the daily air sirens that they face. I saw the impact that the Iranian proxy drone had caused, and I asked the Commander British Forces, General Tom Bewick, “Do you need anything more from us back in Britain?” He said to me, “No, I have been given everything I have asked for.” The UK is leading the response to Iranian threats in close co-ordination with our allies, and Cyprus’s head of the national guard told me last week, “Our military co-operation has never been closer.” Our support is backed up by our NATO allies, including the US, France, Greece and Germany—something that I discussed with E5 Defence Ministers last week.
I can confirm to the House that, having given the US the go-ahead to use British bases for specific defensive operations into Iran last Sunday, the first US bomber landed at RAF Fairford on Friday. As the Prime Minister has set out, this activity is part of
“the collective self-defence of longstanding friends and allies, and protecting British lives…in accordance with international law.”
These missions are to destroy Iranian missiles at source.
We are deeply concerned about escalation in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a dangerous terror organisation that is tied to the regime in Iran. It must cease its attacks against Israel, but we do not want to see Israel expand this conflict further into Lebanon. More than 400 people have already been killed, and half a million displaced, by recent Israeli operations. The solution to these problems, and to this conflict, must be guided by the Lebanese people and the Lebanese Government. We urge de-escalation and the return to a negotiated process.
Moving beyond defence, I know that many Members have constituents with friends and family who are caught in the region, and they are worried about the safety of loved ones. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office teams are working as fast as possible to get our people out of the region. Three chartered flights have now taken off, with more to come this week. More than 170,000 people have registered their presence, which has allowed us to get them the information, support and advice that they need. More than 37,000 British nationals have been evacuated since the start of the crisis response, and as the Prime Minister said last week:
“We will not stop until our people are safe.”
These are deeply uncertain times. While we deal with the immediate crisis in the middle east, we must also maintain our strong support for Ukraine, deter increasing threats in the High North, fulfil our NATO commitments, and ensure that our homeland is protected. Our adversaries are watching. We must manage rising demands on defence, balancing resources to best effect. We must also deal with the cost of living impact that this conflict could cause, just as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out in her statement.
I am proud of the UK’s response. Acting at all times in our national interest, we will defend our allies and support our armed forces. We will do everything necessary to protect British lives and British interests, to make Britain secure at home and strong abroad. I commend this statement to the House.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and for the briefing that I received from his officials this morning.
May I begin by offering condolences, on behalf of the Opposition, to the families of the seven US soldiers killed in the ongoing action against Iran? I join the Secretary of State in utterly condemning Iran’s indiscriminate attacks across the region, and I express my gratitude and that of the Opposition to all our brilliant, brave service personnel and their families who are stationed out there.
Of course, the Secretary of State and I agree that the No. 1 responsibility of any Government is to defend their people and that everything possible must be done to secure our sovereign bases, particularly RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, which was attacked by drones a week ago. That is an incredibly serious development. We support the Government in taking steps to use the RAF and other assets to protect the airspace and defend against drone and missile threats to Akrotiri, but also in deploying our air force to defend allies in the region as an act of collective self-defence.
The problem is that any serious integrated missile defence plan for the sovereign base areas on Cyprus would by necessity include the presence of one of our highly capable Type 45 air defence destroyers, yet despite the Secretary of State saying that “since January” we have moved significant military assets into the region, there is not a single Royal Navy warship present and our Type 45, HMS Dragon, has not even set sail. Will he confirm that the Government decided only last Tuesday to send a Type 45 to the eastern Med, after the US action had already commenced and two days after RAF Akrotiri was attacked by kamikaze drones?
Of particular importance is that it has been widely reported that the Royal Navy recommended to Ministers weeks ago to deploy a Type 45 destroyer to the region. Is that true, and if so, when did the Navy make the recommendation to send a Type 45 and which Minister took the decision to decline that advice from the Royal Navy and instead choose not to send a destroyer? Most importantly, why was the decision taken not to send a Type 45 until there had already been attacks on our base on Cyprus? Can the Secretary of State tell us on what date he expects HMS Dragon to be in position to provide air defence in the region? Furthermore, given the Chancellor’s promise in her statement earlier to reopen the strait of Hormuz and France’s pledge to provide escort ships, what other Royal Navy assets will we be sending to assist?
On 19 February, the BBC reported that the United Kingdom would not allow the United States to use its bases to launch an attack on Iran. We know that three US Arleigh Burke destroyers—its equivalent of the Type 45—have for days been based in the Mediterranean, providing Cyprus with defence against ballistic missiles. Does that not mean that, until the Prime Minister’s U-turn a week ago, this Labour Government were displaying the most extraordinary double standards to our closest military ally by on the one hand denying the US the use of our bases, while on the other relying on it to protect ours?
One of the bases in question is Diego Garcia, which is absolutely critical for launching US heavy bombers. It is bad enough for the Prime Minister to be U-turning over permission to use Diego Garcia while it is still our sovereign territory, but how much worse will the situation be once we have started paying billions for the pleasure of Mauritius, a close ally of China, having a say on whether such action complies with international law? When it comes to the Prime Minister’s next and 17th U-turn, would not the best thing he could do be to scrap his crazy Chagos deal and spend every penny on the British armed forces?
However, this is not just about the future of Diego Garcia. Last week, the Cypriot Foreign Minister said that there are “questions” about the future of the UK’s military bases on the island. Is not the reality that Greece, France and Spain are all sending ships, and that Labour’s failure to deploy the Royal Navy to the eastern Mediterranean has completely undermined our international standing in the eyes not just of our many allies in the middle east, but of those who can now exploit such weakness? Will the Secretary of State therefore give a cast-iron guarantee that UK sovereignty of our bases on Cyprus is not up for negotiation?
It is not of course just HMS Dragon that everyone is waiting for. At a time of war on multiple fronts, we have been waiting months and months for the Government to publish their long overdue defence investment plan. I cannot emphasise how serious this is: Britain urgently needs to rearm. It was right that we gave a huge amount of munitions to support Ukraine, but that has made our need to rearm even more pressing. When exactly are the Government going to publish the defence investment plan? Can the Secretary of State at least say if it will be published before local election purdah commences? That is a key question.
Finally, is there not a simple reason why there is no defence investment plan, and is it not the same reason why, for the first time in almost half a century, there are no Royal Navy warships in the middle east? It is because when it comes to defence spending, this Government have prioritised welfare over rearmament. They have chosen to spend billions more on benefits rather than strengthening our defence in a dangerous world. After all the Prime Minister’s dither and delay, U-turns and weakness, will the Secretary of State finally demand from his Chancellor what we all know our armed forces need, which is a properly funded plan to get to 3% on defence in this Parliament?
John Healey
Let me start by recognising the fact that the shadow Defence Secretary supports the steps we have taken to put UK defence capabilities in the middle eastern region, and that he recognises and supports the fact that we did that in advance of the current crisis. These capabilities and our co-ordination of them have been alongside our US allies and have been purely defensive in nature. We have been making our best contribution to the protection of British interests, British personnel, British bases and British allies in the region.
The shadow Defence Secretary asks me about HMS Dragon. While we have been building up that significant military presence in the middle east since January, which he for the first time has recognised and welcomed, it is totally right that, as circumstances change, so should our military posture. He asks me when the option of Dragon was first put to Ministers. As the Chief of the Defence Staff said on the BBC on Saturday, he looked at the proposals for Dragon being deployed to the middle east on Tuesday last week, and I signed them off the same day. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman is unhappy about the state of the British Navy, he should take a hard look at his Government’s record. Over 14 years, they hollowed out and underfunded our forces. They cut £12 billion from the defence budget in their first five years. Total frigate and destroyer numbers were cut from 23 to 17, and in 14 years in government they did not order a single new destroyer. We have Dragon available to go to the middle east today only because the Labour Government commissioned it before 2010. I completely—[Interruption.] I am proud of the work our military are doing in the middle east, and I reject claims about the response. We got ahead of the first strikes in the way that we have set out.
I have been unable to find any evidence, in public or in this House, of the shadow Defence Secretary calling at any stage before the war began for military assets to be moved to the middle east. Indeed, the shadow Foreign Secretary was calling barely a month ago in this Chamber for our military
“to prioritise or repurpose…inventory to contribute to NATO’s High North missions”.—[Official Report, 19 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 81.]
The shadow Defence Secretary really is proving himself quite an armchair general—General Hindsight, wise only after the event. I am really disappointed.
The shadow Defence Secretary asks about the defence investment plan. We are working flat out to produce that. He asks about defence spending. He cut it; we invested in defence. We have seen the greatest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war. This year alone, we are spending £62 billion on defence, which is £8 billion more than the last year of the Conservative Government.
I am really disappointed, and our forces will be disappointed, that the shadow Defence Secretary did not stand up and offer an apology for what his leader said on Friday. His leader’s claim that British forces in the middle east are “just hanging around” is totally wrong and deeply insulting. They are working flat out, in the face of air raid sirens and warnings, to protect British lives, protect British interests and protect British allies. It is time the Tories did the decent thing, and apologised for her remarks and withdrew them.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I thank the Defence Secretary for advance sight of his statement and for his operational briefing beforehand. I also want to pay tribute to and praise our armed forces for their bravery, dedication and professionalism in defending our citizens and our allies in the region.
I agree with the Defence Secretary that we must urge de-escalation and a return to the negotiation process. I am glad that the Government pre-positioned Typhoons, F-35s, counter-drone units and other air defence assets in the region. However, the lack of a naval presence should be a cause of huge concern for all of us. I appreciate the Secretary of State’s comments that our armed forces are significantly overstretched from the High North to further beyond, and that the hollowing out in recent years has meant that we do not have enough assets, but what is being done urgently to rectify the situation and increase the investment in defence in the near future, so that we can be in several places at once?
John Healey
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for the action we have taken—the deployments I have decided to commit to the region. He asks what we are doing to make good 14 years of our armed forces being hollowed out and underfunded under the previous Government. The first step is to increase defence spending: this year, it is more than £8 billion greater than in the last year under the previous Government, totalling £270 billion in this Parliament alone, which is the single biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war. The defence investment plan that will follow up the strategic defence review is a vision and a plan for rebuilding our forces, strengthening our deterrent, integrating our armed forces for the future and harnessing the accelerating power of new technology. I am grateful to him and his Defence Committee members for supporting and recognising that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and echo his praise for the bravery and professionalism of our armed forces in putting their lives on the line for us all.
The Liberal Democrats continue to have grave concerns about the UK being dragged into Trump’s illegal war. However, it is fair to say that the situation has evolved very quickly. Given that it is commonplace for UK personnel to serve aboard US navy ships, including aircraft carriers such as those currently engaged in attacks on Iran, can the Secretary of State provide an assurance to this House that no UK personnel are currently serving aboard US navy ships engaged in offensive operations in the middle east?
Furthermore, there have been serious questions raised about the use of UK bases for US airstrikes. Will the Secretary of State reassure the House on what monitoring is in place to ensure that US actions from UK bases remain purely defensive? Will the Government ensure that any intelligence relating to US strikes conducted from UK bases is provided to the Intelligence and Security Committee for review? If UK bases were used or were proposed to be used for offensive action beyond the Government’s authority, would the Government withdraw permission immediately? Securing those guarantees is essential to ensuring that the UK does not become complicit in Trump’s unilateral and illegal war.
Finally, even the limited defensive actions being asked of our armed forces have exposed how stretched resources really are. I must press the Secretary of State to give a clear timeframe for the release of the defence investment plan to start the urgent task of plugging those gaps. We must make sure that UK forces are given all the tools they need to do the jobs we ask of them, both now and in the future.
John Healey
As I said to the House in my statement, all the decisions we have taken and all actions in the face of the current conflict have been defensive in nature and legally well based. That gives a sound foundation for Ministers’ decisions and it gives forces personnel the fullest confidence in the actions they are taking. That is true of those we have deployed in the region and it will be true of those we have embedded, I am proud to say, in the US forces around the world. I am proud that our US-UK relationship remains deep and close, and that we continue to do things together that no other nations will do.
Emma Lewell (South Shields) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right that our armed forces are the very best of us. Australian and British media are reporting that HMS Anson has departed western Australia ahead of schedule. Can my right hon. Friend indicate whether HMS Anson will play a role in defending British interests in the region on her voyage home?
John Healey
There are certain things that I will not and cannot disclose publicly. The operations of our submarines fall into that category. My hon. Friend is a long-standing member of the Defence Committee. I know she will understand the sensitivity and the potency of our submarine fleet. She asks the question, but she cannot realistically and reasonably expect an answer; I know that she knows that.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. At the same Dispatch Box about half an hour ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer perhaps unwisely delved into the world of military strategy and said a couple of things that were slightly alarming. First, she upbraided the shadow Chancellor for not calling for the de-escalation of the operations against Iran, yet the Defence Secretary’s own statement mentions de-escalation only when it comes to the situation in Lebanon. Can he clarify whether he is calling on his American counterparts to de-escalate in Iran or not? Secondly, she said that to open the strait of Hormuz we would need to support something she called “cross-country” operations with France and the US, and that we were ready to do that to open the strait of Hormuz. Will he comment on that too, please?
John Healey
The UK Government are urging Iran to de-escalate. We are deeply concerned about regional stability. Part of the reason for our co-ordinated defensive actions—the contribution we are making in the regional co-ordination centres, but also with our jets flying in defence of middle eastern allies—is to reinforce regional security and stability. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor made an important statement this afternoon, and included the confirmation of the commitment to approve for the Ministry of Defence access to the special reserve to deploy additional capabilities as they are needed to the middle east. I am sure the House will welcome that, as it will welcome the fact that she said,
“I am committed to giving our military the resources they need.”
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
I strongly welcome my right hon. Friend’s leadership at this time. One of the defining characteristics of the UK’s response to the crisis when Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the political unity that this party, the Labour party, offered our country. Does he find it extremely disappointing to hear the Leader of the Opposition saying that our military are “hanging around”, when they are putting themselves in harm’s way to defend our interests abroad? Does he expect, as I do, the shadow Secretary of State to apologise for that really disappointing, cheap political point scoring?
John Healey
My hon. Friend is entirely right. When I had the honour of spending part of Thursday with our personnel on our base in Akrotiri, it was not just the teams and the pilots flying the fast jets who were working flat out—the F-35 team I spoke to had deployed at five days’ notice to Cyprus. The whole of the military personnel on that base were doing so, including those looking after and ensuring the relocation of non-essential personnel and families to hotels in the Paphos area. Nothing could be further from the truth and nothing could be more insulting than the suggestion that they are simply “hanging around” in the middle east. I really would like to hear—we did not hear it from the shadow Defence Secretary—any Conservative Member contest what their leader said and apologise on her behalf. Let us have the sort of support that recognises that our armed forces are in the region to protect British personnel, British bases and British interests. We are proud that they are doing that job.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am not particularly keen on the tone of these exchanges, so may I make a positive suggestion to the Secretary of State? We have heard that Ukraine has offered to assist the United States with its specialised version of anti-Iranian drone technology. These weapons for bringing down Iranian drones are much cheaper than the drones themselves, whereas the weapons that we and the Americans generally use are much more expensive. Given the difficult relationship between Zelensky and Trump, does the Secretary of State agree that there is a role here for Britain, with its high standing in Ukraine, to see if we can make a start by acquiring from Ukraine some of these weapons, which we can use in the defence of our own bases and which may then pave the way for a deal between Trump and Zelensky for the wider benefit of the whole theatre?
John Healey
We are taking this one step at a time, but I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion and the tone in which he offers his thoughts. Like me, he will welcome President Zelenksy’s declaration that Ukraine stands ready and is offering its experience and expertise to the Gulf states facing many of the same Shahed Iranian drones. We are playing our part. The defence special adviser for the middle east is currently making a series of visits to nine Gulf countries with a team that includes British experts in the Ukrainian fight against Putin’s invasion and the technologies Ukraine has been using to defeat many of Putin’s developments and drones. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry is also talking to British firms about the contribution they could make to supplying the reinforced defences that our middle eastern partners so badly need.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I encourage Members to ask short questions and the Secretary of State to give briefer answers.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
I shed no tears for the demise of an Iranian regime that murdered and repressed tens of thousands of its own citizens, particularly women, but I am proud that this Government have not joined the US and Israel in this reckless war, which lacks a clear plan and which is hitting my constituents in the pocket and threatening the global economy. Given that this Government have our own independent foreign policy, we are not the handmaiden of Washington, as the Tories would like, nor the poodle of Putin, as Reform is. Can the Defence Secretary say how important it is that the Chancellor is providing new funds for our armed forces who are defending British interests and British citizens in the region?
John Healey
I can indeed. My hon. Friend is right to underline the statement and the commitment the Chancellor made this afternoon to this House. He is also right to point out that while the US may be our closest ally, as the Prime Minister has said, it is for the Prime Minister and the British Government to decide what is in Britain’s best national interests.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I listened very carefully to what he had to say about the authorisation for the US to use UK bases and his confirmation that there are UK personnel embedded with US operations in the region. With that in mind, it seems all the more important that this Government are entirely clear on the limits of the consent they have given to operating with the US. On Monday last week, US Defence Secretary Hegseth mocked the idea of rules of engagement and said that he wanted to seek “maximum lethality”. On Saturday, President Trump then said that new areas and groups of people would be under serious consideration for “complete destruction”. What confidence does the Secretary of State have that the US is following the same rules of engagement that he believes are legal for the UK?
John Healey
I have the fullest confidence. These arrangements for access, basing and overflight are well established. The relations between the US and the UK are very close. We have operated them together before, and we are doing so now.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
I thank the Defence Secretary for all he is doing to support our troops in the region and protect British citizens. It is clear that a long conflict would pose real risks not only to our troops, but to energy prices and the cost of living here in the UK. Does he agree that we need to see urgent de-escalation and a reduction in tensions across the region, and does he share my concern that the Conservatives and Reform would see us dragged into a conflict that could have such devastating consequences for British lives and livelihoods?
John Healey
My hon. Friend makes important points. I welcome his support for the first concern of this Government, which is the protection of British personnel and British citizens in the wider middle east, our bases and our allies. I know that he supports the action we have taken both before the current conflict broke out and in the week or so since.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Is the problem here not our military capability—we still have the second most capable navy in NATO—but the political will? Why is it that HMS Duncan, the sister ship of HMS Dragon, is alongside in Portsmouth, having spent the summer in a maintenance period? She has been up and ready to go for weeks. Why was she not sent at the beginning of this crisis?
John Healey
The right hon. Gentleman is another former Defence Minister from the previous Government, so he knows all about the decisions that left our Navy in the state it is in now. He will also appreciate that we have taken decisions to deploy the things that Britain can best put into the region to protect our allies and our people, both military and civilian. He will recognise and applaud the fact that because of that, from day one, our fast jets have been flying defensive operations in co-ordination with our allies and our US colleagues, and that where circumstances change, we will adapt the action and decisions that we take, which is what we have done from the point that we saw the indiscriminate extent of the Iranian response last Saturday.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Iran has a network of proxies and lone actors who threaten our security here at home. Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking all the volunteers of the Community Security Trust who protect our Jewish places of worship and schools? Never have they been more crucial.
John Healey
I will indeed. My hon. Friend is right: the Community Security Trust does extraordinary work in very difficult times and is responding to deep unease, deep concern and, in some cases, serious fears among the Jewish community in this country.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
May I first say that I do not know of anybody on the Conservative Benches who would not wish to associate themselves with the Secretary of State’s praise for the courage and determination of our armed services, both worldwide and particularly in Cyprus? I have to declare an interest, Madam Deputy Speaker; as you know, I am an honorary citizen of Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus has maintained a principled neutrality that has served British nationals and others well over many years. Akrotiri is based almost exactly between Paphos and Larnaca—it is a very difficult situation for the Secretary of State to square. Will he tell the House what steps will be taken to protect the many British nationals resident in Cyprus and the many other British visitors who have hitherto gone to the island for their holidays?
John Healey
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks about our armed forces and will ensure that they are passed on. I had not realised he was an honorary citizen of Cyprus; I hope he will appreciate that, as I confirmed in my statement, the head of the national guard has confirmed that co-operation between our militaries has never been closer. I hope he will also appreciate that the defensive capabilities and activities that we are running from Akrotiri are part of defending not just our base, but our people right across Cyprus and the island of Cyprus itself. From that island, we can also help to defend regional allies, which we are doing.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for everything he is doing to support all my constituents in the region and to keep them safe. I know that he and I share the priority of getting our serving personnel the capabilities that they need. In the light of the movements we have seen today in the gilt and bond markets, which underline the pressure on Governments to finance increased defence spending, does the Secretary of State agree that we should explore innovative multilateral financing mechanisms, such as the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, to help to unlock the capital our defence industrial base needs to grow?
John Healey
I do, and we are. My hon. Friend will also have noted the Prime Minister’s important speech at the Munich security conference a couple of weeks ago when he recognised that in this new era of threats we face, this is now an era of hard power. He has recognised the need to spend more on defence and to spend it faster.
Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)
I visited the UK-US Bahrain base at the end of last year, and during the Venezuela statement on 5 January this year I said that we were exposed in Bahrain with the naval assets. The Secretary of State has rightly said that the UK presence over there has been ramped up since January. If last Tuesday was the first time that the Chief of the Defence Staff saw a request for naval assets to go to that region, what has gone wrong during that time and is it a strategic failure that it has taken that long for a request for those assets to be put on that desk?
John Healey
I have explained to the House the range of defensive capabilities that we put into the region ahead of this current conflict. When we saw the scale of the Iranian reaction to the strikes—the retaliation from Saturday onwards—it was clear that we wanted to do more. I have done more, and I have explained that to the House. I have also explained that these are not just British defensive assets deployed on a fully legal basis; these assets are employed in full co-ordination with the US and our other allies. As I have explained, HMS Dragon will take up its position in the eastern Mediterranean alongside other defensive destroyers that the US has already deployed in the area.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
The shadow Secretary of State laments the state of our Royal Navy, but he will remember that it was his party that cut investment in our Royal Navy over 14 years, cut the number of warships we had by 25% and ordered no new destroyers in that period either. Does the Secretary of State agree that while we should be investing in our Navy, we should take no lessons from the Conservatives, who set up our Navy to be ready to fail in the situation that we are in now?
John Healey
I do agree with my hon. Friend, and we are investing in our Navy, just as we are increasing defence investment across the board, including in the munitions that we need when we are faced with conflicts like this.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. Members will have noticed that there are still a lot of people on their feet. I am aiming to finish this statement at around 6.45 pm. I call Richard Foord.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
The Secretary of State made the distinction between permitting the use of British bases for offensive action and for defensive action. I understand the need to protect and defend British citizens in the middle east, but can the Secretary of State explain how he is seeking to maintain this distinction between offensive and defensive action, given that it would require a degree of control over US military activity that the British Government may not possess?
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman is a military man by experience. He will understand the nature of the requests that nations make of each other, the agreements that they put in place and how those work. Accessing, basing, overflights—that is exactly the request that we had when it was clear that the Iranian response to the first wave of attacks took us into a new phase. It was a request from the US that we allow US bombers to operate from Fairford and Diego Garcia for specific defensive purposes: to take out the Iranian missile positions. That is what they are doing.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
It was a Conservative 2010 strategic defence and security review and subsequent basing review that took the Royal Navy’s repair facilities from three to one—an utterly reckless decision that was made worse considering that the Conservatives knew of the Type 45s’ power plant problems—creating an internal competition for the limited resource of the Royal Navy. Does the Secretary of State agree that it was reckless Tory risk taking that left the Royal Navy in this precarious situation—
John Healey
I do agree with my hon. Friend; he speaks with the authority of someone who was serving at the time in 2010. In that first year, the Tories cut £2 billion from the defence budget, and in their first five years they cut £12 billion from defence. They underfunded and hollowed out our armed forces over 14 years.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
The deployment of HMS Dragon means that we have left a gap in our commitment to be the flagship of the Standing NATO Maritime Group One. HMS Duncan is already tasked to go on Operation Firecrest to the High North, and HMS Dauntless is still in the fleet time support period. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that we will be able to fulfil our commitment to NATO in providing the flagship role, and can he guarantee that it will be provided by a British ship?
John Healey
I am not going to announce the deployments of British forces in advance. The hon. Member is right to point to the balance of threats and responsibilities that we have to manage. We are doing that, and we will always fulfil our NATO commitments.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
Can I thank my right hon. Friend for everything that he is doing in Britain’s national interest? Our armed forces cannot believe their ears when we have the Leader of the Opposition saying that they are hanging around doing nothing and the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) swanning off to the States to tell Donald Trump that, if he were Prime Minister, he would blindly follow US defence policy. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the first duty of any Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Defence is our national interest—Britain’s national interest and not anything else?
John Healey
The first duty of any Government is to defend the country, pursue our national interest and support our armed forces. On this occasion, we had expected and look for better from the Leader of the Opposition.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I have only been in the House for 21 years, but whenever we talk about defence and when our armed forces are in harm’s way, I have to say that a blame game on either side is not going to save a single life. While we all want to see de-escalation, the Government, I hope, will have learned lessons in the last few weeks and months to prepare for escalation. Is the Defence Secretary aware of the 2024 report by the US director of national intelligence that underlines the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that Iran holds, and will he work with friends and allies in the region and the new Syrian Government to identify and deal with those stockpiles? Finally, on Akrotiri and other bases in the region, will he ensure that our armed forces personnel and their families are given the right protective chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear kit?
John Healey
I am aware of the 2024 report that the right hon. Gentleman cites, and we are aware of those risks. I say to the House that the right hon. Gentleman puts his 21 years as a Member of this House to good effect in the comments that he makes this afternoon.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
We should be deeply alarmed at the sight of US bombers arriving at UK bases ahead of joining President Trump’s bombing of Iran. These attacks violate international law, and the suggestion that these aircraft would be used only for defensive purposes is frankly absurd. Their deployment risks dragging Britain into unlawful attacks and the further loss of civilian life. What assurances can the Secretary of State give this House that UK bases will not be used to facilitate further unlawful attacks and that Britain will not be dragged deeper into an illegal war that the majority of the British public do not support?
John Healey
British bases will be used by American aircraft for fully lawful and defensive purposes. That is spelled out in the agreement that we have with the US, and it is to destroy Iran’s missile bases, which hold such indiscriminate risk and threat to our personnel and allies in the region.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Protecting livelihoods and limiting the cost of living hit both depend on President Trump ending his war of choice. I doubt he cares a jot about the damage he is doing to our economy, but he does care about his poll numbers. Does the Secretary of State agree, therefore, that it is a matter of national security that every method is used to make it clear to the President that his reputation prior to the midterms is best served by bringing this crisis to a speedy conclusion?
John Healey
The last thing the right hon. Lady will find me doing is commenting on American political affairs. What she will find me doing as Defence Secretary is putting the protection of British people—military and civilians—bases and allies front and centre.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
US and Israeli strikes on Iran have pushed the region into deeper instability. More than 1,000 civilians, including children, have been killed, Britons remain stranded, and the shock to fuel prices is already being felt at home. The Government were right not to join this illegal war, but will the Secretary of State hold the line against the drumbeat for escalation? Will he commit only to defend British citizens and national security within international law, and not enter an offensive war without the consent of this House?
John Healey
My hon. Friend will have heard me set out in my statement, and in response to other questions, the principles on which the decisions that we have taken are based. They will continue to inform any future decision that we take, as circumstances in this conflict may change.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Nobody supports the armed forces more than I do. The Secretary of State has my full support and respect, as he knows, but I want to ask a simple question. There seems to be some confusion among Government Back Benchers, who think the Government have somehow kept them out of this war. The Government have not kept Britain out of the war: our bases and allies are in the firing line. The Chancellor spoke about the strait of Hormuz and the necessity of taking action where applicable. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the UK will—and, under international law, can—take action against Iranian threats to oil tankers and other facilities in the strait of Hormuz?
John Healey
We will take the action we need to defend British interests, personnel and civilians. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that our personnel are at risk—as he puts it, they are in the firing line. I am incredibly proud of the work they are doing not just to protect our bases and each other, but to protect our allies in the region and to lead the co-ordination of defensive operations that help to keep the middle east safe in the face of these Iranian attacks.
Damien Egan (Bristol North East) (Lab)
The targeting of RAF Akrotiri by Iranian proxies is a direct act of aggression against the United Kingdom. The Iranian regime have repeatedly shown their willingness to export terror internationally across multiple fronts. What steps is the Secretary of State taking with colleagues across Government to ensure Iran poses less of a threat to Britons abroad and in the UK?
John Healey
Our first priority is British citizens in the region. That is why my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and her team are working so hard to advise and help Britain bring Brits back. My priority is to protect our forces personnel and ensure they can play their role in protecting our allies and British citizens in the region. I recognise that many people have friends and family stranded in the middle east, and are concerned about their future. I am incredibly proud of the role that our armed forces are playing in doing just that.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
We all agree that it is important to protect our overseas bases and personnel deployed on operations, and that must include Ukraine. Over the weekend, the MOD posted a video on social media from a British-run military repair facility in Ukraine. It has been taken down, reportedly because it revealed the geolocation of the sensitive site. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether that is correct, and can he assure the House that it will not happen again in relation to Ukraine, the middle east or anywhere we have facilities?
John Healey
We have taken that video down through an abundance of caution. The last thing that I and the British Government would want to do is put Ukrainians at risk; we would not allow that to happen. I want to ensure that the steps we take in our support of Ukraine—just like those we take in support of our allies in the middle east—reflect our national interests and our duty to protect our own people.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
I talked to people in Exeter over the weekend, and there was very strong support for the Government’s current position of defending British citizens and assets, and—at this point—not going further. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Government’s work to increase defence spending and commitment to new assets, including the new medium helicopter programme, in partnership with Leonardo in the south-west, which will safeguard hundreds of jobs in our region, stands in stark contrast to the record of the Conservative Government?
John Healey
I do indeed. That contract will not just secure well over 3,000 jobs for the future, but will create opportunities for many more in the years ahead. It is not just a contract to build new medium helicopters in Yeovil; Leonardo has committed to make Yeovil and the UK its global centre for the development and export of military helicopters, and for the development of helicopter autonomy for the future. The contract reinforces and is a great vote of confidence in Britian’s innovation and industrial base.
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
I mean no discourtesy to the Secretary of State, but in his statement, which lasted for 10 minutes, there was an omission: the murder of 165 young children at a school, which was allegedly targeted by a Tomahawk cruise missile in a double-tap strike. The Government talk about calling out war crimes—in particular, violence against women and girls—but this does very little to support that proposition. Will the Secretary of State condemn that attack? Would he like to explain what he has done to talk to his alleged allies about this particular strike?
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman will note that we have only the reports from the Iranian regime about the strike. He will be aware that the US is looking into this at present.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I want to start by paying tribute to Edinburgh’s Iranian community. Despite being concerned about their families in Iran, they have taken time in the past week to host public events, which shared details of Iran’s rich culture and the barbaric nature of its regime.
I want to ask a question about HMS Dragon. The maths are quite clear: the ship cost £1 billion, but the Conservatives cut the defence budget by £14 billion. Surely, if they wanted to see more destroyers in the Mediterranean, they should have built the things.
John Healey
My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to the Iranian community in his home city of Edinburgh; I echo his comments. He is also right, of course, that in 14 years the Conservatives did not commission a single new destroyer. We have HMS Dragon, which is set to sail this week—in the next couple of days—only because it was commissioned by the previous Labour Government.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
For the final question, I call Luke Taylor.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war on the Iranian regime has shocked and disgusted our constituents, just like the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on opposition protests for decades. The horrors that we have seen reinforce the feeling in this country that international events are happening to us, and that since Brexit and since Trump re-entered the White House, we have had much less say in our future and security. Will the Secretary of State listen to Liberal Democrat calls to empower us to take back control of our fate by issuing defence bonds, which would raise the cash we need to meet our defence spending, and by rebuilding our place in Europe through deeper co-operation with our European neighbours to reduce our dependence on the mad king in the White House?
John Healey
I am always interested in ways of getting more funding into defence. That is one of the reasons that I have laid such stress not just on the record increase in defence investment that the Government are making from the public purse, but on ways that we can leverage that with investment from private sources. That is why we have a defence investors advisory group, which will shortly set out its report with proposals that we can pursue.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At the end of the first statement, it was indicated from the Chair that those who were not called on that statement would be prioritised in respect of this second statement. Did that happen? If not, why not?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for his point of order. There has been a degree of prioritisation, but no guarantee. I am sure he understands that the time pressures in the Chamber are sometimes impossible. With three Government statements and an important debate, it is just impossible to call everyone.
Social Cohesion Action Plan
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)
With permission, I will make a statement on the Government’s action plan for social cohesion entitled, “Protecting What Matters”.
Britain has faced global crises at many moments in our history; we got through them by staying strong and united. Today we navigate new threats to our communities and families. We must stand together once again against those who seek to divide and weaken us. They want to sow division in our streets, our neighbourhoods, our homes and our minds. They feed off deliberate misinformation, hatred and extremism, carried across social media by algorithms, and funded by hostile states and rogue billionaires determined to pull our communities apart.
Online echo chambers, hatred for those with a different point of view and an unwillingness to seek compromise have led to a politics that is more aggressive, polarised and toxic than we have seen before—certainly in our lifetimes. As a nation, we are proof that people from different backgrounds can live, work and contribute together—a multi-ethnic democracy where neighbours look out for each other—but the foundations on which this country was built have been rocked by the rapid change all around us. Economic shocks and austerity halted the once steady improvement in our living standards. Rapid technological change has transformed how we work and live our lives. Intergenerational unfairness, regional inequality, an ageing population, the Tories’ open borders experiment and the disruption caused by their asylum-seeker hotels policy—all of that—has left communities more fearful of the future and more susceptible to siren voices wrongly putting the blame on minority groups.
Today, through the publication of “Protecting What Matters”, which we laid as a Command Paper in both Houses this afternoon, we have set out our steps towards a more confident, cohesive and united kingdom. Patriotism means bringing our country together, never pulling it apart. It is not patriotic to target someone because of their religion or the colour of their skin. We will resist those who peddle that kind of hatred and division. We choose to celebrate our country and all it stands for. We choose to come together in the best of times and the worst of times. We choose to take on those who seek to divide us. That is patriotism.
Our action plan aims to build confident communities that have hope in the future. There is a direct link between declining high streets and a sense that the country is going backwards. People remember high streets from years gone by that were vibrant, buzzy, great places to socialise with friends and family. There is a real sense of anger, as well as of loss, that so many have been left boarded up and run down, covered in graffiti and full of dumped rubbish—bleak symbols of the wasted Tory years.
People deserve to feel proud of their neighbourhoods. Pride in Place is central to our plan to make that happen. We have now committed £5.8 billion to almost 300 constituencies and begun to set up neighbourhood boards so that local people can decide for themselves how that money is spent. Fair funding for councils means that funding now follows deprivation for the first time in over a decade. We are offering grassroots organisations £5 million through the common ground fund to tackle division in communities.
We will focus, too, on protecting young people from those who want to warp their minds with hatred and introduce more effective regulation of home education, with the first ever register of children not in school, stronger oversight where children may be at risk and the piloting of a new approach where new safety checks are carried out before a child can be taken out of mainstream schooling.
It is important that children grow up understanding the diversity of our nation, so we are investing £500,000 to link schools serving different communities in order to ensure that they know and understand each other better. We will establish a social cohesion measurement framework so that we can identify risks early and act quickly. We will set expectations on integration for new arrivals and the communities who will receive them, with a focus on learning English so that people have a shared language, can participate in the local community and have respect for British values, our democracy and our way of life. We will end the Tory asylum hotels policy and shape an immigration system that is fair and transparent, and that works better for all communities.
We will not allow hatred to distort the lives and life chances of those who are targeted. Right now, Muslim communities are facing shocking levels of abuse. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are at record levels and now make up almost half of all religious hate crimes—way out of proportion to the size of our Muslim population. Mosques, schools and businesses have been attacked. Women have been harassed. Families are living in fear.
We have a duty to act, but we cannot tackle a problem if we cannot describe it, so today we are adopting a non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility. This gives a clear explanation of unacceptable prejudice, discrimination and hatred targeting Muslims, so that we can take action to stop it. The definition safeguards our fundamental right to freedom of speech—about religion in general or any religion in particular—and ensures that concerns raised in the public interest are protected.
I thank the members of the independent working group chaired by Dominic Grieve, who have provided advice to me on this matter. They have been targets for abuse because they carried out that work. That is utterly unacceptable. I am grateful for their patience and their wisdom. We will now work with groups across society to consider how the definition can be used most effectively and what comes next in disseminating it. We have deposited a copy of the definition in the Library of each House.
We also remain absolutely committed to stamping out antisemitism. We have witnessed murderous antisemitic terrorist attacks both here in the UK and abroad. Sickeningly, those have led to spikes in antisemitic abuse. Since coming to power, the Government have taken decisive steps to combat antisemitism, with record funding for security at synagogues and schools, millions of pounds to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities, and new laws to stop abusive protests outside places of worship.
Today we are going even further to tackle antisemitism in schools and colleges and in the healthcare system and, crucially, clamping down hard on the extremism that so often targets Jews first of all. Work is under way across Government as we continue to root out antisemitic hatred from every part of British life. We also hear concerns about hatred and discrimination in the workplace. We are building on protections in our landmark Employment Rights Act 2025, rolling out training across the civil service and working with major employers such as the NHS. This will include training to prevent and respond to religious hatred across the entire workforce.
Confronting extremism in all its forms requires more resilient communities. We will implement the anti-extremism policies that the previous Government announced but never brought into force, embedding the 2024 extremism definition, producing an annual state of extremism report and improving our ability to monitor and stop extremist influence online and offline. We will introduce a state threats designation power to disrupt hostile state and proxy organisations. We will also strengthen the Charity Commission’s powers to tackle extremist abuse and ban visas for extremists and hate preachers.
Our universities should always be beacons of free speech, where students feel safe to learn, to disagree and to explore how they see the world, but in recent years this has been undermined and we will not tolerate that. We are introducing new measures to tackle the rise of extremism on our college and university campuses, particularly since the 7 October attacks, which include strengthening the monitoring of extremism on campuses, improving oversight of compliance with the Prevent duty and taking more robust enforcement action where it is needed.
We will also protect people from hate content online. The Government will not stand by as rogue platforms push divisive and aggressive hatred on social media. We are looking at how we can make platforms give their users more control over the algorithms that determine what they see, and we will make full use of the powers in the Online Safety Act 2023.
We have all grown up in a United Kingdom that is, by global standards, remarkably cohesive. That cohesion underpins our economic strength, our democratic freedom and our national security. It is a fundamental part of the Britain we love. We have made our choice. In place of division, we choose unity, and we know that the people of Britain have made the same choice. The division and hate spewed by a small minority will never reflect our country.
The real Britain is where parents put on after-school clubs and summer fêtes to bring their kids together, where towns come out in the pouring rain to support their local football club with the same passion as they would support their country’s team in the world cup, and where neighbours hold street parties and set up mutual aid groups to look out for each other during covid. This is a Britain to be proud of, and I commend this plan to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. However, I had no prior notice that he would overrun the 10 minutes that he was allocated for his statement by more than two minutes. He has taken 12 minutes, so the shadow Front Bencher will get their time extended to six minutes. I call the shadow Minister.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement, although the Government leaked it on Friday and his Department briefed it to the press yesterday. Parliament should not learn the details of Government policy through newspaper reports. This House deserves transparency.
There are some measures in this strategy that we welcome. Efforts to tackle extremism in charities and universities are important and necessary, and we welcome them, but the strategy lacks ambition and action to deliver tangible change. The Secretary of State spoke for two minutes over his allocated time, which is ironic because there is absolutely nothing new in the measures that the Government are announcing this evening.
The strategy claims that the Government intend to embed the anti-extremism principles adopted by the previous Conservative Government in 2024, but if that is the case, why have this Government reversed the position on naming extremist organisations? We now have the ridiculous situation where the Government claim they have a policy of non-engagement with extremists but refuse to say who that policy applies to. Last month, we saw this confusion laid bare when the Home Office was asked whether it engaged with the Muslim Council of Britain. Two Ministers gave contradictory answers. When asked whether the MCB had given written evidence to the Macdonald review into hate crime, the Minister for Policing and Crime, the hon. Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), stated:
“The Government’s policy of non-engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain has not changed.”
However, just two days later, when asked whether the Muslim Council of Britain was on the list of organisations subject to that policy, the Minister for Security, the hon. Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), replied:
“The Home Office does not comment on specific groups.”
So which is it?
This lack of transparency also applies to the review itself. Will the Minister now publish the full report provided to him by the working group? Will he publish a list of every external organisation that the working group met, and every organisation his Department has subsequently consulted on that report? Will he confirm whether organisations deemed extremist or subject to the Government’s policy of non-engagement were permitted to submit evidence? So far, this review appears to have been conducted largely in secret. The Government even had to be dragged kicking and screaming into publishing an email address so that evidence could be submitted.
The proposed definition still raises serious questions. Jonathan Hall KC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has warned that any definition should include clear examples of free speech that are not considered anti-Muslim hatred. He says it is important that people can still openly discuss difficult but significant topics such as migration and Islamism. The definition risks undermining free speech within the law, it risks hindering legitimate criticism of Islamism and it risks creating a back-door blasphemy law.
The strategy also claims that the Government want to promote the English language, but they will not say whether they support the guidance issued to councils in 2013 by the then Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, which advised against routine translation into foreign languages. We should be investing in English language training, not endless translation. Translation undermines integration, it wastes taxpayers’ money and it ultimately harms equality. There is no legal duty on councils to translate documents into foreign languages, yet too often officials gold-plate the Equality Act 2010 and do so anyway.
Meanwhile, around 1 million adults in this country cannot speak English properly. This fundamentally limits their life chances and perpetuates separate communities. If the Government truly believed in equality, they would not turn a blind eye to practices such as family voting, where husbands effectively take the votes off their wives. Neither would they tolerate the misogyny and segregation that occur when men prevent women from learning English—[Interruption.] Labour Members might want to listen to this, because I am about to talk about antisemitism and I know that they have had a problem with that.
On the question of antisemitism, will the Government challenge anti-Israel boycotts and divestment campaigns in local government, as we have seen recently in Bristol, advocated by a party in this House? Such campaigns fuel hostility towards Jewish people and contribute to the rise in antisemitism. Local procurement boycotts of Israel are supposed to be unlawful, yet Ministers do nothing to enforce the law. They will not even compile a list of the councils pursuing such boycotts.
Added to these fears, separatism is on the rise in our country, as the Leader of the Opposition rightly set out in her speech last week. She said that
“for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain…Britain is a multiracial country, we must not be a multicultural one.”
[Interruption.] That was in the Secretary of State’s statement, by the way. We must reject the absurd idea that culture is something imported from somewhere else. For integration to work, people must know into what they are integrating. That means a culture that is confident, that is strong and that believes in itself. That is what this Government still seem unable to understand and unwilling to defend.
Steve Reed
I thank the hon. Gentleman—I think—for his comments. The reason this is the first social cohesion strategy that any Government have published for many years is that the Conservatives did not bother when they were in government. No, there has not been proactive engagement with the MCB in the work carried out by the Government or the taskforce. The previous Government did not publish a social cohesion strategy, but they did sow division in our communities. Their asylum seeker hotel policy, which we are having to clean up, caused all sorts of problems all over the country. They actively stripped money out of poorer communities and then boasted about it, leaving high streets to fall into decline and the people living in those communities feeling that the country was going backwards and was offering them nothing.
On the definition, there is absolutely no question of blasphemy laws by the back door. We will not do what the Conservatives did and stand by and simply watch while Muslim communities face targeted abuse in ways that any decent country would consider to be absolutely intolerable. As for English language teaching, they cut funding for it by 60%, and then have the cheek to stand there and say there is not enough of it going on. When I was a student, I volunteered to teach English to refugees. I suggest the hon. Gentleman does the same thing, because it is enriching for the volunteer and beneficial for the person learning English. Speaking the same language is fundamental to social cohesion.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I welcome the narrative he has spoken about, because I think it will give a lot of strength to people in my constituency. Can I ask him a practical question, though? I hear a lot from people with Muslim-sounding names that when they apply for jobs—research also shows this—they are three times less likely to get a positive response than someone with a western-sounding name, even if they have the same CV and qualifications. Of course I will be speaking about the narrative that he has talked about from the Dispatch Box, which will be welcome in my constituency, but what does he want me to say to the young Muslim and black men on the Kilburn estate in my constituency who are rejected when they are looking for jobs because of how their names sound?
Steve Reed
Many Members across the House will recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes, which will have been communicated to us by our own constituents. There are laws against outright discrimination, and those must be properly enforced, but we hope the definition will help the vast majority of employers—people of goodwill—who may not understand the nature of hostility towards Muslims or people who appear or sound like they are Muslim to see how employers contribute to that hostility. The intention of the definition is to enable those individuals and employers to better understand the circumstances, so that Muslim people are given the same opportunities and chances in life as anybody else.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Liberal Democrats are pleased to see the Government present this social cohesion strategy, partly because we have consistently called for its publication without further delay—it was promised last year. This should not be a political matter. We all witnessed the scenes during the 2024 riots. To suggest that a community cohesion strategy is unnecessary is to be blind to the very real challenges facing our country—challenges that have regrettably been inflamed by certain politicians who should know better. Given that almost 140,000 hate-related offences have been recorded in the year to March 2025, it is clear that action is definitely needed at a national level.
To support community cohesion, we must first build community itself and the kind of community that comes from access to shared spaces—youth clubs, green spaces and the everyday places where, regardless of background, we come to recognise how much we have in common with each other. Will the Secretary of State outline how faith communities will be properly supported and involved in proactively preventing division?
The Government also previously committed to promoting local faith covenants as a way of strengthening partnerships between councils and faith groups. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether the new strategy will provide practical support for local authorities to implement those covenants, especially given that many councils are on the brink financially?
Steve Reed
I thank the hon. Member for her comments and her party’s welcome of the strategy. It is important that we give it as much backing as possible because there is an awful lot to fix in what the previous Government left behind.
On help to build communities, our Pride in Place funding makes available £5.8 billion across nearly 300 constituencies. The intention is that the communities themselves will take the decisions about how that money is spent. I have been to visit some of those communities already. Frequently, there is multi-faith engagement in taking those decisions on the neighbourhood boards. That brings groups together and gives them a role, together with other community organisations, in taking decisions about how they can build cohesion and, indeed, community in their localities.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The reality is that the abhorrent rise in inflammatory rhetoric from national figures, including in this place, has normalised Islamophobia to the extent that it is now open season on British Muslims. This scapegoating feeds a hostile environment, and recent violent attacks on British Muslims show the real-world consequences. Let us be clear in this House: this is not just an attack on British Muslim communities; it is a direct challenge to the British values of fairness, respect and the rule of law. We must stand united in saying that British Muslim communities deserve safety, dignity and the freedom to exist without fear, like every other community. Can the Minister set out how the strategy will directly address this open season of hatred against British Muslims?
Steve Reed
I of course recognise what my hon. Friend says. We have a situation where over 40% of all recorded religious hate crimes target British Muslims. That is wildly out of proportion with the number of Muslims in our country. The reason we are publishing this strategy today, and the reason that it includes the anti-Muslim hostility definition, is so that we can better tackle the problem by describing it and then reviewing how we disseminate it with partners, institutions and groups across the country to give Muslims access to the freedom and rights they deserve, just as much as anybody else in this country.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Like a number of other right hon. and hon. Members, I come from an immigrant family and grew up in a household where a foreign language was primarily spoken by my grandparents, my father was bilingual and I was monolingual with the language of the country that my family had come into. The key to it all working is a willingness to integrate. Can the Secretary of State confirm that there are measures in this overall plan, which seems to have much to commend it, that are designed to prevent separatism and ghettoisation in society? Where that exists, a community becomes impossible to navigate in the way that we would all want it to be navigated.
Steve Reed
There is an awful lot in the report, and I cannot go through all of it because I will further annoy Madam Deputy Speaker by using up too much time, but if I might point to one area, we are allocating £500,000 to link together schools from different communities so that children growing up, perhaps with their friends from the same community, can get to know and better understand children from other backgrounds as well, and to understand that they live in and are part of a thriving, diverse community.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
I recently attended an anti-hate crime seminar organised by the Rochdale Council of Mosques. It struck me that it was clear that innocent Muslim men, women and children are subjected to vile Islamophobia in the street and blamed for terrorist outrages, just as Jews are subjected to vile antisemitism and blamed for the actions of Israel. I welcome today’s new definition of anti-Muslim hostility, which is needed every bit as much as that existing definition of antisemitism. I note that the definition of antisemitism has not had a chilling effect on free speech either.
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for his points, which are well made. It is important that, even going beyond this strategy, our existing laws against abuse and hate crime are properly enforced up and down the country, but we expect and hope that the definition will help organisations and individuals to better understand what causes anti-Muslim hostility and therefore how we can prevent it from happening.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
All forms of abuse are appalling. All forms of targeted abuse—be they against Muslim, Jewish or black communities—are even more appalling. I would be interested to know why the word “Islamophobia” does not appear in the statement, when that is clearly an enormous problem in our society. I am unclear about whether the Secretary of State took any advice from the Muslim Council of Britain, which has often been very helpful in explaining to the wider community the consequences of Islamophobia. Does he not think that there must be much greater concentration on the role of the racist far right in our society, which, on social media and elsewhere, continually incites—subliminally and overtly—violence against identifiable minorities all over the country, with devastating consequences for the security, safety and wellbeing of many people on our streets?
Steve Reed
The right hon. Gentleman is correct: it is important that we tackle all forms of abuse and discrimination, no matter which minority group they target. That is why, in the case of the Muslim population, we have included the anti-Muslim hostility definition as part of our report. The language for that came from the working group itself, which of course included many senior and well-respected figures from the Muslim community.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)
My constituents tell me about the increased level of hate crime against Muslims. I hear stories of women being abused or having their hijabs pulled off. That is a direct result not just of most of the coverage in our right-wing media, but of politicians in this place, some of whom have held the highest offices in the land, including the Leader of the Opposition. They feed into this narrative and cause anti-Muslim sentiment. What more will we do to counter the level of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment?
Steve Reed
I recognise well and with deep sorrow the situation that my hon. Friend describes. It is outrageous that over 40% of all recorded religious hate crime targets Muslims—that is way out of line with the Muslim proportion of our population. We have published the report, the entire plan and the definition to encourage and support organisations in tackling the forms of discrimination that blight the lives of British Muslims up and down the country.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for his positive statement, in which he described the society we all wish to live in. It is the society that I wish to live in, too. As he will know, I chair the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, which speaks up for those of the Christian faith, those of other faiths and, indeed, those of no faith. Respect is core to realising that we can all live together. In Northern Ireland, the past 34 years have shown that Protestant and Roman Catholic can live together. We have seen that in my constituency of Strangford. In Ards, the local mosque is side by side with the Presbyterian church, and there are no problems and no attacks—nothing happens. Christian Syrian refugees came to Ards for sanctuary under the refugee allocation of the last Conservative Government. Has the Secretary of State had the opportunity to see what has been done in Northern Ireland, as he considers the pluralistic society that he desires? Will he ensure that all religious beliefs are treated and respected equally?
Steve Reed
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He is right: there will be much to learn from the experience of Northern Ireland in bringing back together disparate communities, particularly in the period since the troubles came to an end with the Good Friday agreement. I will ask my Department to reach out and make sure that we take those lessons on board.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State and his Ministers; the previous Minister, Lord Khan, who started the process; and the working group for all their hard work. The Centre for Media Monitoring launched its landmark “The State of British Media 2025: Reporting on Muslims and Islam” report today. It is the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, analysing more than 40,000 articles across 30 outlets. It finds that nearly 50% of all UK media coverage about Muslims contained measurable bias, and 70% associated Muslims or Islam with negative behaviours or themes. This is not a fringe problem; it is systemic. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the definition of anti-Muslim hostility will be taken seriously by Ofcom, so that media outlets that spread conspiracy, target Muslim communities and actively undermine the social cohesion of this country are held to account?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for her support today and for her advice on these issues over many years. I recognise what she says: the vast majority of coverage of Muslims in the media is negative and completely misrepresents the experience and contribution of Muslim communities. Yes, it is important that we engage with Ofcom, broadcasters and indeed other public institutions to ensure that they take on board the definition and work to improve their performance.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State said:
“There is a direct link between declining high streets and a sense that the country is going backwards.”
I agree with those sentiments. Will he therefore consider encouraging the Chancellor to reduce taxation on high street businesses to support job creation and help them to thrive?
Steve Reed
We already have the fastest growing G7 economy in Europe thanks to the Chancellor, so I do not think she needs the hon. Gentleman’s advice.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
In times of increasing division, there is no place for divisive rhetoric, and the Government clearly have a role to play in supporting cohesion. The Tories clearly failed in that respect; we have heard again of their inability to embrace the United Kingdom of today. I welcome the definition of anti-Muslim hostility. Racism against Muslims, Jews and people of all backgrounds, including Sikhs, is sadly increasing and needs to be tackled. Many hate attacks on Sikhs are recorded as Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred, and it is important that that data is disaggregated. However, the United Kingdom is a very diverse country, so can the Secretary of State outline how his proposals will support people of all backgrounds, including in less diverse communities such as rural and coastal communities and smaller towns?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is right to say that the response of the official Opposition was disappointing, because it implied that they have learned nothing since their historic election defeat a year and a half ago. Pride in Place—£5.8 billion distributed to almost 300 constituencies—will give some of the most held-back communities in the land up to £20 million each, and local people will choose how that money is spent. Whatever the demographic make-up of individual communities—be they more or less diverse—that will bring local people together to make decisions for themselves. The restoration of power to communities will help to build resilience within them, for whatever challenges we may face.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Does the Secretary of State believe that echoing Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech strengthens community cohesion?
Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)
The publication of the definition of anti-Muslim hostility has been almost a decade in the making. I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Faith for their determination to define the hate and prejudices that Muslims face. As the Secretary of State knows, the definition must command the confidence of the Muslim communities that it is meant to support, so will he commit to an extensive outreach programme with a diverse range of Muslim community groups to ensure that the definition has the necessary community buy-in to begin tackling the deep-rooted hatred faced by Muslims in Great Britain?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for his years of leadership and advocacy on this issue. To have his support makes me even more proud that we are bringing forward the report and the definition today. Of course, it is critical that we carry out the work to ensure that the definition is disseminated widely, through local government, schools, universities, the NHS and broadcasters—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) implied—so that it can have the biggest impact possible in protecting Muslims from abuse and discrimination.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
I welcome that the strategy acknowledges that antisemitism, an increasingly concerning issue, is being normalised in many corners of society. Indeed, 2025 saw the second highest annual total ever recorded for anti-Jewish hate incidents, at 3,700. What action is the Secretary of State taking to protect the Jewish community from those who may see Israel’s involvement in Iran as an excuse to attack British Jews?
Steve Reed
The hon. Gentleman is right to point to a danger and threat that we all recognise, and much in the action plan will cover the issues he is talking about. For one thing, we are reviewing the visa watch list to ensure that extremists and hate preachers are not given visas to enter our country. Secondly, the Charity Commission will get new powers to close down charities that are promoting division, including antisemitism.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the social cohesion strategy as we seek to unite our communities. In Altrincham and Sale West, we are fortunate enough to have some fantastic interfaith groups and organisations, and I give a special mention to “The Rabbi and The Imam” project. With antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise, the project brings together local Muslim and local Jewish leaders to talk about their faiths, focusing on shared humanity, understanding and unity, including going into local schools. Is that exactly the kind of initiative that the Government and society need to get behind to counter extremism and hatred?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent example from his constituency; interfaith projects such as that will make the difference. Communities will be supported to take action to tackle the division that is trying to be forced on us, and on all of them, by hostile actors who want to weaken our communities and thereby weaken our country.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
In 1979 my father took me to Newton Stewart cinema to see “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, and I recall my father being more upset by a spoof travel documentary that preceded the main film, because there was swearing in it, than he was about the supposed slights to Christianity. It was an early lesson to me that no one in this country, in a modern democracy, has the right not to be insulted or offended, so why are we in this place, the cockpit of democracy, discussing a blasphemy law by the back door?
Steve Reed
I am sorry that the hon. Member has chosen to misrepresent the definition. It is intended to protect Muslims from abuse that we know is shrinking people’s lives and life opportunities. One would hope that everyone in this House would get behind actions intended to give Muslim people the same chances as anyone else in our country.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the community cohesion strategy, which the Labour group of Hope not Hate, which I chair, has been calling for. The Secretary of State will know that the other side of the coin when building community cohesion is the counter-extremism work to stop people being radicalised in the first place, whether that is people on the far right with anti-Muslim hatred, or people on the far left with anti-Jewish hatred. What action will be taken to address those who perpetrate such myths about people, whether they be Muslim, Sikh, Hindu or Jew, and what resources might come from the Department to achieve that?
Steve Reed
The Government are intending to bring into force and fully utilise the powers available in the Online Safety Act 2023. By doing that, we think we can tackle some of the worst online sources of disinformation and hatred that are being spread around to sow division in our communities.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Muslim people across the country face intensifying, dehumanising and often violent racism every day. Now that we have a definition, I am desperate for the conversation to move towards action. How quickly will the Government now move from definitions towards a clear and funded road map for action, including proper monitoring and accountability?
Steve Reed
The hon. Member is right to call for action, and I agree with her point. We will now engage in a review of how best to disseminate the definition, and put it into action so that it makes a difference to people’s lives. There is £5 million of new funding in the report, but Departments across Government will have sources of funding that also can be used to disseminate the new definition. We are committed to appointing an anti-Muslim hostility tsar, who can advise and be a critical friend to the Government in doing the work that we need to do. We will engage widely across local government, schools, universities, broadcasters, the NHS and others to agree on how we can best utilise the definition in order to support the Muslim community.
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
I have long been arguing that we need an overhaul of charity regulation to tackle rogue operators who are exploiting charity status to peddle extremism and hate, so I am thrilled that the Government have listened and are starting that today with new powers for the Charity Commission—I look forward to seeing the detail. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Charity Commission will have a range of sanctions to impose where needed, and that there will be clear communication with HMRC to ensure that sanctioned and shutdown charities can no longer abuse public money through Gift Aid?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Charity Commission will be getting new powers so that it can close down those organisations that purport to have charitable objectives but are really cover for promoting hatred and division. With the changes we are announcing today, that will no longer be allowed to continue.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
We all agree that there is no place in our society for hatred or discrimination against anybody, anywhere. Islamophobic incidents in the UK are at record levels; there are thousands of incidents each year, with many more likely to be unreported. Abuse is increasingly normalised and politicised through media, TV and online, at institutional as well as street level. Police data shows serious undercounting, making specialist monitoring essential. Islamophobia in the UK is not limited to fringe behaviour, and data shows a pattern of escalating hostility and normalisation in public discourse, including in this place and the other place. How will this definition be integrated into the Nolan principles, and what sanctions will apply to Members of this House and Members of the other place?
Steve Reed
It is for the House authorities to determine what happens with Members of this House, but the hon. Member is right to point to the huge concern that we should all share about the unacceptable level of hostility and abuse directed at Muslims. It is under-reported, in all likelihood, because we know that not all instances of such crime are reported.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Steve Witherden—[Interruption.] I mean Dr Scott Arthur.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think we are easily confused.
Yesterday I attended Open Heavens church in Wester Hailes, and a man told me how he had faced open racism from his colleagues and had been forced to resign, take his employer to court, and win his tribunal—a fantastic achievement. It was a shameful episode, but what made it worse was that he was an NHS consultant, and it was the NHS that he took to court. The point he made to me on the floor of the church was that too often society views hate as a series of events, rather than a culture. Will the Secretary of State confirm that what he has presented today will result in a change of culture, rather than simply addressing events? How will we measure that as we proceed through the remainder of this Parliament?
Steve Reed
We will measure the outcome of the report through new measures as part of the social cohesion framework that is described in more detail in the action plan, and we will be engaging directly with major employers, including the national health service, to ensure that they are taking every possible action to eliminate discrimination in the workplace, whichever groups might be targeted.
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
I thank the Secretary of State for introducing this definition of anti-Muslim hostility. Many facets contribute to causing division in society, not least the cost of living. When we saw the march in London, a large number of the audience there were racist, but a large majority of the people attending were not racist, they were just concerned about the cost of living. How does the Secretary of State see this definition incorporated, in terms of holding our far-right media and social media platforms to account, and how do we balance that with addressing the cost of living crisis?
Steve Reed
Part of the action that the Government are taking is the allocation of £5.8 billion to some of the most held-back communities in the country—over 300 constituencies will benefit from that funding. It will be local communities, through neighbourhood boards, who will decide for themselves how that money will be spent, directly addressing poverty but also directly addressing the lack of power that many of those communities feel. That will deliver the kind of change that the hon. Gentleman is describing and that we all want to see.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Rachel Taylor to ask the final question.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
As part of my work on the Women and Equalities Committee, I have heard at first hand from victims of horrific hate crimes, who have been targeted just because of how they looked and who they were. Will the Secretary of State confirm that this Labour Government will finally deliver the funding, resources and a call to action to empower communities like mine in North Warwickshire and Bedworth, to bring people together and to combat those seeking to create division and hatred across this country?
Steve Reed
There is much in this report, and I hope that Members will take the opportunity to read it in full, including the definition and the many other proposals. This country is strongest when it is united, and the intention of this report is to bring this country back together in the face of those who have tried to pull our communities apart.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 8 January 2025 (Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Programme), as varied by the Order of 17 March 2025 (Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Programme (No. 2)):
Consideration of Lords Amendments
(1) Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 9.00pm at today’s sitting.
(2) The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order: 2, 5, 16, 17, 19, 21, 37, 38, 41, 42, 44, 102, 105, 106, 1, 3, 4, 6 to 15, 18, 20, 22 to 36, 39, 40, 43, 45 to 101, 103, 104, and 107 to 121.
Subsequent stages
(3) Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
(4) Proceedings on the first of any further Messages from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement.
(5) Proceedings on any subsequent Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—(Gregor Poynton.)
Question agreed to.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
21:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 309 / Noes: 181 - Question accordingly agreed to.
21:15 - The House divided: - Ayes: 306 / Noes: 182 - Question accordingly agreed to.
21:28 - The House divided: - Ayes: 321 / Noes: 106 - Question accordingly agreed to.
21:39 - The House divided: - Ayes: 307 / Noes: 173 - Question accordingly agreed to.
21:52 - The House divided: - Ayes: 316 / Noes: 171 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:04 - The House divided: - Ayes: 315 / Noes: 109 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:15 - The House divided: - Ayes: 315 / Noes: 163 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:27 - The House divided: - Ayes: 304 / Noes: 177 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I can inform the House that Lords amendments 21, 37, 38, 39, 44, 101 and 105 engage Commons financial privilege. If any of these Lords amendments are agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving the Commons’ financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.
After Clause 1
Cessation of Child Protection Plans
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Olivia Bailey)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
With this it will be convenient to discuss:
Lords amendment 5, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 16, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 17, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 19, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 21, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 37 and 38, Government motions to disagree, amendments (a) to (c) to Lords amendment 38, and Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu of Lords amendments 37 and 38.
Lords amendment 41, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 42, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 44, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 102, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 105, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 106, Government motion to disagree, and amendment (a).
Lords amendments 1, 3, 4, 6 to 15, 18, 20, 22 to 36, 39, 40, 43, 45 to 101, 103, 104
and 107 to 121.
Olivia Bailey
Children’s voices are heard rarely in this place and are too often ignored in our society, so I say at the outset that it is truly a special privilege to play my part in the passage of this landmark legislation. This Bill is about creating the conditions in which every child can achieve and thrive, to ensure safer and more secure childhoods, to tackle the scrouge of child poverty and to deliver high and rising school standards. Today I ask the House to renew its commitment to that ambition for our children and our country. I extend my thanks to my colleague and friend, Baroness Smith of Malvern, the Minister for Skills, for her skilful stewardship of the Bill. I ask hon. Members to back the Government amendments made in the other place that increase the ambition of the legislation.
In part 1 of the Bill, we have introduced a new duty on local housing authorities to, with consent, notify educational institutions, GP practices and health visiting services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. We have also strengthened the Government’s work to put the voices of children at the heart of decisions about their futures, with amendments on family group decision making and the kinship local offer.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
On that point, will the Minister give way?
Olivia Bailey
Sorry, but I have to make progress as I have so much to get through.
Turning to part 2 of the Bill and schools, we are taking forward our historic strategy to lift children out of poverty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) set out last year, from September all children in households receiving universal credit will be eligible for free school meals. That will put £500 back in families’ pockets, support 500,000 more children with a nutritious meal and lift 100,000 children out of poverty. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making for children and families. We are supporting this by upgrading the eligibility checking system, making it much easier for local authorities, schools and parents to confirm free school meal eligibility.
Finally, the Government are also enabling the introduction of academy trust inspection and giving powers to the Secretary of State where academy trusts are not meeting acceptable standards.
I will now turn to the 13 non-Government amendments made in the other place, first the amendments relating to child protection. On Lords amendment 2, statutory guidance is already clear that a multi-agency conference should take place to review whether the child protection plan should be discharged. On Lords amendment 5, effective multi-agency child protection practices that prevent tragedies and save lives needs to happen now—further delay is unacceptable. In addition, evaluation is already under way, and regulations to give multi-agency child protection teams their functions will be subject consultation and parliamentary scrutiny.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
There is much positivity in what the Government are bringing forward. Back in Northern Ireland, Minister Paul Givan has brought forward a pilot scheme to take smartphones out of the classroom while children are in school. Has the Minister considered that positive strategy? If it is a positive in Northern Ireland, I think it would be a positive here as well.
Olivia Bailey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important intervention; I will turn to that matter in due course.
The Government cannot support Lords amendment 44 on principle. Extending the consent requirement would risk discouraging families from seeking or continuing to receive help or support. The amendment suggests that a child’s or a family’s circumstances can never change.
Olivia Bailey
I am sorry but I am going to make some progress.
I will now turn to the amendments relating to looked-after children and deprivation of liberty. Lords amendment 16 concerns a proposed review of the level of funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund. We all know the importance of effective support for the success of adoptive families. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), announced £55 million for the fund in 2026-27 and confirmed that the fund will continue in 2027-28. He also announced a 12-week consultation on adoption support, including the ASGSF. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that it is important that we do not undermine the integrity of the consultation by undertaking a separate review.
Lords amendment 17 intends to strengthen relationships between looked-after children and their siblings. In practice, it would require local authorities to record in the care plan any contact arrangements made between looked-after children and any sibling they are not living with.
I am proud that this Government have set out the biggest reforms to the children’s social care system in a generation. In particular, we are implementing changes to expand fostering, creating 10,000 additional places for children, and resetting the system to back kinship care, so that more children can grow up safely with people who already know and love them. These changes will allow many more children who grow up in care to spend time with their brothers or sisters.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I congratulate the Government on making kinship care central to their policies. Many children in care experience significant disruption in their lives, through multiple home moves and school changes, and relationships with their brothers and sisters are so central to a child’s sense of identity, belonging and emotional security. Will the Minister look again at how regulations and guidance could better ensure that those relationships are protected?
Olivia Bailey
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of sibling relationships. Lords amendment 17 would do little to advance that cause, but the reforms that we are driving forward on children’s social care will.
Lords amendment 19 seeks to include integrated care boards in regional co-operation arrangements. The Government agree that is important to include health partners in regional arrangements to improve looked-after children’s outcomes, but there are already legal requirements on local authorities to do this. These duties will continue to apply to local authorities that form regional care co-operatives, and the amendment is therefore unnecessary.
Lords amendment 21 concerns joint funding arrangements for children deprived of their liberty. Mechanisms for pooled funding already exist and work well in some areas, and legislating now would be premature ahead of pilots that will test effective models.
Lords amendments 41 and 42 seek a monetary cap rather than a numeric limit on branded school uniform. I welcome their lordships’ support of the Government’s aim to tackle the cost of uniform for parents. Our manifesto was clear that we will limit of branded items of uniform required, so uniforms make children look smarter but do not make families poorer. However, these amendments would undermine our shared aims. A cost cap would risk creating perverse incentives for schools by creating a financial target; many schools could require more branded items, reducing savings for parents.
A cost cap would require Government to regulate for wider, unworkable factors, including how many spares parents might buy, cost variations for clothing sizes and even promotional pricing. It would also impose new bureaucracy on schools to carry out regular retail price monitoring, often across multiple suppliers. We recognise concerns about high-cost individual items, which is why we will strengthen existing cost guidance to be clear that high-cost compulsory branded uniform items should be avoided.
Lords amendment 102 seeks to limit the circumstances in which the adjudicator can specify a lower published admissions number following an upheld objection. Every parent should be able to send their child to a good local school, and we want a choice of good schools for all families. That is why, when we bring forward the updated statutory school admissions code, it will make securing a high-quality education and high levels of parental choice central factors in any decision on PAN. However, at a time of declining pupil numbers, schools acting unilaterally in isolation can put that parental choice at risk. That is exactly why clause 56, unamended, is essential to help to ensure that all schools and local authorities work together to ensure that place-planning delivers a choice of high-quality schools for all families.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
I completely agree with the Minister’s position; parents should have the choice to send their child to whichever school they believe is best for them. In relation to admissions, one of my first cases after becoming an MP was an automatic off-rolling of a child after she had been absent for 20 days, despite the absence having been communicated to the school and extended due to a bereavement. She was off-rolled with no process and no review, and she was out of school for nine months. Will the Minister consider reviewing this punitive policy to ensure that there is a formal review before a child is removed from their preferred school?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. The Minister is being very generous with her time. However, she will be aware that many Members wish to speak in this debate. As it stands, that will be very difficult, given the time constraints.
Olivia Bailey
If the hon. Gentleman writes to me about that case, I am happy to look into it for him. Off-rolling absolutely should not be happening.
Let me turn to the crucial issue of allergies. Lords amendment 105 seeks to introduce mandatory allergy safety provisions for all schools. The Government agree with Members across the House who have been campaigning for improved allergy safety in schools, including my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) and the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns). Last week, we published draft statutory guidance, which will be in force in September. It sets out clearly that schools should have a dedicated allergy safety policy and stock spare adrenalin devices, as well as whole-staff allergy awareness training.
At the launch, I had the privilege of joining Helen and Peter Blythe, and their wonderful daughter Etta. Their campaigning in memory of their son, Benedict, has been both brave and instrumental. We recognise their argument about allergy safety requiring the strongest protections. That is why I am pleased to confirm—with Helen in the Gallery today—that we will put Benedict’s law on the statute book, with our own amendment to require schools to have and publish an allergy safety policy, to have regard to statutory guidance and to give powers to the Secretary of State to make regulations relating to allergy safety. This will protect children with allergies in schools and ensure that our guidance can evolve as clinical advice changes. I am sure the whole House will join me in thanking Helen once again for her bravery and brilliant campaigning.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
I thank the Minister for recognising that we need to legislate to protect children with allergies in schools. Can she reassure us that the Benedict Blythe Foundation, Helen and the MPs who have campaigned for this will see the amendment at the very earliest opportunity before it goes to the Lords, so we can ensure that Benedict’s law is delivered in full?
Olivia Bailey
Absolutely—I can give that assurance. I am afraid that I cannot take any further interventions, because I must get through the last section of my speech.
Let me turn to Lords amendments 37, 38 and 106, on social media, VPNs and phones in schools. I acknowledge the strength of feeling on these issues in both this House and the other place. The Online Safety Act 2023 brought in strong protections, but this Government have always been clear that we will build on its foundations. We know that parents across the country worry about what social media is doing to their children’s sleep, concentration and mental health. Many feel that they are fighting a losing battle against platforms designed to keep children scrolling.
Many parents and campaign groups have called for an outright ban on social media for under-16s. Others, including children’s charities, have warned that a blanket ban could drive children towards less regulated corners of the internet or leave teenagers unprepared when they do come online. That is why last week the Government launched a consultation to seek views to help to shape our next steps and ensure that children can grow up with a safer, healthier and more enriching relationship with the online world. The consultation will be open until 26 May, and we will respond in the summer.
The consultation already addresses the areas covered by the Lords amendments. Crucially, the consultation goes beyond the Lords amendments and seeks a view on a range of other issues, including children’s use of AI chatbot services, mandatory overnight curfews, whether platforms should be required to switch off addictive features, and whether the digital age of consent in the UK general data protection regulation should be raised from 13.
We are also ensuring that we can act swiftly and decisively on the outcomes of the consultation. That is why we are proposing an amendment in lieu to allow us to act via regulation-making powers. These powers will allow the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology to restrict or ban children of certain ages from accessing social media services and chatbots, limit access to specific features that are harmful or addictive on these services, age-restrict or limit children’s VPN use, and change the age of digital consent in the UK GDPR if the outcomes of the consultation show that that is necessary. The specific measures will be shaped by what parents, children and experts tell us, and any regulations brought forward will require a vote in both Houses of Parliament, ensuring proper scrutiny.
Olivia Bailey
I cannot; I must make progress—I am so sorry.
We understand that we need to act swiftly, and rest assured that through these powers we will be able to do so. Let me be extremely clear that it is not a question of if we act, but how.
Finally, let me briefly turn to Lords amendment 106. We have always been clear that mobile phones have no place in schools, but because previous guidance was not sufficiently clear, we have published strengthened guidance so there can be no doubt that, from bell to bell, schools should be mobile phone free. We are also acting to ensure that bans are properly enforced. Our network of attendance and behaviour hubs will provide targeted support to schools that are struggling. From April, Ofsted will inspect schools’ mobile phones policies and enforcement. Our consultation is seeking views on whether we need to go further to support schools—for example, whether the guidance should be placed on a statutory footing.
Hon. Members have the chance tonight to vote to keep children safe online and offline, to tackle child poverty by putting money back into parents’ pockets, and to put in place a schools system that enables every child across all our schools to achieve and thrive. I urge the House to support this vision for our children and our country’s future, and to back the Government’s amendments in lieu. I look forward to the remainder of the debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I am delighted to address the 13 amendments sent back to us by the other place this evening. The volume of Lords amendments reflects the strong feelings in both Houses about the deficiencies in the Bill, but there is a chance tonight to make change for the better. At the moment, the Government seem to do their utmost to oppose anything that they did not come up with—not on merit, but because they have retreated into a tribal bunker in which only ideas emanating from Labour special advisers or union bosses are deemed acceptable. May I suggest that this is not serving the Government very well?
Let us take the phone ban. The Education Secretary has turned into a contortionist. First, she told me that a statutory ban on phones in the classroom was a “gimmick”. Then, the Prime Minister slammed it as “unnecessary”. The Education Secretary later admitted that there is a problem, but she said that more guidance can fix it. Finally, she is now consulting on whether to do a statutory ban but refusing to back our amendment, in Lords amendment 106, which would actually deliver one. I am flattered by the energy that the Education Secretary is putting into avoiding agreeing with me, but this is getting ridiculous.
If the Government cannot properly argue the merits of their case, we get bad legislation. We had that problem with the Bill when it first came in. The Government still cannot justify the rationale for taking away academy freedoms—the very same freedoms that have delivered improved school standards in this country. Indeed, we now have the absurdity of the schools White Paper rightly saying that academies are the driving force behind school improvement, while in this Bill the Government are destroying academies in all but name. This is palpable nonsense. Do not try to make any sense of it—it is not possible.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Would my right hon. Friend allow me?
Sir John Hayes
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on making the case for banning mobile phones in schools and for restricting access to social media. We do not need more discussion or consultation, and we do not need more research, because research already shows the harm that those things are doing. By delaying and prevaricating, we are robbing children of the chance of a healthy life, so let us just move on and do what so obviously needs to be done.
Laura Trott
As ever, my right hon. Friend is the voice of reason in this Chamber.
Turning to our amendment that deals with pupil admission numbers, Lords amendment 102, I hope the Government will try to explain why they think good and outstanding schools should be made smaller when they are oversubscribed. To be clear, that is exactly what the Government are asking Back Benchers to vote for this evening. Parental choice has been the great driver of school improvement in this country—it empowers parents to vote with their feet and encourages excellent schools—yet the Government want to turn that principle on its head. They want to cut good school places, which is bad for parents, bad for schools and, above all, bad for children. School standards are on the Order Paper this evening, and the Government want to vote against them.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
The right hon. Lady knows that the challenge at the moment is that, because of the way that the system works, local authorities can control the number of admissions to good and outstanding maintained schools, but have much less control when it comes to academies. When there are falling pupil numbers—as she knows there are across the country—and work needs to be done to ensure we have the right number of places in the right areas, the only lever that our local authorities have to pull is reducing admissions to good and outstanding maintained schools. Does the right hon. Lady not agree that it is right that this Government act to make sure we can make choices in the interests of children and parents, regardless of the type of school?
Laura Trott
I profoundly disagree with the hon. Gentleman. At a time of shrinking school places, it is important that it is the good school places that survive, and parents should make that choice, not bureaucrats.
The Government’s inability simply to admit that they got it wrong in the Bill, and that there is a better way of achieving the outcome they want, is ever present. Lords amendment 41, which would impose a cost cap on school uniform, is palpably better than having a cap on the number of items. It is the height of insanity to insist that it should be illegal for a school to use the football kit it received for free because that would be outside of the item limit. If anyone is thinking that this cannot actually be Government policy, I suggest that they read the guidance that sits alongside the legislation. It literally says that
“All loaned or gifted branded items will be captured within the limit if they are required to be worn”,
meaning that they come under the cap. That makes absolutely no sense.
Olivia Bailey
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that specific point, but it is clear in the guidance that an item can be loaned as long as it is not compulsory. That is a perfectly reasonable situation that enables school sports teams to loan uniform items.
Laura Trott
The whole point is whether it is compulsory or not—that is the whole point of uniform, and I was reading directly from the guidance. It makes absolutely no sense; how is a child wearing something that they have been given for free going to increase costs for parents? If the “not invented here” syndrome were not running so rampant in the Department for Education, the change made by Lords amendment 41 would already have been made.
The same is true of Lords amendment 44. We all know the horrific case of Sara Sharif, which was used as a rationale for bringing forward many of the positive child protection measures in the Bill. The serious case review published at the end of last year set out multiple failings that led to Sara falling out of the system. That review states that, while well intentioned, this legislation would not have helped Sara, so we have brought forward amendment 44 to fix that. It ensures that consent would need to be sought from the local authority to homeschool any child who has ever had a child protection plan. That would mean that the Bill would have helped Sara, which is the Government’s stated aim, but guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker? The Government are now opposing that amendment. We are diligently doing the work an Opposition should do to improve the legislation, but it is being shrugged off by the Government—not on its merits, but because they do not want to accept anything from this side of the House. It is not good enough.
Mr Forster
I thank the shadow Minister for raising the case of Sara Sharif from my constituency. The safeguarding review that she has referred to highlighted failings in Surrey county council and failings in the law. That review recommended three quite detailed things, which are not included in the Lords amendment—the amendment is separate. Would it not be better for Surrey to be put under special measures and for the Government to implement the safeguarding review in full, immediately?
Laura Trott
The hon. Gentleman is arguing for things that are outside the scope of the Bill. What we know is that the change made by Lords amendment 44 would have helped Sara in a way that the unamended Bill would not have done.
I am not going to push Lords amendments 2 and 21 to a vote this evening, but I reserve the right to come back to them if the Government do not engage constructively in the other place. I am grateful to the noble Lady Baroness Barran for her brilliant work on those amendments and on the wider Bill.
Turning to phones, I really want Members to understand how bad things have got with phones in schools, and why a statutory ban is necessary. I know that the Government have issued revised guidance and have asked Ofsted to enforce it, but Ofsted’s guidance on this topic still allows phones to be present in schools. I cannot overstate to Members how damaging and dangerous that is. I was thinking about how to communicate this most effectively, and given that the Government are not listening to me, to parents or to teachers, I thought that first-hand testimony from a young person might get through.
I warn you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the following account from a former pupil involves some graphic content that I sincerely wish I did not have to talk about. However, I refuse to shy away from it, because if we are exposing 13-year-olds to such content in schools, we need to be able to talk about it in this Chamber. This is testimony from a girl who was at an outstanding girls’ school that had a “not seen, not heard” phone policy. Such policies are common in many schools across the country and count as a phone ban under the Government’s definition. The Minister says that children’s voices are rarely heard—well, I hope she listens to this testimony today.
“When I was around 13 or 14 years old, one of my classmates would pull out her laptop at lunch times. She would connect her laptop through her phone’s hotspot, because the school wi-fi would block any social media, and launch up social media, because some thought it was funny to see how long it took to find an old man wanking—it was never long—or how long it took for somebody to ask them their age, and when they replied with ‘14’, they would send their Snapchat for you to add. The teachers never knew, because we were alone in our forms.
“Some of my friends had access to Snapchat from very young, some even primary school, but I did not. I got Snapchat when I was 12 or 13, but I remember before, my friends talking about dick pics in the changing rooms, and one said she got at least 10 in the morning. She’d put up her phone and show us by scrolling through them, just because it was funny that they would just send it. This happened after she added someone on Snapchat that she didn’t know. Others had them too.
“Looking back now, I remember pretending to find everything funny, just to fit in, but actually I felt really confused and grossed out at some of the content being shared. All of this happened at school, and we probably should have talked to a teacher, but as an 11 to 14-year-old girl, you’re not going to tell your male form tutor that people were being sent dick pics in school, or that your classmates were sending porn in the form group chat. I didn’t even tell my parents until recently, because I was embarrassed, or maybe because it just seemed normal, but my mum was already pretty strict with my phone usage and if I told her what was being sent around at school, I felt like I would be in trouble and she’d take the phone away. The phone was how everyone connected, so I needed to protect it. Over time, all the sexually explicit stuff just became normal.”
I remind Members that this is happening at school and, in this case, at an outstanding girls’ school. It is so far from being an isolated incident—in fact, it is the opposite. It is approaching a norm.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
To enhance my right hon. Friend’s point, I have been running a survey in my constituency and the vast majority of respondents and parents have said that they support the concept of a simple age limit on social media, because of these particularly harmful algorithms. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the responsible thing for all of us in this House to do is to support our party’s policy of keeping our children safe by putting an age limit on social media?
Laura Trott
My hon. Friend is completely right. We need that age limit, and we need the phone ban in schools. Polling out today shows that 40% of children are shown explicit content during the school day. That is happening right now. This is an emergency. No more guidance; no more consultations—the Government should legislate, do something about it, and vote to ban phones in schools tonight.
The Lords amendments on social media received overwhelming cross-party backing in the other place. They were put forward by the noble Lords Nash, Berger, Cass and Benjamin. The amendments have been extensively debated and are backed by a number of expert groups and bereaved parents. In the place of those amendments, we have the farcical situation where the Government are asking the House to support their own amendment, which does not tell us what the Government will do or even when they will do it. No action is required by the provision being put forward this evening.
Mr Perkins
The shadow Secretary of State has been speaking a bit tonight about parental choice. That is, until this amendment, where she does not believe parents are able to decide what their children should do. In fact, she believes that she is far better placed, as are many Members in the House of Lords who do not know how to take a photo on their phone, to tell people how to parent their children. Does she acknowledge that many parents recognise that their children have positive experiences on social media? Is it not sensible to have a consultation, as the Government have already announced, to hear from experts, from children and from all the people who have opinions on this issue, rather than legislating at great haste and making a huge difference to many young people’s lives?
Laura Trott
This is a safeguarding issue, and we have always taken steps when it comes to safeguarding young people. Let me be clear to Labour Members: the Government can choose to do nothing based on this amendment. Ministers do not have a view on whether social media should be banned, and they have put forward an amendment that does not tell us what they will do. It is extraordinary.
Alicia Kearns
This is not about the ability of parents; it is about recognising that social media platforms are being weaponised by algorithms—let alone by hostile states—to make children addicted to them. It is impossible for parents to protect their children who do not have the critical thinking skills before 16. Having worked in counter-terrorism, I know that it is critical thinking that stops people from getting on planes to blow themselves up in foreign countries.
The No. 2 cause of stroke in women under 40 is being strangled during sex. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is because they have been told on the internet that they can be safely strangled? They cannot. We have to protect our children, because it is impossible for them to police things or have the critical thinking skills to protect themselves when they are on the internet.
Laura Trott
My hon. Friend eloquently sums up why this amendment is so important.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Laura Trott
I am sorry, but I will make some progress, otherwise I will get in trouble with Madam Deputy Speaker.
We have an emergency, and it is hidden on children’s phones. A quarter of children in primary school have seen porn, and the vast majority access it via social media. Some 70% of teenagers have seen real-life violence online, while only 6% were looking for it. In other words, the social media algorithm deliberately serves it to them. Criminals are using Snapchat and Facebook to groom children. Child sexual abuse imagery crimes are up enormously. Snapchat is flagged in almost half of cases. Meta platforms make up a quarter.
Several hon. Members rose—
Laura Trott
I am sorry, but I really have to make some progress.
Sextortion is also a huge issue on social media. In 2022, there were 10,000 reports of sextortion by snap. That was not in a year, but in one month, and those are just the ones we know about. Most horrifyingly of all, social media is culpable in dozens of children’s deaths. To give just one example, Ellen Roome’s son Jools took part, she believes, in a TikTok blackout challenge. That is where young children and teenagers are encouraged to hold their breath until they pass out. Jools died as a result in April 2022, and that was two years after the challenge had supposedly been removed from the platform. When I met Ellen and other bereaved parents, they said that, tragically, their bereaved group just keeps on growing. In the face of that, do Members know what the Government’s consultation says? It says that children like using TikTok to post dance videos. This misguided view that social media is in some way good for children, or that its benefits outweigh the harms I have spoken about, is what has got us into this position.
Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)
Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?
Laura Trott
I am sorry, but I must make some progress.
I have heard Ministers argue that vulnerable children or children who are isolated need to find their community online, and I want to put that argument to rest once and for all. All the evidence shows that these children are the most likely to be exploited, groomed and harmed by social media. If a child is scared or isolated, the last thing we should do is put them on social media. It is a terrible argument, and I hope it is not repeated today.
The other options that the Government present in their consultation simply do not meet the scale of the challenge. A curfew so that children can only get damaged by social media during the day does not help. Time limits so that children still see the content, but just for fewer hours, are not good enough. Getting rid of scrolling is fine, but how does that stop children being groomed?
So far, three senior Labour figures have managed to grasp the seriousness of the situation: the Mayor of Greater Manchester, the Health Secretary and the Labour leader in Scotland. They have judged this policy on its merits, and I hope the House manages to do the same tonight, because we are in a crisis. If Members across the House agree, they need to add their voices and vote for change.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. With the exception of the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, there will be an immediate four-minute time limit.
I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I rise to speak to the Lords amendments to the Bill that are of most interest to the Education Committee, following our scrutiny work on the Bill and in relation to a number of other subsequent and ongoing inquiries.
I welcome the decision to place the expansion of the entitlement to free school meals in the Bill. The Education Committee welcomes that expansion, which will increase the number of children who can benefit from a nutritious hot meal in the middle of the day. Combined with the roll-out of free breakfast clubs, it will substantially reduce the scourge of hunger, which harms children’s health and holds back their learning.
My Committee has recommended that the Government introduce auto-enrolment for free school meals. The use of universal credit data, which the Government already hold, would make auto-enrolment much easier to achieve. I urge the Minister to ensure, by implementing auto-enrolment, that no child misses out on the meal to which they are entitled.
I welcome the introduction of a requirement to notify health and education services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. I have seen at first hand many times in my constituency the destabilising impact of temporary accommodation on children’s lives. It is usually the worst quality accommodation and is the most likely to be overcrowded, damp and mouldy. It is often far away from school and friends, with no space to do homework, and brings the constant underlying insecurity of not having a permanent home. It can have profound consequences for children’s health and education, and the new duty to notify is an important first step in ensuring that children can be supported.
Chris Vince
I declare an interest, as a member of the Education Committee and a former teacher. I thank the Chair of the Committee for her passionate speech. Does she agree that it is hugely important that teachers are aware when young people in their care are in temporary accommodation, because of the huge impact it can have on their education, as she has suggested?
Helen Hayes
I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. So often we hear from teachers that they recognise a drop in a student’s engagement or performance, but without understanding why.
I welcome the introduction of the new requirements on allergy safety in schools. As the parent of a child who had unexplained allergies in early childhood, I understand some of the fear and anxiety that parents experience when entrusting a child with allergies to a formal setting. There is anxiety about whether allergens will be properly managed, and anxiety about what will happen if their child experiences an allergic reaction. The new requirements will ensure that there is more consistency, improve knowledge and introduce better protocols for managing allergies in schools, so that parents and schools can have more confidence.
I turn to Lords amendment 17 on siblings and foster care. In the Education Committee’s inquiry into children’s social care last year, we heard directly from young people with recent experience of the care system. They told us about the profound impacts of sibling separation. Sibling relationships are very important for looked-after children, who often have experienced trauma and broken relationships with their parents and other family members. Yet far too often, siblings are separated by a care system that struggles, due to funding and lack of capacity, to deliver child-centred care. My Committee was shocked to discover that the Department for Education gathers no data on sibling separation. That is a first and necessary step in seeking to reduce it.
I appreciate that the Government are not yet content with the wording of the amendment on sibling contact, but I urge them to find a way to incorporate stronger requirements for sibling contact to be prioritised and maintained before the Bill reaches the statute book. It is a small change concerning something that should happen anyway, and has the potential to make a big difference to vulnerable children in the care system.
In the short time that remains to me, let me mention just two other matters. The first is the amendment relating to school uniform costs for families. I know what a strain those can be for families who are struggling with the cost of living, and I welcome the Government’s efforts to limit the costs, but I urge the Minister to give a further assurance about the risks of the high costs of specific items. I encountered an egregious case in my constituency, in which a child from an extremely low-income background had been given a place at a school but was told that she could not attend unless she had the appropriate blazer, the cost of which was £100. I hope the Minister can give an indication that the guidance for schools will be strengthened in this regard.
I support robust measures to protect children from social media harms, including raising the age of digital consent and a ban on some social media apps for under-16s, and I support a statutory ban in schools.
Helen Hayes
I will not, because of the time limit.
However, there are important differences of opinion between stakeholders on the best ways in which to regulate young people’s access to smartphones and social media, so I consider it right for the Government to consult. I welcome the amendments that will allow legislation to be introduced without delay. It would be helpful if the Minister could give some assurances about the timescale for the introduction of legislation following the consultation, which I believe will be necessary.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to welcome the Bill back to the House of Commons, some 15 months after it started its passage at the beginning of last year. I am, however, extremely disappointed that the Government have provided such a small amount of time for us to discuss the numerous Lords amendments, and that they are throwing so many of them out. I am grateful to our colleagues in the other place for their diligence and their efforts to strengthen and improve the Bill.
Lords amendment 41 and 42, tabled by my noble Friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, seeks to introduce a price cap on the amount of branded uniform that a school can require parents to buy. We know that the price of uniform causes real hardship for families, particularly in the midst of a cost of living crisis. As we have just heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), it often causes genuine anxiety. Children are sometimes sent home for wearing the wrong item of uniform, which disrupts their learning. While we strongly support the Government’s intention to introduce a branded uniform items cap, I implore the Minister to look again at the detail.
The Liberal Democrats have proposed a uniform price cap, which would keep the prices down for parents while giving schools the flexibility to choose their own uniform policy and decide how many branded items they wish to include. The Minister talked about perverse incentives and driving up prices for parents. In fact, a monetary cap would do precisely the opposite, because it would be using the market and incentivising suppliers to drive down their prices. Obviously, they would want to be able to sell more items of branded clothing within that cap. I appreciate that the Government point to their manifesto commitment, but there is nothing shameful about changing one’s mind—or, dare I say, U-turning—when the evidence demands it. That is something that the Government should feel pretty comfortable with by now.
Let me turn to the theme of supporting families. Lords amendment 16 would require the Government to review the per-child funding in the adoption and special guardianship support fund following the devastating cuts that they implemented last year. The fund provides therapeutic support for some of the most vulnerable children in society, allowing them to process their trauma and relearn how to trust. As a result of last year’s cuts, many adoptive parents and kinship carers can barely afford to pay for needs assessments, let alone the complex therapy that the children actually require. A number of them have written to me from across the country about their experiences since the Government cut their entitlements. Heartbreakingly, many mention the threat of adoption breakdown looming over their family.
The fund is a lifeline for families, but that lifeline is fraying. We are told that tough choices must be made, but the Department for Education’s advertising budget hit nearly £50 million last year. That is a £15 million increase in the last two years. Just halving that budget could restore crucial therapeutic support to thousands of children. Will the Minister support our amendment that seeks to review the funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund and commit herself to restoring individual grants, or are this Government more interested in glossy advertising campaigns than in supporting the most vulnerable children?
Speaking of vulnerable children, let me turn to Lords amendment 17, tabled by Baroness Tyler, who has done amazing work on the issue of sibling contact rights. The amendment seeks to close a loophole in the current regulations so that siblings, when one is in care and the other is not, are able to remain in contact. It would require a child’s care plan to include arrangements for promoting contact with all the child’s siblings, whether they are in care or not, as far as that is consistent with the child’s welfare.
The Government have said that there is no need to close the loophole because the duty already exists, but I ask Labour Members whether they can be content with such an answer when it is clear that the present system is not working. We have heard again, from the Chair of the Education Committee and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), about the importance of this issue.
I have been given permission to share Abby’s story. Abby grew up in a residential care home and lost contact with two of her sisters, which was subsequently restored. However, I do not have time to go into that now because the time for debate has been so limited this evening, but I hope that we will return to this subject again if the Government insist on doing the wrong thing and throwing out an important amendment that a number of their Back Benchers clearly support.
The Government motion on amendments in lieu of Lords amendments 37 and 38 further amends the UK GDPR legislation to tighten control over children’s personal data online. The Liberal Democrats have been calling for that change for over a year. While we welcome the Government’s copying of another of our proposals, simply granting themselves the power to do something at some point is no protection for children until they act, and action has not been forthcoming. The same is true of the second part of the motion. Again, we have a consultation that appears to be dithering over whether something should be done at all.
We Liberal Democrats have made it very clear to the Government that if they want our support, they must make a firm commitment to act, and to act quickly. We are calling for a specific implementation timeline and a change in the consultation’s terms of reference, so that it becomes a question of how, and not if, we regulate social media. We have a thought-out policy that is ready to go if the Government want to take another idea of ours. We have proposed a harms-based approach to online regulation: age-rating user-to-user services according to the addictiveness of their features, the harmfulness of their content and the impact on mental health.
The solution is practical and future-proofed, and would provide the incentive to make the online world safer for us all. Unlike the Government’s approach, our approach would ensure that these sweeping powers are not concentrated in the hands of a single Secretary of State. Are the Government truly comfortable with bypassing full parliamentary scrutiny through secondary legislation? They must consider the precedent that they are setting. We are handing a loaded gun to any future Administration, of any political complexion, to decide which websites are harmful and which are not. For the sake of our children’s safety and our democratic standards, I urge the Government to think again.
Finally, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches made a promise to the campaigners, the charities and the thousands of parents who have written to us that we would not play party politics on this issue. While we may differ in our approach, we will oppose the removal of Lords amendment 38, because we need the Government to hear the voices of the thousands of parents and children who are desperate for something to change. Every hour that this House spends debating whether we should do something, another algorithm is being developed to exploit a vulnerable child. By opposing the removal of the amendment, we are sending a clear message that the safety of our children is a non-negotiable right.
Emma Lewell (South Shields) (Lab)
I will speak briefly to Lords amendment 17. Since 2016, I have used every single parliamentary lever possible to improve sibling contact for children in care, by trying to create parity in the legislation. Although the Children Act 1989 requires local authorities to allow a looked-after child reasonable contact with their parents, there is no such requirement for a looked-after child’s contact with their siblings or half-siblings. If siblings cannot be placed together, they should have the same rights to contact defined in primary legislation as they do with their parents. Many siblings who come from neglectful or abusive backgrounds often state that their only constant, positive and reassuring relationship is with their siblings. After all, they have a shared experience. No matter how horrific it is, it is something that only they truly know about.
Alicia Kearns
Lords amendment 105 is named Benedict’s law for Benedict Blythe, who was just five years old when he suffered a fatal anaphylactic reaction at school after being exposed to allergens. No child should go to school in the morning feeling anxious that they will not be safe, and no parent should fear at drop-off that they may never pick up their child again, but that was the unfortunate reality for Helen and Peter Blythe. Since that day, they have fought to make sure that every child is safer in school. Benedict’s law would ensure that every school has a mandatory allergy policy and holds spare adrenalin medications on site, and that every member of staff is trained and knows how to protect children. One in three schools in our country currently has none of those things, but we would not have known that if it was not for Helen’s campaigning for the Benedict Blythe Foundation. That is why this law is needed.
I offer my thanks to the Government. The statutory guidance to which they have committed is a real step forward, and today’s announcement that the Government will accept our amendment by tabling it in the Government’s name is welcome. It finishes the job, and means that full protections will finally be in place. Every measure that protects a child with allergies is a good thing, and I am so relieved that we have reached this point. I drafted the Benedick Blythe amendment last September, and I pay tribute to Harry Warren and my team, with whom I have campaigned throughout this time. When the amendment was put to the Lords, the Government whipped their peers to vote against it. I thank every noble Lord who voted for it, because they brought us here today.
The Government had told me that legislation was not needed. When the guidance was announced, we welcomed it, but we said that it did not go far enough. That is why we pushed our amendment to a vote. We are glad the Government now recognise that the guidance does not go far enough, largely because we were determined to push the amendment to a vote. We will need to see the wording of the amendment as soon as possible, because in the Lords we learned that guidance can be given and guidance can be taken away. There was a view that a threat of losing what little had been offered would deter Helen Blythe, and that misjudged her entirely. I am willing to draw a line under this, but I put it on the record that I want the Government to maintain their resolve and make sure the amendment is laid, because on Tuesday last week we received a letter telling all of us in this place that the amendment would be voted down and was not needed. On Friday, that was still the Government’s position, which is why they missed the deadline to lay their own amendment.
I want to turn to the financing of this amendment. The Government do not plan to provide funding to schools for the medications needed to protect children having anaphylactic shock. That is not the right approach. It currently costs the taxpayer about £9 million to provide the additional adrenalin auto-injectors prescribed to children to take into school individually. By altering the distribution method, as the Benedict Blythe Foundation has recommended, the new measures in Benedict’s law could save the Treasury £1 million a year. Just as with defibrillators, which the Conservative Government funded for all schools, we are asking the Government to fund medications to save the taxpayer money. These savings are before we consider the estimated £1.5 million saved by reducing A&E and hospital admissions, improvements in school attendance and parental workforce participation. I ask the Government to look at that again as they draft the amendment for the Lords.
I want to close by paying tribute to Helen Blythe. Her asks have really been very simple:
“Benedict’s life mattered. His death must matter too”.
That is why we come to this place—to protect those who need us—and I am so proud to have been able to stand beside Helen in her fight. I ask colleagues today to hold Benedict in their hearts tonight. I know that today is a good day, but such a promise will only be worthy of him when it is kept and when children become safer in our schools.
Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)
As a father of two young boys, I want to be clear that I have approached these Lords amendments, particularly Lords amendment 38, not only as a legislator, but as a parent. I have seen at first hand the pressures that social media places on children, and I have considered this matter with the utmost care.
To date, I have received 1,309 emails from residents across North Somerset calling for immediate action to raise the age of social media access to 16. That makes this campaign one of the largest I have seen since my election. The consensus is clear: parents, teachers and almost everyone who works with young people want to see meaningful change, including the Gladiator Steel—I am sure no one wants to mess with him. Social media was sold to us as a tool for connection—a way to stay close to friends and family, to find community and to share in each other’s lives—but that promise has been broken.
Freddie van Mierlo
The Government already had an opportunity to raise the age of digital consent from 13 to 16 with the amendments put forward to the Data (Use and Access) Bill by the Liberal Democrats, but they are dithering yet again while children could have been benefiting from that change. Why does the hon. Member think the Government are continuing to dither on this issue?
Sadik Al-Hassan
I will talk about that in a second, but I appreciate the hon. Member’s patience.
Social media was sold to us in that way, but these platforms have been driven not by connection, but by engagement algorithms optimised purely for profit—something altogether more troubling. Parents such as me are locked in a daily battle, which they simply cannot win alone, of fighting platforms that have been specifically designed to keep children hooked. This is not just my experience. A 2024 report found that 78% of young people have experienced at least one form of online harm—body shaming, harassment, non-consensual sharing of sexualised images—or been publicly outed. As a pharmacist, I know that if a drug were causing such measurable harm for 78% of young people, it would be withdrawn, reformulated or placed behind the counter with strict controls on who could access it. We would act because that is what the evidence demanded, and the same logic must apply here. We have an identifiable source, we have overwhelming evidence of harm and we have the power to act.
Big tech companies are billion-dollar corporations that have built their business models on capturing the attention of young people for as long as possible. If we are serious about holding these companies to account, we should go further. I urge the Government to consider a windfall tax on social media companies, so that those who have profited from the exploitation of children begin to pay for the damage they have caused. Like the tobacco industry before them, these companies knew their product was harmful and took steps to make it more harmful and more addictive, but then denied responsibility for the consequences. We do not accept that argument from tobacco companies, and we should not accept it from big tech either.
The revenue raised could make a real difference. Youth centres have closed, and the pubs and community spaces that once gave young people somewhere to go and something to belong to have disappeared. Mental health services are overwhelmed. Education support is stretched. A generation has been harmed and the companies that profited from that harm should contribute to repairing it. That is why I welcome this debate today and any discussion on raising the digital age of consent, regulating social media and, crucially, holding big tech to account.
I understand the urgent call for action, to put our boot on the neck of big tech companies that have hurt an entire generation and put our children at risk—I share that desire completely—but I also understand that we need to get this right. It is relatively straightforward to identify what change is needed. The harder and more important question is how we make those changes in a way that is enforceable, durable and genuinely protective of children. A well-intentioned measure that cannot be properly implemented or enforced helps no one. We must learn from Australia’s model. The world is watching. Our teachers, parents and healthcare professionals are watching. Our children depend on what we decide in this Chamber today, tomorrow and in the future. Their opportunities, hopes, and dreams are in the balance, so we have to get this right—for them.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
There is now overwhelming evidence that addictive algorithms and harmful content are deeply damaging to our children’s wellbeing. We Liberal Democrats support Lords amendment 38, which would ban social media for under-16s, although our preference is for online regulation with film-style age rating of user-to-user services.
While the Government dither and delay, children across the country are being exposed to deeply harmful content every single day. I have spoken many times about the saturation of pro-eating disorder content that children view on social media, but the harms do not stop there. Social media is increasingly acting as a marketplace for the illicit drug trade. Researchers at the University of Bath have found that up to a quarter of vapes confiscated in secondary schools contained the deadly drug Spice. The Government’s own data reveals an eightfold increase in young people entering treatment for Spice in 2024-25.
How are young people getting their hands on these dangerous drugs? Through social media. Researchers have identified nearly 10,000 accounts involved in the supply and distribution of Spice, using TikTok as a means of communicating and advertising to children. Ofcom agreed that the content is “priority illegal content”. However, it declined to use its powers under the Online Safety Act 2023. We are facing a shocking reality. Children, right now, can buy the most dangerous prison drugs on mainstream social media: Snapchat, TikTok, Telegram. If Ofcom will not step up and the Government will not make it, what choice do we have but to prevent children accessing these platforms altogether?
The Government’s amendments in lieu of Lords amendments 38 and 39 completely miss the point, as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) outlined. The Government must act now to stop children being exposed to illegal and harmful content online. We cannot allow endless inquiries, consultations and delays to stand in the way.
Wera Hobhouse
I will not; I am sorry.
More than 40 charities and experts support this approach. Our constituents have made their views clear too. I have been inundated with emails, the overwhelming majority of which support a ban. Now is the time for action. The Government could accept this cross-party amendment and give children an escape route from the dark corners of social media.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
I would like to talk to the social media element of the Lords amendments. The argument for stronger protections for children online has been won, not least because of the appalling harms that have come to so many children because of the lack of proper, functioning legislation. I will use my time, which is limited, on this subject to make clear what I would like the Government to do and why I will be voting down the amendments in front of us tonight.
I want to focus on my steadfast belief that we must age-gate functionalities instead of age-gating social media, because I think that phrase will immediately become outdated—it is already outdated in schools.
One of the big problems with the Online Safety Act and how long it took to come in is that so many technologies are now not covered by that legislation—it is not evergreen. I am determined to ensure that my time in this place is used to create evergreen legislation for the issue of our time, which is protecting children from the horrendous and exploitative harms that they are coming to.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Would the hon. Lady agree that the film-style age rating system that the Liberal Democrats have come up with speaks to exactly what she is saying? An app that allows children access to strangers or is built with an addictive algorithm, for example, would have a different age rating than something that is absolutely safe and gated, like a game, which could be rated safe for younger children.
Lola McEvoy
I am interested in the idea of licensing functionalities and new developments before they come into children’s lives, which is not happening at the moment—at the moment it is happening after they have been used for a long time. We are age-analysing and risk-assessing them retrospectively, which seems very backwards to me.
I agree that we should have a licensing scheme for content that is designed for children, like CoComelon and some of the other content that we know is addictive for very young children. Such a scheme would obviously have to be fleshed out, with a proper consultation on publishing rights and with information on who is going to do the licensing. I feel very strongly that self-published is inappropriate for under-16s. I do not think that content that is not regulated, that has not gone through any supervision and that has no legislative or regulatory framework surrounding it should be allowed to be fed to our children in any way.
I will sum up by saying that one of the young people in my latest online safety forum said to me via an anonymous note—I told them all that they could send me an anonymous note if there was anything they did not want to say in front of their peers— “Don’t ban it, but if you do, make sure it works.” I thought that was brilliant. Young people are much savvier than we give them credit for.
I want to make it very clear that at the moment, Ofcom is yet to use its strongest powers. The Online Safety Act does not include AI. I am determined that whatever this Government decide to do, they must do it with the idea of effective implementation of the legislation. We owe it to the next generation and the generation currently using the digital world to get it right and to future-proof their right to a childhood. Because so many of them have been badly let down, we must make evergreen—
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Only one clause in this legislation applied to Scotland in advance of it returning from the Lords. Lords amendment 38 contains a reserved power that would apply across the whole UK the changes that are being suggested to the Online Safety Act. I want to focus specifically on those changes.
Comments have been made about social media, but it is not exclusively social media where there are dangers to children online. It is not exclusively user-to-user services where there are dangers to children online. There are some games that can be downloaded that do not have user-to-user services but are highly addictive, and those would not be covered by the Conservative or Liberal Dem proposals because they are games without user-to-user services.
There are massive risks online for young people, but I do not want us to absolve companies of the responsibility of dealing with that. There is this sudden feeling that dealing with this issue is dramatically urgent, but people have been sending unsolicited nude pics online for more than 30 years. It has been happening for a significant length of time. It is urgent that action is taken, but it does not have to be taken today; it has to be taken correctly and in a way that works, as the hon. Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) just said.
We need to ensure that, whatever we do, we have a clear aim in mind. What is the intention? Are we trying to protect children online, or are we trying to ban children from social media? Are we trying to ensure that young people are not exposed to people who are looking to groom them, to access them, or to convince them of something? Are we trying to protect them from that, or from obsessively looking at algorithms and videos on TikTok? Maybe we are trying to do both, but we need to be clear about what the aims are.
There is no point in banning social media if we do not know why we are banning it, and if we still allow access to Roblox and many other places where there is harm. If we ban YouTube, what happens if a kid wanders into a room and watches YouTube that is playing on the TV via the PlayStation? Who is responsible for that? How do we sort this—how do we ensure that it works?
I am clear that whatever happens, it needs to work. We must not just listen to the big tech companies. We need to do as the Minister has suggested: listen to parents and experts to understand exactly how children consume the internet. We need to know where and how these individuals who are accessing children for nefarious purposes are doing it, because it is not only through social media or the platforms that are being defined by some people as social media.
I am clear that this needs to work. Therefore, I am supportive of the Government undertaking a consultation. I have spoken to DSIT officials and as many people as I possibly can about this. I am very glad about some of the changes that the Government are bringing forward—for example, to ensure that livestreaming cannot be accessed by young people. I have been pushing for that for a significant number of years, and I am glad that we have got to that place, but there are far wider issues with certain functionalities online that need to be tackled and that will not be covered by a blanket ban on social media.
We cannot let the companies continue to get away with this. We cannot let them continue to have horrific and harmful illegal content, without cracking down on it and making sure that they are held accountable for the behaviour on their platforms. We cannot just say, “We’ll ban under-16s from social media and absolve ourselves and the companies of responsibility.” We need to take real action that will really protect our children. Please, everyone, respond to the consultation.
Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)
I rise to speak to Lords amendment 105. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on allergy, a lifelong allergy sufferer, a former teacher and the parent of a lifelong allergy sufferer, I am painfully aware of the inconsistencies of allergy care, and the anxiety and harm that it causes.
Baroness Morgan of Cotes’ amendment aimed to introduce new requirements based on learning, following the tragic deaths of Benedict Blythe and others. While I believe that there is much more that can be done to improve the lives of allergy sufferers, I am pleased that the creation of new statutory advice and the implementation of Benedict’s law will vastly improve the situation for children with allergies. All schools will now be required to stock allergy devices, have a dedicated allergy policy and ensure that teachers are trained, meaning that lifesaving treatments for allergies will no longer be hidden in tupperware boxes at the back of dusty cupboards. It means that no parents will ever receive a phone call like I did, when I was asked whether my child, in the school’s care, needed to use their auto-injector, knowing full well that if the answer was yes, it could have already been too late.
I am proud that the Government are putting allergies at the heart of proactive, preventive school planning. Recent approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency means that more adrenalin devices are available, including stable, long-lasting and less-traumatic adrenalin nasal sprays. I would appreciate it if the Minister can confirm that nasal sprays and other adrenalin devices will be available in schools following the new statutory advice. Children are more likely to have a reaction in school than anywhere else: 80% of food allergy reactions happen in schools, including a quarter for the first time. That is why it is essential that schools have devices available, even before diagnosis occurs.
I want to celebrate the campaigning of Baroness Morgan of Cotes and the incredible work of Helen Blythe. The implementation of Benedict’s law in full will reduce the risk to our children. It will ensure that every child starts the school day safe, and will reduce the fear that they will not leave it that way, even if they have allergies.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Rebecca Paul, who has just two minutes.
Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)
I am incredibly pleased to speak in support of Lords amendment 38, which seeks to raise the digital age of consent to 16. I only wish we had much more time for this debate, as it deserves.
For years, parents like me have worried about the harms of social media on our children, and the detrimental impact of excessive screentime. We have tried to manage it as best we can on our own. We have felt the sting when we have been told by others that responsibility fully sits with parents, and that good parents do not need the state to help them get this right, yet no one says that about alcohol, smoking or buying fireworks. In all those cases, it is acceptable for parents to be helped by sensible laws put in place to protect children from preventable harm, yet social media and excessive screentime are just as harmful as cigarettes, alcopops and messing around with fireworks in the street, so why would the state not step in on that too?
I have three children, and it is fair to say that they love screentime. If I try to talk to them when they are glued to a YouTube video of someone else playing a computer game, they ignore me, completely engrossed. They do not want to go out in the garden, play with their friends in the street or play with toys. Instead, if given a choice, they would always choose to stare zombie-like at their tablet. Thankfully, I have kept them away from social media, but there is only so long I can get away with that.
Staring at a screen for endless hours is not healthy. It prevents children from developing the social and cognitive skills they need in adulthood and is terrible for their mental health. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a mental health crisis, which started at the same time as the mass adoption of smartphones and access to social media. It really should be a wake-up call. What does the future look like if our children’s most important relationship is with their phone? Their brains are literally becoming hardwired to respond to likes and shares, rather than human interaction and connection.
Social media is doing exactly what it was designed to do: reeling our children in and feeding them content that often is not in their best interest but is highly addictive. We know this because we all experience it the same. Social media is not for children. We do not need any more time given over to consultation to confirm what we already know—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I call the Minister to wind up.
Olivia Bailey
I thank Members from across the House for their varied and valuable contributions. We have heard a number of powerful speeches that made really important points. I am very sorry that I do not have enough time to respond in detail, but I will endeavour to write to Members who asked specific questions.
This is a Bill with opportunity at its heart—opportunity for every child, no matter the circumstances they are born into. It will make children safer online and offline, with our ambitious, swift action on social media and phones; it will help to tackle the cost of living crisis with our action on free school meals and the cost of uniforms; and it will drive up standards in our schools and improve outcomes for children in care.
Tonight, the House has the opportunity to support free school meals for half a million more children, swift action to protect our children online, and the most significant safeguarding measures in a generation. This is a landmark Bill, but it is also a Labour Bill—because it is ambitious for every single child in this country. I urge the House to support Labour’s vision for our children and for our country’s future.
Lords amendment 3 disagreed to.
Lords amendment 5 disagreed to.
Business without Debate
Funeral Directors: Regulation
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
I am afraid that it will be a rather morbid debate this evening. We spend remarkably little time in our lives thinking about the practicalities of death, and it is probably part of human nature that we do not dwell too much on the inevitable future fate that awaits us. That means we put far too much implicit trust in those who take responsibility for our bodies, and in those of our loved ones when we die. We all assume that in death we will be treated with respect and care by professionals, but his evening I am afraid I will share some hard truths about the gruesome reality of death. I warn anyone watching that what I have to say will be graphic and distressing—there in no way around that.
Last year, Gosport residents and funeral directors Richard Elkin and Hayley Bell were found to have kept 46 bodies entrusted to their care in a completely inappropriate environment with an unregulated temperature. Describing entering the place to see his mother, one of my constituents said,
“the awful smell is something that will never leave me”.
Concerns about what was going on behind the doors of Elkin and Bell funeral directors were first raised by local residents, and then by the senior coroner at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. A body had been sent for a post-mortem that was
“laying in pools of bodily fluids”
and infested with maggots. The post-mortem also found that the deceased individual had suffered a spinal fracture after death.
After a Gosport borough council environmental health investigation raised concerns but took no further action, a few months later, simply because bills had not been paid, bailiffs attended the property, where two bodies were discovered, putrefying, in a room with bloodstained floors, water dripping from the ceiling, and broken windows. One of them was an elderly gentleman who had been left for 36 days. His body was found in a badly decomposed condition. It is too much of a cliché to compare this to a horror movie, because this is real life, or real death. When the family of one of the deceased was contacted, they were surprised, because they were under the impression that their loved one had already been cremated. The company had certainly taken payment for it.
As the Minister will know, it was completely legal for Elkin and Bell to keep dead bodies in a room like that. Elkin and Bell could only be brought to justice by some incredibly diligent work by Hampshire police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and John Price KC, using a variety of different offences including fraud, forgery and a piece of common law that dates back to Victorian times. The crime of preventing lawful and decent burial was dusted off from the days when it was used to convict grave robbers. That is instead of what should have been possible, which was sentencing the pair because they had wilfully neglected bodies in their care, and treated people’s loved ones as nothing more than money spinners.
The case highlighted that the funeral sector is nothing better than a wild west. When this was first brought to my attention, I was incredulous and horrified to learn that there is no regulation of any kind governing the sector. In fact, the only law that governs the funeral industry is around the financial transparency of funeral plans, and that was put in place after a Competitions and Markets Authority investigation in 2021. There are simply no mandatory qualifications, no accreditation, no licensing, no designated working practices or formal inspection and, crucially, no law to fall back on when things go wrong.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing the debate. She is right to raise this issue. In Northern Ireland, we are fortunate to have a number of funeral directors of long standing who have impeccable reputations and integrity. However, funeral directors in Northern Ireland as a whole are not regulated either. Trade bodies such as the National Association of Funeral Directors and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors require members to follow codes of practice, but many operate without that oversight, although those who provide prepaid funeral plans are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Does the hon. Lady agree that more must be done to protect the general public and instil confidence in a regulated system? That is the way forward.
Dame Caroline Dinenage
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; better regulation is exactly what we are pushing for. In fact, everything needs to be better when it comes to the services governed by those organisations. As he says, the vast majority of funeral directors up and down this country work with incredible professionalism, great pride and integrity. They care deeply about what they do, and about the families and the individuals who they look after. One funeral technician told me that she does not see her work as a job—she sees it as a privilege. Such businesses and individuals have been silent pillars of our communities for centuries.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech on an incredibly difficult topic. On behalf of my constituents, Cody and Liam Townend and Zoe Ward, who had horrific things happen to their babies’ bodies as a result of the lack of regulation, I spoke to both main professional bodies, which cover 80% of the sector, and lots of businesses, including the biggest player in the sector. They are united in thinking that regulation is the answer to restoring public trust in the funeral sector. Does she agree?
Dame Caroline Dinenage
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I am about to make exactly that point. I am grateful to him for teeing it up so beautifully for me, because it takes only one business to do the wrong thing to erode trust, but unfortunately the case of Elkin and Bell is not the only case. There have been similar cases at Legacies Independent in Hull and Florrie’s Army in Leeds, which I think is the case he refers to, where deceased babies were staged in lifelike positions in a living room. These are unspeakable and unimaginable horrors. There have been other cases where bodies have been found in the most unimaginable condition, but no further action could be taken by the police or others because, simply and incredulously, those businesses have not actually broken any laws.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The Minister will know that this is the second Adjournment debate on this issue that he has had to respond to in these last several months. Given the fact that most practitioners want to see regulation and the public want to see regulation, does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government seem to be very slow on this issue—unless the Minister is going to give us some earth-shattering news this evening? This is too vital and important a set of circumstances just to leave to an unregulated marketplace in continuation; it needs regulation and it needs it quickly.
Dame Caroline Dinenage
I thank my hon. Friend for listening to me on this issue when he was the Justice Minister, when I first brought his attention to the situation. The points he makes are absolutely right. Over the past couple of years I have met the two voluntary trade bodies for the funeral sector, the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors and the National Association of Funeral Directors, as well as countless reputable funeral businesses and, crucially, many of the families impacted by these cases. I am so grateful to all of them for the time that they gave me, but as my hon. Friend said, every single one of them has stressed the need for the sector to be better regulated. I echo his calls for the Minister to give us some good news on that in a minute. That is important for everybody; otherwise, all those who carry out their work with such enormous care and diligence will have to operate under the shadow of suspicion. We owe it to them as much as anyone else to get this right.
The Minister knows that malpractice is not uncommon. Quite simply, taboos and sensitivities around death have effectively created a smokescreen for bad care. I am especially concerned about one area: the rise in direct cremations. For those who do not know what that is, it is where the loved ones do not see their deceased at any point in the journey. In their cases, there are absolutely no safeguards, checks or balances. The key thing here is that direct cremations have expanded hugely in the last few years, partly as a result of covid, from just 3% of funerals in 2019 to 20% in 2023.
We all see the charming adverts on the television in which an elderly gentleman explains with a smile that he has arranged for himself a direct cremation. He says, “I just didn’t want any fuss. It is much easier for my children.” We know that some very reputable and caring businesses do this process, but if the children knew what direct cremation might be, they would know that it might be little better than a conveyor belt. Mum and dad may be bundled into a van, maybe still in their soiled nightclothes, with a catheter attached and without any form of temperature controls. They could be taken to an unknown location and left for days before a slot becomes available at a crematorium. Who knows? In the hands of an unscrupulous company—who knows which ones they are?—it is all too possible for any human dignity and respect to become a completely unnecessary complication and expense in this process.
The only requirement before cremation takes place is that the body needs to be rid of objects such as pacemakers and other medical equipment. That was another part of my journey through understanding this process. This surgical procedure is carried out by embalmers, who also drain the body of blood in order to replace it with embalming fluid and remove the contents of the stomach. I was really shocked to learn that that can be performed without any accreditation or qualification whatsoever, and with no minimum standards of care for the body. That is not to say that there is not a form of qualification—the British Institute Of Embalmers provides professional training, and reputable companies such as Co-op funeral directors require a level 5 apprenticeship qualification for their embalmers—but it is not mandated to be able to practise.
In a nutshell, if the political career of any one of us in this room did not work out, we could walk out of here and set up our own funeral home—in our house, if we wanted to—with no special skills or accreditation and nobody inspecting our work. With that as the starting point, who can ever say for sure that their family member was treated with the appropriate professionalism? I have a question for the Minister; I know he has been hoping that I would get to this for some time. What can the Government do to restore trust in this sector? It is unfair on those who practise with enormous integrity that their professionalism is being called into question.
The Minister will know that the Fuller inquiry was set up in the wake of the crimes of the necrophiliac David Fuller, who abused 100 dead women and girls in a hospital mortuary in Kent. Those women were between the ages of nine and 90. In the wake of cases such as those in Hull and Gosport, Sir Jonathan Michael, who led the work into the Fuller report, was asked by the Government to prepare stage 2 of the report, which considers the wider funeral sector and those working in it. The report was published last July and includes some very sensible recommendations, including a statutory regulatory regime for funeral directors that invokes a licensing scheme, mandatory standards and regular inspection.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
This is a really important debate. While regulation of the funeral sector is fundamental, does the hon. Member agree that it must be proportionate? A small, independent home carer for 20 or 30 people a year cannot be expected to have to mirror the administrative burdens placed on a large, multi-site corporate provider. Does she agree that core standards must be universal, but related to the structure and scale of a business?
Dame Caroline Dinenage
I do not think that the size of a business is necessarily any reflection of its professionalism. We know that a large number of small, independent funeral services up and down the country work with incredible professionalism.
The hon. Gentleman is also right that nothing should be introduced that is unnecessarily bureaucratic or costly for those businesses.
The Fuller report says:
“It is important that real change is implemented to ensure the security and dignity of the deceased, and that a specific government department is given responsibility for overseeing this.”
Everybody who is involved in this sector recognises that there is a need for it to be properly regulated, inspected and overseen, so can the Minister set out clearly what his initial thoughts are on the recommendations of the Fuller report and when the Government will respond to them in full? When they do so, will they set out clearly what firm action will be taken, and when? We have waited so long, so when the Government respond, it must be with clarity, with purpose and—above all—with urgency.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
When the Minister replies, can he be clear about whether it is the Department of Health and Social Care or the Ministry of Justice that has control over this area? There seems to be a bit of a wrestling match going on between the two. I am sure the hon. Lady agrees that responsibility needs to sit in one place, so that there is definite control over this sector.
Dame Caroline Dinenage
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is crucial to know which Department will take the lead on this work and ensure that it happens, because while I think the Minister will be responding to the Fuller report, we are also awaiting the outcome of a Law Commission report that was kicked off in 2022 by the last but one Justice Minister, the former Member for Finchley and Golders Green. That report is looking at different laws on what happens to our bodies after death; it does not include the regulation of funeral directors. My fear is that, as the hon. Lady just said, efforts to regulate the sector will fall between the silos of Government Departments, and nobody will grip this issue.
As we have discussed, what is required is a minimum standard of qualification, accreditation or licensing, and robust inspection. A regulator with the power to withdraw licences and sanction wrongdoers might seem like a tempting first step, and Scotland is ahead of England, having passed legislation 10 years ago to introduce a licensing and inspection regime. However, 10 years on, not a single Scottish funeral director I have spoken to has actually been inspected. I am concerned that this could be the worst of both worlds, with the illusion of regulation masking the possibility that nothing has changed in practice.
A sensible approach would be to extend the scope of the Human Tissue Authority beyond public mortuaries to the whole death pathway. The Fuller report recommends that the HTA
“should require the organisations it licenses to ensure that any individual who provides care to deceased people is suitably qualified, experienced and supervised.”
If inspections are going to be carried out by local authorities, they need to be significantly better trained and resourced to do so, and we would have to take into consideration the fact that some of them run funeral services of their own. They cannot mark their own homework. Inspections must have public trust. The regulator can make sure of this by aligning its minimum codes of practice with those provided by the two voluntary trade bodies we have already heard about, the SAIF and the NAFD.
I am also concerned about the existing marketplace in training. For sums of money reaching into the thousands of pounds, professional qualifications are delivered by the British Institute of Funeral Directors. At face value, that seems quite promising; after all, those courses are accredited by the University of Greenwich. So far, though, I have seen absolutely nothing that gives me confidence in the legitimacy of the BIFD’s work, particularly in light of the fact that Hayley Bell of Elkin and Bell fame, who has now been sentenced to four years in prison, was one of its examiners. If its own examiners cannot uphold even the most basic standards of care for the dead, what is the value of the qualifications it is selling people? Just as important as qualifications is a person’s suitability for a job. Surely, a lesson from the Fuller case is that funeral technicians and embalmers, as well as anyone else involved in the death pathway, should undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service check.
As we have heard, the death pathway is open to so much abuse, and I warn the Minister that the cases I have mentioned will only be the tip of the iceberg while there is no regulation to tackle them. Doing so will require a whole system of changes, not just licensing and inspection. In some cases, this could be achieved by expanding existing legislation, such as the Human Tissue Act 2004, and it must be done in a way that is not punitive for small, independent businesses.
I would also like the Government to explore the possibility of a new crime, that of the mistreatment of a body after death, because we cannot keep relying on Victorian common law. We must ensure that the death pathway is much clearer and runs more smoothly, to provide a minimum of opportunity for things to go wrong. For example, I have heard that in some cases, bodies are already decomposing by the time they make it to a funeral director because of a lack of medical examiners to sign off the death. What reassurance can the Minister give me that his Department is going to improve standards in this area as well?
I believe that for there to be full accountability and trust in the system, a clear method of tracking the bodies is necessary. One of the most heartbreaking parts of the Elkin and Bell trial was the story of baby Albie, who died after just 11 minutes of life. His parents still have no clear picture of what happened to his body after it was taken into the care of Elkin and Bell. At every step of the journey, identification numbers and proof of licence should be shown when a body is passed from one responsible authority to another. Without that, families simply do not have the certainty that their family members have been well treated, or even that they have been reunited with the correct ashes.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be pleased to know that I am coming to a conclusion. Why is this issue important? We all know people who say, “I don’t care what happens to me after I’m dead; I won’t know anything about it.” It is a truism that funerals are for the living. I have been heartbroken by the stories I have heard from families who regret the arrangements made for loved ones—stories of feeling racked with guilt and unable to say goodbye in the way that they wanted. Grieving is such an important part of human ritual, regardless of someone’s religion or beliefs. We are elected to Parliament to make things better and to improve people’s lives, but today I am asking the Minister to commit to improving people’s deaths, to restoring dignity in death, and to ensuring that our loved ones are treated with the care and professionalism that they deserve.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing this important debate and for her continued advocacy on behalf of her constituents. As the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) highlighted, I was here at this Dispatch Box not so long ago responding to him on the same topic.
We all recognise the profound importance of ensuring dignity, safety and high quality standards of care for people during life and after they die. Bereaved families place immense trust in funeral directors to guide and support us through one of the most difficult and distressing times of our lives and to ensure that our loved ones are laid to rest with the utmost respect. They rightly expect that high standards, professional conduct and appropriate oversight are firmly in place. However, these deeply troubling cases, including the appalling events in the constituencies of the hon. Member for Gosport and of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards), demonstrate that his trust cannot always be assumed.
Although these cases are rare, they have revealed serious weaknesses in our system, as the hon. Member for Gosport has adumbrated this evening. Unacceptable and distressing incidents, such as bodies being stored or treated in ways that cause deep anguish, were able to occur. In some instances, the police lacked the powers they needed to act. In the case of Elkin and Bell, the two funeral directors in the hon. Lady’s constituency, charges included intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance, the common law offence of preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body, and carrying on a business with intent to defraud creditors or another fraudulent purpose.
The Ministry of Justice is actively exploring options to strengthen criminal law protections for the deceased, including the potential for new offences as outlined in the Law Commission’s 14th programme of work. This work will identify gaps in the current law and whether new offences are needed to address behaviours that fail to treat a deceased person with dignity and respect. I am pleased to say that we have already taken steps to strengthen and improve standards to safeguard the security and dignity of the deceased.
My Department is responsible for co-ordinating the Government’s response to phase 2 of the Fuller inquiry. In December 2025, the Government published our interim update, outlining the progress made against the 75 recommendations. Of those, 11 have been accepted in full, 43 are accepted in principle and 21 remain under consideration. The 11 recommendations accepted in full cover standards, data and operating procedures in the wider health sector. Highlights include the Human Tissue Authority’s publication of updated guidance on 1 December to ensure that adverse incidents in the anatomy sector are recorded, and NHS England’s agreement to introduce data collection on conveying deceased patients in ambulances for the first time in 2026-27.
Since I was last here at the Dispatch Box responding to the hon. Member for North Dorset, the Human Tissue Authority has also issued universal and generic best practice guidance for those responsible for the care and dignity of the deceased, including organisations not formally regulated by the HTA. That point is particularly pertinent in relation to the hon. Member for Gosport’s comments about the increasing number of direct cremations. In addition, the HTA has begun reviewing its codes of practice. That process will continue into 2026-27. The review may lead to changes to the current guidance in light of the Fuller inquiry recommendations, and it will help us to consider whether the codes could be applied and used by other settings.
Before turning to the discussion about the options to strengthen and improve standards to safeguard the security and dignity of the deceased, I want to remind the House how we got here. Following the unspeakable crimes committed by David Fuller, the last Government established an independent inquiry, sponsored by the Department of Health and Social Care, to investigate how a member of staff was able to carry out such unlawful and abhorrent acts in hospital mortuaries, and how those actions went unnoticed. I must make it clear that crimes such as David Fuller’s are extremely rare. However, that will come as little consolation to the families involved. At this point I extend my deepest sympathies to those families, who continue to bear the weight of suffering, and for whom it must be particularly triggering when debates such as this are held in the Chamber.
Phase 1 of the inquiry focused on the crimes that Fuller committed in the mortuaries at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust. The phase 1 report, published in November 2023, identified failures of management, governance and regulation, as well as a lack of curiosity, which enabled Fuller to continue his repeat offending. It set out 16 recommendations for the trust and one for local councils. In February 2024, the trust published an assurance statement on the implementation of the recommendations from the report. Kent and East Sussex county councils reviewed the position and confirmed that their contracts with the trust required compliance with licensing and regulatory standards to ensure that the deceased were treated with dignity and respect.
On 15 July 2025, the inquiry panel published its final phase 2 report, which dealt with the care of the deceased in both hospital and non-hospital settings. It acknowledged that arrangements for the care of deceased people are complex and often interconnected. It clearly identified multiple organisations, with different governance and operating models, spread across a large number of sectors. It focused on whether procedures and practices in hospital and non-hospital settings, including the funeral sector, were doing enough to safeguard the security of the deceased, and it considered the role of regulators.
The overall recommendation of the inquiry’s chair, Sir Jonathan Michael, was for the Government to introduce an independent statutory regulatory regime to protect the security and dignity of people after death in all settings where deceased individuals are cared for, regardless of the institution, including funeral directors. Eleven of the phase 2 recommendations relate to the introduction of statutory regulation, including regulation of the funeral sector. They remain under consideration. Through the Fuller inquiry recommendations programme board, established in July last year, work continues apace with the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Business and Trade and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to assess options for Government intervention to improve standards of care for the deceased in the funeral sector, and, as such, to respond to the recommendations.
Mark Sewards
Can the Minister tell me whether any meeting has taken place between those Departments, or whether one is going to take place, and if so, when?
Dr Ahmed
The hon. Gentleman is clearly reading my speech. I can assure him that meetings had taken place before my appointment as the Minister responsible for the aspects of the regulations relating to the Department of Health and Social Care. I can also confirm that further meetings are taking place, at my instruction, with the relevant Departments—hosted by me in the Department of Health and Social Care—so that we can genuinely move forward. I know that there is consensus across the House that we must move forward, genuinely and expediently, not only in aligning lines of demarcation and responsibility across those Departments, but in genuinely working together and showing leadership on this issue. I shall be happy to keep the hon. Members who are interested updated on those meetings when they take place.
This is a complex and sensitive matter that requires careful and thoughtful consideration to safeguard the rights and dignity of those who have died, to support their bereaved families, and to ensure that any measures taken are proportionate, given that we are working with a number of small and medium-sized enterprises. To support this work, I am continuing to discuss progress and next steps with relevant Ministers across Government, as I said in response to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). The Government are continuing to consider all options to ensure that high standards are upheld consistently across the funeral sector, and that includes the possibility of introducing suitable and proportionate regulation for funeral directors.
As we discuss these options, we are clear about the need for the approach to maintain high standards, protect the dignity of the deceased and support bereaved families, recognising that any additional costs arising from regulation will ultimately fall on them. At the same time, we must consider the impact on the funeral sector itself.
The funeral sector comprises 6,500 private businesses across the UK, the vast majority of which serve their communities with compassion and integrity, as we have heard tonight. Some 85% are already members of trade bodies that provide guidance, codes of practice and voluntary inspection schemes. The Government are committed to reducing the administrative burdens of regulation on businesses by 25%, and that will contribute to our approach to regulation in this area.
Simon Hoare
Is the Minister, and other Ministers who are involved in this area, fully seized of the fact that this is a very unusual situation, in that the professional bodies and the lion’s share of practitioners are calling for regulation? It is very unusual that they want to see regulation.
Dr Ahmed
I am very cognisant of that fact. We will discuss in our interministerial meetings how we can involve the profession early in that regard.
While the vast majority of funeral directors already operate with professionalism, the actions of a small minority have undermined public confidence. We are determined to ensure the security, dignity and care of the deceased across all settings. That is why we are committed to setting out the Government’s decision on regulation in our full response to the Fuller inquiry phase 2 report in summer 2026.
Question put and agreed to.