Westminster Hall

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 2 June 2026

[Christine Jardine in the Chair]

Community Pharmacies

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of community pharmacies.

It is always a pleasure to see the Minister in his place. I know how committed he is to his brief, and I am grateful for the conversations we have had on a number of important issues. The timing of this debate could hardly be better, coming as it does in the wake of the Government’s announcement just before the weekend. That announcement provides the perfect context within which to couch my remarks. I would like to believe that I have developed a reputation for constructive criticism, and I hope to offer a fair-minded but frank scrutiny of the Government’s plans for community pharmacies. There are positive moves, which I welcome, but there is also considerably further to go.

It is clear that the national picture for community pharmacies is one of an incredibly fragile system, and I am sure that much reference will be made this morning to the damning headline statistic that since 2016, over 1,000 pharmacies have been lost across England. Funding was cut that same year and remained flat in cash terms until 2024, even as the volume of NHS pharmaceutical care and the cost of providing it surged.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. When I met the Minister in April, we were going through the consultation on the pharmacy contract, but we are yet to hear any announcement. Does the hon. Member agree that the pharmacies we all rely on need certainty about when their contract negotiations and the associated funding will be completed?

[Rachel Gilmour]

The hon. Member makes a good point, which I shall return to in due course.

The community pharmacy network has had to absorb real-terms cuts of 30% in Government funding. For most community pharmacies, NHS funding accounts for 90% to 95% of their annual income. That is simply not a sustainable business model; it is a slow strangulation. The Government’s own independent economic analysis, published as recently as March this year, found the gap to be £2 billion a year. More recently still, the Government have admitted that pharmacies in England were funded £800 million less in real terms in 2025-26 than they were a decade ago. It is important to be clear that those are the Government’s own figures.

Against that backdrop, I welcome the funding settlement for 2026-27.

[Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)]

As a fellow south-west MP, will the hon. Lady welcome the fact that the Minister came to the Concord pharmacy in Little Stoke in my constituency just last week to make the welcome announcement about £340 million more to boost our vital community pharmacies? Does she agree that when the Minister winds up, it would be helpful for him to share how he finds these visits valuable in forming his work in the Department and showing him more about the support that pharmacies need?

[Rachel Gilmour]

As I said at the beginning, the Minister is a very hands-on Minister, and I am sure he finds every visit absolutely fascinating.

The community pharmacy budget will increase by 10.3% to £3.636 billion. The introduction of independent prescribing into some pharmacy services later this year is a positive step, as are the measures aimed at stabilising the volatile medicines supply system. In the spirit of constructive opposition, I will certainly give credit where credit is due, but we must be honest: the settlement is still far short of what pharmacies need to keep their doors open. Over 600 branches closed last year alone.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Pharmacists such as Max, who runs South Petherton pharmacy, are taking care of constituents from the other side of my constituency. Our pharmacies in rural areas are expected to do more and more with little extra help. Does my hon. Friend agree that alongside greater funding, we need to see the Government use the NHS workforce plan to properly expand the pharmacy workforce?

[Rachel Gilmour]

As a rural MP myself, I certainly have a grasp of what my hon. Friend addresses, and I shall come to that in a minute.

Analysis conducted by the Independent Pharmacies Association shows that an average pharmacy dispensing around 10,000 items a month will face a shortfall of approximately £56,000, even after the settlement. Without a commitment to continued above-inflation funding increases year on year, patients will face an acceleration of service reductions and closures. Those closures will fall hardest on communities such as mine and that of my hon. Friend, as I will explain.

My constituents have lived with these difficulties. At a cursory glance, there are 16 pharmacies across Tiverton and Minehead, serving a population of approximately 91,200. On average, they dispense 113,000 prescriptions every month because they are busy, essential, community institutions. Yet a survey of 3,000 people in Tiverton, conducted by a local GP surgery, found that 30% of respondents were unable to find a pharmacy. That should simply not be the case in 21st-century Britain. It cuts to the heart of a fundamental truth about rural healthcare and much more that successive Governments have neglected to confront.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I recently visited Weldricks pharmacy in Rossington and saw the amazing work done by the team there. My constituency is in quite a rural area and provision is patchy. Does the hon. Member agree that it would be good to map all community pharmacies, understand where there are gaps, and make targeted interventions? That would ensure provision for the number of people living in that area.

[Rachel Gilmour]

I agree that a strategic approach is always best. The distances, the limited public transport and the dispersed nature of rural populations mean that the closure of a single pharmacy can represent a genuine healthcare crisis for thousands of people. I see that directly in my constituency; the loss of a fully fledged pharmacy with all its associated services in Bishops Lydeard in March 2024 was a blow to the community. In its place there is now a dispensary, but solely for patients of the surgery. The same thing happened in Norton Fitzwarren. Transport woes, which so often hold back my constituents, sever a vital link to the health service.

Jhoots, the previous provider of pharmacy services in parts of Tiverton and Minehead, had operated poorly for some time. Constituents lamented the missing medicines, unexpected closures and queues stretching down the street. Under the new stewardship of Allied Pharmacies, things have improved markedly. That is a testament to what good management and proper investment can achieve.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

My hon. Friend raises the spectre of Jhoots, which resulted in the closure of the Bridport and Lyme Regis pharmacies in my constituency. Jhoots exposed serious concerns around contractual failures, unsafe practices, staff treatment and service continuity, leaving staff in my constituency relying on food banks. When I met the Minister, he told me that officials were reviewing whether additional regulatory powers were required to prevent another Jhoots scandal. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for the Government to bring forward legislation to deal with such a scenario?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I have had that discussion with the Minister, who reassured me that the Jhoots scenario has been at the front of his mind and he will seek to resolve it.

There is also the question of business rates. It seems manifestly unfair that community pharmacies, which are frontline NHS providers in every meaningful sense, are required to pay full business rates, while GP surgeries and dental practices do not face the same burden. I ask the Minister how that disparity can be justified and whether the Government intend to address that.

Pharmacies are the engine of community care and offer an opportunity that the Government have not fully grasped. The thrust of the Government’s health strategy has been care in the community, devolving healthcare back to local settings, with neighbourhood health structures and a shift away from hospitals to primary and preventive care. All of that is absolutely right but cannot be delivered without the community pharmacy network. Pharmacies are already doing the work the Government say they want the NHS to do: local, preventive, accessible care, delivered by trusted professionals in the heart of communities. The funding must match the words.

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

The hon. Member is making a powerful speech about the importance of community pharmacy. There are pharmacies on the edge of my constituency, serving Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The inconsistency of integrated care board delivery can create problems for local communities trying to get medicines. Does the hon. Member agree that we need consistency of approach?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I assure the hon. Lady that some of the most frustrating conversations I have are with my local ICBs. Properly resourced pharmacies could release a staggering 51 million primary care appointments through an expanded Pharmacy First service, prevention services and a greater role in managing long-term conditions. That is 51 million appointments freed up in general practice, allowing more people to escape the infamous 8 am scramble. Pharmacies often meet people where they are, offering more accessible services to those who might not otherwise engage with the health service at all. They are arguably the most accessible arm of the NHS.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

I have been fortunate to have a pathfinder within the independent prescribing programme in my constituency. Its data shows that only 5% of patients who use the independent prescribing pathway need to be referred to their GP, so it is exactly as she says: there are huge savings to be made. I must push the Minister, because Community Pharmacy England has said that it is

“not persuaded that sufficient investment is being made to enable the full and effective introduction of independent prescribing.”

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister should look at that carefully to make sure that we are getting as much as we can out of community pharmacy?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I shall come to just that point in a minute. This sounds strange now, but I am going to say it: take obesity, for example. One in three people in the UK are currently classified as obese. Obesity is estimated to cost the NHS over £11.4 billion a year, with wider societal costs to the tune of £74 billion a year. Community pharmacies are ideally placed to provide wraparound support for those prescribed weight-loss medicines as part of an NHS-commissioned service, but they need the resources and the commissioning framework to do so.

There is one aspect of this debate that receives insufficient attention, and I want to raise it briefly. The ongoing situation in the middle east has hit the pharmaceutical supply chain as much as any other sector. There were a record 219 price concessions announced for community pharmacies in May alone, with further negotiations still ongoing. The cost of medicines has risen sharply. I understand that some cancer drugs have reportedly seen elevenfold increases. Crucially, medicine shortages and record-high price concessions reflect an instability in the supply chain that is being intensified by geopolitical pressures. I put it to the Government that the growing medicine supply crisis poses serious risks to Britain’s preparedness and resilience.

[Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)]

I met with a pharmacy manager in Denton who told me that NHS reimbursement for medicines is not keeping pace with rising costs. They are dispensing medicines at a loss, paying more to suppliers than the NHS then reimburses them and absorbing the shortfall. Does the hon. Lady agree that independent pharmacies need to be fairly funded if they are to continue acting as the front door to the NHS?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I agree wholeheartedly.

I want to turn to two issues that I consider to be the systemic failures underlying all others: workforce and integration. On workforce, the community pharmacy network lost 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists between 2021 and 2025. That is not a sustainable trajectory. There is a specific incoherence in current policy that I must name. If one arm of the national health service is funded to recruit pharmacists away from community pharmacy while community pharmacies are simultaneously expected to take pressure off the same system, that is not joined-up workforce planning; it is quite simply the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

The introduction of independent prescribing is laudable and long overdue, and I note that it is expected to come later this year, but I ask for more specificity from the Minister. What is the Government’s current timetable for making independent prescribing a routine, commissioned part of NHS community pharmacy services? If we train pharmacists to prescribe and then fail to commission services that let them do so in community settings, we will have wasted a major opportunity, and we will have trained a cohort of professionals whose skills are systematically underused.

On integration, Pharmacy First will not reach its full potential if GPs, hospitals, NHS 111 and patients all have a different understanding of how it functions. The incongruence within the system is hobbling pharmacy practice. What is required is proper system-wide integration, with pharmacies recognised as a fundamental pillar of our NHS. As the NHS modernisation Bill progresses through Parliament, that must be recognised. 

Pharmacies are already doing the work that the Government say they want the NHS to do. They are the first port of call, the most accessible point of contact and the trusted face of healthcare on high streets and in rural communities across this country. The Government have taken some positive steps, and I reiterate that the 10.3% uplift is very important. The direction of travel towards community care, independent prescribing and neighbourhood health is right, but direction without sufficient resource is just aspiration.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

Although I also welcome the funding uplift, community pharmacies were already in crisis after years of real-term funding cuts, especially in rural areas. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to scrap unfair budgetary pressures on community pharmacies and commit to a funding model that will put them on a sustainable financial footing for years to come?

[Rachel Gilmour]

Of course, I fully agree with my hon. Friend’s comments, and I laud her good work in her constituency. I urge the Government to commit to above-inflation funding increases year on year in order to close the £2 billion gap identified by their own independent analysis, deliver proper integration across the NHS and address the workforce crisis before it becomes irreversible. Pharmacies are ready, they are willing and they are already delivering. The question is whether the Government will match that commitment with the funding and the strategy that the sector and our constituents deserve. I look forward to hearing hon. Members’ contributions.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. In order to get everybody in, we will have an informal time limit of three and a half to four minutes. I will call the Front-Bench speakers at 10.28 am.

09:46

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate on the future of community pharmacies. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of community pharmacies across the country, especially in Wolverhampton and Willenhall. They are true anchors of support for my communities, providing not only specialist healthcare services but a friendly, familiar face for so many residents.

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

Will the hon. Lady join me in paying tribute to the many people who work in community pharmacies, including my constituent Sadie Jefferson, who is 90 years old and retired last week from the community pharmacy where she had worked for 75 years? Hers is an example of the commitment and effort in community pharmacies right across the United Kingdom.

[Sureena Brackenridge]

I extend my sincere gratitude and congratulations; 75 years working in a pharmacy is incredible. At the other end of the scale from Sadie, my very first Saturday job was in pharmacies in Wednesfield and Willenhall in my constituency. I also extend my thanks to the pharmacies, dispensers, frontline shop staff and delivery drivers whose dedication underpins that support. Community pharmacies are among the most accessible and trusted parts of our NHS.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

Boots closed its pharmacy in Thames Ditton in 2024. An application was put in for another one, but it was decided following a pharmaceutical needs assessment that the need was met by the chemist. However, elderly residents have a 20-minute-plus walk to get to the chemist, and the high street around it has pretty much collapsed. Does the hon. Member agree that, beyond macro PNA figures, local circumstances are relevant?

[Sureena Brackenridge]

I agree. The absence of a community pharmacy leaves a vacuum on the high street that is felt by residents. I am sure that Members across this Chamber will appreciate that factor as well.

Some 1.6 million people walk through a pharmacy door in England every day; they are embedded in our communities. That is why I welcome the Government’s recent £340 million funding agreement for the sector and the expansion of Pharmacy First. It builds on a service that has already delivered more than 3.3 million consultations in the past year alone. Crucially, from autumn 2026, pharmacists with independent prescribing qualifications will be able to assess patients and prescribe medicines directly on the NHS. It is a significant step forward to deliver faster care right on our high street.

However, if we are serious about shifting care into the community, improving prevention and delivering on the ambitions of the NHS 10-year health plan, we must be honest about the challenges that the sector has faced. From 2010 to 2015, community pharmacy funding broadly kept pace with demand, but from 2016 onwards it was cut and then largely held flat in cash terms through 2023 as costs and workload increased. That resulted in a sustained real-terms decline of around 20% to 25%. Since 2024, funding has begun to rise again, but primarily to stabilise the sector after years of underinvestment, with a significant gap still existing between funding and actual costs.

Across England we have lost nearly 1,500 pharmacies since 2017—that is 15% of the entire network. Those national pressures are felt acutely in my constituency of Wolverhampton North East, where, since 2020, we have seen a net loss of six pharmacies. Yet, despite those challenges, my local pharmacies continue to step up. Through Pharmacy First alone, they have delivered more than 23,500 consultations. That points to the scale of the opportunities ahead.

Community pharmacies are central to the future of primary care. It is thought that they could release up to 51 million primary care appointments by doing more on prevention and helping patients to manage long-term conditions. Independent prescribing is a vital part of that vision. At present, many pharmacies derive over 90% of their income from NHS funding while facing rising staff costs and increasing business pressures. The sector has also lost more than 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists in recent years. I therefore ask the Minister: what steps will the Government take to provide long-term sustainable funding and a road map for community pharmacies, and how will they address the workforce shortages and challenges?

In Wolverhampton North East, pharmacies have stepped up time and again for local people. Now I stand with my pharmacies to ensure that they can continue to serve my constituents for many years to come.

09:53

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for placing this matter before us. I also welcome the Minister to his place. I very much look forward to his commitment to the pharmacies, and I welcome the Government’s commitment so far—it would be rather churlish of anybody to say that we do not appreciate that.

In January 2024, I called for a UK-wide roll-out of the Pharmacy First service, recognising increasing demand on pharmacies and the need for consistent access to healthcare across the United Kingdom. As the Democratic Unionist party’s health spokesperson, I continue to advocate for increased investments and support for the scheme as a means of decreasing pressures on our already strained healthcare system.

Across the United Kingdom, a significant proportion of GP workload is addressing minor ailments—conditions that can be appropriately treated in community pharmacies. I have always advocated for that; we should be doing more of it. Investing and increasing community pharmacies’ capacity to treat those conditions, and, in turn, highlighting to the public their ability to avail themselves of pharmaceutical services for such ailments, will improve ease of access to standard care, reducing unnecessary GP and out-of-hours contact. Broadening the capability of the scheme also allows pharmacists to build their clinical skills and creates a more experienced workforce that can more readily diagnose and treat conditions, so I believe that we should look at this as an opportunity.

I want to give a Northern Ireland perspective, as I always do in debates. There are 508 community pharmacies in Northern Ireland, and their use is steadily increasing. In 2024-25, Northern Irish pharmacies dispensed more than 45.7 million items—a 0.7% increase on the previous year. That is the highest figure on record, which indicates that we need to increase support for pharmacies to meet demand. In Northern Ireland, community pharmacies would benefit from a more formalised version of the Pharmacy First scheme, as it currently diverges from England’s formalised Pharmacy First structure and depends primarily on a minor ailments service. What discussions can the Minister—who is always responsive, for which I thank him—have with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister, to ascertain how we can work better with the system that has been proposed for England.

There is clear support for the scheme in Northern Ireland: 96% of respondents to a 2024 Northern Ireland Department of Health survey said that the informal Pharmacy First service should be recommended to others. The service improves patients’ confidence in the self-management of conditions, which is vital to a long-term reduction of unnecessary burdens on our strained GP services. As a result of the benefits of the service, in May 2024 the Department of Health’s community pharmacy strategic plan unveiled plans for Northern Irish pharmacies to treat six new conditions, offer two new services and run various pilots. Those improvements are to be introduced in the period up to 2030, but they are subject to the securing of the necessary funding.

Rural patients often travel significant distances to access GPs, but they are likely to have easy access to a pharmacy. It is estimated that, as of 2025, 99% of Northern Ireland citizens live within five miles of their local pharmacy. Pharmacies clearly play a big role for us in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. Many rural residents are older adults who live with long-term health conditions, so improving access to Pharmacy First services will support early intervention. The DUP recognises the pressure on GPs and hospitals, and recently welcomed the £42 million investment in pharmacy and digital reform, which has the potential to modernise prescription services to reduce the pressure.

I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. In particular, I ask him to share the information from England with the Minister in Northern Ireland, and to ensure that the UK-wide support for this vital cog in the health machine is endorsed and even increased.

09:57

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I want to speak about rural community pharmacies. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important and timely debate.

In my constituency, from Haltwhistle and Haydon Bridge to Bellingham, Ponteland and the villages across Tynedale, the local pharmacy is not simply a convenient service on the high street; it is the frontline of the NHS and a core and trusted custodian of community health and wellbeing. As has been said, rural healthcare works differently. People face geographical access challenges. Longer travel distances and limited public transport are both huge determinants of health outcomes. They face digital access challenges, with more frequent broadband and mobile connection issues. More than 30% of the population of my constituency is over the age of 65, and about 20% of the people in the communities I represent live with a disability. There are considerable accessibility challenges, which require assurance and support from a friendly and locally minded in-person service that community pharmacies are uniquely positioned to deliver.

I want to touch more broadly on the challenges of delivering healthcare rurally. When we speak about modernising the NHS—from the conversations that I have had with the Minister privately, I know he is aware of this—we need to ensure that making the NHS more digital does not leave behind rural areas, where the access challenge continues. I hope the broader challenges posed by the Health Bill are taken up by other Departments in addressing connectivity issues.

Whether they are managing the specific symptoms of a condition, collecting a prescription or accessing emergency contraception, or are a parent needing reassurance about their child’s symptoms, those in rural communities rely on proximity to their local pharmacy, given that the journey to a GP surgery or hospital is often unworkable, inaccessible or costly. In providing a wide range of health services, pharmacies play a crucial role in the broader mechanics of care, easing pressure on GP practices and helping patients to get the care they need more quickly. That is exactly the direction of travel proposed in the Health Bill. We want care closer to home, a shift towards prevention and better use of the wider healthcare workforce. If we are serious about delivering on those ambitions in rural areas, we have to be equally serious about supporting the infrastructure that makes that possible.

The reality on the ground is that community pharmacies, particularly those in rural areas, are under real strain. In England, around 90% of the population live within walking distance of a community pharmacy, but that falls to just 20% in rural areas. We have seen closures and reductions in opening hours, and in places like my constituency, the loss of a single pharmacy is not easily absorbed—it is not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. There is not always another one down the road; the next nearest pharmacy could be several miles away, beyond the reach of those without a car or effective public transport links.

I welcome the recently announced funding package for community pharmacies in England, but we need to address the further challenges to close the gap between the rising costs facing the sector and their increased delivery of services, which leaves community pharmacies vulnerable and, often, in a turbulent operating environment. Nearly 64,000 community pharmacy weekly opening hours were lost between September 2022 and June 2024. We cannot afford to lose any more, especially in rural constituencies. We need rural funding models that reflect reality and a continued commitment to innovation in community pharmacy. I urge the Minister to take forward those points.

10:01

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I thank and congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), on her resolute advocacy for pharmacy provision in her constituency. She is right to mention Norton Fitzwarren, which is in my constituency but serves many of her constituents. I pay tribute to Councillor Andy Sully for all his long-term campaigning, which eventually saw a pharmacy return to the village, and I thank Mo Idris, the pharmacist who took the plunge and opened the facility.

Yesterday’s debate on Second Reading of the NHS modernisation Bill included much talk about an NHS that works for people, but in Wellington, in my constituency, communities have had to scale the heights of bureaucracy in a system where patients have to work to the tune of the NHS, not the other way around. Wellington went from having four pharmacies to having just two. The Boots pharmacy in the medical centre closed, followed by Jhoots in September, leaving its staff in the parlous state that my hon. Friend referred to earlier.

That left only two pharmacies—Superdrug and Boots—for a town of 17,000 residents. Queues that were 15 people deep formed, Boots completely failed to scale up to meet the challenge, medicines were not ordered in time and patients became anxious. I challenged the decision of the NHS to refuse to support the opening of another pharmacy. I pay tribute to the Wellington Pharmacy Action Group. Its dossier, which was sent to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, was a 17-page challenge to NHS Somerset, which, alongside all the pressure brought to bear by myself and others, eventually changed the position.

The pharmaceutical needs assessment seems to be fundamentally flawed. How could it be prepared at a time when the town had four pharmacies, but also apparently demonstrate that two pharmacies were enough and no more needed to be opened? As I say, due to huge pressure, the situation was eventually turned around, but it should not be a matter of communities having to rise up against the challenges and rules of the NHS to get or restore pharmacy provision in a town of this size. Allied Pharmacies was granted a licence to open in Luson House, the former premises of Jhoots, which was a fantastic win for the community and came as a result of sustained community pressure. A fourth pharmacy at Westpark has also been approved, subject to appeal.

However, the job is not done. The action group says that a further pharmacy is likely to be needed as the town grows, with tens of thousands of new homes under the Government’s new planning rules and national planning policy framework. Wellington is a textbook case of a town where housing growth is outrunning the provision of infrastructure. Essential services should be built in from the start, not promised after the fact, and definitely not reduced by half—from four pharmacies to two.

Since 2017, England has lost 1,200 pharmacies. We Liberal Democrats would require developers to fund GP surgeries as a priority from the outset: “No doctors? No development.” The same must go for ensuring adequate provision of pharmacies and dentists if the Government’s housing plans are really to work for local people.

10:04

[Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I must declare an interest as a registered pharmacist. I speak today wearing two hats: as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy and as someone who spent nearly two decades working as a community pharmacist. That experience is why earlier this year, as APPG chair, I wrote a vision for what pharmacy should look like in 2040 and put it directly to policymakers across Government and pharmacy.

Community pharmacy remains one of the most accessible parts of the NHS, with around 80% of the population living within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy. However, as has been mentioned, nationally 1,383 pharmacies have closed since 2016, including six in North Somerset, even after two pharmacies were reopened in Portishead thanks to the hard work of Magna Pharmacy and Ramesh. Every single day, 1.6 million people walk through a pharmacy door, saving an estimated 38 million GP appointments every year.

That is why the funding settlement announced last week matters so much. The 10.3% uplift adds £340 million to the overall contract. More importantly, an increase in the margin allowance provides important support and stability for the sector. I thank the Minister, the Department and Community Pharmacy England. However, I have called this a down payment on a brighter future. It is just a start, not an end point. The 10.3% uplift is very welcome, but it comes against a backdrop of an around 9% yearly increase in costs.

Pharmacy First and the inclusion of independent prescribing are good starting points, but the next step is to map out what we want Pharmacy First to look like through to 2030 and beyond. It cannot simply remain a pharmacist-led service for a small number of conditions. Community pharmacy has the potential to play a much broader role across acute care, minor ailments and prevention. That ambition must be backed with the professional boundary changes to match, because it will mean nothing if the foundations are not right.

Pharmacies are receiving £800 million less in real terms than a decade ago. The Government’s independent analysis found a funding gap of £2 billion a year. Former colleagues are telling me that they are dispensing more and more medicines at a loss, spending hours sourcing drugs that should be available and managing patients’ anxiety when the supply chain fails. As a country, we have become addicted to cheap medicines in our NHS, which has created vulnerabilities right across our supply chain. Fixing the drugs bill in a way that supports wider investment and greater supply chain resilience will also strengthen community pharmacy services for the future. We must get this right.

My vision for pharmacy in 2040 calls for genuine integration into neighbourhood healthcare, as the 10-year health plan intends. However, integration works only if the infrastructure works. A true single patient record system with read-write access for pharmacists is the foundation on which everything else depends. Primary care, pharmacy and hospitals all need to work from the same picture of the same patient and sing from the same hymn sheet. There is no point writing a vision for pharmacy’s future that does not fit the wider NHS system it sits within.

The 10-year health plan wants to move care closer to home. Community pharmacy is already there. It is an incredibly efficient, high-value asset to the NHS. I urge the Government to match that ambition with sustained, multi-year funding, a workforce plan that unlocks independent prescribing and the digital infrastructure to make seamless care a reality. This could be a really bright future for community pharmacy. I believe in the future of the profession, but only if we have the will to see it through.

10:09

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this debate. She, the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and all colleagues have dispensed some great ideas today. [Laughter.] Sorry, but it does not end there.

The Minister and Members may be aware—I might not have mentioned it enough—that I am one of the only practising optometrists to be a Member of Parliament, and optometrists share many of the concerns and challenges that our pharmacy colleagues face. I surpass the hon. Member for North Somerset in having been a community-based optometrist for nearly three decades.

I want to address many of the points that have been made. First, our GPs are facing real burnout. There is a lag in the number of GPs who are qualifying and taking up positions. In lower socioeconomic areas, of which there are many in my Leicester South constituency, there are 1,985 patients per GP. There are 300 more patients per GP in those areas and, as has been mentioned, pharmacists really do plug the gap, saving 38 million GP appointments and doing incredible work. The Government’s 10-year health plan is built on the bold premise of shifting care out of hospitals and into our communities. We all support that ambition—of course we do—but we cannot deliver care in the community if we are not allowing community infrastructure to thrive, and that is precisely what is happening to pharmacies at the moment.

Since 2017, England has lost more than 1,400 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, which is a net loss of 15% of the entire network. In Leicester, five pharmacies have shut down in the last calendar year alone. There are now fewer than 10,000 pharmacies open in England, and nearly 64,000 opening hours a week have disappeared since 2022. Between 2021 and 2025, the sector lost 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists. Funding was cut in 2016 and held flat for eight years, and the sector has absorbed real-terms cuts of 30%. Pharmacies, unlike other businesses, cannot pass on their costs to their customers. They cannot manage demand by extending their waiting lists, and 90% to 95% of their income comes from the NHS. They are, in effect, trapped.

We all welcome the £340 million uplift announced for 2026-27 and the decision to begin integrating independent prescribing into Pharmacy First and the Pharmacy Contraception Service. Those are welcome steps, and everything of that nature is going in the right direction. However, NPA analysis shows that 8.9% is needed simply to allow pharmacy budgets to stand still—to absorb the national living wage, employers’ national insurance contributions, inflation and business rates. The settlement is just 1.3 percentage points above that threshold; it does not close the £2 billion funding gap that the NHS’s independent review identified a year ago. Much of the uplift will be swallowed by costs before a single patient sees any benefit.

I am not just here to outline the problems, as there are positives. Community pharmacies represent one of the greatest untapped opportunities in modern healthcare, and I say that as someone who has seen community-based clinical practice at work. Independent prescribing is, as the sector rightly calls it, a generational opportunity. Pharmacists already have the clinical skills. With the right framework and investment, they can manage long-term conditions, initiate and adjust medicines and take pressure directly off GPs—not as a stopgap, but as a genuine, permanent part of the primary care team.

Beyond prescribing, pharmacies are ideally placed to deliver integrated healthcare and lifestyle services, such as smoking cessation, weight management, hypertension case-finding and alcohol interventions. In my experience in community eye care, the closer we embed clinical services in high street settings, the better the uptake by patients who would never otherwise engage with the NHS. Pharmacies are trusted, accessible and visited regularly—far more than any GP surgery.

Medicine optimisation is another point. With an ageing population on complex polypharmacy regimes, pharmacists conducting structured medication reviews can reduce harm, cut millions of pounds in waste and improve outcomes. This is not aspirational; it is proven. We are simply failing to fund it at scale.

I have a repeat prescription for the Minister. First, publish a road map to close the pharmacy funding gap with above-inflation increases—not in one year, but as a sustained multi-year commitment. Pharmacies cannot plan, invest or recruit without it. Secondly, match investment in retained margins with real action on medicine pricing. The UK is an unattractive market for global suppliers, and medicine shortages flow directly from that. That is a patient safety issue. Thirdly, be genuinely ambitious on independent prescribing. The autumn roll-out into Pharmacy First is a start, but we need a shared vision of what full deployment looks like in this Parliament, with the funding to match. Finally, address the workforce crisis by setting out concrete steps to grow the pharmacy workforce in parallel with any expansion of services. New services on the backs of a depleted workforce will fail.

10:14

[Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) on securing this timely debate.

Community pharmacies and the people in them are the backbone of our NHS. They are a fixture on our high streets, dispensing our medicines, providing confidential, expert advice and helping people with everything from colds and tummy bugs to allergies and ear infections. Increasingly, through Pharmacy First, they are also prescribing prescription medicines without patients having to see a GP, which absolutely has to be the way to go.

I am four-square behind Pharmacy First, with one small caveat: I have to say to the Minister that I think it has completely and utterly the wrong name. We could say that it does what it says on the tin: “Go to the pharmacy first.” However, to me it is a name that has been dreamed up by health insiders, not by people thinking about how patients actually see our services. When I think about going to the chemist, I think about a place where we probably pay for our prescription and maybe pick up some shampoo or, if it has suddenly started chucking it down, an umbrella. I do not think enough people will be thinking of highly trained clinical professionals who are on their doorstep. Crucially, they will not be thinking NHS.

My suggestion for the Minister today is to change the name of Pharmacy First to something else, maybe “NHS+”, and to include compulsory rebranding in every contract, so that the shopfront would scream NHS. NHS means free, trusted and quality, and the plus sign would look a bit like a chemist’s anyway. A knock-on effect would be sprucing up our high streets, creating pride in place, which I know this Labour Government stand four-square behind. I would absolutely shout about it from the rooftops.

Ahead of today’s debate, I went on the NHS pharmacies website to find out which of my local pharmacies provide Pharmacy First services. I am afraid that I came away none the wiser, but I did learn the seven common conditions that Pharmacy First chemists can help me with, from sore throats to shingles. Before that, I did not know that there were seven. I tried this out at a meeting of party members recently, and it turned into a terrible round of “Family Fortunes”. No one had the faintest idea what they were.

We absolutely need a nationwide campaign so that people understand what services they can get from their pharmacies. If people do not know that these NHS services exist, they just will not use them. We have to stop hiding them in plain sight, and ensure that people understand what every community pharmacy already is: the NHS front door on every high street.

10:17

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) not only on securing this debate, but on the manner in which she introduced it. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, which keeps this and other issues under constant review, I have been listening very intently today, and I will certainly be taking messages back to the Committee. I particularly welcomed the contribution of the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and his—pardon the pun—prescription for the better health of pharmacies.

I welcomed the announcement in the Minister’s written statement to the House yesterday, but it is notable that Community Pharmacy England has said that even with that extra investment, many community pharmacies will remain in financial peril. Although it softens the blow, it will not remove the threat or the peril hanging over many pharmacies around the country.

As for my constituency, there are 15 pharmacies in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which seems to be about average compared with other constituencies that have been mentioned, and Pharmacy First saves approximately 2,500 GP appointments per annum. That initiative is certainly delivering but, as previous speakers have said, it could deliver a great deal more.

It is telling of the times we live in that one of the tragically many pharmacies that have closed—I will not say where—has been replaced with an apothecary. I hope that that is not a sign of a continuing trend, but perhaps it says something symbolic about the way things are going. We are well aware that pharmacies should be at the frontline of one of the most important of the Government’s three shifts: the shift from hospital to community. Building up and strengthening the resilience of our community pharmacies is essential for the Government to deliver that shift.

One of the many brilliant community pharmacies in my constituency is Hall’s in Helston, in the south of the constituency. The pharmacy dispenses between 9,000 and 12,000 prescriptions per month, representing about 70% of the dispensing activity in the hinterland of the Helston area. Despite that critical role in primary care delivery, it is under increasingly severe financial pressure. It does not believe that yesterday’s announcement will relieve that pressure, because of how medicines are reimbursed.

As others have said, a key issue is the growing number of medicines that are being priced above the drug tariff. Essential medications, such as—I will get the pronunciation wrong—ramipril, bisoprolol and Creon are frequently being supplied at a loss. Price concessions are sometimes introduced, but they are often delayed, inconsistent and insufficient to reflect real-time market prices.

That creates a situation in which pharmacies must either dispense at a financial loss or deny supply. They use a system called e-CASS, which tracks real-time drug pricing. On any given day, there are between 16 and 40 lines that cannot be ordered through standard systems because the purchase price exceeds the reimbursement tariff. That number has increased significantly over recent years, indicating a worsening trend. As a result, independent pharmacies such as Hall’s are increasingly being forced to subsidise NHS dispensing from their own funds just to maintain patient care. That is simply not sustainable.

The situation is further complicated by ongoing medicine shortages. There are growing concerns that elements of the current reimbursement system are actively impacting timely patient access to medicines. Pharmacies are left simultaneously managing supply chain disruptions and financial risks, with limited systemic support.

We are also witnessing troubling behaviour in the sector. Some large corporate pharmacy chains are redirecting patients to independent pharmacies for medicines that are above tariff, incorrectly stating that those medicines are unavailable when in reality they are unwilling to supply them because of the financial loss involved. That shifts both the clinical and the financial burden on to independent contractors. Regrettably, that has begun to force difficult decisions across the sector as more medicines fall off tariff.

In addition, the continued closure of pharmacies is placing further strain on other parts of the NHS. It is putting further pressure on emergency departments and GP services, which is the exact opposite of the direction in which services should be going.

10:23

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate. I also thank the staff at community pharmacies across my constituency, particularly the staff at the Well pharmacy in Denton Holme who have given exceptional care and support to my family for many years.

Pharmacies and their staff provide a vital accessible health hub in our communities. However, this year Community Pharmacy England has reported that 55% of pharmacy staff experience abuse, often triggered by medicine shortages, prescription delays, long queues and other issues entirely outside their control. I am sure all hon. Members will agree that, whatever the prompt, abuse of that nature is completely unacceptable. I will therefore be grateful if the Minister can briefly outline what action the Government are taking to protect pharmacy workers from abuse.

Sadly, under the previous Government too many community pharmacies were lost. Between 2019 and 2024, 1,633 community pharmacies closed. In the same period, about 400 opened: just one for every four that was closed. In communities such as Carlisle, the closure of a pharmacy has a significant knock-on effect on the remaining pharmacies. Two pharmacies in the Harraby area of Carlisle have closed in recent years, placing additional pressure on the sole remaining pharmacy, on Central Avenue, and resulting in longer waits for prescription collections. It is therefore doubly frustrating that efforts to open a new pharmacy in the same community have so far come to nothing because the premises’ landlord, the Riverside housing association, has failed to respond to representations from both the prospective pharmacist and me since last October.

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

Shame!

[Ms Minns]

In the meantime, ironically, the shop next door, a former pharmacy, has been refurbed and opened as yet another barber’s and mini-mart. It is simply not good enough. That is why I very much welcome this Government’s prescription for our community pharmacies: not just £3.6 billion in funding for community pharmacies, but the Government’s high street strategy, the recently announced crackdown on dodgy vape shops and mini-marts and the plans to integrate community pharmacies as key local healthcare hubs. These actions are not just vital for the health of local people; they are vital for the health of our high streets, too.

10:26

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is an absolute honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this fantastic and timely debate. I also note the expertise of my friend the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan). Not only did he provide some really good insights—I thought his point about the importance of a single patient record all the way from pharmacy to hospital was especially meaningful—but I love how enthusiastically he agrees with everyone else’s points.

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

Only the good ones.

[Dr Chambers]

Yes, the good ones.

There has been a general consensus that pharmacies are often overlooked as a source of care for those in the community. I have visited many pharmacies in my Winchester constituency: there is Eric, who runs Springvale pharmacy up in Kings Worthy; there is Colden Common pharmacy in Colden Common; and there is the Wellbeing pharmacy on Winchester High Street, which gives me my flu jab every year. The people there actually make having a flu jab a lot of fun; we always have a great laugh. I never thought having a vaccine would be something I would look forward to, but I love going in and seeing them.

We know about the 8 am rush for GP appointments, so the fact that a high street service exists where one can drop in for advice and consultations is absolutely brilliant. Pharmacies allow us to siphon off some of the pressures on GP services, but—as pharmacists have been telling me repeatedly since well before I was elected—pharmacies are currently under immense pressure.

Adding to that pressure is the increase in national insurance contributions, which has saddled pharmacies and GP surgeries with additional costs. As a consequence, many local pharmacies have had to limit opening times and staff numbers. In Alresford in my constituency, the hard-working staff at Wessex Pharmacies have had to close shop on Saturday afternoons. That service will be sorely missed, particularly by those who are in full-time education or work during the week and who relied on being able to pick up their prescriptions at the weekend.

In addition, shorter opening times mean that if a patient sees their GP later in the day, the required prescription is delayed by a day if the paperwork is not registered in time. For a patient with an urgent need for medication, that extra day can be extremely frustrating and worrying.

Although we really do welcome the recent 10% increase in Government funding to community pharmacies, it is worth pointing out that that is giving with one hand and taking with the other. In the wake of rising costs for energy, staff and medicines, this funding increase was the first in 10 years, so it was sorely needed, but unfortunately, it did little to alleviate the extreme pressures heaped on community pharmacies in the Budget.

That point comes into focus when we consider the rise in drug costs: a 20% to 30% rise for things like paracetamol and hay fever medications, and an elevenfold rise in the cost of cancer drugs since February, while the funding provided to community pharmacies has dropped by more than 20% in real terms since 2015. That is why we are calling on the Government to invest in pharmacies in smaller towns, particularly in villages and rural areas such as mine in the Meon valley. In places such as Bishop’s Waltham and Colden Common, people need access to a community pharmacy, and not only for convenience: Conservative-run Hampshire county council has cut vital bus services to the nearest big towns, which means that people without a vehicle, especially older people, absolutely rely on local pharmacies for their medication.

We are also calling for a new, long-term, sustainable model for pharmacies and an expansion of Pharmacy First to give patients more accessible routine services so that we can free up GPs’ time. We want an exemption for pharmacies from the national insurance contributions increase so that funds can be spent on patients and vital medications.

I come to my final, key point. I have spoken to many pharmacists since I was elected and before that, and I have had very long, in-depth conversations with them. I have also attended events in Parliament organised by the Royal College of Pharmacy and the National Pharmacy Association and I have discussed their issues with the NHS pharmacy contract. Given my professional background, I am used to sourcing, dispensing and prescribing drugs. However, the contract is so complicated that, despite my extensive conversations with those organisations, I do not fully understand it. The key message that comes out is that it costs pharmacists to dispense NHS medication in many cases, and that NHS medication is sometimes being subsidised by other sales in shops. I even met two pharmacists who said that their personal finances are subsidising some NHS dispensation. That is clearly not tenable in the long run.

[Lee Pitcher]

Standardisation and consistency in services are really important. A person in my constituency of Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme is living with poor mental health. His pharmacy has stopped doing nomads, and it is too far for them to travel to the next pharmacy, where those are not paid for. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that consistency in how we support pharmacies is massively important to help people such as my resident?

[Dr Chambers]

I completely agree. All businesses need predictability and stability. It appears that, week to week, pharmacists are trying to work out how to source drugs with changing prices, and there is an NHS contract that is not meeting their needs.

When we talk about community healthcare and provision, it is important to remember that having good, well-run pharmacies means that people are being kept out of GP practices and that they are less likely to turn up at A&E. That is even better value for money for the NHS and, ultimately, for the taxpayer. There is no downside from a Government point of view to investing and heavily supporting community pharmacy, because the savings made upstream will be hugely significant. At the moment, we are treating people with conditions that should be treated in the community with the most expensive part of the NHS, in A&E and hospital, when they could quite possibly have avoided going there in the first place.

[Monica Harding]

Accessibility is paramount. The costs that are pushed on to pharmacists mean that they cannot remain sustainable and that they resist opening pharmacies in smaller places, because it will take away business from them. Therefore, those pressures take away accessibility, which is needed.

[Dr Chambers]

That is another legitimate point, and it was made in my second to last words, so I thank my hon. Friend for contributing. I thank the Minister for listening to our concerns.

10:34

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine, and I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate. It is important that we discuss community pharmacies, given their place not only in the health landscape but in the hearts of many of my constituents and people across the nation. I, too, have visited multiple pharmacies, both in my shadow role and as an MP, and I, too, went to my local pharmacy for my flu jab, back in Newbold Verdon. I am very grateful to them because I found the system very easy to use and to get into. It is really important to see that system change that makes it more accessible and easier for people to make the choice to improve their own health and protect others.

There are positives in this debate that we must celebrate. Community pharmacies are one of the most accessible parts of our health service. For millions of patients, particularly older ones, those with long-term conditions or those living in rural communities, the local pharmacy is often the front door to the NHS. They provide expert advice, dispense vital medicines, support prevention and increasingly deliver clinical services that help to reduce pressure on GPs and hospitals—as a former GP, I am very grateful for that—and that is why this debate is so important.

Ministers want community pharmacies to do more, but I worry that, at the same time, they are actually making it harder for pharmacies to survive. This debate is timely, given that the Government agreed the community pharmacy contractual framework for 2026-27 last Friday. I expect that the Minister will reference that, but I will let Community Pharmacy England’s response speak for itself:

“Accepting this deal does not mean we think it is enough—for this year or the future.”

It went on to say:

“It means the opposite…the sector is in a critical position, and that we now need urgent work on a sustainable long-term solution, including reform of the contract, funding and reimbursement model.”

Given the Government’s enthusiasm for reviews and long-term plans, I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on what meetings he will have to work on the framework and the wider funding model, along with what changes we can expect and in what kind of time.

The reality is that pharmacies continue to face mounting financial pressures, many related to the Government’s tax rises. Over the last two years, the Government have made a conscious choice not to exempt community pharmacies from their taxes and have even voted against that. In the first year of this Labour Government, pharmacies faced higher employer national insurance contributions alongside increases in the national living wage. In the second year, they have lost the temporary business rates support that they relied on, with the replacement not matching the rise in their costs.

The sector is clear that much of the additional funding announced through the new framework will simply be absorbed by those rising costs. The headline findings from Community Pharmacy England’s latest “Pharmacy Pressures” survey, due to be published later this month, show that 100% of pharmacies report that costs are higher than at this time last year and that three quarters are losing money, while 86% say that it is taking longer to procure medicines and 76% say that patients are already being directly impacted by the pressures on their businesses.

The National Pharmacy Association put it plainly last Friday when it said it was concerned that much of the funding increase will need to be spent on increased costs, including national living wage contributions, inflation and business rates rises,

“rather than addressing chronic under-funding”.

Those figures tell a simple story. The Government are asking pharmacies to do more while making it more expensive for them to keep their doors open.

What discussions has the Minister had with the Chancellor regarding business rates for community pharmacies? Has he even raised the sector’s concerns with the Chancellor, and if so, what response did he receive? Will he press for a package of support similar to that made available to other sectors such as pubs, to help with those pressures?

The rising costs also cast a shadow over the Government’s plan to expand independent prescribing through community pharmacy. We can all see that independent prescribing has enormous potential. It could improve patient access to care, make better use of pharmacists’ clinical expertise and help to deliver the Government’s ambition of shifting care from hospitals into the community. But the sector itself is not convinced that the necessary investment is in place. Community Pharmacy England has said:

“we are not persuaded that sufficient investment is being made to enable the full and effective introduction of IP…given the workload, enhanced clinical responsibility, clinical governance and infrastructure requirements that it will entail.”

It went on to warn that

“the addition of IP to the CPCF risked being set up to fail.”

That should concern us all in this Chamber. If pharmacies are expected to become a cornerstone of neighbourhood healthcare, as set out in the NHS 10-year plan, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the necessary workforce, governance and infrastructure are in place to support that ambition? What response does the Minister have to those concerns, and what steps will he take to ensure that independent prescribing is the success we all want it to be?

Alongside the financial pressures, pharmacies continue to face significant challenges in the medicine supply chain. Analysis by the National Pharmacy Association earlier this year highlighted rising prices for a number of cancer medicines and concerns about the impact on availability. At the same time, the number of medicine price concessions has reached record levels. There were 204 concessions agreed in April, surpassing the previous record set only a month earlier. Community Pharmacy England has now confirmed a new record of 219 concessions for May, with further requests still under negotiation.

Behind those numbers are real patients facing delays, uncertainties and difficulties accessing the medicines that they need. Community Pharmacy England has warned that those figures reflect the continuing fragility of medicine supplies in the supply chain and that the wider instability from the middle east crisis is adding pressure. Of course, I cannot hold the Government responsible for that, but it is their duty to look at that volatility and to reassure patients and the sector that resilience is being put in place and measures are being looked at. I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on what that looks like.

Before I conclude, I will raise an important point that is affecting dispensing practices. We have not talked about those today, but they are part of the real fabric of the community network. Dispensing GPs provide essential primary care medicine supplies to 10 million patients in remote, rural and coastal communities, where access to a community pharmacy is limited. For many patients, they are the primary point of access to medicines. Earlier this year, dispensing practices were informed that the central NHS England funding for the EMIS web dispensing module would cease and that the costs would instead be passed directly to the practices.

The proposal generated significant concern among dispensing practices, the British Medical Association and the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. Concerns centred on the lack of consultation, the timing of the changes and the potential impact on the sustainability of dispensing services. Following representations from the sector, implementation has now been paused and central funding has continued. I welcome that decision. However, the uncertainty created caused understandable concerns for practices, their patients and the planning of future services, particularly for those in rural communities. When I wrote to the Minister to raise that issue, he responded that an assessment will take place this year of the long-term provision of dispensing modules and that NHS England will consult relevant bodies such as the Dispensing Doctors’ Association as part of that. Will the Minister provide further details on that assessment today? What criteria will be used? Who else is being consulted? If NHS England is going, who will take that work on? When can dispensing practices expect greater certainty about future arrangements?

I would also be grateful if the Minister addressed concerns about the discount abatement—what is called the clawback system. Dispensing practices continue to argue that the current arrangement creates inequalities for them compared with community pharmacies. Equally, community pharmacies are upset about the clawback, so there is an obvious tension. Given that the Government are looking at the long-term structure, I would be grateful if the Minister took that away and considered how we can modernise that aspect to ensure that there is equity in the system as well as an understanding from both sides.

Ministers have made it clear that they want pharmacies to play a greater role in prevention and neighbourhood healthcare and in reducing pressures elsewhere in the NHS. We in the Opposition agree, yet throughout this debate we have heard concerns from across the sector about rising costs, medicine supplies, independent prescribing and dispensing services. The question is whether Government policy is keeping pace with the expectations being placed on pharmacies, or whether Ministers are making it harder for the sector to deliver the growth and innovation they say they want to see. Community pharmacies have repeatedly demonstrated their value to patients in the wider health service. I therefore look forward to hearing from the Minister how he intends to address those concerns and provide greater confidence to a sector that remains vital to communities up and down this land.

10:43

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) on raising this important issue. The number of hon. Members present shows how vital community pharmacy is right across our country.

Since coming into office, this Government have continued to reverse the decades of cuts to community pharmacy, and have frozen prescription charges for the second year in a row to help our constituents with the cost of living. Wherever they live in the country, women can now get emergency contraception from their local pharmacy free of charge on the NHS. That work has only been possible thanks to the tireless efforts and dedication of pharmacy teams in supporting patients in their communities, delivering a wide range of NHS services, not least in the west country. In fact, just last week, I was in Bristol visiting the fantastic Concord pharmacy, which is at the forefront of our efforts to shift care from hospital to community. I thank Saeed and his team for the warm welcome they gave me. I saw how they are delivering blood pressure checks, vaccinations and Pharmacy First services to the people of north Bristol.

For too long, community pharmacies such as Concord have been held back from realising their true potential. It is why the Government have given them a central role in our 10-year plan to shift the focus of the NHS from sickness to prevention, from hospital to community and from analogue to digital.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

An excellent example of community pharmacies in England embracing innovation is their interaction with the NHS app. My constituents in Scotland do not have access to a similar app because the Scottish Government have not got on with fixing it. Will the Minister join me in calling on the Scottish Government to produce a proper equivalent NHS app, so that constituents in Scotland can benefit in the same way?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend makes a vital point. It appears that the Scottish Government are stuck in the analogue age, and we need digital solutions. I join him in encouraging the Scottish Government to get with the programme, get with the NHS app and get moving on some of these important initiatives.

We all know that we simply cannot make the shift from hospital to community without our community pharmacies. I am not the only one to see that—I am sure that all of us have made use of community pharmacies in our constituencies, and that colleagues will know the importance of the accessibility of pharmacies in towns and villages across the country. There are over 10,000 pharmacies in England. They are busy dispensing medicines, offering advice, and delivering care and services to support our communities. Patients across the country can also choose to access over 400 distance-selling pharmacies, which deliver medicines to patients’ homes free of charge, playing a vital role in reaching the most isolated members of our society. However, I acknowledge that access is not the same in all areas of the country. Rural areas often have fewer community pharmacies, so people have to travel further to access a pharmacy as well as other services.

Colleagues have also been right to raise concerns about pharmacy closures in the past. Local authority health and wellbeing boards are responsible for assessing whether local needs are adequately met by the existing providers, and what improvements are needed to ensure that people can access services. Those assessments inform integrated care boards’ commissioning decisions. In areas where there are fewer pharmacies, our pharmacy access scheme provides additional financial support to eligible pharmacies. The scheme helps pharmacies that are critical for patient access to stay open and provide local communities with continued access to medicines and excellent healthcare advice. In certain rural areas where there are no pharmacies, dispensing doctors can supply medicines to patients directly without the need for a pharmacy.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead will be aware that there are currently 14 pharmacies in her constituency. I am aware of the closure of two pharmacies in her constituency since 2017, and that the local population instead get their medicines from the neighbouring dispensing GP or from one of the over 400 distance-selling pharmacies available nationally. I also note that the latest data shows that there are 199 pharmacies in Devon, with 914 across the south-west. The Government are committed to supporting the critical role that they play in serving their communities.

[Dr Luke Evans]

The Minister points to the important partnership between community pharmacies and dispensing GPs. There are concerns about the change in the EMIS module and the future for dispensing practices. If the Minister does not have the answers here, will he write to me about what is happening with EMIS and where he is looking to take dispensing practices in the future?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I absolutely commit to writing to the hon. Gentleman with more detail. He raises some important points, and I will get back to him.

The Government have always been clear that investment must come with modernisation, and our 10-year health plan and our three shifts set out a clear pathway to getting there. In her 2024 Budget, the Chancellor took important decisions that enabled us to give the sector a record 19% uplift across 2024-25 and 2025-26. It was the largest uplift of any sector across the NHS in that spending review period. I am proud that just a few days ago, we announced another significant uplift in funding for community pharmacies. That means a further £340 million uplift for the sector this financial year, to support the supply of medicines and delivery of vital services across our country. That will include supporting the introduction of pharmacist prescribing as part of NHS services in autumn 2026, to expand access to NHS care and strengthen support in communities across England, delivering upon the commitment made in our manifesto. That 10% uplift is almost three times the growth of the overall NHS budget, and it shows that when we talk about making the left shift, we are putting our money where our mouth is.

I will start with the shift from sickness to prevention, because community pharmacies will be vital in making sure that vaccine coverage reaches every part of our country. The NHS vaccination strategy in our 10-year health plan commits us to increasing vaccine uptake through primary care. One way that we are getting that done is through the national vaccinations programme. Alongside a core offer of vaccination in GP practices, we are making sure that vaccines are offered through sexual health services, maternity services, schools, health visitors and community pharmacies. Selected community pharmacies across the country have already been commissioned to provide MMR and RSV vaccines.

The expanded vaccination programmes make use of pharmacy teams’ expertise in delivering vaccines, releasing pressure on GPs and helping to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. We have also seen a significant increase in the provision of flu jabs within community pharmacies, with approximately 4.7 million people being vaccinated by pharmacists in the 2025-26 seasonal flu vaccination programme up to February 2026. That is up by around 600,000 vaccinations the previous year, showing the progress that has been made.

When we talk about prevention, we are not just talking about vaccines, because community pharmacies are also delivering the hypertension case-finding service, which spots people at risk and helps to prevent cardiovascular disease. Nearly 3.6 million free consultations were delivered in the 12 months to February this year. That is a great example of the sickness to prevention shift in action.

Turning to our shift from analogue to digital, so many pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are not working with technology that is equal to their skill, talent or ambition. I am afraid to say that it is a similar story across other parts of the NHS, where the outdated technology is holding staff back from realising their full potential. We are supporting pharmacies through digital transformation. Last year, a new Amazon-style prescription tracker went live on the NHS app across nearly 1,500 community pharmacies in England, enabling patients to check on their prescriptions through real-time updates.

This year, we want to make digital access even easier, with stronger links between pharmacies and general practice as we build stronger neighbourhood health teams across every community. That will make them match-ready for the introduction of pharmacy prescribing as part of NHS services from this autumn. Digital also has a huge role to play in our supply chains and improving the public’s access to the medication they need. That has included our secondary legislation to enable the expansion of hub-and-spoke dispensing between different pharmacies, to make it possible for more pharmacies to use automated dispensing, realise economies of scale and increase efficiency and productivity.

Additionally, GPs cannot currently see live national shortages when prescribing, but this year we will make it possible for GPs to be aware of these shortages in real time. That will mean that patients no longer have to go from pillar to post looking for medicines that are not available, because GPs will be able to prescribe an antibiotic unaffected by supply issues.

In the NHS that is fit for the future, pharmacies will play a key role in the shift from hospital to community. We have already begun making huge progress in rebuilding primary care and fixing the front door to the NHS by ending the 8 am scramble, whether through extra funding for general practice, hiring more GPs or the introduction of online services. We will go even further to ease the pressure on GPs by making sure that pharmacists are making the most of their clinical abilities.

That is why the Government have been promoting the Pharmacy First campaign, although I take on board some of the very interesting suggestions about the rebranding. I will have a think about that; I am not going to make any rash decisions today. The most recent data shows that the number of people polled who knew that their pharmacy would treat Pharmacy First conditions rose from 71% to 79%. Trust in the advice given by the pharmacy team increased from 61% to 70%, and intention to use the pharmacy if people had conditions covered by Pharmacy First went up from 32% to 37%.

[Jim Shannon]

I very much welcome what the Minister has said. There is lots of good stuff being rolled out across the United Kingdom, but I asked him to share some of the things that have been done with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister, Mike Nesbitt. I know the Minister has regular contact with him, so perhaps he could say, “This is what we are doing here. Maybe you should do the same.”

[Stephen Kinnock]

We do indeed have an excellent relationship. If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will go back into some of the discussions that we have been having and write to him with an update on the latest thinking.

A second public advertising campaign ran from October 2025 to this January, and I look forward to updating the House when data about its impact becomes available. Another thing to watch is the independent prescribing pathfinder programme, through which 200 sites have delivered 34,000 consultations. About 60% resulted in a prescribing decision, and 90% of those prescriptions were completed without the need to refer to a GP. When it comes to relieving pressure on other parts of the system, the pathfinder programme shows immense promise.

As announced last week, the new community pharmacy contractual framework for 2026-27 will focus on implementing what we have learned from the pathfinder programme as we roll out NHS pharmacists prescribing nationally from autumn this year. That will deliver the 10-year plan’s ambition for pharmacies to go beyond dispensing and to offer more clinical services as part of an integrated neighbourhood health team.

We have also introduced legislation to enable pharmacy technicians to manage dispensing processes that would otherwise be undertaken by pharmacists, and to allow checked and bagged medicines to be handed out in the absence of the pharmacist. That saves time for patients, who will not have to queue for as long to get their medicine. It is good for busy pharmacists, who will have more time for clinical services, and for pharmacy technicians, who will be able to use their skillset as qualified professionals.

Pharmacies are a massive untapped resource. The NHS that we are building puts them front and centre of care in every community, whether on the local high street or as one of the more than 400 distance-selling pharmacies that can reach across the country, including rural areas. This year, I plan to spend a lot more time with our partners in the sector to seize every opportunity to go further, and I am always keen to work with colleagues across the House on this.

As the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) said, there is a clear commitment to long-term reform. Some of the issues that are holding the sector back require fundamental thinking. We are in discussions, and I am looking forward to a meeting very soon with Community Pharmacy England. I want to put on the record my thanks to it and, in particular, to Janet Morrison, for the incredibly constructive way in which it has engaged with me and my team on the contract negotiations and the strategic thinking that needs to go into long-term reform. Our latest deal with the sector shows that this Government are in it for the long haul and are fully committed to putting pharmacies right at the heart of getting our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future.

10:58

[Rachel Gilmour]

I do not have time to go through the list of hon. Friends and hon. Members who have made fantastic contributions. Suffice it to say that there is only one negative aspect of this debate: the fact that not a single Conservative Member of Parliament is here is shocking.

I just want to say happy birthday to the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer). I do not suppose she imagined that she would start her birthday by debating community pharmacies, but I hope she has a wonderful day.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of community pharmacies.

Glasgow City Region Economy

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Martin Rhodes (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for the Glasgow city region economy.

It is a pleasure to serve with you chairing, Ms Jardine. The Glasgow city region is at the heart of the Scottish economy and is a fundamental pillar of the larger UK economy. Home to 1.85 million people, across eight local authority areas, the Glasgow city region accounts for around a third of Scotland’s employment and economic output. Shipbuilding on the Clyde; world-leading university research and spin-offs; the largest production of miniature satellites in Europe; one of the largest financial sectors in the UK outside London; an established and growing advanced manufacturing base; and a dynamic and thriving cultural sector are integral parts of the city region’s economy.

This is a city region that includes UNESCO City of Music status for Glasgow, and playing host to COP26 in 2021 and the Commonwealth games in 2014, to be hosted again in Glasgow this summer. That all paints a picture of the Glasgow city region as a major economic and cultural success, but it is still held back by historical challenges. Its history of deindustrialisation has left deep-rooted issues of poverty and inequality that are still being grappled with today in many communities. The region has one of the highest percentages of people with no formal education, while also having one of the highest percentages of people with higher-level qualifications or more.

Parts of the region have some of the highest deprivation in the UK, along with some of the highest drug deaths in Europe, although the city region also contains some of the wealthiest areas of Scotland. That gets to the crux of the matter. Support for the Glasgow city region economy must be judged not only by headline growth figures but by whether the benefits reach all communities, particularly those who have waited longest for change.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for bringing this forward. I spoke to him beforehand about city region deals recognising the situation in Glasgow and my constituency, yet this work has only just begun. Does he agree that sustained funding has to be available to local councils to build on those foundational deals? The funding needs to be adequate to make a difference, not just in Glasgow but in Newtownards.

[Martin Rhodes]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I agree and will go on in my speech to talk about how the work of the city deals needs to be developed further. Those structures and activities need to be built on to ensure we get the most from that initial interest to develop it further.

The Glasgow city region economy has seen real investment from the UK Labour Government but much more can be done. With greater devolved powers over areas such as infrastructure, skills, investment and public health, the region will be better placed to shape solutions around the needs of its communities. That would not be devolution for the sake of it. Greater local autonomy can help reduce inequality, improve health outcomes and create new jobs and opportunities across the region.

As the city region is right now, I welcome the significant investment that the UK Labour Government are already delivering. The new local growth fund, combined with the Pride in Place programmes, is set to deliver nearly £94 million in investment over the next three years. The combination of those funds delivers long-term infrastructure and renewal. That approach will help the Glasgow city region to invest in long-term renewal, an ambition that needs to be matched by sustained adequate local government funding from the Scottish Government.

This UK Labour Government have delivered the largest spending review settlement in the history of the Scottish Parliament, which amounted to £50 billion in last year’s settlement. That is in stark contrast to the Scottish Government, which instead of passing that funding increase to local government, continued to enforce cuts to communities. From 2013 to 2026, Glasgow city council alone has seen a £1.5 billion loss in Scottish Government funding. Those cuts to local government funding have left councils across the region overstretched and focused on struggling to deliver core services, with little left over for the long-term investment the city region needs.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and an important contribution. We have seen in other UK cities the difference that city region mayors can make, whether in Manchester or in Liverpool and whether on bus franchising or attracting investment. Does he agree that one of the things Glasgow needs is greater devolution from Holyrood to our city to help to attract investment?

[Martin Rhodes]

Yes, I agree that we need devolution of power from Holyrood. One of the ironies of the devolution period in Scotland is that although powers have been devolved from the UK to Scotland, power has been hoarded in the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government and not devolved to local government and local communities.

The UK Labour Government’s investment is not a substitute for sound local government funding. It is targeted, strategic funding designed to deliver the transformational projects that drive growth, create better jobs and build more prosperous communities. That investment reflects real ambition for the city region and is a fundamentally different offer to the Scottish Government’s short-sighted approach.

While the Scottish Government neglect the Glasgow city region, this Labour Government have been representing its interests in our trade abroad. The £10 billion defence deal with Norway has secured thousands of jobs at shipyards on the Clyde while also supporting many small and medium-sized UK and Scottish businesses in the supply chain. This Labour Government are supporting skilled jobs and opportunities in our city region communities that need them.

The UK Government are not supporting only traditional industries such as shipbuilding; they are also supporting the region’s future technology industries. I recently visited the University of Glasgow-based Responsible Electronics and Circular Technologies programme, which was established in my constituency in 2024 with more than £6 million of UK Government funding. REACT brings together industry and academia to design sustainable solutions for the electronics sector. Projects like that create high skilled jobs, strengthen supply chains and ensure that Glasgow city region remains at the forefront of future industrial development.

With that dynamic and growing economy in the region, it is clear why devolving power and funding to the city region would help industry, businesses and communities. It would allow policies to be better shaped to serve communities where these investments are happening. Already, the Glasgow city region cabinet, a unique governance structure established to oversee the Glasgow city deal that brings together the leaders of the local authorities, helps to deliver these types of regional programmes. However, that governance structure was created for a particular purpose: to oversee a significant but limited city deal programme. It needs to be transformed to meet the new reality and the ambition of the region shown by recent UK Government investment.

Since being elected, I have met with businesses, public transport providers and campaigners, and representatives from the city region to discuss this issue. All of them acknowledge that the Glasgow city region as a metropolitan area needs a regional structure to deliver aligned region-wide policies. That would allow the Glasgow city region to tailor its policies to the needs of our communities. However, devolution must be about outcomes, not simply structures. Any transfer of power must come with clear accountability, strong governance and a focus on what matters to our communities: reducing poverty, improving health outcomes and creating good jobs.

As the city region develops, there will also need to be stronger democratic accountability around the decisions being made. What matters most, however, is that power is placed closer to the communities affected by those decisions. That means better systems to identify the barriers keeping communities in poverty and regional solutions to break down those barriers. That stands in contrast to years in which powers have sat concentrated in Holyrood, with little meaningful transfer to the city region. The Glasgow city region is reaching an important moment in its development. There is now a growing recognition that city regions such as ours are best placed to shape solutions to the challenges and opportunities facing our communities.

Importantly, that work is being matched by growing investment and institutional confidence. The city region now oversees a portfolio of more than £2 billion and is working with partners, including the National Wealth Fund, to shape the next stage of the region’s development. If we get this right, the Glasgow city region can play an even greater role in the Scottish and UK economies while delivering practical improvements in people’s lives: better transport, stronger local economies, good jobs and healthier communities. In the meantime, there is so much to be proud of. World-leading universities, high-skilled jobs and art, culture and sport make it one of the UK’s greatest city regions. It deserves the support it needs to tackle the challenges it faces and deliver real change for the communities of the Glasgow city region.

As for the future, regional devolution for the metropolitan areas of Manchester, Liverpool and the west midlands is proof that greater city region devolution can work. The foundations for governance are already in place in the Glasgow city region, and the UK Labour Government have shown, through significant investment and their partnership with the city region body, that they understand that empowering the Glasgow city region will help it succeed further, economically and culturally. The hugely beneficial impact of UK-funded initiatives such as the local growth fund, the Pride in Place programme, the Norway defence deal and the city deal—

[Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)]

One in eight local authorities in the Glasgow city region is in my constituency. The Clyde is more than just Glasgow; it is the towns and areas up and down both sides of the Clyde. Does my hon. Friend agree that UK Government funding, not least the £60 million local growth fund, has the potential to unlock two sites in my West Dunbartonshire constituency: the former Exxon site and the Carless site? Both have the potential to create thousands of well paid, highly skilled jobs in West Dunbartonshire.

[Martin Rhodes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his customarily well versed arguments for his constituency and the skills, developments and opportunities there. It is true that when we talk about the city region we are talking about not just the city itself but all parts of the city and the surrounding region. The impact of every £1 of investment could go further. When funding is channelled through empowered regional structures, with engagement, accountability and governance systems providing tailored local policies, it has a multiplier effect on everything it delivers. That means delivering for not just the wealthiest parts of the city but those communities that are most in need of support in all parts of the city region, within the city boundary and beyond.

My constituents in Glasgow North, along with people in the rest of the region, deserve high-quality affordable homes, an integrated transport network and good jobs, which an empowered city region can help deliver. I welcome the Minister’s reflections on what steps the UK Government plan to take to support the Glasgow city region’s economic ambitions. I also welcome any further reflections on what the UK Government can do to help accelerate the transfer of powers to the city region.

The Glasgow city region is a major economic and cultural success, but it is still held back by historical challenges. With the right powers behind it, with sustained local authority funding and with the UK’s Government’s investment, it could go much further in delivering improved health, good housing and rewarding, well paid jobs for our communities. The test will be how it delivers for all our communities, and for all in our communities, so that they can not only survive or live but truly flourish.

11:13

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Kirsty McNeill)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) on securing this vital debate, and on everything he does to represent one of the greatest parts of one of the world’s finest cities. Whether through the revival and modernisation of heavy industries such as shipbuilding on our beloved Clyde, or future-facing industries like satellites and life sciences, this region is truly stepping forward to lead globally.

The Glasgow city region’s importance to the Scottish and UK economies cannot be overstated—the region is quite simply a powerhouse. It encompasses some of Scotland’s most vibrant local authorities, thousands of distinct enterprises and more than 1 million workers. With more than £870 million invested into the region by the UK Government over 10 years, its future is looking even brighter, but to empower this region to reach its full potential we simply have to do things differently. To do that, we are actively moving away from the short-term, fragmented funded priorities that have held us back in the past. Instead, we are taking a targeted, long-term approach that puts power back where it belongs: in the hands of communities and regional leaders who know their streets and economies best.

I want to share exactly how we are working to supercharge the Glasgow city region, secure high-quality jobs and restore pride in local places. I will begin by highlighting the immense success of the £1 billion Glasgow city region deal, which has delivered foundational benefits through its first decade. That 20-year agreement stands as one of the largest such deals in the whole UK. With more than half a billion pounds of investment from the UK Government, it is set to deliver up to 29,000 jobs over its lifetime.

To date, the deal’s infrastructure programme has completely reshaped the local landscape, delivering iconic new connections across the Clyde. It has also breathed life into the city’s most important public spaces, including the Canal and North Gateway project, which has been transformational for communities in my hon. Friend’s constituency, creating better connections to the city centre and upgrading their public spaces. Further, that deal has leveraged over £800 million in additional private and commercial investment since its inception in 2014, showcasing how effective Government investment can unlock wider commitments to build towards a brighter and more ambitious future.

However, we will not stop there. We will be building on those foundations with the new £140 million Scottish local growth fund launched in January 2026. It is specifically designed to support areas that contain some of the lowest living standards to boost productivity and improve access to better-paid work. The Glasgow city region economic partnership is set to receive the single largest allocation in Scotland from the local growth fund: £60.9 million over the next three years.

The Glasgow city region is an excellent example of a region that knows exactly how to deliver true regional change, as exemplified through the success of the deal programme to date. At the same time, we understand that economic growth cannot be measured just on a balance sheet; as my hon. Friend said, it must be felt on the high street and on the doorstep. That is why we have introduced new hyper-local community funds that will empower local people to shape the future of their neighbourhoods.

Through the Pride in Place programme and the Pride in Place impact fund, we are directly supporting the most in-need communities. Through those programmes, the Glasgow city region is receiving a total of £146 million to support communities across the city region to thrive. Funding is going to places in Glasgow city, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Inverclyde and West Dunbartonshire. Of course, one of those places is the Springburn and Sighthill neighbourhood, which includes my hon. Friend’s constituents in Cowlairs and Port Dundas, and I cannot wait to see what priorities the community chooses to support in that area. We all know that the most enduring purpose of Labour Governments is to redistribute power. That is why we are putting decisions about such funding back into the hands of local people who know the places they love the best.

Moving from the hyper-local to the national ambition, the UK Government are delivering a 10-year industrial strategy that is set to back Scotland’s strengths, unlock investment and deliver lasting economic growth. The Glasgow city region is key to this work, with many of the eight growth sectors in our strategy already forming the backbone of this regional economy—from advanced manufacturing and life sciences to defence and financial services.

To back up that transformational strategy with real funding, we are investing up to £500 million across the UK into new local innovation partnerships aimed at growing high-potential innovation clusters. Because of the Glasgow city region’s huge innovation potential, we have allocated £50 million to the region, building directly on the success of the Glasgow innovation accelerator pilot, which this Government backed with another £10 million to the region.

We will not stop there when it comes to equipping the region with the tools needed to be a truly modern economy. Its residents must have the skills and opportunities they need to chase the jobs of the future, as AI is put to work to transform communities and livelihoods. That is why Lanarkshire will host a new AI growth zone, backed by £8.2 billion of private investment and £5 million of direct UK Government investment, creating over 3,000 jobs and driving growth in line with the objectives of our industrial strategy.

Simultaneously, our investment zone programme is driving regional economic growth and regeneration, targeting the high potential of the Glasgow city region’s advanced manufacturing sector. Working in partnership with the Scottish Government and local leaders, we will provide up to £160 million of funding for this investment zone over the next decade, which is expected to generate around £300 million of initial private sector investment and support up to 10,000 jobs in the region.

We must also continue to support the industries that helped to make this region great. That is why this Government have provided bespoke support to Inverclyde in the form of £20 million for the Inchgreen dry dock redevelopment, which will drive new maritime and defence industry opportunities into Inverclyde, and support the people living there to gain the skills they need to do this important work.

Of course, we do not just want investment coming in, but Glasgow’s unique strengths to be exported out to the global market. That is why I am delighted to be joining Glasgow chambers of commerce on an upcoming trade mission to China as they return to the Shanghai international technology fair. We are determined to champion this region’s world-renowned strengths in technology, life sciences and advanced manufacturing to encourage export opportunities and create jobs.

Closer to home, the strategic partnership between the National Wealth Fund and the Glasgow city region represents a colossal opportunity for the region. In Scotland, the National Wealth Fund has directly invested nearly £2 billion, mobilising over £3.5 billion of private investment into projects that will create or support upwards of 9,000 jobs. The creation of partnerships, both internationally and at home, between the private and public sectors will unlock further private investment and drive growth. Together, that will leave the region best placed to navigate the challenges and financing barriers faced in delivering critical infrastructure improvements and developments. Such UK Government interventions are exactly the kind of long-term commitment that we believe is required to drive true growth.

Crucially, building a truly dynamic economy is also about ensuring that the power to spend and to direct investment is with those who know the unique needs and opportunities of their area the best. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North said, for too long we have watched the centralisation of decision making at Holyrood pull powers away from local communities and regional leaders across Scotland. That stands—I am sorry to say—in stark contrast to the UK Government’s ambitious regional devolution agenda south of the border, which seeks to expand the economic success story of Manchester to more parts of the country.

The 2025 report on regional economic growth by economist Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli asked whether we should consider a “realignment of powers” for Scotland. Similarly, the leader of Glasgow city council, Susan Aitken, has called for a

“rapid devolution of the powers”.

I hear the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee), for devolution, not for the sake of it but because it will drive greater local autonomy that will in turn aid the reduction of inequality, the improvement of health outcomes and the creation of new jobs and opportunities across the region. This is the debate about the future of localism that Scotland needs now.

[Gordon McKee]

The Minister is making an excellent speech. In the conversations that she has had with the Scottish Government, have they ever articulated a reason and an argument for not devolving that power to Glasgow? That devolution is what my constituents want. We can see from cities such as Manchester and Liverpool that it would benefit our city.

[Kirsty McNeill]

My hon. Friend will know that that is felt right across the city region, and across other city regions in Scotland. The Scottish Government seem simply addicted to the centralisation of and hoarding of power. We have made an argument to the people of Scotland that has been incredibly well-received: they live in places that they know and love best, and they want the people they elect locally to have greater power. We are in ongoing dialogue with the Scottish Government but their driving political imperative is nation building, not place shaping. That stands in sharp contrast to the approach of this Labour Government, which is to put power in the hands of communities to change the places that they know and love so well. Scotland needs proper devolution inside Scotland, not just to it. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South will find no greater champion of that local power agenda than me.

We should at all times be guided by the fundamental principle that powers over local services and projects are often best exercised as close as humanly possible to the people whose daily lives they affect. The Scottish people need all levels of their Government to work together to make their lives and communities better. Strong, effective councils and empowered regional voices are key to a prosperous Scotland. We are fully committed to working alongside our local partners in the months and years ahead to deliver that better future for the Glasgow city region and beyond.

Before I close, I want to reassure the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that I am in ongoing dialogue with Northern Ireland Office Ministers about how we can take lessons from the city deal programme and scale them UK-wide. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) made a very important point about the strategic sites right along the Clyde. I happily visited one such site in his constituency with him. We are fully appraised of the opportunities right along the river.

I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North for securing this debate and thank all hon. Members who have spoken. The UK Government’s investment of over £870 million into the Glasgow city region over the next 10 years, combined with empowering local spending decisions, has already delivered a truly transformational impact that can be felt in every corner of the region, but this UK Government do not look backwards. Instead we continue to focus on progressing delivery and achieving the economic growth outcomes that will make sure that the Glasgow city region, Scotland, and the UK as a whole can thrive.

To deliver more we must seize all opportunities. That includes having a meaningful conversation on the future of regional devolution, because together we still have so much more to gain. Let us seize this moment, look to the future and continue to deliver for the Glasgow city region.

Question put and agreed to.

11:24

Sitting suspended.

Children: Development of Essential Skills

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan in the Chair]

14:30

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for children developing essential skills.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I start by declaring that I am chair of the all-party parliamentary groups for schools, learning and assessment; on social mobility; and for classics. It is wonderful to see so many young people in the Public Gallery.

We are facing a generational moment. We know the risks that technology and artificial intelligence increasingly pose to our world, but we also know the opportunities. It strikes me that it is up to us to shape a generation that responds to these challenges not with despondency, but with the confidence and authority to make these tools work for humanity, not against it. Without the human skills to properly engage with, discuss and question the world around us, we are setting our children up for failure.

[Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)]

As the former vice-chair of the APPG on financial education for young people, I really welcome the Government’s work on that issue, including the commitment to introduce it more firmly in the national curriculum for all ages. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful were the Minister, in her summing up, to provide us with an update on the work to get that ready for young people in the years to come?

[Peter Swallow]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I am aware that the financial strategy sits with the Treasury but, like many of the tasks that face this Government, there must be a cross-Department approach. It is really important that all Departments grapple with the need to deliver better skills for our young people, and I am sure that the Minister has heard my hon. Friend’s request.

Today, when it has never been easier for young people—I should add that it is not just young people—to be misled by mis- and disinformation, and to be sucked in by algorithms and harmful content on social media that comforts them with easy answers in a complex world, essential skills have never been more crucial. I am thinking of skills such as being able to think critically, communicate and reason; having the confidence in ourselves to form opinions; and, above all, having the resilience and will to engage with the world in all its complexities, rather than turn away from it.

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

I have been contacted in the past week by pupils from Collingwood college in Surrey Heath—it is very close to Bracknell, but I can still claim it. They have been talking to me about mis- and disinformation, and they have said how important it is to receive citizenship education, which is excellently delivered at Collingwood. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that citizenship is one of the core, critical skills that gives children exactly the kind of awareness of mis- and disinformation that is vital as we approach the mid-21st century?

[Peter Swallow]

I absolutely agree with my constituency neighbour, and I will come on to talk a lot more about citizenship, which is vital. Just this week, I have been dealing with my local Reform party using AI to create fake images of our community, which is exactly the kind of fake news being put on social media by bad faith actors that we need to ensure that all people—particularly young people—are equipped to face.

Schools have a fundamental role to play in preparing young people for life. Both the recent curriculum and assessment review and the schools White Paper recognise the importance of skills and enrichment as part of a holistic education in and outside the classroom.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

Does the hon. Member agree that fostering strong partnerships with educational institutions can play a pivotal role in developing a curriculum that aligns with current labour market requirements? Additionally, I emphasise the importance of collaboration with tech companies to enhance digital skills education.

[Peter Swallow]

The hon. Member’s point is well taken. I will talk about the interim report from the Milburn review later, but it is really clear that the skills system that we inherited from the previous Government has not set up our young people for the world of work. Essential skills are about more than just preparing young people for the world of work—they are also about preparing young people for the world of life—but such preparation has an important role to play. I am keen that we work proactively with tech companies to create such opportunities, where doing so in the best interests of young people. Social media companies in particular need to do a lot more to protect young people from harm online. The one thing being true does not detract from the other thing also being true.

Returning to the curriculum and assessment review, I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the recommendation that citizenship be made a statutory requirement for key stages 1 and 2, and that the secondary citizenship curriculum will encompass topics that are vital to raise engaged citizens, including government, law and democracy, climate education, and financial and media literacy. Hon. Members have already made those points.

Given the Government’s plans to lower the voting age to 16, those topics have never been more important. The Government are right to recognise that young people are an important voice in our society, but if we are to extend the franchise, we must make sure that we get it right and grasp the opportunity to use the classroom to its full potential, so that young people feel empowered and confident about using their vote. As the chair of the APPG on schools, I have heard from young people and educators both in England and across the devolved nations, where 16 and 17-year-olds already have the vote in some elections, as part of our ongoing inquiry into votes at 16.

It was clear from those sessions that young people do not feel as empowered as they should feel by our current democratic education, but that is perhaps not surprising given that many teachers have also reported a lack of confidence in the guidance on how to facilitate conversations about democracy and politics in the classroom. It is right that teachers do not tell young people what to think, but it is deeply concerning that many are so afraid that they might be seen to be doing so that they do not feel comfortable enough to broach the subject of current affairs at all.

As a former teacher, I know that the classroom can and should be a place where ideas and questions are explored openly, not feared or hidden from. I ask the Minister to bear that in mind as the Government continue their important work to reform the curriculum, because the best curriculum in the world will not be a success without teachers who feel properly equipped to deliver it.

Another theme that stood out strongly from our evidence sessions is the importance of essential skills being integrated into the curriculum, rather than being just the preserve of citizenship or personal, social, health and economic education. I was delighted that the schools White Paper explicitly recognises the relationship between skills such as media and financial literacy and critical thinking, and the wider school curriculum, including core subjects like English and science.

It was notable from our sessions that there is a widespread perception that democratic education is often tokenistic, relegating it to a niche, subject-specific interest, rather than making it a fundamental priority of our education system; indeed, I think that is true of all essential skills. The embedding of democratic education throughout the curriculum and connecting it to broader work on employability is an important rejoinder to that perception.

On that point, I was also pleased to see the Government recognise in the schools White Paper that oracy is vital not only to education but to employability and the Government’s growth mission, as well as more widely to the confidence and mental health of young people. As we now seek to implement the changes set out in the White Paper, it is important that we do not tokenise oracy and other essential skills but recognise that they represent more of an approach to teaching and learning. In the case of oracy, it is focused on learning through talk and learning to talk.

Over the last week, we have heard from Alan Milburn on the essential skills that young people are missing as they leave education and seek to enter the workplace. Embedding oracy into the curriculum and into school-wide teaching can be a significant driver of the very skills that our young people are missing, including increased confidence and communication skills, greater critical thinking ability, and a greater capacity for listening to and empathising with others. I emphasise that all those skills will never be taken by robots.

As oracy organisations like Voice 21 highlight, oracy is an explicitly inclusive practice. Oracy-rich teaching supports early identification of children with speech, language and communication needs; it removes barriers that are highest for students with special educational needs and disability, and for those from disadvantaged backgrounds; and it helps to nurture the learning environment that the Government have been clear is their ambition to create, where high standards and inclusion are one and the same.

I recognise that we are moving in the right direction, and I thank the Minister for the important steps that she is already taking towards a more holistic approach to education. I also thank her for visiting my constituency last year to discuss the work that we are doing to reform the SEND system and ensure that education is inclusive of everyone. I also thank Voice 21 for the work that it is doing to support schools in my constituency, including at St Joseph’s primary, where, as I heard on a recent visit, oracy is empowering the students to feel more confident and boosting their communication skills.

A fully holistic approach to essential skills means not only integrating them into what is taught in the classroom but the wider school and enrichment experience. Both inside and outside the classroom, enrichment opportunities are fundamental to the development of skills like resilience, collaboration and confidence. Just in the last recess, I saw an excellent example of how students volunteering in the community can build essential skills and a spirit of citizenship, through the fantastic MindGreen initiative at Bracknell and Wokingham college.

When we have these conversations, we often speak about schools, but it is vital that the same principles are not forgotten in our further education colleges so that all young people are given the opportunity to develop the skills to succeed. With that in mind, I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to an enrichment entitlement for every young person alongside a national framework and benchmark for schools. Some organisations, however, like the Duke of Edinburgh’s award, have raised concerns that enrichment often gets lost in the wider school curriculum and becomes too thin or inconsistent to make a difference.

Research has shown that that is especially likely to be true in state schools compared with private schools, with the Sutton Trust finding that one in five teachers in state schools do not think their school provides good opportunities for pupils to develop these non-academic skills, compared with just one in 10 teachers in private schools. Needless to say, no Labour Government would be satisfied with allowing that gap to continue, so I ask for the Minister’s assurance that the Government are committed to making sure that such opportunities exist meaningfully for all young people in all schools, regardless of background or location.

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

On the hon. Member’s point about involving all schools, does he agree that the problem is not so much about ensuring that young people who are interested and want to get on develop their skills? Disaffected and disinterested young people are the ones we really have to reach out to, to ensure that they, too, avail themselves of the benefits that he rightly outlines.

[Peter Swallow]

The hon. Member makes a valuable point. To again reflect on the interim report by Alan Milburn, he highlights that one of the challenges we face is not just that the current education system does not do enough to develop skills; it is also not doing enough to develop a love of learning and inclusion. Young people feeling disaffected, and that they do not belong in schools or colleges, means that we are also unable to make sure that they are accessing a great education. I have always said that the best education is a fun education, because when young people enjoy getting involved in school—enrichment can be a huge part of that for many young people—they are more likely to feel that they belong and to succeed.

Over the recess, I was reminded of the importance of enrichment opportunities in young people’s lives at a visit to the Bracknell Cobras, a basketball club in my constituency that works with more than 500 young people a week. During my visit, I heard that the Cobras do not just teach young people to play basketball; they also develop essential skills like teamwork and resilience. They even train them up as referees so that they can gain a nationally recognised qualification.

That last point brings me to the crux of my argument: even when young people have the opportunity to develop skills, both in the classroom and through enrichment more widely, they often feel unable to properly identify or quantify their learning, or that the skills can be meaningfully demonstrated to future employers or education providers. That is why, as the Minister knows, I have been working with a wide group of stakeholders to gather views and build the case for reform of the skills passport, inspired by the invaluable work of Skills Builder, which has built a brilliant framework to quantify the skills that young people need to thrive.

That idea was first raised with me by young people themselves. On a visit to Garth Hill college in Bracknell, a group of GCSE citizenship students delivered a fantastic presentation to me asking why the school’s curriculum was not better at teaching them essential life skills, such as financial literacy, and why those skills were not measured. Their question, which has stayed with me, was this: why is there no Duke of Edinburgh’s award for life skills?

It is obvious to anyone with experience in education that what is not measured is not recognised. I fear that we are failing young people and employers by neglecting to ensure that the essential skills young people develop both in and outside the classroom are properly and meaningfully recorded. As part of its research into the future of the labour market, the National Foundation for Educational Research found that it was essential skills such as collaboration, communication, problem solving and information literacy that will be most needed by employers by 2035. We are already facing deficits in those areas, which are likely to only get worse.

It has never been more vital that we equip young people to not just develop essential skills, but record and demonstrate them. That area has strong potential to support the Government’s wider work with regard to growth and supporting young people back into the workforce. I was very pleased to see a commitment to exploring skills passports in the post-16 White Paper, and the recent launch of the UK standard skills classification, which is an important step forwards in a common understanding and vocabulary around skills. I am also grateful to Skills England for meeting with me to discuss that very point.

However, it is clear to me that for any form of skills passport to be truly meaningful, introducing it at the end of the school journey is too late. If young people are to be properly empowered to recognise, develop and communicate their essential skills in a way that speaks to them and to potential employers, we must help them to identify those skills much earlier.

I want to touch briefly on the new careers service for schools and colleges planned by the Government. I have referred to Alan Milburn’s important interim report numerous times, but another point we have heard over the last few days is the importance of the early years of someone’s career and the long-term impact of missing out on opportunities at that stage. I therefore ask the Minister for assurance that a recognition of the importance of essential skills will be built into the new careers service, so that young people are given the best and most holistic advice possible at this vital point in their educational and personal development.

Essential skills are essential for so many reasons. They help us to become more employable and educated, but, more than that, they help to make us better, more resilient, confident and well-rounded people with more capacity for empathy and more curiosity about our world. At a time when we are facing so much uncertainty and volatility, it is incumbent on all of us to equip our young people with the skills they need to be active and empowered citizens in the world.

The evidence is clear: our most essential skills are our human skills. Building an education system that no longer overlooks or sidelines but nurtures them is vital. It is up to the Government to build on the great work already started in a truly holistic way so that young people are supported to develop the skills that we as a country need from them, not only as future workers, but as citizens. That is how we break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.

14:48

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship for the first time, Dr Allin-Khan. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow). It is well known across the House that he is a classics scholar; indeed, he chairs the APPG for classics. Our democracy is based on that of the ancient Greeks, and demos is a Greek word from which we draw our idea of democratic values. One of our greatest ever parliamentarians from Leeds, Denis Healey, was himself a classics scholar. He inspired many others in Leeds and his constituency to study the classics, some of whom are now elected politicians in the city, so this subject is dear to our hearts in Leeds.

Substantial democratic political education for our young people can help to comprise a curriculum for life for the future of the UK. I am proud of the commitment in the Labour manifesto at the last election, and many elections beforehand, to give the right to vote at 16. That must go hand in hand with a genuine education in critical thinking and democratic processes, and a guide to citizen participation.

Without that education, we are all vulnerable to reductionist populism, as seen on the extremes of our political landscape. Equipping the next generation with the skills they need to identify mis- and disinformation, to call out discrimination and prejudice in politics, and to navigate our political system will forge a brighter and sharper future for our country. It is an education that I am sure we all wish we could have had access to across the United Kingdom.

As the MP for the constituency with the youngest electorate in the country, I can say that the young people of Leeds Central and Headingley are switched on to what is going on in the world. As I am sure hon. Members will agree, when we visit schools and sixth-form colleges, we are kept on our toes by the young people there as much as we are in the Chamber itself—more so, actually, the majority of the time.

If we can fully enfranchise young people with the tools on how to navigate all the layers of our political landscape, we will have a succession plan for a stable and ethically awake future. These tools are needed now more than ever, at a time when we are at the mercy of faceless social media, bot farms and nefarious online foreign actors that seek to disrupt the stability and the fabric of communities in our country.

Furthermore, better political education can help tackle the negative perceptions of politicians and the growing levels of abuse, harassment and intimidation. We need politics to be an environment that is representative of the UK, not one that intimidates colleagues out of the field—or that intimidates people out of even considering entering elected politics.

I believe that reducing the voting age will help increase the political engagement of younger people, and I agree with the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that lowering the voting age is a good opportunity to develop a new school curriculum for political education—an education that can enable young people to exercise their right to vote without unduly swaying or influencing them. Let us create the fairest and most democratic UK we have ever seen, with Government support for children to develop skills in political education and with enfranchised 16 and 17-year-olds, hopefully in a fairer voting system where all votes count.

14:51

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing this important debate. For years, we have had an education system that looks pretty good on league tables or spreadsheets but does not really help young people develop essential skills for dealing with this rapidly changing world. Rather than repeat remarks that I have made before, and that other hon. Members have made today, I will cut to the chase and list some issues and solutions that I urge the Minister to consider—so grab your pen, Minister.

The first issue is funding. Somerset is one of the 40 lowest funded education authorities in the UK. We need to see a level playing field for funding, with an increase in school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year.

The second issue is the type of skills we are teaching. Yeovil college does an amazing job with vocational and technical education, but we need the Government to go further. Can we make AI and digital skills training a core part of the national curriculum as its own subject? If we want to innovate, we need teaching that focuses on the skills needed for business and self-employment, although I may be biased because I ran my own landscaping company.

Thirdly, we sadly have pockets of real deprivation in Yeovil. Will the Minister extend pupil premium funding to disadvantaged young people aged 16 to 18, so they can get the quality education or training they want, rather than having to work any old job—or worse?

My final ask, unsurprisingly, relates to SEND. Can the Minister set out when the research into universal screening will conclude, and whether the Government will commit to adopting it, if that is supported by the research? We cannot help young people develop essential skills without working out how they learn best.

More broadly, can the Minister please promise that the upcoming reforms to the SEND system will not mean that children with SEND lose the right to dedicated time with teaching assistants or speech and language therapists to help develop essential skills? The maths GCSE post-16 resit policy sees too many young people with SEND forced to retake exams that are just not useful for them. It comes with stigma and takes time away from developing the skills they actually need. Can the Minister commit to abolishing or reworking the resit policy to meet the needs of a wide range of young people with SEND more flexibly? I could go on for hours about this subject, but I have bent the ear of the Minister many times, so I will leave it there.

14:54

[Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing this debate. I feel it is my duty as someone sadly nearing the end of parenting a child in nursery to talk specifically about early years.

When we talk about children developing essential skills, we often start too late. Learning does not begin when a child starts reception; it begins the very moment they are born, if not sooner. The skills they develop during the first months and years provide the foundation that children need to thrive in school. Nurseries, pre-schools and childcare providers play a crucial role in helping children build those skills, day by day, through care, routine support and encouragement. That is why Government support to help parents secure high-quality early years provision is so important.

In Bolton North East, we are making progress on early years support. At the Valley community school, Government investment is helping refurbish old spaces, create a new play area and expand nursery provision. Our family hubs—Bright Meadows, Oxford Grove, Tonge and Oldhams—give families somewhere to get support without feeling judged.

That progress matters, but it is not enough on its own. Across Bolton, more than a third of children are starting school without the essential skills that they need, making it harder to learn, communicate and build relationships from day one. For parents wanting to do their best for their children, the core question is whether early years support is accessible, affordable and workable in real life. I say that not just as the MP for Bolton North East, but as a single mum with a young son growing up in Bolton. I have often wondered whose idea it was to have school hours set from 8 am to 3 pm, working hours set from 9 am to 5 pm, and vital services operating within those hours. How on earth are parents supposed to make that work?

One parent in my constituency told me that they had hoped the Government’s expansion of funded childcare from 15 to 30 hours would bring some relief—just that little bit of breathing space, enough to add one more nursery day so that grandparents did not have to keep filling the gap, or flexible working requests did not have to keep being made. But once the provider’s charges for meals and consumables were added in, and because of the way the hours are structured, their bill barely changed and that extra day remained out of reach. Government support is meant to help families, not be lost in extra charges and inflexible arrangements.

This is not about attacking providers. Many early years providers and staff in Bolton do extraordinary work every day, often under real pressure, but at the most crucial point in a child’s development, it is wrong that profit can be made from childcare while families are left fighting for consistent standards, transparency and fairness. As parents, we should not have to rely on guidance that, even when improved on paper, is still inconsistently applied and too weakly enforced. Nor should we have to choose between what we can afford and what our child deserves.

Children cannot build essential skills in a system that does not fit around the realities of family life. Too often, it is still mums who are expected to make it fit. Of course parents make sacrifices every day to help their children develop those essential skills, but our early years model still assumes that someone is at home, usually mum, to bridge the gap between nursery hours and working hours—someone who can do the 3 pm pick-up, cover sick days and leave work the moment nursery calls. In reality, that often means reducing her hours, turning down that promotion, losing income and then being told she is lucky to have flexibility, if she even gets it in the first place.

Too often, flexibility is just another word for women being expected to bend their lives further and further, being made to feel guilty every time they ask for an adjustment, or being told that they are putting their job at risk. It also completely disregards single parents. Parents who need flexible working are too often treated as a problem to be managed, rather than as people who hold families, workplaces and communities together—and then we wonder why birth rates are falling. We cannot keep making motherhood expensive, uncertain and career-damaging and then act surprised when more and more women feel the choice has already been made for them.

My asks of the Minister are simple: strengthen enforcement so funded hours are genuinely free, transparent and usable; review whether funding rates reflect the real costs of high-quality provision; and put the essential skills that children need and the flexibility that families need at the heart of early years reform.

Every child deserves the best start, and that has to be something families feel in the support they receive, in the childcare they can rely on and in the confidence their children carry through the school gate. Having children should not be an unmanageable financial burden. It should not be a choice with a cost attached to it. No one should have to give up their dream of having a family because society is not set up to support them or because it punishes them for doing so, and no parent should have to make the tough choice to say no to having more children simply because they cannot afford to.

Finally, single parents should not fear having to shoulder the responsibility alone. Every parent deserves to be supported by a society that benefits from all of us having children. [Interruption.]

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

Given the thunder, I think someone upstairs agrees with you. I call Jim Shannon.

14:59

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship as always, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for highlighting this essential issue. The Democratic Unionist party is committed to the development of early years skills. It is good to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), and the Minister in their places. I thank the Minister for all her hard work and wish her well in that role. Whether in strategy or policy, the focus on children is so important.

The importance of investing in children’s essential skills in the early years cannot be overstated. Success in that has been shown to have an impact on broader society and the economy. Studies conducted by the effective pre-school, primary and secondary education project demonstrated that having a trained early years teacher often leads to better long-term chances for children. I have witnessed that as grandfather to six children, and will later mention their progress.

That evidence has sometimes sadly been neglected, as reflected across the United Kingdom where only one in 10 nurseries has an early years teacher. Children with an early years education were found to go on to gain higher English and maths GCSE results, and were more likely to achieve five or more grades A* to C. The facts and evidence base are clearly there. Children who experienced high-quality pre-school education were better at self-regulation, social behaviour and less inclined to hyperactivity. That is all evidence based—I speak according to the evidence. Children who experienced high-quality pre-school settings were more likely to follow a post-16 academic path. Despite that evidence, more than 80% of parents say they have struggled to access services such as parenting support, health visitors and high-quality early education.

I would like to highlight one issue. My son and daughter-in-law control and restrict screen time on the iPad but, over my time as an elected representative, I have noticed one thing coming back from those involved in nurseries and primary school. This is not a criticism, because people deal with things in their own way, but what happens if the child is busy, hyper or giving a bit of bother? They are handed the iPad. It takes their attention and they are okay for a while, but the amount of time a child is on an iPad must be restricted. I am not sure that every parent understands that. That is about teaching skills, not telling them how to parent. It is about making them aware of the issues.

Some of the nursery staff I spoke to told me of the damage of a child being on an iPad screen for three or four hours a day. That will have a very negative effect on the child. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that, because that important point is made by nursery school teachers and some parents. Increased screen time for children should be raised as a potential barrier to the development of children’s essential skills.

[Adam Dance]

I totally agree that screen time can be damaging for young people just given a phone or an iPad, but does the hon. Member not agree that screen time can be beneficial if used in the right way to help people with disabilities such as dyslexia?

[Jim Shannon]

I agree with the hon. Member. I know that from my grandchildren—the wee ones in particular, who are both educationally challenged—though my son and daughter-in-law restrict time. It is important to have the opportunity, but also to control that time so that it does not impact them adversely. The hon. Gentleman is right that it is a tool that can be used for benefit, as well. It is important to put that on the record.

It has been recognised that excessive screen time could limit the vocabulary of children, particularly damaging the ability to speak of those under five. Research found that 98% of two-year-olds watch screens daily. Higher screen time was independently associated with lower vocabulary development: the more the screen time, the less the talking and voice and word development. Children with the highest screen time could say 53% of the 34 test words on average, while those with the lowest screen time could say 65%. It is clear that we need a UK-wide approach to help parents understand why screen time balance is as essential to development as a nutrient-filled diet.

It is vital that outcomes in reading and writing assessments continue to be monitored, in recognition that many children are still underdeveloped in essential skills and may require extra support due to covid educational preventions. I believe that essential skills are also provided by the voluntary sector. I want to mention some of those, such as local churches. We must recognise the volunteers in the Boys’ Brigade and Girls’ Brigade, the Campaigners, the Scouts and so many others who teach skills for badges. Their work with local community groups is so valued and must be highlighted in any debate on essential skills, as a child’s skills are more than academic; they are social and moral as well. So many volunteer organisations sow into children’s lives, and this must be recognised and applauded.

In Northern Ireland, the publication of the 2024-25 end of key stage assessment outcomes highlighted the urgent need for renewed focus on literacy and numeracy. Data showed that 28% of pupils at the end of primary school are not achieving at the expected levels, so there is a real challenge there for us back home, and for the Education Minister to do much better. That is almost three in 10 pupils, to give an idea of the significance. That is of significant concern particularly as the foundational skills and the basics are essential for pupils’ future learning, wellbeing and life opportunity. I will finish with this mantra: every child should be allowed the best start in life, and it is our duty as elected representatives in positions of power—whether MPs here or representatives in the regional Governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—to ensure that future generations are protected. We can do that if we choose to do that. I look forward to what the Minister will say to encourage us all.

15:07

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) on this really important debate. I hear an awful lot of guff and bluster in this place, and I just wish that we had more of these sorts of debates. I am only sorry that there is not a single Member of His Majesty’s Opposition on the Back Benches.

I will take us back to the skills required by preschool children, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle), because an essential skill for children is the ability to read, and 2026 is the National Year of Reading. In collaboration with the National Literacy Trust, the Department for Education is seeking to address the steep decline in reading among children and young people.

A child’s earliest years are crucial to their development and life chances. When children start school, early communication and language skills make a huge difference. Being able to talk, listen, understand words and share stories helps children make friendships, ask for help from teachers and participate in learning and play. Literacy and communication skills lay the foundation for children to enjoy and take part in all aspects of school life, from imaginary games in the playground to activities in the classroom.

These skills impact children’s success later too, which is why their start at school really matters. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, children who have good language skills at the age of five are far more likely to achieve the expected levels at the age of 11. Yet at a time when parents face enormous pressures, more than one quarter of five-year-olds in Cornwall start school without the communication, language and literacy skills that they need to thrive. For too long, our society has been failing Cornish children—not just them, clearly, but children all over the country. Research consistently shows that the home learning environment—the activities that children engage in at home, such as chatting, singing, sharing stories and playing outside—has a powerful impact.

The National Literacy Trust’s Early Words Matter campaign supports parents and carers to build their children’s early language, communication and literacy skills. In my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency, the Everyone Ready for School project run by the National Literacy Trust in Cornwall provides early literacy support for families with children starting school soon. It offers free books—more than 4,000 have been distributed already—as well as resources, events and activities in the local community, empowering parents and children as they prepare together for the adventure of starting school. But the National Literacy Trust needs to secure funding for its remarkable ongoing work across one of the most deprived regions of northern Europe. I respectfully ask my hon. Friend the Minister to address that funding point when she responds to the debate.

I am proud to say that I am a literacy champion for the National Literacy Trust in Cornwall. By working together with parents, teachers, early years professionals, volunteers and the wider community, the National Literacy Trust in Cornwall hopes to inspire parents to feel confident, knowing the amazing role that they play in their child’s school journey. The way that parents and children spend time together now is preparing children to succeed and be happy at school.

15:12

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) on securing this really important debate.

Whether children leave school with the skills that they need is not just an education question but an economic one, and one that the Government have a particular responsibility to get right. As mentioned, the Milburn review, “Young People and Work”, published just last week, underlines how complex and deep-rooted the problems are and how much depends on getting the foundations right. Skills England has noted that members of the UK workforce are more likely to be underqualified for their occupations than counterparts in other OECD countries. We are talking about 26% of UK workers, against an OECD average of 18%. That is not an accident; it is the accumulated consequences of choices made about what we teach, how we teach it and whom we invest in earliest.

If we want to understand where things go wrong, we should start at the beginning, as the hon. Members for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle), for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others have highlighted. The early years foundation stage data for 2024-25 shows that 68% of children achieved a good level of development at the end of reception, meaning that nearly one in three did not, falling short on personal, social and emotional development, physical development, communication, literacy or numeracy. Children who arrive behind tend to stay behind. The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers opens early and rarely closes, sadly.

[Peter Swallow]

The hon. Member is making a really important point about the need to focus on early years. Given that, does he regret the decision taken by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government in 2010 to cut Sure Start?

[Ian Sollom]

The point is well made about the importance of early years. That decision was sadly before my time, but it has certainly had consequences that we should all attempt to put right.

Investment in high-quality early years provision, properly funded and staffed, is the most cost-effective skills intervention available for the long term. The Liberal Democrats broadly welcome the curriculum review, but we are concerned about the scrapping of the EBacc, at least in isolation—that is to say, without more clarity about accountability. The EBacc fulfilled an important role in mainstreaming subjects that were in decline, such as the humanities and languages. The right response to that is to build on its success by broadening it further to encompass arts, coding and physical education, rather than removing the accountability framework altogether. Without clear guidance, vital subjects risk being sidelined as schools struggle with budget pressures. That is why the Government’s commitment to give arts GCSEs equal status to humanities and introduce a core enrichment entitlement matters. It is also why the test now is whether those commitments translate into actual curriculum time in actual schools—particularly those serving disadvantaged communities, where the squeeze has been sharpest.

It is important to recognise that breadth is only part of the answer; the quality and relevance of the core curriculum matters just as much. Too many young people leave school without feeling equipped to use maths in their lives or careers. Financial literacy, data interpretation and proportional reasoning are not optional extras but critical foundations. We should be asking not just whether children can pass their maths exam but whether the maths they are taught actually serves them.

That same question—does what we teach serve children in the world they are entering?—applies in many respects. The hon. Member for Bracknell and others highlighted civic skills, and I would pick up artificial intelligence, given the world we are entering. The curriculum review is the right moment to embed AI literacy, not simply as a bolt-on qualification but as a genuine thread running throughout what children learn. Understanding those tools and their capabilities and limits is becoming a basic competency. The Government’s instinct is right, and we encourage real ambition in following it through.

Skills alone are not enough if children cannot see where they might take them. Even a child who leaves school with strong skills, broad knowledge and digital fluency may still struggle if nobody has helped them to see what is possible, so careers guidance really matters. It matters most for the children who do not have family networks reaching into professional life. For children in that position, a well-timed conversation about what their aptitudes could lead to is not peripheral support; it is transformative. The Liberal Democrats are clear that the earlier that guidance begins, the more powerful it is.

To pick up the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance), children with SEND must be included in every part of our ambition for essential skills. Too many children with SEND still cannot access support for their education, health and care plans. The system remains slow and adversarial, and is too dependent on families fighting for entitlements that should be automatic. Early identification and intervention is not happening at the scale or pace required, and when that does not happen, the consequences are compounded through adolescence and into adulthood.

The Government’s reforms are a step in the right direction, and we genuinely welcome their intent, but SEND reforms must be judged not by the stated intentions but by the outcomes for children. That is the standard we will continue to hold the Government to.

15:19

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Dr Allin-Khan, and may there be many more. I thank the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for opening the debate, and for his thoughtful contributions that we have heard throughout. I know that he is a long-standing champion of this issue, for which he made his case, and I am sure we will hear more from him. I also thank all Members across the House who made contributions.

In particular, I want to single out the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle), who I thought made a really valid contribution. Having just welcomed my third child, and having seen the sacrifice that mums make, I can attest to the fact that she made some very valid points, and she will certainly get a lot of sympathy from me. My good friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about screen time. With three children under five, I can tell him that the battle of the screen time has already begun; I know the anguish that parents face, so I have a huge amount of sympathy.

While I am always careful not to talk about silver bullets in politics, I believe that education is a silver bullet that can transform a child’s life and their chances. School is an essential part of a young person’s development, equipping them with the skills they need to succeed in life. The academic lessons we learn in the classroom prepare us for the world of work, and the social lessons we learn in school teach us so much that will be needed later in life.

The official Opposition are very clear that our children deserve a first-class education, and I am proud that the previous Conservative Government delivered a world-class curriculum to facilitate that. Under previous Conservative Governments, England became one of the top performing countries in education; children in England were named the best in the west for reading, and we were ranked the best at maths in the western world in 2023, according to international standards. At the heart of those results was the previous Government’s rigorous curriculum, which raised standards and helped pupils soar up the international league tables.

This debate has centred on some of the softer but equally important skills that a good education can instil in a young person. While I believe that we cannot underplay the importance of academic rigour, this debate plays a vital role in getting our young people ready for life—or the school of life, shall we say. There is no doubt that so much more needs to be done to ensure that our young people are equipped with the right essential skills.

I would like to go back a few years. I believe that the pandemic played a huge role in some of the outcomes that our young people are facing. Many of them spent time away from home and outside the classroom, which really impacted on skills. With that in mind, I invite the Minister to comment on whether the Government should be working to fill those gaps and ensure that those people are supported into adulthood.

The Opposition are clear that a rigorous curriculum that demands high standards is vital to developing critical skills, which is important in areas such as maths and literacy, and the previous Conservative Government are really proud of our legacy of driving up standards. However, I am concerned about some of the changes in the curriculum review. While I agree with many of its principles, I worry that if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

I want to talk about the practical implementation of the curriculum to see whether the Minister can shed some light on it. We all want to see our children equipped with the skills that are needed in life. The hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) talked about getting our children ready for the digital age, especially with the onset of AI and the waves of disinformation we are seeing online. As a former tech Minister, I share those concerns.

I invite the Minister to discuss what she thinks the new curriculum will do to ensure that our children are ready for the advent of AI, as it is already upon us. Does she worry that we risk diluting the core education that I mentioned, which underpins our academic success and those high standards? What will be sacrificed to deliver some of that extra work? This will also be incredibly important because, as has been mentioned, the Government have decided to push down the voting age to 16. If millions of young people are enfranchised in that way, how will the Minister be confident that they will have the skills to engage in our democracy? How will they be encouraged to critically analyse the information they are given?

In addition, I would like clarity from the Government on the time being taken away from core education. How will they ensure that time is given to the new aspects of the curriculum review to ensure that high standards are achieved? When the Government have been challenged previously by Opposition Members, they have not been forthcoming on that issue. Parents and students are anxious about how the reforms will change their education in the long term, so I invite the Minister to give a bit more clarity, specifically on the citizenship curriculum. As for teaching, what training will teachers require to be ready for those changes?

On financial literacy and education, we can all recognise the benefits of ensuring that young people enter adulthood knowing how to manage their money. In 2023, the “Building Beyond Barriers” report by the all-party group on financial education for young people found that more than half of teachers did not know that financial education was already part of the curriculum. As the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), made clear in a report last week, the importance of financial education cannot be overstated. That report found that

“Four in ten people in the UK have poor financial literacy”,

which is holding back our economy.

The APPG’s report also found that one of the barriers to delivering financial education was a feeling that there is simply not enough time in the school year to deliver those lessons—a similar argument to the one I just made about citizenship lessons. So I ask the Minister: how will they be implemented? Other Members asked about the standards that will be expected. What assessments will be in place to make sure that the quality of the education is of the highest level?

Focusing on core skills does make sense in this regard because good maths is a gateway to lifelong financial stability. That is not just my opinion; the programme for international student assessment found a strong correlation between performance in financial literacy and performance in mathematics. I have no doubt that our hard-working teachers are keen to play their part in delivering the skills education that we have discussed today in an appropriate way in the classroom. But a key part of that is innovation, and the Government’s compulsory curriculum risks inhibiting that innovation from teachers. The Government’s curriculum review praised innovation in teaching and made clear the benefits of flexibility for teachers, but I worry that the opposite will happen in practice.

Lastly, in my regular meetings with stakeholders—both in education and industry— and when I have spoken to students, I hear time and again about the importance of better career support in schools. Understanding the world of work and what steps are needed to get to where a person wants to be in later life are essential. Young people are seeing profound and substantial changes in the world of work, none more so than the impact of AI on professional careers, such as accountancy and law. With that in mind, it is more important than ever that young people are equipped with the right skills to navigate a changing world of employment and the economy at large. I invite the Minister to elaborate on the work that she will do with the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that young people get the quality career advice that they need.

Children deserve a world-class curriculum that sets them up for the best possible chance in life. I support a knowledge-rich curriculum and will continue to urge the Government to answer some of the constructive questions that the Opposition have put forward. We all want to ensure that our young people have the best chances in life and also have the skills to live their lives and thrive.

15:27

[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I welcome today’s constructive and thoughtful debate and the constructive tone of both the hon. Members for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) and for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti). I know we all share a desire to ensure that our children are supported to grow up into well-rounded adults. It is brilliant to see young people in the Gallery listening to the debate.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing this debate. He has been such a champion of these issues, and almost on a daily, or at least weekly, basis he stops me to discuss these questions. As he said, I have visited his constituency and seen some of the work that he is leading in practice. As we have heard today, these are massively important topics. The Milburn review has shown the real cost of unemployment for young people and how critical it is to ensure that they have the skills that can support them into the workplace, but also, as we have heard from so many people, support them to be active citizens participating in community life.

I will start where my hon. Friend did in his speech and focus on the importance of children and young people feeling confident to face challenges and shape the world around them. So much change is happening, and we cannot fully imagine the world that young people will go out into. It is therefore critical that they have the core foundations of knowledge as well as a love of learning. We want young people to return to and enjoy learning as their time in the workplace goes on; learning should be core throughout their lives. They must feel that they have the skills to be able to deal with uncertainty, to shape the world and to feel confident. So many young people tell me that that is not how they feel at the moment. That is why the curriculum and assessment review and this debate are so important.

The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East asked whether we have to choose between knowledge and skills and standards and inclusion. For me, they are two sides of the same coin. It is absolutely critical that we support our children to attain academically. We all know that too many young people are being left behind, and we have stark gaps for disadvantaged young people that we need to address. A big part of that is how they are engaged in education. School has to be unmissable, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell said, the joy of learning is critical. It is important that children are engaged and want to come to school to develop their knowledge, whether that is through enrichment or through teaching the core things that they really want to know about, such as financial education.

In this Chamber and the main Chamber, we often talk about inclusion and the importance of supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities to feel a sense of wellbeing and belonging. Too often, they have not felt that, and that has left them feeling disengaged from education. We will pursue both knowledge and skills and inclusion and high standards for our young people.

We have heard throughout the debate about the curriculum and assessment review and the work that we commissioned Professor Becky Francis to do with an incredibly expert panel. It did a really careful and thoughtful piece of work for the Government, setting out the things that it felt needed to change to support children to be able to go out confidently into the modern world. Lots of the themes that came up in this debate—media literacy, digital literacy, the importance of citizenship, oracy—came out in the review, and we have committed to embedding them. In terms of next steps, a huge amount of work is going on to draft programmes of study and to test them with a range of different partners. We have committed to giving schools four terms to prepare for implementing the new curriculum.

The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East asked about space in the curriculum. What was really powerful about the work that Dr Becky Francis led was that it gave careful thought to the sequencing of the curriculum, how things fit together and how duplication can be prevented. We are developing a digital curriculum for the first time, so it will be much easier for teachers to make links between different subjects.

The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell also raised enrichment and its importance in making school unmissable and making young people excited about coming to school. I travel around the country talking to young people, and they often say that it is the thing they really look forward to and that it helps them to feel part of the wider school community. We will publish an enrichment framework with a focus on developing wider life skills relating to arts and culture, civic engagement, nature, outdoor adventure, and sport and physical activities.

Many Members made really important points about making sure that the enrichment offer is open to students who feel further away from those opportunities, and we are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to build up the enrichment offer in 400 schools in the most disadvantaged areas. We are investing £22.5 million from the dormant assets fund to make that a reality, as well as working with a whole range of partners to ensure that the enrichment framework for all schools is a really powerful tool.

Another point raised by a number of Members was about citizenship and political education. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) made a really powerful speech about how important that is for votes at 16, but also for our democratic institutions and our ability to disagree agreeably and have these political debates. When we have so much misinformation and division, embedding that in our education system is incredibly important. We have committed to citizenship being statutory in key stages 1 and 2, and to strengthening and modernising citizenship across the curriculum, looking at many of the themes that we have talked about, including media literacy.

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) talked about digital literacy and AI and about making sure that those are core skills. We are looking to embed key areas such as digital and media literacy across the curriculum, because every single subject will have an element of these AI and digital skills, but we are also refreshing the computing GCSE so that particular content is focused on that.

On media literacy, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) mentioned misinformation. That is another really important theme that will sit in citizenship but also in other subjects. In history, for instance, people will really think about sources and how to decipher information, and in English people will look at emotive language. Those are areas where we can look at these core themes embedded into the wider curriculum.

My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) and others mentioned financial literacy, which comes up more than anything else from young people as being a skill that they really want to have and learn about. We are working across the maths curriculum and the wider piece to look at how we really embed financial literacy, and we will be doing a number of test and learns around implementation and working with teachers.

Turning to the different contributions on early years childcare, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle). She made an incredibly powerful speech about what a lifeline childcare is for families, and I completely agree. I see that all the time as a constituency MP, and particularly how essential it is for mums, who often end up doing so much of that childcare. My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of the 30 hours of free childcare; that has made a difference for people taking up the full entitlement, which we think has saved them an average of £8,000. She also mentioned how fees and different practices can pull away at some of that really important cost of living support. The Secretary of State for Education has written to the Competition and Markets Authority to request a review of the early years childcare market, which is to look precisely at many of the issues that my hon. Friend mentioned. It is worth having a look at that letter, and it is a really important issue to pursue.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the importance of early years, and my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) spoke powerfully about the long-term impact of delayed language development for children. Sadly, since the pandemic we have seen many more children coming into school with delayed language. We know the long-term impact on children, so that has been a key focus for the Government in developing Best Start hubs, which will give that wraparound support to children, but also introducing new programmes such as the early language support programme, which brings NHS services to schools to identify needs earlier, and the Nuffield early learning intervention programme, which puts support in for reception children. I would be interested to hear more about what is going on in Cornwall and some of the challenges that my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth mentioned, and to discuss that further. This is also a key part of our thinking around the SEND reforms, putting more investment, earlier, into speech and language support and the new Experts at Hand service, which will include speech and language therapists.

[Jim Shannon]

First, may I welcome the Minister’s comments on all the issues that have been raised, particularly mine on screen time? Sometimes we must engage with parents in a way that shows that we understand that children should be given a bit of time on their iPads but that that time should be restricted, too. Does the Minister have any thoughts on that?

[Georgia Gould]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that issue. We have developed guidance for parents to support them with screen time in early years. As a parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old, I know how confusing it can be. It is not something that I was spoken to about when I had my son. It is important we have guidance that is not judgmental but gives parents the best advice. We have put that out now. A lot of expertise has gone into developing it and I have had really positive feedback. Certainly, I have found it very helpful personally in shaping those important decisions. It is also important that through our Best Start hubs we are able to have that conversation and support for children, not just about not being on screens, but about what engagement looks like: what are the activities, how does one encourage a child to speak, and as they get older what are the enrichment activities that they can engage in after the school day?

The hon. Member for Yeovil is always a passionate advocate of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and I welcome him mentioning that as part of these wider issues. On the questions on identifying needs, he will know that we are developing national inclusion standards which include research into identification around the needs we have set out in our SEND consultation document. That work is ongoing and it will form part of national inclusion standards. We are working on appointing the panel of independent experts at the moment. It is critical that we get that right, and have that early identification of needs, whether on speech and language or others.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the importance of support for young people who are constantly having to re-sit English and maths. He will know we have been consulting on a new level 1 English and maths qualification, which is precisely designed to support children and young people to consolidate their knowledge and be a gateway qualification to deal with exactly that problem, which is one I have heard time and time again.

[Adam Dance]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for answering all my questions, as always. Concerned parents in Yeovil also tell me that kids who have autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, sensory issues or attention deficit disorder cannot find apprenticeships or work, nor have they had help developing the skills they need to get into the creative or agricultural sector. Can the Minister set out what more the Government are doing to support rural schools and employers to get neurodiverse people into those industries?

[Georgia Gould]

I really appreciate that question. Again, talking to families and young people around the country, that comes up all the time. I welcomed the Milburn review’s focus on the experience of young people with SEND and disabilities, and on some of those barriers. There is action we are already taking, through supported internships and our work with further education, but it is an area in which we need to go further. It is something we are continuing to work on with the Department for Work and Pensions. I am happy to have further conversations about those issues.

I want to conclude by thanking everyone for this really important debate. These are areas we are actively looking at as we develop the new curriculum and think about developing the oracy framework we have committed to. Employers have said to us that it is essential young people have the skills they need for later life. Many of us will have seen how powerful some of these interventions are. I was recently with the Duke of Edinburgh, talking to young people in a school in my constituency. They talked about the confidence and problem-solving skills that the programme gave them, changing their sense of what was possible for them. That sits alongside the core knowledge that young people must learn, supporting young adults to be well rounded and able to shape their futures confidently. I hope that we can continue these conversations, as a lot of important ideas were mentioned today. We will consult fully on the new curriculum, which I am sure that all Members will look at with interest.

15:45

[Peter Swallow]

I thank Members for taking part in today’s debate. It has been fantastic to hear support from across the House for improving access to skills for our young people. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for reminding us that skills can be delivered across the curriculum. Classics is an excellent example, as it can teach young people not just about declensions, but democracy; not just Augustus, but oracy. Other subjects are available.

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) is a doughty champion for young people, particularly those with SEND. He made many excellent points about some of the barriers faced by young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) was right to highlight early years. I am grateful for the work being done in Bracknell Forest to roll out new services through our Government-backed Best Start family hub.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) brought, as always, a thoughtful insight from the Northern Irish perspective. He was right to highlight the need for screen time guidance, which I know the Government are committed to delivering. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) raise the issue of reading. As a member of the Education Committee, I have been working on its inquiry into reading for pleasure. The evidence we have heard was echoed in my hon. Friend’s contribution.

I respectfully disagree with the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on the EBacc. As the Minister has heard me say many times before, it did not support all humanities subjects equally. Citizenship GCSE, for example, was not included. I do, however, welcome his comments about early years and careers guidance.

I thank the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for his contribution, but I will quote to him from Alan Milburn’s interim report, which says

“the school system is built on young people gaining qualifications which is not the same as ensuring they are ready for work.”

I encourage the hon. Member to read Milburn’s interim report thoroughly.

Finally, I thank the Minister for all the work she is doing in this space. I am excited to see the enrichment framework when it comes forward. I will scrutinise it closely, as she would expect, but I welcome her commitment to delivering it inclusively. As we have all agreed today, getting this right is crucial to supporting our young people’s futures. We all want to see opportunities for young people in our constituencies, and that is what has inspired each of us to speak today. I thank you, Dr Allin-Khan, and all Members for their contributions.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Government support for children developing essential skills.

15:48

Sitting suspended.

Workplace Exposure to Silica Dust

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

15:54

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

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

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered silica dust exposure in the workplace.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I want to begin by paying tribute to my constituent Caroline Hudson and her sister Sandra, who are both here today. I thank them for their determination in bringing this issue to me and the wider public. None of us should underestimate how difficult it is to relive the loss of a loved one in public, but they are doing so because they do not want other families to suffer the same heartbreak.

Sandra’s husband, George Elliott, was a keen golfer, a proud Spurs fan and a man deeply loved by his family and friends. He was a highly skilled stonemason who worked on buildings including 10 Downing Street. George died in November 2023 from silicosis, a devastating lung disease caused by inhaling respirable crystalline silica dust. His family did not know that he had silicosis until his post-mortem. By then it was too late. Before his death, George suffered through severe breathing difficulties, constant exhaustion, oxygen dependency and the cruel deterioration that the disease inflicts upon its victims.

Silicosis is progressive and incurable. Tiny silica particles become embedded in the lungs, causing inflammation and permanent scarring. Over time, lung capacity is destroyed. Victims struggle to breathe, struggle to work and struggle to live normal lives. It also dramatically increases the risk of other serious illnesses, including tuberculosis, kidney disease, chronic bronchitis and lung cancer.

The key thing about silicosis is that it is preventable. The Health and Safety Executive estimates that around 600,000 workers in the UK are exposed to silica dust every year, yet for far too long the Government’s response has not matched the scale or seriousness of the threat. One of my uncles died from mesothelioma. We cannot let silica dust inhalation become another scandal on the scale of asbestos.

It is important to note that silicosis is increasingly affecting young workers—people in their 20s and 30s—and that the increase is largely due to engineered stone. The rise in the popularity of engineered stone has transformed modern kitchens, and these products are now everywhere, but many engineered stones contain extraordinarily high levels of silica—in some cases, up to 95%. When dry cut without proper controls, they release enormous quantities of deadly dust into the air.

The current system is leaving workers vulnerable. I welcome the recent steps the HSE has taken, following public concern and pressure from campaigners, clinicians and affected families. It has declared the dry cutting of engineered stone to be unacceptable, and introduced new guidance requiring water-suppression techniques, respiratory protective equipment and health surveillance, and a programme of more than 1,000 inspections across the UK.

However, there are concerns that the HSE’s current resources, enforcement powers and inspection capacity are not sufficient to deal with what could become a major national occupational health crisis. There is a fear that enforcement remains inconsistent, and that rogue operators continue to evade scrutiny altogether. Does the Minister believe the HSE has the capacity, staffing and resources necessary to effectively regulate the sector? If not, what additional support will be provided?

Australia has already prohibited engineered stone, following hundreds of silicosis cases among workers, and last week California took the first step in that direction. There should be absolute agreement on some fundamental principles: exposure limits must be rigorously enforced, proper personal protective equipment must be mandatory, workers must receive proper training, and health surveillance must become vastly more robust.

Australia’s national screening programme identified hundreds of cases that otherwise might not have been detected until the disease had progressed to a dangerous stage. Experts there found that one in four screened workers had silicosis. Why are we not introducing a targeted national screening programme here in the UK for workers in high-risk sectors, such as kitchen fitters, stonemasons and construction workers? There needs to be a large public awareness campaign for those potentially at risk and for NHS practitioners.

I would like to recognise the journalists who have been campaigning and raising awareness of this issue, including Joe Duggan at The i Paper, and the all-party parliamentary group for respiratory health. Recent analysis provided to senior NHS officials and reported by The i Paper suggests that more than 1,000 UK stonemasons could already have silicosis linked to exposure to engineered stone. The same report estimates that around 4,000 workers in the UK may be operating in informal or illegal parts of the industry, where basic safety protections are routinely ignored.

Silica safety should form part of compulsory training in construction, stonemasonry and apprenticeship schemes. Real-time dust-extraction systems should be properly explored and rolled out where appropriate. Occupational health records and GP systems should better identify workers exposed to silica, so that symptoms are not repeatedly missed or dismissed.

One of the most alarming aspects of this crisis is that we still do not know its true scale. It beggars belief that silicosis was removed from the official list of notifiable occupational diseases in 2013. As a result, cases are frequently hidden within broader categories such as lung cancer.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. Exposure to RCS dust causes significant occupational health issues, and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland estimates that silica dust exposure is responsible for some 20 lung cancer deaths per year. A quarry worker in Northern Ireland is five times more likely to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than the general male population. Does the hon. Lady not agree that we must ensure that workplaces have the tools and knowledge required to put in place effective protections for workers and visitors to such sites?

[Liz Jarvis]

I thank the hon. Member for his question and for all his work with the APPG. He is of course right: it is vital that we ensure that all workers have the proper protection.

Experts repeatedly warn that silicosis is being underdiagnosed and under-reported, so will the Minister consider how best to collect comprehensive national data on silicosis? Why are we not routinely publishing figures on diagnoses, deaths and occupational exposure? How can policymakers, clinicians and regulators properly respond to a growing occupational health crisis if we do not even have accurate national data?

The APPG for respiratory health and experts have argued that silicosis should once again become a notifiable disease. There are also calls for mandatory or greatly strengthened reporting through schemes such as SWORD —the surveillance of work-related and occupational respiratory disease. I hope the Minister will respond positively to these proposals today.

Early diagnosis matters enormously. Removing workers from exposure early can prevent disease progression in many cases. It can save lives and prevent long-term costs to the NHS. I know the Government have committed to increasing capacity in respiratory services and that the NHS has specialist centres for diagnosing and managing lung diseases such as silicosis. That is welcome, but we need to go further than treatment alone. Prevention must come first, with earlier detection, stronger enforcement and dramatically improved awareness.

I hope that, in the spirit of this debate, we can work on a cross-party basis to ensure stronger legal protections, earlier detection, and meaningful action before more lives are destroyed and more families suffer the heartbreak that George Elliott’s family have endured.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

By prior agreement, Ian Lavery will now speak. There is sufficient time for him to have five minutes, if he would like.

16:09

[Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)]

Thank you, Dr Allin-Khan. As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) on securing this timely debate on a really serious issue, and on making a very strong speech.

This debate is on silica dust in the workplace, which causes the deadly disease silicosis. What is silicosis? It is a progressive, incurable lung disease caused by inhaling respirable crystalline silica. It leads to scarring, reduced lung capacity, respiratory failure and increased risk of infection. Accelerated silicosis develops after only a few years of high exposure, and is increasingly common among individuals using engineered stone. Silicosis carries significant social and economic consequences for all affected workers and, of course, their families.

Who is affected by silicosis? The highest-risk groups include engineered stone fabricators and installers, construction and demolition workers, those involved in quarrying, mining and tunnelling, and foundry workers. Younger workers are disproportionately represented in new cases. Migrant workers and workers in precarious employment also face heightened risk due to poor protections.

Silicosis is preventable, but only if we actually act. Engineered stone is the new asbestos, and we are repeating the same mistakes. Young workers are being exposed to lethal dust for the sake of kitchen worktops. If we wait, we will be paying for this, in people’s lives and in compensation, for decades. We have to ask: should anybody lose their life for kitchen worktops? That is the basics of it.

Silicosis cases are rising, especially among workers cutting engineered stone. The current legislation—the control of substances hazardous to health regulations—is not being enforced effectively, leaving workers exposed. Engineered stone that has extremely high silica content, sometimes of more than 90%, has been identified as the primary driver of new cases. Surveillance and reporting systems are fragmented, leading to underdiagnosis and under-reporting. I think the hon. Member for Eastleigh mentioned the recommendation of a national strategy including stronger enforcement, improved surveillance, mandatory training, and potentially the prohibition of high-silica engineered stone.

What action is needed? I ask the Minister for a co-ordinated, multi-pillar national strategy, which would include the consideration of a ban on high-silica engineered stone, strengthened enforcement of existing regulations, improved surveillance and mandatory reporting, national education initiatives, and long-term support and compensation pathways for affected workers. As the hon. Member for Eastleigh said, there is also a need for cross-party and cross-Government leadership on this issue.

In concluding, I associate myself with The i Paper “Killer Kitchens” campaign, led by journalist Joe Duggan, and I urge everyone to join that campaign. It is extremely important in highlighting the dangers of dry cutting quartz kitchen worktops. Minister, we cannot have people dying so that people can have nice worktops. I will conclude with that.

16:14

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) on securing this important debate. I also pay tribute to her for her consistent work on this issue in supporting her constituent, Caroline Hudson, whose brother-in-law, George Elliott, tragically died of silicosis, as we have heard.

I am very pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) in his place, as he invariably is for debates on health and safety matters, and to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), too.

I am the Minister responsible for health and safety in the workplace and for the Health and Safety Executive, or HSE. There has rightly been a lot of interest and correspondence lately about the increased dangers of silicosis resulting from engineered stone, the concerns that have been raised in this debate. Workers—often quite young people, as we have heard—who have worked with engineered stone have been made seriously ill or even, on occasion, lost their lives. I want to extend my deepest sympathy to all individuals and families affected.

We have been rightly informed that respirable crystalline silica—RCS—is a fine dust. It cannot normally be seen by the naked eye when airborne, but it does generally arise in visibly dusty processes. It is breathed in through the nose and mouth, can stay in the lungs for years and can cause irreversible lung damage before any symptoms become apparent. The illness it causes can continue to worsen after exposure stops. Breathing in RCS can lead to silicosis and the very serious harms we have heard about. It can also lead to other problems, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer, as the hon. Member for Eastleigh said.

Every worker should be able to return home safe from work without fear of succumbing to a preventable deadly lung disease. Silica dust risks have long been recognised but we now know that engineered stone can contain very high concentrations of crystalline silica, as we have been reminded. What is particularly alarming in the past couple of years is the emergence of accelerated silicosis, which is linked to the processing of engineered stone containing high levels of silica at a much higher throughput without effective exposure controls being in place.

As one might expect, engineered stone can be processed much more quickly than natural stone and that means that the volume of silica dust a worker can be exposed to is much greater. As a result, we have seen across the world rapid onset of illness after quite short exposure periods, with severe and irreversible lung damage occurring. As we have rightly been told in this debate, all of that is preventable where exposure to silica dust is controlled. We are determined that it should be prevented. It is well known, as we have been reminded, that Australia introduced a ban on engineered stone in July 2024, and California is now considering a similar approach.

It is worth noting, though, that the danger of silicosis arises from natural stone, not just engineered stone. Having introduced a ban on engineered stone in July 2024, Australia then introduced restrictions on the use of natural stone in September of that year. We are not currently proposing a ban in the UK, because we do not think that is the right approach. HSE is working closely here with the Worktop Fabricators Federation. That has developed, in conjunction with the British Occupational Health Society, for which I have a high regarded, a quality mark for worktops, to reassure consumers that they are buying a worktop that has been produced safely, not putting workers at risk. It has a logo and the wording

“strict silica safety standards applied”.

Being able to display that quality mark is dependent on the fabricator demonstrating to a registered occupational hygienist compliance with a 16-point list, including, for example, point number 3:

“The use of lower silica products (below 30%) wherever possible.”

Accredited products can now be bought from some retailers listed on the Worktop Fabricators Federation website.

As I said, we are going to keep this closely under review, though we are not currently proposing a ban on engineered stone in the UK. It would not solve the problem in workplaces that did not have adequate safeguards, because as I have said, problems can arise with natural stone. And the evidence is clear that workers can be protected from the dangers of engineered stone if the right control measures are in place. Those controls need to be in place now to make sure that exposure to harmful dust does not occur.

One difference with Australia is the concern there about the safety of people installing the worktops. That has not been raised with me as yet. The risk that we have identified here is to people in workshops cutting the materials ahead of installation. There is a serious problem there, but of course it is possible that the problem could arise in installation as well, and we will keep this closely under review.

A ban could lead to unintended consequences with alternative, less well-known materials introducing new risks. Last week, the Health and Safety Executive met Safe Work Australia—the body responsible—to discuss the impact of the ban there. It did an initial review and it identified potential concerns that the ban had led to complacency about the safety of other products that are not prohibited, suggesting that they were assumed to be safe to use without control measures when actually they are not. Control measures are needed for those products as well. But we are going to keep in touch with Safe Work Australia and keep the experience of the ban in Australia under review.

A lot of workers in Britain work with these materials every day. Workers and their employers need to understand that controls to prevent exposure are essential, not optional. For many decades, we have had in place a robust regulatory framework—the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, known as COSHH. That includes the need for control measures, substitution with less harmful materials, and health surveillance. There is also a workplace exposure limit of 0.1 mg per cubic metre for working with silica. That ceiling must not be exceeded, but those with duties are required to minimise exposure below that level. The HSE has published a range of practical guidance—some of it very recent—for those where risks are highest. That is focused on the need to control the dust at source. But the law and guidance are effective only when followed, and it is here that the HSE is now focusing its efforts.

Over the last two years, the HSE has been building the evidence base, working with suppliers and developing an effective response. I was pleased to see the hon. Member for Eastleigh welcome that activity recently.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Not just at the moment. I may be able to later.

Last month, the HSE launched a campaign specifically on this area of risk, with dedicated pages and resources on the HSE’s Work Right website. Media activity supported the launch; there was coverage in national publications and trade media, as well as the HSE appearing at the Natural Stone Show at the Excel centre in London.

Also last month, the HSE published new COSHH guidance for those working with engineered stone. Businesses now have unambiguous instructions on what the law requires for compliance to be achieved. The guidance sets out what is expected to protect workers: water suppression of dust and mist control, appropriate respiratory protective equipment and effective ventilation. Those are not optional extras; they are what is required to comply with the law. Dry cutting of engineered stone is not acceptable. It must not happen anywhere. When dry cutting happens, workers will be inhaling significant quantities of silica dust. Where it remains on their clothing, they are also potentially spreading that silica dust to others.

The HSE has also strengthened its guidance on health surveillance to make it clear that where there is a risk of exposure, employers must ensure that workers’ health is regularly monitored. That addresses the point that the hon. Member for Eastleigh correctly raised.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response. The dangers are significant for those who visit factories and quarry sites. The Minister outlined that there is a strict statutory need for protective clothing and respiratory mouth covers. Is that the true for people who visit these sites, so they are not affected by this as well?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Employers need to take care that visitors to their premises are protected. What is being done includes making sure that workers at risk are having respiratory health checks, lung function testing and X-rays at intervals decided by an occupational health professional, and that employers have clear processes for identifying and reporting symptoms. In this debate, the importance of carrying out reporting has rightly been identified. The HSE is currently consulting on expanding the requirements in the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations to include silicosis once again. The consultation on that is under way, and it will conclude at the end of the month. The hon. Member for Eastleigh was quite right to raise that issue.

For those who choose not to comply with the law, we need effective enforcement. Starting in April and throughout the summer, HSE will be carrying out more than 1,000 inspections across the industry. It will inspect every place that we know of where this stone is being cut— if anyone knows of a place that we may not be aware of, please let me know; I want to make sure that HSE can go and look at it. HSE has carried out 13 inspections since they started at the end of April. Those were visits to places that concern was expressed to us about. Out of the 13 inspections so far, two businesses had ceased trading, but six of the remaining 11 were made to stop processing immediately. Prohibition notices were served for dry processing, unguarded machinery or both. Eight businesses received improvement notices for failing to provide the correct respiratory equipment, while eight received them for failing to provide health surveillance for employees. Just one of the 13 was operating in an exemplary way.

Through the programme, HSE will inspect every site it can identify in the country that works with engineered stone. HSE’s inspectors are being briefed on the programme this week. The resources are available to do the job properly, and inspections are under way across the country. Wherever standards are not met, enforcement action will be taken, including a prohibition notice if necessary. As a result of the inspections, HSE may give a duty holder advice or, where there are more significant concerns, issue improvement or prohibition notices that require a duty holder to make improvements or stop dangerous activities altogether. The inspections are now under way, and we are determined to drive out the poor practice behind the problems we have heard about in this debate.

We remain committed to ensuring that every worker in every sector is properly protected from this entirely avoidable harm. I welcome the contributions of Members who spoke today. I commend the campaign of The i Paper on this issue and all those who are working to highlight this important and alarming development. I will continue to monitor the evidence available in this country and keep an eye on what is going on elsewhere in the world. I will be very happy to consider further measures if it becomes clear that they are needed.

Question put and agreed to.

Preparedness for National Emergencies

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker in the Chair]

16:30

[Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered preparedness for national emergencies.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker, and I am grateful to colleagues for coming to this important debate. As the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy has set out, the assumptions underpinning UK security are being challenged to an unprecedented degree in what it describes as

“an era of radical uncertainty”.

This is not a distant or theoretical challenge; it is happening now, and it is shaping the lives of our constituents already. We are rightly beginning to recognise that resilience at home—across our infrastructure, our communities and our economy—is vital. In opening this debate, I want to do four things: reflect on a recent example of where preparedness fell short; set out the changing nature of the threats we face; address the need for stronger co-ordination across Government; and reflect on the role of the public.

During Storm Éowyn in January 2025, thousands of homes across my constituency lost power, many for several days. That came during a period of cold weather, leaving people without heating, electricity and, in some cases, access to essential medical equipment. People did not know where to turn, but they were receiving inconsistent information and had very little clarity on when the situation would improve. What stood out to me was not a lack of commitment, as energy companies, emergency services, local authorities and community organisations worked tirelessly. What it showed was that when the system came under real strain, the weaknesses were clear. Preparedness cannot be about having plans on paper; it must be about whether those plans work when they are actually needed.

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

It was really useful to observe the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Resilience Forum test exercise to understand what could go wrong and how it would deal with it. Does my hon. Friend agree that local resilience forums are crucial to our preparedness in national emergencies, because they know what our local communities need?

[Graeme Downie]

I could not agree more. A lot of planning had gone into severe weather events in Fife over the years, but it had never been tested. A lot of it was out of date, and staff had moved on. For example, in High Valleyfield, a former coal-mining village, there was an almost 10-year-old resilience plan that said that the local community centre would be opened. The community knew about the plan, but the council had totally forgotten about it. They did not even know who had the keys for the community centre, so the community figured it out for themselves.

Broader lessons were also highlighted during that event, such as vulnerable customer data not being shared, confusion about support for care homes, a lack of generators, limited logistical capacity to deploy that provision, and access to temporary accommodation. Those are very practical failings, but they had very real consequences. The challenges we face now are broad and evolving—cyber-attacks, infrastructure sabotage, supply chain disruption, hybrid threats from hostile states, climate-related events and health and bio-security emergencies.

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

This weekend, in my Paisley and Renfrewshire North constituency, there were flight delays due to fuel shortages, which were no doubt caused by events in the middle east. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is precisely the type of event we should be mitigating against, before it becomes a national emergency?

[Graeme Downie]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct: we need to ensure that we are preparing for all these eventualities, regardless of what causes them—I believe that individual case was caused by one driver shortage. The need to plan and have contingencies in place is vital.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Last year was monumental in terms of the number of events suffered in the UK and internationally; think about the economic damage to Jaguar Land Rover and Marks & Spencer, and there were power outages across Spain and Portugal for 10 hours. There is a real need for wider resilience. Certain other countries have made further progress on the issue, ensuring that each individual has, say, a “go bag” that will give them seven days’ provisions to ensure that they survive any natural catastrophe or other such event.

[Graeme Downie]

I am about to go on to that point; I will mention the need for resilience to be across Departments and involve the public.

The impact of these events is often not immediately dramatic but gradual, cumulative and enduring. One crisis flows into another, as I am sure Ministers feel every day. We must think of preparedness as being not just for an event but for a different type of world altogether. In that context, I refer to article 3 of the North Atlantic treaty, which is often overlooked but is highly relevant. It puts a duty on nations to maintain and develop their capacity to resist attack through continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid. Article 3 refers to an armed attack, but I believe that in the unstable world we live in we should read that in the broadest possible terms. Attacks no longer happen instantaneously, as they did when NATO was created, and neither do they come just from other states.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is being typically generous in taking interventions. Last week, the director of GCHQ spoke about Russian hybrid warfare against the UK and how pervasive it consistently is. That is understood by defence experts, but is perhaps not well enough understood by the general public. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a duty on Government to educate people about the scale of Russian hybrid warfare against the UK, so that we are properly prepared?

[Graeme Downie]

I absolutely agree; that is a point I will come to later. We must engage with the public if we want their permission to plan for resilience.

Article 3 tells us that preparedness must be constant and not confined to defence Departments. It must be collective, but it requires active participation across the system. I would be grateful if the Minister picked up on how resilience is being embedded across Departments in the areas of threat highlighted by the national security strategy.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue forward; I spoke to him beforehand. Does he agree that if groups tasked with preparedness training, such as the building resilience in communities project in Northern Ireland, are to be effective, they must be well funded? The work carried out with local groups to build grassroots disaster resilience can bring about results only if there is the scope to invest in reaching out and if groups are not hampered by tiny budgets. This is not just about England but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland collectively.

[Graeme Downie]

As ever, I agree with the hon. Gentleman—I always agree with his interventions, particularly when they are made so well. There is a need to make sure that we break outside of the M25, frankly, when we talk about resilience. We also need to look seriously at the resilience of our critical national infrastructure. What is striking about many of the risks we now face is that they do not require a full-scale conflict. They can arise from hybrid threats, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) mentioned: those are much below the threshold of war but are capable of causing real and widespread disruption.

In a recent discussion with senior officials about the threat of Chinese-manufactured cellular internet of things modules, in my role as chair of the Coalition on Secure Technology, it was suggested to me that because the threat from such modules was theoretical—even though it was acknowledged that it was clearly feasible and would have a significant impact—there might be no need to prepare for it. Most risks are theoretical until they are very real, and the public then wonder why we were not prepared. I ask the Minister to specifically say what conversations he is having about the threat of cellular modules to the UK. Which Departments have been involved in those discussions?

I move on to our energy system—a key and particularly sensitive part of our infrastructure. We have seen how Vladimir Putin has used energy as a weapon against ordinary Ukrainian people, and he would be more than willing to do the same to British people as well. Without reliable energy, hospitals cannot function, communication systems begin to fail and supply chains break down. The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, which I am a member of, will hold an evidence session on this very topic tomorrow. I have raised the issue with Defence Ministers before, but I believe that there are areas where we lack clarity on the legal position when it comes to hybrid attacks on our offshore infrastructure. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on what role the Cabinet Office can play in resolving that, as there seems to be an unclear boundary between the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Ministry of Defence in particular.

I turn to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford about the importance of the devolved Administrations. Emergencies are experienced locally, as I highlighted at the beginning—they are managed locally, and resilience must be built locally. Too often, the UK’s national security infrastructure can feel as though it is concentrated within the M25 and shaped in central Government rather than fully embedded across all parts of the United Kingdom. I do not believe that that is intended, but it does create a risk: if preparedness is genuinely to be a whole-of-society effort, it must extend beyond Whitehall.

In those areas, security, advice and expertise do not always flow consistently to devolved Administrations and local partners. At the same time, those Administrations do not deal with national security issues with the same regularity as central Government. That creates a potential blind spot—due not to a lack of commitment, but the structure of the system. It is exactly the kind of gap that hostile actors could seek to exploit. I hope the Minister will address what more can be done to ensure that security advice and capability are fully embedded across the devolved Administrations and local authorities, and how we can ensure resilience is genuinely UK-wide, rather than only inside central Government.

Finally, I turn to a topic that is becoming a bit of a hobby horse of mine: the requirement to trust the public when we are developing our national security and resilience. Preparedness cannot be delivered by the Government alone; it must involve the public.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. He has mentioned the M25 a few times; people may not expect South Hampstead to suffer from frequent surface water flooding. I have been contacted by two groups, the Hillsiders and the Hampstead and Highgate Climate and Nature Group, who would like to talk about strengthening education, especially about climate change in the national curriculum. There is limited information in the national curriculum when it comes to climate change and the climate emergency. Does my hon. Friend agree that strengthening education for children and young people would help in the long run when it comes to tackling national emergencies?

[Graeme Downie]

I absolutely agree. We need to make sure that we are preparing clear information about the risks that we face, what a climate emergency means in reality, and how communities can help respond to that fully and effectively.

We also need to make sure that we are providing practical guidance for individuals and communities, as well as a shared understanding of what resilience is.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

Often when we are talking about building confidence among the public, we tend to think about it at the moment of crisis, rather than making sure that we explain the causes of the crisis that we need to prepare for. Particularly in the context of the energy crisis that we are living through, it is more important than ever that we emphasise that those global drivers could end up having consequences for our own communities. We need to be working to prevent them collectively, collaboratively and at an international level in order to be part of our national security and resilience.

[Graeme Downie]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We have discussed that issue many times, both in the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee and outside. The need for collective action is required and we must make sure the public are a key part of that. They must understand why certain crises are happening. Sometimes they are outwith Government control; we are affected by what happens in the world and we must make sure that we are bringing them along in that conversation.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Nowhere is it more apparent what happens when a community is not prepared than in South Devon. We have a major A road that washed into the sea in February and we now have communities that are completely severed: bus services are not running, school buses are not running, and people cannot get to healthcare appointments or to their jobs. It is a complete nightmare.

The community knew that that might happen at some point, but for many years the local authority refused to address the issue and do the preparation required to make sure that the inland road network was sufficient to compensate for the main road that has now washed into the sea. It is an absolute disaster. If we had been better prepared, our communities would not be in the situation they now find themselves in.

[Graeme Downie]

I am sorry to hear that the hon. Lady’s constituents are having that issue; that is terrible. Again, it is why we must make sure that we are preparing for all different types of resilience. That must be at the forefront of the minds of the public and different levels of Government when we consider the different challenges that we face, whether internal or external and whether beyond our control or very much within our control, as it sounds that example was.

The national security strategy tells us that the assumptions underpinning UK security are being challenged to an unprecedented degree. We must not hide from the public the scale or nature of the threats that we face. We must trust people with information that we might previously have chosen to withhold and we should worry less about causing alarm and more about appearing to hide the truth. If the public do not feel and understand that, they will not support and force us to carry out the investment and actions required to address the challenges. Any Government who have not undertaken that work with the public at its heart will have very large political price to pay.

I have not even had time in this speech to touch on the threat to the public and the need to prepare for ongoing misinformation. If we lose trust with the public, resilience will be weakened.

Preparedness for national emergencies is not a single policy or programme; it is a system—more than that, it is a mindset. When the next crisis comes, and it will, the question will not be whether plans existed on paper. It will be whether, on the ground, the Government did enough to prepare and make sure that our communities were ready.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

Order. After the next speaker, I will have to impose a two-minute speaking limit. I call Dr Ben Spencer.

16:45

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this important debate. Given the number of hon. Members here, we could have had a three-hour debate on his wide-ranging speech. I will be brief so colleagues can get in.

In Runnymede and Weybridge, we have flooding incidents almost every year. Thankfully, they are often not huge, but sometimes they very much are. The local resilience forum exists to deal with the really big emergencies, but we often have what I call sub-acute flooding events—where there is enough flooding to cause risk to properties and people, but not enough to trigger an LRF major response.

The problem for people facing flooding incidents is that Floodline operates as a telephone directory. The roads are dealt with by the county council. The Environment Agency deals with the direct response. The fire service deals with emergency rescue. The local authorities, Runnymede borough council or Elmbridge borough council, deal with different responses. We have Affinity Water, which is for direct freshwater coming to people’s homes, and we have Thames Water, which deals with the drainage. Each is responsible for a different bit. We have the county council, which leads on overall flood preparedness. It is too disjointed.

What we need locally, and also nationally, are flood control centres that can bring all these different organisations together to co-ordinate a flood response. A few years ago, during the last big flood that we had while I have been an MP, my team and I ended up dealing with a lot of the flood response and communicating directly with people. I am very happy to do that, but we need a flood control centre to be able to do so. I think that would help our national resilience.

MPs, broadly speaking, have a role in being embedded in our communities. We usually know what is happening at all different levels and we have key contacts on the ground. On that basis, for the local resilience response, does the Minister agree that MPs should have direct access to local resilience forum chairs, both before and during an emergency event?

16:48

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for securing this important debate, with so many MPs and such a short amount of time for such a big topic.

As the former shadow Paymaster General, I spent two years working on national resilience policy, and I am pleased to see many of those policies emerging in Bills in our programme of government today. I am proud to have secured the 2024 manifesto commitment to strengthen preparedness across central Government, local authorities, emergency services and local resilience forums.

I speak today as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the environment. Our APPG is currently conducting an inquiry into national resilience and adaptation. We welcome written responses from any organisations or individuals listening to this debate, including any Members here today.

Across two critical evidence sessions, we have covered housing, infrastructure, nature and food systems. We have learned from vital stakeholders including the National Farmers Union, Zurich Insurance, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the UK Green Building Council, the Woodland Trust and Kew Gardens.

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

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Fleur Anderson]

No, I only have two minutes; I am afraid I will not be able to give way.

The message from stakeholders has been unequivocal. The UK is fundamentally unprepared for the scale of the climate risks that we face. These risks cascade across systems. Extreme heat killed nearly 3,000 people in 2022, but by 2050, deaths could reach 10,000 people annually. Flooding costs us £2.4 billion every year. Crucially, 60% of England’s most productive farming land is at high flood risk. As the Climate Change Committee’s recent report, “A Well-Adapted UK”, warned, nature must be treated as vital infrastructure.

To match the urgency, we must adopt some critical interventions. I first want to ask the Minister whether the lessons from the covid inquiry will be learned and shared. It was an enormous achievement to get that inquiry—there was an enormous amount of evidence—but it really showed that Ministers must not take their eye off the ball, as the previous Government did with Brexit and their lack of preparation for covid. We must learn the lessons, and they must be shared with us now.

We need stronger flood mitigation planning, and enforcement by local councils. We must embed strict resilience standards, including, among many other things, planting trees, which is a key action. We must act now before the risks become unmanageable crises.

16:50

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this important debate.

Before summer has even begun properly, an amber wildfire alert has been issued in West Dorset. Since 2021, there have been 397 wildfire incidents meeting national wildfire criteria, requiring more than 2,100 appliance mobilisations. Last year’s fires on Holt Heath and Newton Heath required 164 and 134 appliances respectively over multiple days. Yet at precisely the moment when demands on our fire services to respond to emergencies are increasing, Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service faces huge financial pressures. It has already lost about one fifth of its workforce since 2010, and £15 million of savings have been required. It now faces ongoing budget deficits and declining central Government support; the central Government funding deficit will rise from £1.2 million to £1.7 million by 2029.

As a result, proposals have been brought forward to close eight on-call fire stations, including Charmouth and Maiden Newton in my constituency, which would mean the loss of 72 firefighters and the closure of 16% of fire stations across the area. If we are serious about our preparedness for emergencies, we must reform the fire funding formula, provide greater flexibility over local funding arrangements, and ensure that rural services remain sustainable.

16:52

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. Agility and long-term planning are two essential cornerstones of our preparedness for national emergencies. There are two types of national emergency where we must instil those traits: climate and nature, and artificial intelligence and data centres.

The UK’s food system, economy, water security, flood protection and public health all depend on functioning ecosystems, yet the Joint Intelligence Committee has warned that every critical ecosystem that the UK depends upon is on a pathway to collapse, posing huge risks to our security, prosperity and way of life. Restoring nature is vital to avoid national emergencies.

A functioning, healthy ecosystem reduces flood risk; protects our homes, hospitals and transport systems from overheating; sustains soil so that we can grow food; and cleans the very air that we breathe. By legislating for a strategic nature network and recognising it as national infrastructure, we can restore, connect and maintain a system of key functional ecosystems that strengthen our national security, protect communities and build resilience across the UK.

Furthermore, in terms of the preparedness of our infrastructure for national emergencies, Britain is not truly sovereign as long as we are helpless to act in an AI emergency in our country. Data centres are now part of our critical national infrastructure, but the UK does not have the sovereign capability to pull the plug in the case of a dangerous AI cyber-attack or the takeover of Britain’s data centres.

My amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill would change that. This kill switch would be a last resort, allowing the Government to pull the plug when things go wrong or where there is sufficient evidence that things will go wrong. It would cover two threats: AI-driven cyber-attacks and the development of superintelligent AI that is utilising UK data centres. Most of the public would be surprised to find that kill switch powers do not already exist: there is no big red button to shut down a data centre that poses a risk to people, the economy or our national infrastructure. Kill switch powers are an essential first step in preparedness, and Parliament should seize this opportunity to truly prepare for such a national crisis.

16:54

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. One of the greatest threats to public safety is climate breakdown, with the increasing frequency and severity of extreme heat, flooding, food and water scarcity, critical infrastructure failures, and risks to public health and safety. Climate resilience must be embedded at the heart of national emergency planning, yet the Climate Change Committee’s key message in its latest advice is that the UK is woefully ill-prepared for the catastrophic impacts to come. The CCC makes it clear that affordable, practical solutions are available and that the cost of inaction will far exceed the investment required to prepare.

Those dangers are not distant: more than 1,500 deaths have been recorded on average each year from extreme heat in recent years, and this could rise to 10,000 a year by 2050. By 2050, one in four properties could be at risk of flooding. The Joint Intelligence Committee report in January made it clear that ecosystem collapse and biodiversity loss make our food system extremely vulnerable.

The Government and Members of most parties in this Parliament rightly have a strong focus on carbon reduction and climate mitigation, but we must increase our collective focus, and the Government’s focus, on climate adaptation and resilience. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) said, we currently see far too little co-ordinated action across Government.

There must be cross-Government approach, which is why I argue that we need a Cabinet Office Minister responsible for climate resilience across Government: preparing the NHS for new public health challenges; investing in flood protection; developing a comprehensive extreme heat strategy and a national drought plan; strengthening transport, water and energy infrastructure; and supporting a farmer-led transition to climate-resilient food production. Climate breakdown is not simply an environmental issue; it is a matter of national security, public health and emergency preparedness. I ask the Minister: will we prepare now, or pay a greater price later?

16:56

[Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this debate.

Before I was elected to this House, I served as a humanitarian aid worker and spent time in a number of war zones, so I know the importance of preparedness for emergencies and for scenarios that one hopes will never happen. In a country like ours, the role of the state is crucial in this. As my hon. Friend set out, foreign aggressors threaten our country, along with a whole range of new and emerging threats.

My hon. Friend also spoke about Storm Éowyn, and we know that, as the rate of climate change increases, the effect of such storms will be exacerbated. When Storm Éowyn hit my constituency, more than 15,000 people across Fife lost power in freezing conditions, and it brought to light flaws in the preparedness for the storm at many different levels, including failures in the priority services register. People’s phone batteries ran out and they had no signal or way of contacting anyone. There were also failures in how the Scottish Government and local authorities planned to get resources to vulnerable communities, including those in areas served by independent distribution network operators, such as Fordell Gardens in my constituency, which was completely left out. It took me more than a year of follow-up to get any kind of action on that issue.

We need more joined-up thinking to prepare for such events in future, but we must also be prepared for the international threats that we face. I have to say that we lag behind our European allies in this kind of national preparedness. Our peers such as Sweden and Finland are much further ahead than we are, because of the threats that they have faced historically from Russia. We have the new strategic defence review and the resilience action plan, but we must speed up that work so they are not just frameworks on a shelf but the culture of our country, where individuals, communities and agencies work together to prepare for the threats that we may face in future.

16:59

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. Across the river, we can all see the covid memorial wall with a quarter of a million red hearts—a quarter of a million of our people lost. Few families were unaffected. My son is an accident and emergency doctor, and he was then working at a London hospital. His accounts of A&E were terrifying, and my wife felt that we had sent our son to war. There was inadequate protection for staff, with masks that did not fit and plastic aprons. PPE—personal protective equipment—was an acronym we had never heard before. Our hospitals simply did not have enough ventilators or intensive care facilities, and were forced to triage those who could be salvaged and those who could not.

This must not happen again. We must be prepared, for who knows when there will be another pandemic. Let us learn the lessons and never forget those whom we have lost. Still today, there are healthcare workers with long covid and post-traumatic stress disorder. I think especially of our very young doctors and nurses, who were suddenly exposed to death and loss on levels quite unprecedented in our NHS. We must look after them.

We must invest in pandemic research and preparedness. Public health is national health, and we must invest in it. Jenner first discovered vaccination in 1796 when he took pus from a cowpox lesion on a local milkmaid called Sarah Nelms and inoculated his gardener’s son, an eight-year-old lad called James Phipps—the first person ever to be vaccinated. Our country has a strong record of medical research, and we are all proud of it. Our scientists developed a covid vaccine that saved countless lives. Let me use this moment to make a further plea to do all we can in this House to support basic and applied medical research, for it is upon such scientific advances that we will all rely.

17:00

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for bringing us this important debate.

In remote villages and communities such as mine, severe weather can often lead to prolonged power outages. Following Storm Arwen last year, one village in my Carlisle constituency was without electricity for five days. Data analysis found that the storm triggered a rapid, severe and sustained decline in mobile performance across all operators on a scale not seen before. Historically, when electricity networks were hit by power cuts, people could still rely on the old copper wire telephone network to remain in service. However, with the full retirement of the public switched telephone network scheduled for January next year, our communications infrastructure will become increasingly dependent on digital fixed lines and mobile networks, both of which require power.

That raises an important question about resilience. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which a prolonged power outage leads not only to the loss of electricity but to a telecommunications blackout. Mobile masts are currently required to have only one hour of back-up power, which is nowhere near sufficient when there is a real possibility of a multi-day outage. I recognise that mandating longer power back-up on every single mast would be disproportionate. A more proportionate response would be to require mobile network operators to maintain a fleet of mobile electricity generators that could be towed to mast sites to restore power while the electricity network is repaired. With extreme weather events becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms, I believe that the UK’s preparedness for national weather-related emergencies requires the Government and Ofcom to look again at the adequacy of the current regulatory requirements for power back-up to mobile masts.

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

After the next speaker, I will have to reduce the time limit to one minute. I am really sorry; this is obviously a very popular debate. I will call the Lib Dem spokesperson at around 5.10 pm.

17:00

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. Emergency preparedness in east Kent is essential because the area contains major strategic entry points to the UK, including the port of Dover and the channel tunnel. Those vital gateways for trade and travel handle a significant proportion of the nation’s freight and passenger movement. However, their importance also makes them particularly vulnerable to disruption, whether through accidents, severe weather, security incidents or operational pressures.

The consequences of such disruption can extend far beyond the region, affecting national supply chains, businesses and the movement of essential goods. We saw a clear example of that over the recent bank holiday weekend when travellers experienced delays of around four hours at border checks, highlighting what can happen to these systems when they are under severe pressure. In that context, effective preparedness, co-ordination and communication are critical.

Another key element of resilience in the region is the international rail service between mainland Europe and London, which passes through my constituency. Members will be aware that I have previously raised the economic and strategic importance of restoring international services to Ashford International, for which I will continue to campaign. Although trains do not currently stop at the station, it nevertheless plays a crucial contingency role. In the event of an emergency on the line between London and the channel tunnel, Ashford International remains a designated location where passengers can safely disembark. Despite the absence of stopping services for over six years, Eurostar has until now maintained a contract to keep the facilities at Ashford available for emergency use. Importantly, the infrastructure remains fully operational, with international platforms, security arrangements and access routes enabling emergency services to reach trains quickly and passengers to be evacuated safely when necessary. However, that contract is due to expire later this year. I know the Minister may not be able to give much detail, but I hope he will take that matter up with his colleagues in the Department.

17:04

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this debate. I want to put a proposal to the Minister for a national resilience strategy to sit alongside our national industrial strategy, not in competition with it but in parallel as a strategic, essential partner. That new national resilience strategy should look at the key elements that our communities and nation cannot afford to function without: first, food, water and waste; secondly, health emergency services; thirdly, construction, housing, transport and logistics; fourthly, energy production and transmission; then, education and local resilience networks; finally, defence and military technology. Each pillar of that strategy should have an individual programme to make sure that we are able to grow those industries and act individually without being reliant on imports. For food, we are reliant on imports of fertiliser, for instance. Making sure that we can adopt the strategy used for the renationalisation of British Steel in our critical industries will be hugely important for national resilience.

17:05

[Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I must declare an interest as a registered pharmacist. Before my election as an MP I worked in community pharmacy for nearly two decades and, crucially, worked on the frontline through the covid-19 pandemic. Like so many frontline healthcare workers, in my constituency of North Somerset and up and down the country, I went to work every day during lockdown as a key worker to serve members of my community, helping patients to maintain continued access to essential medicines and medical advice.

Any pharmacist will tell you that that was not an easy time for our profession. We were not prepared. We were scared that we could bring covid to our own families and we desperately tried to do our best by our patients even when we had little advice to go on. I will not list a litany of failures, as the detailed covid inquiry did, but I will say clearly that under the previous Government our healthcare system was stretched thin. In a national crisis the public and frontline workers need to trust the Government, yet pharmacies were told that they did not even need PPE.

Resilience must be built into future plans. True neighbourhood health means ensuring that we have systems, processes and governance ready before the next crisis hits.

17:07

[Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)]

We currently have a maternity inquiry addressing the fact that two thirds of maternity units are deemed unsafe in normal times, yet one of the clearest lessons from the covid-19 pandemic is how easily mothers and pregnant women can be overlooked even more when decisions are made at pace. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on babies (pregnancy to age 2), I am aware of how often babies and their parents are left out of policymaking, yet they absorb so much of the impact of keeping going in a crisis.

Analysis of meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies during the covid-19 crisis showed that gender was largely absent from key discussions. Helen MacNamara, a senior official at the time, later acknowledged that the lack of a female perspective

“led to significant negative consequences”.

She particularly highlighted the failure to properly consider childcare, domestic abuse victims, and pregnant women. The result was that many women faced pregnancy, birth and the post-natal period alone. That will have impacts for generations.

If we are truly to be prepared for future national emergencies we must ensure that parents, babies and pregnant women are built into planning from the outset, rather than being treated as an afterthought.

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

I call Perran Moon.

17:08

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Meur ras, Mrs Barker. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship.

On 8 January Cornwall was smashed by one of the most powerful storms in decades. Storm Goretti delivered 100 mph winds, thousands of trees were torn from their roots, roofs were ripped off and communications infrastructure was flattened. Despite warnings that storms of this nature will become increasingly frequent, resilience systems proved wholly inadequate. The local resilience forum is not even based in Cornwall but 110 miles away in Exeter, which led to a woeful response at critical moments.

Five months on, where is the review of Cornwall’s digital connectivity? What is the assessment of Cornwall’s critical infrastructure? When will the Government commit to an overhaul of the 40-year-old Bellwin formula? What assessment has been made of the use of satellite technology in remote areas? I cannot help thinking that if the storm had hit Surrey, London or Manchester, those questions would have been answered and solutions put in place, but for us in Cornwall—the home of the critical minerals industry—it feels once again like we are second-class citizens. I have to say that if the Minister thinks Cornish MPs can be ignored or placated, he is wrong.

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

After the next speaker, I will call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

17:09

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I want to focus on two areas of national resilience. The first is hospital capacity. The covid inquiry highlighted the lack of surge capacity within the NHS, and NATO recognises the lack of medical capacity as a critical vulnerability. The UK has an opportunity to address both challenges together through better integration of civilian and military capabilities.

The second area is supply chains for essential medicines. China now controls about 85% to 90% of global production of the antibiotic precursor 6-aminopenicillanic acid or 6APA, on which many common antibiotics depend. There is only one remaining producer of it across Europe and within the NATO area. That is a strategic dependency that should concern us all. Indeed, it especially matters because of the NATO article 3 commitment to national resilience, which is becoming increasingly important. We are targeting the 1.5% spending on the resilience component, so resilience is far more than defence.

17:10

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this debate. It has been extremely fruitful and I hope that the Minister will be able to answer all the questions that have been asked.

In preparing for the debate, I reflected on Raymond Briggs’s book, “When The Wind Blows”. It is shocking to think that it was published 44 years ago. It is a very useful reflection on how the state failed to prepare the UK for nuclear war and on how we were equally unprepared. I also reflected some of the challenges that we face. Although the number of challenges we face now may have increased, the players out there—Russia, Iran, China or North Korea—are the same.

I will touch on three key areas today. First, there is false information or fake news. I visited Moldova earlier this year, and people there were really alive to it, because Ukraine is acting as their shield. Russia is engaging in lots of nefarious activities in that part of the world and the Moldovan population is used to dealing with false information.

Secondly, I was delighted to support an event at Torquay Library last week, where a librarian called Hazel was helping youngsters to understand which sources of news can be trusted and which cannot. I would like the Minister to reflect on how that approach could be built into our curriculum, because the sooner we make young people, and their parents and grandparents, alive to the importance of such an approach, the better.

Another area of significant challenge is cyber-security. There are real challenges, whether they involve Jaguar Land Rover or people’s personal finances, and the consequences can be devastating. We know that the number of threats to national infrastructure has doubled over the last year, mostly from hostile players elsewhere in the world. Minister, we should develop a sovereign digital approach to such threats, so that we can protect our own infrastructure without having to outsource it to a third party.

17:13

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker, for this vital debate on our nation’s preparedness for national emergencies.

We live in an era defined by profound and accelerating global volatility. The primary duty of any state is the protection of its citizens: we must ensure that the United Kingdom is as properly prepared to meet the threats of an unstable world as it is to respond to a domestic crisis.

Our adversaries are becoming bolder. We have seen hostile state action inching closer to our shores, with alarming incidents such as Russian-flagged vessels anchoring mere miles off the UK coast and directly above the critical transatlantic telecommunication cables that underpin our digital economy.

When the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster introduced the UK Government’s resilience action plan last year, he promised that it would assess the UK’s resilience, enable a whole of society approach and significantly improve public sector resilience. Almost a year later, however, what we find is a framework characterised by high-level bureaucratic ambition that is fatally undermined by deep structural fragility, broken promises and ministerial inaction.

I must start with the foundational prerequisite for national resilience—the economy. I understand why the Government want to talk about resilience planning, but they ignore the elephant in the room: a collapsing economy locked in a doom loop of high spend, high debt and high taxes. True national resilience requires immense fiscal headroom and economic stability. A Government who are actively hollowing out that macroeconomic foundation are inherently making Britain more vulnerable and far less equipped to absorb and recover from future crises.

Turning to the machinery of central Government, the Amber Book, updated in April 2025, rightly makes explicit the leadership role of the Cabinet Office in the cross-Government response to national emergencies, yet its operational execution relies entirely on seamless co-ordination with lead Government Departments. Nearly a year ago, the Government explicitly committed to publishing refreshed lead Government Department expectations to clarify the exact role of the Cabinet Office and other Departments in planning and responding to crises. Ministers promised that we would have those by spring 2026. It is now approaching the middle of the year, but there is seemingly no sign of those vital expectations.

Why does that administrative failure matter? Take the grave case of a national power outage. The resilience action plan claims that the Cabinet Office would provide oversight, but experts at the Royal United Services Institute have explicitly warned that the current fragmentation of responsibilities between the Cabinet Office, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and arms-length bodies like the National Energy System Operator risks creating profound confusion. They warned that this fragmentation will fundamentally slow down central Government’s response during an acute crisis. Ministers must urgently rectify this failure and explain to the House why they have failed to publish those expectations on schedule, leaving interdepartmental boundaries dangerously ambiguous.

This failure extends to the Government’s promises to the private sector. The resilience action plan includes a commitment to use the critical national infrastructure knowledge base to map out the various resilience standards to which businesses in those vital sectors are held. While Ministers have confirmed that the interactive map of vulnerabilities has been completed, they have not provided any timeline on their progress in mapping out those resilience standards.

Furthermore, businesses were promised a comprehensive package of support to help them to improve their own resilience. The Government committed to publishing further information on business impacts alongside the national risk register, including a dedicated business section on the Prepare website. Where are they? None of the commitments seems to have been fulfilled. If the Government expect the private sector to take a leading role in improving our preparedness, they must honour their commitments to support businesses in doing so.

At a local level, local resilience forums are the absolute frontline of our emergency response, yet the foundational wider guidance detailing the fundamental role of those forums in emergency response was last updated in 2013. That means that we are asking our local emergency planners to combat the complex, cascading threats of 2026 using a conceptual framework that was drawn up in what may as well have been a different world.

The previous Government launched the emergency alert system in March 2023 after almost two years of public testing. It was an important part of our preparedness for a national emergency, allowing Government and the emergency services to send a text alert to mobile phones in a situation where there is perceived to be an immediate risk to life. However, a ping on a mobile phone cannot be a substitute for robust national infrastructure, and strategic documents are meaningless if the core guidance for our frontline responders remains over a decade old. It is now time for the Government to move beyond issuing glossy action plans and start doing the hard foundational work of actually preparing this country for the realities of the modern threat landscape.

17:18

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr James Frith)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on his work in this area and on securing this important debate.

In the interest of time, I intend to go through my pre-prepared remarks, but I have noted the themes that have been covered. I hope that colleagues will forgive me if I breeze through the themes and pick up any shortfall in subsequent correspondence, either through me or the Cabinet Office. We have heard excellent contributions on the impacts of hot and cold weather; covid and the need to learn lessons from the discoveries in the inquiry; the role of the Cabinet Office; the role that MPs lead locally; and education, skills and the role of devolved learning. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) that specifics on Cornwall shall not be ignored or bought off, and I look forward to a conversation with him on this in due course.

The Government’s first responsibility is to keep the country safe. Domestic resilience is a fundamental element of our national security strategy. The resilience action plan, published in July 2025, sets out the Government’s strategic vision for a stronger and more resilient UK and the steps being taken to deliver that, including building domestic resilience and supporting the whole of our society to build its own resilience. The Government utilise a range of tools as part of emergency response, including the National Situation Centre, which was established in 2021 and provides situational awareness for crisis response and the emergency alerts system, which is an essential capability to inform and warn the public in emergencies.

We are living through a rapidly changing global risk landscape, driven by geopolitical instability and rapid technological change, where the threats facing the UK are numerous, complex and exist on many fronts. Those risks may be non-malicious, such as accidents or natural hazards, or they may be malicious threats from malign actors who seek to harm us. Against that set of risks, it is more important than ever to make resilience front and centre of the UK’s approach to national security. Without security and resilience at home, we cannot deliver economic growth, peace and prosperity or any of the other Government missions to improve everyday life in Britain.

[Ms Billington]

Where does the energy crisis we are currently in with the situation in the strait of Hormuz sit on the national risk register?

[Mr Frith]

I will get on to preparedness and the impact of global events, including in the middle east, but I will come back to my hon. Friend on specifics. Responsibility for the overarching resilience system is led by the COBR Directorate in the Cabinet Office. Colleagues are rightly asking about the role the Cabinet Office takes in this work. It leads work on cross-cutting and high-priority risks, and in scenarios with major impacts, it uses the COBR mechanism to manage the Government’s response to major crises or events.

The UK Government define resilience as the ability to anticipate, assess, prevent, mitigate, respond to and recover from shocks. The resilience landscape is extensive and encompasses natural hazards, deliberate attacks, geopolitical instability and so on. The foundation of the Government’s approach is the national security risk assessment, which identifies and assesses the most serious acute risks facing the UK over a two to five-year time horizon. Under the lead Government Department model, each NSRA risk is owned by a lead Government Department, ensuring that those with the most relevant expertise, relationships and levers are responsible for putting the necessary planning response and recovery arrangements in place for each risk area.

The Government are also taking steps to enhance our readiness for the highest impact, whole-of-system crises called catastrophic risks, including by explicitly embedding the leadership role of the Cabinet Office in our central crisis management doctrine, the Amber Book. Alongside that, the Government have an extensive programme of assurance to understand how prepared we are to assess risks, including through a dedicated red teaming capability in the Government Office for Science and independent expert panel reviews.

Together, this approach ensures that the Government collectively understand and are prepared for the risks the UK faces overall, which relies on a collaborative approach and a shared ownership across Government Departments. The Government are committed to working in partnership with both the devolved Governments and the local tier to effectively plan for and respond to risks wherever they occur.

The Cabinet Office leads for Government on the overall response to severe weather. That is, in effect, a co-ordinating role, as individual Departments lead for the response, planning and longer term resilience of the sectors they represent. A key component is the severe weather resilience network, which is chaired by the COBR Directorate and comprises representatives across Government Departments.

On the matter of heat, periods of high temperature and heat waves are not a new phenomenon, and their risk—in terms of both impact and likelihood—is well documented in planning advice from the Government. There are tried and tested arrangements in place to warn of impending extreme temperatures, to review preparedness and, if needed, to co-ordinate the Government’s response to the impacts that they may have.

On the devolved authorities, it is vital that the four nations across the UK work together to keep communities safe, so that we can ensure that we are most effectively using the different levers that each Government hold. On the matter of local resilience forums, it is also essential that we strengthen resilience at the local level, and the Government are committed to the stronger LRF trailblazers programme, which provides selected areas with the opportunity to test approaches and strengthen leadership. I encourage local MPs to engage with that leadership.

[Dr Spencer]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Frith]

I will not, as I want to make some progress, and I am afraid there is still a lot to cover.

On covid, several Members made excellent points about the need to recall, remember and learn from that damning period. One such example is the significant improvement made to our crisis response structures and capabilities in line with the recommendations made in the covid-19 module 1 inquiry. That included establishing the National Situation Centre in 2021 to improve the use of data in crisis response, creating a single Cabinet committee for resilience to ensure ministerial oversight.

On the issue of education and resilience, we must provide excellent training, and exercising is also essential to ensure that individual sectors can work together to prepare for, respond to and recover from crises. The Government have also established the UK resilience plan.

On the matter of AI, AI sovereignty is defined as the UK having resilient access to key AI capabilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) referred to the need to counter the increasing threats posed by AI that is housed and created away from these shores. Sovereign capability is vital, and the launch of the sovereign AI unit is vital as we transition towards that authority, as it will help the UK to win at strategically important parts of that value chain.

Civil society also plays an important role in the UK’s resilience, including the many voluntary, community and faith sector organisations that contribute to community-level resilience and emergency planning. The resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure is of central importance to ensuring that the essential services on which the public rely continue to operate. Given the fundamental and connected nature of those services, failure has the potential to cause cascading and catastrophic consequences. The resilience action plan’s all-hazards approach, combined with the priorities in the strategic defence review, the national security strategy and the 10-year infrastructure strategy, underpins the Government’s commitment to improving the security and resilience of CNI.

On smart devices and tech resilience, the Government take an actor-agnostic, risk-based approach to supply chain resilience. Instead of reacting to individual firms or components in isolation, we must focus on the structural choke points and systemic dependencies that create national-level vulnerability, regardless of where in the chain they are. While cellular modules present some specific cyber-threats, those can be mitigated in effectively the same way as any other cyber-risks. Therefore, existing work to strengthen our cyber-resilience will impact how vulnerable sectors and organisations are to threats via the cellular internet of things.

In conclusion, the Government continue to regularly engage the public and parliamentarians on risk and resilience through our annual statement to Parliament, which gives a strategic overview of the current risk picture. The next annual statement will be made in July this year, and it will provide detailed updates on progress made to deliver against the commitments over the last 12 months.

17:29

[Graeme Downie]

I thank everyone for participating in the debate this afternoon, in which we heard the different range of threats that the UK is undoubtedly facing. I urge the Minister to continue to work across Government wherever possible, particularly on the threats to energy infrastructure, subsea cables and other items that were brought up by Members. We must ensure that such work is co-ordinated through Government, and that the public are fully aware of the level of threat that we face. I thank the Minister for his response.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered preparedness for national emergencies.

17:30

Sitting adjourned.