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Higher Education Funding
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Abtisam Mohamed (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered higher education funding.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on students and for international students and a member of the all-party parliamentary university group, and representing a constituency with one of the largest concentrations of students, I know at first hand the enormous value of higher education and the growing challenges facing the sector. It is worth saying from the outset that I am applying for a separate Backbench Business debate specifically on students that will cover the cost of living, maintenance support and the wider student experience. Those are important issues in their own right, but today’s debate focuses on the foundations and long-term sustainability of higher education itself.
My constituency is home to two outstanding universities: the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. I have had the privilege of studying at both institutions and, like many people, I know personally the doors that higher education can open and the horizons it can broaden. We have a world-class higher education system whose institutions are often seen as a great equaliser, especially for working class communities. Walking into universities, we know right away why they are described as centres of innovation and industry. A good university acts as an anchor in our cities and is far more than just lecture halls and graduation ceremonies.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way and congratulate her on securing the debate. On providing opportunities, particularly for working-class communities, would she agree with me that in my area, the likes of regional colleges, both on the north coast and the north-west, offer excellent opportunities, particularly for people who feel disadvantaged and who possibly left school without any qualifications and are really caught in a bind? The colleges offer them a way out of the position they are in with prospects for the future and for jobs.
Abtisam Mohamed
I agree with the hon. Member. He makes an excellent point. I will come on to talking about disadvantaged students and the role that universities play.
Universities train the nurses and doctors who treat us. They train the teachers who educate our children, the engineers who build our infrastructure, and the researchers whose discoveries save lives. They support businesses, attract investment, create jobs and drive progress. In Sheffield we see that contribution every day. Sheffield Hallam University trains around 3,900 healthcare professionals and 2,800 teachers every year. In a single academic year, those healthcare students contributed more than 365,000 hours through NHS clinical placements.
Meanwhile, the University of Sheffield generates an estimated £4.82 billion for the UK economy and supports 138 start-ups and spin-outs. Its research activity contributes billions more in economic value. Although those figures are impressive, behind them lies a fracture point. There is a growing disconnect between what we ask our universities to deliver and the resources that are available. We want universities to drive growth to boost productivity, tackle regional inequality and undertake world-leading research. We want them to support the NHS, public services and local economies, yet the sector faces a financial crisis that threatens its very survival.
We have to recognise the failed funding experiments of the last 16 years and bring them to an end. I draw colleagues’ attention to the Education Committee’s comprehensive report from earlier this year, “Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students”, that identifies the real-terms cut in undergraduate tuition fees as a huge factor, though one of many, in financial instability. It is also widely recognised that the UK’s public education funding levels rank well below the OECD average of around 70%. Funding levels have fallen so far that funding direct to universities now makes up just £2 billion out of a total of £16 billion—the complete inverse of what it used to be. The majority of Government funding is spent on a bloated student loan system that is wildly out of control, while current repayment threshold freezes are punishing lower-earning graduates. Last year, the Office for Students forecast that up to 40% of higher education providers will be in deficit. Put simply, far too many institutions are being forced into a cycle of cuts just to temporarily balance the books.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will be aware of there being around 600 job cuts at the University of Nottingham. There have been alternative proposals from staff—120 in total—but the impact will be significant. What has been noticeable in my conversations with the university is the emphasis on commercial elements, whether that is covenants, 30 days’ access to cash or access to a revolving credit facility. Does she agree that that emphasis has gone too far? We have forgotten what the public benefit of universities is, and the Government and universities need to reflect on that.
Abtisam Mohamed
I agree with my hon. Friend; he makes an excellent point. Nottingham is seen as a university that needs support, and I think colleagues across the sector will look to see how Nottingham is supported alongside their own universities.
As I was saying, far too many institutions are being forced into a cycle of cuts just to temporarily balance the books. Over recent months, I have spoken to university leaders, staff, representatives of trade unions including the University and College Union, students and employers. While they all have very different perspectives, they all present a common diagnosis: the current funding model for higher education does not work. That raises a fundamental question: if we recognise universities as national assets, as our rhetoric often does, why have we systematically stripped back public funding and left them to shoulder so much of the financial burden themselves?
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for setting out the real challenges that our higher education institutions face. Does she agree that the difficult financial position universities are in is causing them to oversubscribe their courses, putting unsustainable pressures on their workforce, reducing the student experience and increasing financial instability as a result of that boom and bust?
Abtisam Mohamed
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Universities need to be supported, so that the financial burden is not purely left for them to deal with.
I now want to come on to international students. International students should be welcomed as an enrichment of our campuses and strengtheners of Britain’s international ties. International students’ fee income has become an essential pillar, propping up our universities, cross-subsidising home students’ education and supporting research that would otherwise be cut, but universities did not become dependent on international fee income by choice. They have increasingly relied on it because domestic teaching and research funding has failed to keep pace with the real costs of delivery.
I and many others remain concerned about using an international student levy to pay for maintenance grants. It is seen as little more than an additional tax on one of the UK’s most successful exports. At a time when global competition for talent is increasing, we should be asking how we can strengthen one of Britain’s greatest success stories, not how we can make it less attractive. A restructured maintenance support system for home students, separate from international fee income, would be a vastly more successful policy, and it is one that I will continue to support.
Fundamentally, any solution to the sector’s funding crisis and support for the most disadvantaged home students should not further destabilise university finances. That is especially important in a context where universities are already cutting staff, courses and research programmes. Data from Universities UK shows that nearly eight in 10 universities have pursued voluntary redundancies in the last three years, and the same amount have frozen recruitment. The UCU estimates that 30,000 jobs have been lost over the last three years. That is devastating, and we should be clear about what it means: it means rising workloads and pay erosion for remaining staff, and it means staff who support students every day losing their livelihoods.
In Sheffield Hallam University’s case, more than 1,200 posts have gone in just over two years. Having met staff representatives and UCU members, I know that these numbers are not abstract; they represent people who have mortgages to pay, families to support and bills to meet. I also hear from many talented academics who are moving from one short-term arrangement to another, with little certainty about their future. The consequences are felt by individuals and the community beyond the university gates, but there are also implications for the future of British research. A system increasingly characterised by insecurity will only drive talented people away.
If universities are one of the UK’s greatest assets, why are they not considered to be involved in our economic growth? Although we speak of growth, skills and Britain’s future competitiveness, we see growing financial fragility across the very institutions that help to realise those ambitions. We cannot continue to expect universities to do more with less. Chasing efficiencies erodes capacity, and once capacity is lost, rebuilding it is neither quick nor easy.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, what is the Government’s long-term vision for higher education? I want to know not simply how individual institutions will survive the next financial year, but how universities will fit into a national strategy for growth, skills, research and regional development.
Secondly, does the Minister recognise that the current funding model has become overly reliant on international student income, mainly because teaching and research funding no longer meets the real cost that universities face? If the Government continue with the international student levy, what impact will it have, and how will fluctuations in student recruitment affect university finances? Does the Minister recognise that the institutions are likely to pass on those costs through higher fees, potentially making the UK a less attractive destination in the international student market?
Thirdly, does the Minister believe that the current balance between public and private contributions to higher education funding is sustainable? The Government now contribute about 16p for every £1 spent on teaching. Does the Minister believe that that is a viable basis for the future funding of higher education? Will the Government examine how to move towards a fairer balance between the individual and state contributions in the long term in recognition of the enormous public benefit that universities provide?
Fourthly, how are the Government assessing the economic impact of university job losses? We cannot call universities regional anchors while simultaneously accepting the loss of thousands of highly skilled jobs across the sector.
Finally, where do universities sit within the Government’s growth mission? If they are engines of growth, they should be treated as such, and they need a funding framework that recognises the enormous contributions that they make to our economy, our public services and our communities.
I want young people in Sheffield to have the opportunities that education gave me. I want our universities to continue training the nurses, teachers, engineers and researchers that our country desperately needs, and I want Britain to remain a world leader in higher education and research. If we want our institutions to survive, we have to stop treating them as an afterthought.
Several hon. Members rose—
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Order. Could Members please remain standing so that the Clerk can make a note of how many wish to speak? Given the numbers, I will have to impose a hard time limit of four minutes.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
“Crisis” and “world beating” are overused terms, and both apply to UK higher education, which, after an over-reliance on international fee income during years of underfunding, feels ready to snap. Four in 10 of the best universities on Earth are in Britain. Imperial College London, whose White City campus is in my seat, is one. It attracts the brightest brains for groundbreaking postdoctoral research, and its Scale Space facility incubates start-ups, but Home Office restrictions on dependants, the cutting of the post-study work visa, indefinite leave to remain changes and the new basic compliance assessment, which has inexplicably resulted in record visa refusals, have threatened all that. In a competitive world, international students have other options, which we see them opting for.
I am also the MP for the University of West London. It is not top 10, but it is a local anchor institution. It is a big employer and a vital hub for under-represented communities. Both universities are concerned by the international student levy. The return of maintenance grants, which the proceeds will fund, is welcome, but the £925 fee that universities must pay per international student per year of study at a time of falling student numbers is unviable. Given how course fees vary, why not a percentage—6% was originally mooted? What is the logic behind the the first 250 students being free of the charge? Sadly, the University of Suffolk has for the first time gone below that number—an unwanted situation—thanks to that perverse disincentive. Could we not increase the number?
Why are only the subjects in the Government’s industrial strategy funded by the grants? They include computing, maths and pure science, but no arts or social sciences, which potentially leaves those subjects to elites. Creative sector education—including at UWL, the old Ealing School of Art, which specialised for 100 years in art and the humanities and which was where the Who formed and Freddie Mercury studied—risks being wiped out along with jobs, as the University and College Union fears, because such subjects do not fit financial forecasts.
Our universities are not simply dreaming spires and ivory towers. They are essential invisible exports offering soft power and regional capacity building, with growth in every postcode. The University of Westminster, the first polytechnic, was founded to enrich the working man; its Soho Poly venue was where Pink Floyd played their early gigs, and things still happen there. We must treasure our wide diversity of institutions, not just throw them to the wall.
The Office for Students estimates that 119 universities—43% of the sector—will be in deficit this academic year, with 24 in danger of bankruptcy. After mergers and departmental closures, the next step, as predicted in the Education Committee’s excellent report, is insolvency. The Oxbridges will go from up here to down here, but where will the Suffolks and the UWLs go? Down there? Will it take someone to go bust before the Government finally take notice?
When I taught in the sector, international students, who spend money locally, were seen as the golden goose to compensate for real-terms funding cuts, but our over-reliance is now exposed. The basic compliance assessment’s red, amber and green ratings have become existential. The Government cannot rely on past laurels, then cash-starve a sector, demand gullible international students with limitless pockets, prop it up with staff good will and magically expect growth. The elasticity of demand inevitably snaps.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
As always, Ms Vaz, it is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing the debate, setting the scene so well and enabling us to make a contribution on this incredibly important subject. It is a matter of grave concern for the future of our people, our youth and our economic prosperity in Northern Ireland. The Minister has no responsibility for Northern Ireland, but I always like to bring a Northern Ireland perspective to debates, because what is happening on the mainland is happening to us as well. We are debating the broader systematic challenges facing higher education funding across the United Kingdom, yet, as is so often the case, the view from Northern Ireland reveals a distinct and far more perilous landscape. It is good to see the Minister in her place; I look forward to asking her at least one question, which I hope she will be able to answer.
While universities in England and Wales adjust to tuition fee caps rising to £10,000, our local institutions remain strictly bound by the Department for the Economy. We deliberately keep undergraduate tuition fees lower, at £4,750, to ensure accessibility for our working-class communities. It is important to me as an MP and to our Assembly that we look after them and give opportunity for all. The Labour party wants opportunity for all, I have no doubt, and I wholeheartedly support the motivation of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central.
We need look no further than the devastating crisis that is currently unfolding at Ulster University, where some 735 members of staff—nearly 24% of the entire workforce—have applied for redundancy. The university is forcing through a planned reduction of jobs to plug a catastrophic £25 million deficit. Dedicated lecturers, researchers and support staff across Belfast, Coleraine and Magee are watching their livelihoods vanish. It is gutting our regional skills base, cutting away the fabric of Northern Ireland’s future and threatening the long-promised expansion of the Magee campus in Londonderry.
Mr Gregory Campbell
Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue of the Magee and Coleraine campuses needs to be addressed, particularly the maximum aggregate student number cap, which restricts the numbers that universities in Northern Ireland can take? We have to review that urgently.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend and colleague for bringing that issue forward and for backing up practically what he sees on the ground, as I do, from the Northern Ireland perspective. Any decision against the Magee campus in Londonderry means telling the local businesses crying out to fix the skills deficit that the talent will simply not be there. That worries me greatly.
The Provost of Ulster University warned just days ago that those consequences are not abstract, nor are they years away. They are happening at this very minute, as we sit here, and they are affecting student places and long-term investment. Once the intellectual capacity is lost to redundancy, it is incredibly difficult ever to build it back up. Our institutions create value far beyond their campus walls. These are difficult times, and when the Minister responds it is important that we hear of a strategy. Please will she discuss policy changes and strategy with the relevant Northern Ireland Assembly Minister to ensure that we can move forward towards a positive future, even though it looks incredibly black at the moment?
Unlike England, which boasts well over 100 higher education institutions, Northern Ireland has only two for our population: Queen’s University and Ulster University. In a region with only two distinct academic employers, the impending job losses at Ulster University represent not a standard corporate restructuring, but a catastrophic hollowing out of nearly half of Northern Ireland’s university network. Academics and researchers have practically nowhere else to turn locally. These cuts create an inevitable brain drain, forcing elite talent to flee across the water to Great Britain, while triggering course closures that push local students to follow them.
I will conclude, because I am conscious that others want to speak. When one of only two pillars of a higher education framework is forced to cut a quarter of its applicants through redundancy, the structural integrity of the entire region’s skilled economy faces immediate collapse. That is the serious issue we face in Northern Ireland, and that is why I seek the Minister’s help.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for the way in which she introduced the debate. Sheffield University was the first place I visited outside Scotland; I think the Red Deer pub, which is right next to the university, was the first English pub I ever went into.
Before I was elected to this place, I worked in the university sector for 20 years in Scotland. Our universities are among Scotland’s biggest assets. Across the sector, there is incredible innovation. Each year, our universities attract the very best staff and students from across the world. I always say that any country serious about its economy should be serious about its universities. It is great to see our Prime Minister putting universities at the heart of the triple helix model that he talks about so often. In a debate in Westminster Hall 18 months ago, I quoted the then president of NUS Scotland, who warned that Scotland’s education system was “crumbling”. At that time, I hoped our words would prompt the Scottish Government into action. Sadly, they did not, and Scotland’s sector has lurched from crisis to crisis.
Undergraduate university education in Scotland is free, but the sector is grossly underfunded. Broadly speaking, funding per undergraduate student in Scotland is well over £2,000 less per student compared with universities in England. That means less money for facilities and staff wages. I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a member of UCU and have an ongoing connection with Heriot-Watt University. Because of the huge stresses on the sector, there is industrial action at, I think, six universities in Scotland right now. Industrial action at one university might suggest a local issue, but when it is happening across the country it suggests that the Government need to step up and do something about it.
In my constituency, both Edinburgh Napier University and Heriot-Watt are internationally recognised institutions. They are home to dedicated staff, ambitious students and world-leading research, but both face serious challenges. In the past year, there has been talk of compulsory redundancies and course reductions. There are similar issues at Edinburgh University, which is outside my constituency, but quite a lot of staff and students are based in Edinburgh South West. This situation cannot continue. We need the Scottish Government to bring together universities, staff, students and trade unions to agree a way forward.
I want to talk briefly about immigration. During my time at Heriot-Watt, I worked alongside fantastic academics from around the world. Next door to my office, on one side I had Professor Adebayo Adeloye from Nigeria, and on the other I had Benny Suryanto, who came from Indonesia. Our students are lucky that these people choose to come to the UK. I felt lucky that students came from around the world to spend time in Edinburgh and enjoy its education and the opportunities that provides.
I am concerned that the Government are making it harder for both staff and students to come here. If we are serious about growing our economy, we have to recognise the benefits that universities provide, both nationally and locally in our towns and cities. It would be great to hear what is happening inside the Government to support universities and ensure that they can thrive. In Scotland, their funding is largely a matter for the Scottish Government, but I think the UK Government could do more to support the immigration status of students and staff.
Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate. Britain has a proud tradition of higher education. Our historic universities, our culture of learning and discovery and the world-class research carried out in this country have earned us a reputation that is recognised around the world. It is an asset that we must celebrate and that we must protect, because that tradition belongs to all of us.
Higher education is so much broader than a three-year degree. Higher technical qualifications, foundation degrees, degree apprenticeships and lifelong learning all have a vital role to play alongside academic study. I left school at 16 and built a career as a plumber and gas engineer through vocational training at Bolton college and, later, apprenticeships, including the Prince’s Trust’s brilliant enterprise programme. I raise this because too often the voices of working people, tradespeople and people who maybe did not get on with school or who just prefer steel-toe cap boots to suits are missing from the debates and decisions that shape higher education.
In the areas I represent, there is no shortage of ambition or of people willing to graft to make something of themselves, but far too many people struggle, through no fault of their own, to see a clear route into secure, well-paid work and a decent life. A strong and accessible higher education system should be part of that route. That system is clearly now at breaking point. Across the country, higher education institutions are facing a deepening financial crisis, driven by years of under-investment and a funding model that is no longer fit for purpose. Universities, specialist colleges and other higher education providers are grappling with a multibillion-pound funding gap, as tuition fee income and public funding have failed to keep pace with their rising costs.
Yesterday, more than 400 students graduated from UCEN Manchester. Many of them were the first in their family to enter higher education, while others were mature learners who had returned to education. Yet providers such as UCEN that specialise in widening participation are increasingly being asked to do more with less, with their funding being steadily eroded.
The consequences of that underfunding are already painfully clear: courses closing, experienced staff being forced out and departments having to make severe cuts just to make ends meet. At the same time, working conditions have worsened for all staff members, with growing workloads, stagnant pay and increasing job insecurity. In vocational education, things have got so bad that institutions cannot persuade people to leave industries like plastering to take up teaching the next generation, because the wages are far below what they are already earning. Students are facing exorbitant fees and the prospect of being burdened by decades of debt.
If we are serious about equal opportunity, we must recognise that higher education is a long-term investment in our people, in our communities and in our country. The inventions and discoveries made by higher education researchers, like the covid-19 vaccines or the development of famine-resistant crops, have the potential to benefit all of us. The Government face a choice in today’s Budget; they can continue papering over the cracks or they can finally make a long-term investment in Britain’s future.
The Green party’s position is clear. Higher education should be free, and students should be provided with adequate maintenance support funded through public investment, not private debt. A 1% tax on wealth above £10 million would raise around £15 billion a year—money that would more than cover the cost of scrapping tuition fees and would give our higher education institutions a vital injection of cash.
Higher education policy must focus on spreading opportunity and investment more fairly across the country in areas like Gorton, Denton, Abbey Hey, Burnage, Longsight and Levenshulme. People from those places have never, ever lacked talent or drive. We must stop wasting it, by properly funding higher education and finally recognising learning for the national asset it is.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this important debate.
Southampton is home to two excellent universities and yet in my constituency, only 7% of kids on free school meals will hold a degree by the time they are 22. Of those who do not receive free school meals in Itchen, just 19% will get there. If we go a few miles up the road to Winchester, however, that become 39%. We must make sure that higher education is not shut down as an option for young people. In my speech, I will focus on three points that are becoming worryingly clear about the funding system as it stands: it is not working for students, it is not working for universities, and—I fear—it is working only for the Treasury. I do not believe that is what this Labour Government are about.
First, on students, I was the first in my family lucky enough to go to university. I started in 2000 when fees were—wait for it—£1,025. My annual loan was about £3,500. We looked enviously on the generation before us, who did not pay fees and who received a grant to go to university. This generation is looking enviously on my generation, which is worrying. I went on to spend 20 years as university lecturer, so I saw every subsequent wave of student finance agreements. The Treasury Committee has concluded that we were essentially mis-selling some of the previous loan agreements on terms that no commercial lender would ever be allowed to offer.
Darren Paffey
My hon. Friend makes an absolutely salient point. Many of us never imagined that we would get to an even worse place, but here we are.
Only the top three earnings deciles of recent intakes will ever pay off their student loans in full. The nurse, the teacher or the engineer on £35,000 will pay 9% for decades and still never clear the balance. Dare I say it, but if it walks like a tax and quacks like a tax, let us call it a tax and treat it as one. If we properly sort it, it could well be a better deal than the current loan system.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very compelling speech. I wonder if he noticed the coverage in The Telegraph, which reported that graduates on the minimum wage will be making repayments on three out of the five student loan plans from next year onwards. Does he agree that this, in many ways, breaks our social contract with the student population, who were essentially told that they would earn a huge amount more and should therefore contribute to their higher education?
Darren Paffey
I agree that this is not the deal that I think our country wants to offer its young people, particularly if the Government are about breaking down barriers to opportunity.
Secondly, on universities, the Office for Students reported in May that more than a third of English higher education institutes were already in deficit last year, and that if recruitment simply flatlines, nearly six in 10 could be in deficit within five years. International student numbers, as hon. Members have stated, fell by around 45,000 last year, and student visa applications in the first months of this year were down by a third.
In May, the Education Committee, which I sit on, warned of the real threat of insolvency. Universities such as those in my constituency—the University of Southampton and Southampton Solent University—are anchors of our local economy, and that is reflected around the country. We cannot afford to let them fail. They are not immune to the job losses that are affecting other HEIs.
Thirdly, I turn to the taxpayer. The Government estimate that the state meets 35% to 40% of the cost of higher education. Others take a different view: the Institute for Fiscal Studies put the figure for the 2022 cohort at around 3%, with 97% of the cost met by students. Sir Philip Augar recommended a 50:50 split. Whichever number we look at or choose to believe, we are a long way from the balance that Parliament intended, and the bill is quietly being passed to young people.
That brings me to the international student levy. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely welcome the return of maintenance grants—for families on low incomes, they really matter—but a grant of up to £1,000 a year amounts to about £20 a week, and it is to be funded by a levy of £920 per international student from 2028. Last November, that was forecast to raise £445 million in its first year, but that forecast was made before visa applications fell by a third. I fear that a grant that depends on a shrinking tax base is a good intention built on sand. Before the levy legislation completes its passage, will the Minister commit to publishing an updated forecast of what it will raise based on today’s recruitment figures? Will she confirm that maintenance grants will be protected if they fall short?
Finally, the Government have said that the whole student finance system is under review, and I welcome that news enthusiastically. Will the Minister set out how and by when that review will report, and whether it will move us back towards a fair balance between the state and the individual? As hon. Members have very eloquently said, this is all about intergenerational justice. It is about whether 22-year-old me would look at university and say, “Yeah, I can risk that,” or whether I would now be more likely to say, “Nah, my family has never done that and I simply cannot afford it.” It is about growth and the 7% of kids in Itchen, and more across this country, who deserve better opportunities and better odds.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate.
As remarkable as it is to imagine, I also began university under Margaret Thatcher.
Perran Moon
Thanks, Jim.
The higher education funding settlement is currently failing both universities and young people in Cornwall. Institutions such as Falmouth University, based largely in my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency, are central to our local economy and our skills base, yet they are increasingly being asked to educate students at a loss. Delivering a full-time degree costs more than £12,000 a year, so even when the maximum tuition fee rises past £10,000 next year, it will still fall well short.
No sector can remain sustainable if growth depends on losses, and the funding gap is particularly acute for regional and specialist institutions. Universities, therefore, are forced to compete for short-term grants and rely on international student income to balance the books. But when that income falls, courses and jobs are at risk. We have seen that play out over the summer at the University of Exeter’s Tremough campus, also in my constituency, with voluntary redundancies and the closure of its geography course.
The system is not working for students either, especially those from lower-income backgrounds. In my constituency, less than 23% of 18-year-olds went to university in 2025, compared with 51% in London. That is not because young people in Cornwall lack talent or ambition; it is because in one of the poorest regions of northern Europe, the costs of pursuing a degree with the associated debt are too great to even consider. The barriers to higher education are simply too high. Even students who remain in Cornwall but rightly want to live on campus find that the rent for a single room consumes almost their entire maintenance loan before they have spent a penny on food, travel or other essentials.
The loan system does not make things any better. Those from wealthier families may avoid taking out a loan altogether, while low-income students have no such option. A low-income student on a three-year course could be left with a £67,000 debt the moment they graduate. The interest on the debt often accumulates faster than repayments, leaving poorer graduates paying a higher effective rate for their entire careers.
Higher education should expand opportunity and drive growth in places such as Cornwall. Instead, we have a system that asks universities to do more with less while operating a student loan system that, for all intents and purposes, functions as a regressive graduate tax. We cannot build a fairer, more productive country on that foundation. I ask the Minister: what steps are the Government taking to make higher education funding fairer for students and more sustainable for universities?
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate. I declare an interest as a member of the University and College Union and the all-party parliamentary university group.
Everybody in this debate wants to see young people and lifelong learners succeed in their chosen path in life. Most would agree that the Government have done a great deal to invest in education and skills since 2024, and I want to pay tribute to that. We have seen that uplift in schools, special educational needs and disabilities provision, youth hubs, colleges and apprenticeships.
This debate, however, is focused on the situation in higher education. My discussions with those who work in and represent that sector give me cause for concern, as I know is the case for other hon. Members present. Other south Essex MPs and I have spoken in this Chamber and elsewhere about the very significant challenges that my former colleagues at the University of Essex have faced over the past year. The university closed its Southend campus and made large numbers of staff redundant there and at its main Colchester campus.
The University of Essex is not alone, as we have heard, in facing these painful challenges: many universities are closing departments and issuing redundancies. At least two other universities are considering campus withdrawals or closures. The University of Buckingham has withdrawn from its Crewe campus, to be replaced as the main operator by Apollo Education. The University of Brighton is closing its Eastbourne campus and is considering closing its Falmer campus.
Other institutions are merging: the University of Kent with the University of Greenwich; City, University of London with St George’s; and King’s College London with Cranfield University. These new arrangements are the start of a new era in higher education. They raise the very thorny issue of how universities that were brought into being by the Privy Council via royal charters merge with those that were brought into being as companies limited by a guarantee. I suspect that this is a policy rug nobody really wants to lift. Other universities are being bought out or privatised. Lincoln Bishop University, for example, is now operated by Global University Systems, a global body with millions of students around the world.
This new era of campus closures, redundancies, mergers and buy-outs comes at a time when many in the sector face huge financial challenges. The Education Committee has already been referenced. It recently reported:
“The higher education sector in England is facing a financial crisis that now poses a real risk of institutional insolvency.”
This situation requires our close attention. We need our universities to thrive in our rich research and teaching ecosystem—they are part of an ecosystem. Our industrial strategy depends on that, as does our ability to create sovereign innovations in every sector.
Universities are very ready to adapt, and have adapted over the years, but they need us in this place to have more open conversations about how they can best do that. I ask the Minister to continue to champion our universities, but to support them by enabling more open conversations like this one about the scale of the challenges that they face.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this timely debate. My constituency does not have a university, but many of my constituents study and work at the two nearby universities in Bournemouth. However, my interest in this subject comes from the fact that when I was a regional official for Unison, I was head of the HE section in the south-east. That experience taught me a lot about the way in which the sector is financed.
Today, a growing number of institutions are forecasting deficits, and many have introduced or will soon be introducing the cost-cutting measures that hon. Members have mentioned, including redundancies among academic and support staff. For years, there has been a financial over-reliance on international students. We saw that decline greatly during covid, when I was working as a trade union official, and it has not yet been able to come back. Coupled with changes to visa restrictions, international students are being put off from coming to the UK.
There are also rising operational costs—energy costs, pensions and national insurance rises; those have all had an impact on large campuses—and a tuition fee funding model that has failed to keep pace with those rising costs, but the real reason for the state of HE funding is the marketisation of the sector. Pitching one university against another to compete for students has driven an arms race to build the shiniest buildings they can, often at the expense of the teaching and student experience. At any time, many of our campuses look more like a building site than a university.
The financial risks, however, are not evenly spread across the sector. Institutions with smaller reserves, limited international recruitment and weaker balance sheets are particularly exposed. The most invidious result of these financial pressures is the move to make staff pay for the failure of the system. At a number of universities, including those with whom I used to negotiate, we are seeing the creation of subsidiary companies to transfer staff out of direct university employment. That removes them from either the local government pension scheme or the teachers’ pension scheme. Staff who refuse to transfer often face the threat of redundancy. Despite the Government’s best efforts, this looks remarkably to me like fire and rehire.
The Government cannot secure the future of the HE sector simply through further fee increases for students. I believe we need an immediate cap on student numbers for each institution, rather than allowing the larger institutions to hoover up all the available students in an area. We need financial support for those universities facing immediate financial pressure, and we need to put a halt to the redundancies and wholesale course closures that are taking place across many of those institutions.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that his growth agenda is based on a triple helix model of business, Government and universities working together. For that to succeed, we need a healthy HE sector, and to achieve that, we need greater Government intervention and support.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate.
Access to higher education can be life changing for young people. However, this opportunity is already harder to grasp for young people in Cornwall. Students face the high costs of travelling from remote, disconnected areas or, if they stay local, the high costs of private renting in a tourism-heavy region. Students across the south-west face the second highest monthly living costs in the UK, at £1,212 per month, which is only £114 less than London. These financial barriers directly impact whether young people pursue higher education. While the 2025 UK-wide entry rate for 18-year-olds was 36.3%, the rate in the south-west was joint lowest at 30%, and in Truro and Falmouth it was 27.2%, which is the lowest rate on record since 2016.
Having universities close by with a variety of courses and offerings is key for young people in Cornwall to be able to access the higher education opportunities. HE is an investment in place, and nowhere more so than in Cornwall. It leads to economic growth, productivity and innovation, including higher wages, skills and regional development.
There are ongoing funding concerns in relation to higher education institutions in Cornwall, and it is integral that support for these vital institutions is considered. Losing higher education opportunities there, especially with the campus that is across the border in the constituency of the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), means that Cornish students risk losing out on these opportunities.
Falmouth University, which began in my constituency, offers traditional creative arts alongside technical and entrepreneurial courses and produces nearly 7,000 highly-skilled graduates each year. Tuition fee income does not meet the costs of delivering these degrees, particularly in creative and technical universities like Falmouth. That leaves universities with a difficult choice: sacrifice their core academic delivery for research investment or engage with more corporates. Government funding is cost-intensive to obtain and competitive, and frequent changes to Government funding models make it very hard to plan effectively. Specialist institutions like Falmouth are unevenly affected by those higher costs to secure fewer grants.
Funding for these integral institutions cannot fall by the wayside. They offer local employment opportunities, produce wider economic benefits and give young people in Cornwall a tangible place to pin their aspirations. I welcome the Government’s reintroduction of funding for higher education through targeted, means-tested maintenance grants, which will support low-income students from deprived areas to access and excel in higher education. We need to ensure that funding for a diverse range of courses that allow young people to gain skills and access to new experiences is accessible, realistic and enables the higher education sector to continue to foster ambition in Truro and Falmouth, Cornwall, the south-west and across the UK.
Dr Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this important debate.
Sheffield is my university. I attended the 45th reunion last weekend and, apart from the fact that many of my former student colleagues had decided to dye their hair grey, everybody was looking remarkably well. I would also like to say that I actually went to university before Mrs Thatcher was the Prime Minister.
I am a former NHS surgeon and a father of three children who have all been through our university system. Our universities are among our greatest assets, as we have heard during the many thoughtful contributions this morning. They drive research and support our local economies, but we cannot take them for granted. They are facing considerable financial pressure. Rising operating costs and an increasing reliance on international student income have left many of them in a precarious position.
We all know that the importance of universities goes far beyond the lecture theatres. Just this Monday, I spoke in the House about genetic research at the University of East Anglia to help us distinguish between dangerous and less dangerous prostate cancers—a subject that we absolutely need to sort out. That sort of groundbreaking research depends on well-funded universities with the confidence to invest in the long term, particularly in subjects such as my own, medicine, but also in the sciences and many others, where the costs of providing higher education and training are considerable.
The Government’s decision to increase tuition fee caps in line with inflation rather than allowing their value to erode makes sense. I also welcome the return of maintenance grants. Those are important steps towards supporting universities and students, but we must recognise that there is a difficult balance at the heart of this debate. Universities need more money, yet increasing tuition fees means that we are asking students to take more debt. I can see that generational difference in my own family. My two eldest children studied under plan 1, my youngest is on plan 2 and the students I met at Thurston community college in my constituency face the prospect of something called plan 5, with repayments potentially stretching over 40 years.
I graduated from medical school without tuition fee debt. I began my career, I entered the housing market and I gradually became more secure, but that looks very different for today’s graduates. A maths graduate who recently attended one of my constituency surgeries brought home just how complicated our student finance system has become. He brought a very well worked-out spreadsheet that explained it to me—at least at the time; I could not possibly explain it to Members today. We must avoid a situation in which the financial sustainability of our great universities is secured simply by transferring the ever-greater burden on to the next generation, for generational unfairness is the great challenge of this Parliament.
I ask the Minister to consider just two things. First, how can we provide universities with greater long-term funding certainty rather than leaving them so dependent on tuition fees and unpredictable international student recruitment? Secondly, how can we ensure that efforts to stabilise university finances are accompanied by a fair and transparent student finance system so that young people really understand the financial commitments they make? Our universities need financial stability, but our students need financial security. That is a hard thing, but our Government know how to do hard things.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this debate and I congratulate Members from across the Chamber on their contributions.
It should not be said that issues facing our universities are the preserve of MPs from big cities or the leafy suburbs. As Sunderland Central’s MP, I want to highlight the importance of the University of Sunderland to my city. This is as much a red wall issue as it is anywhere else in the country.
I want to mention the university’s educational and economic impact, and what the higher education funding environment means for our city. The university comes from the proudest of polytechnic traditions. It is rooted in the city, with a mission to be open to anyone who can benefit from higher education. It is shaped by what local employers and professions need. Nowhere is that clearer than in health. Sunderland trains the nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and doctors whom our NHS rely on. Its medical school was explicitly set up to bring more working class and local students into medicine. It is now moving into dental education, in a region where too many people struggle to see NHS dentists. When it was named university of the year for social inclusion, more than six in 10 of its students were the first in their family to go to university. If I may, I will associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) on the intergenerational and social mobility missions of our universities. That is crucial in Sunderland, as it is elsewhere.
This is what widening participation looks like in practice: young people from Pallion, Hendon or Southwick in my constituency having the chance to get a degree and, by living at home, de-risking some of the financial issues facing students that we have talked about. The university, as we have heard, also brings people to the north-east from across the country and, as successive Governments’ international strategies have encouraged, from around the world.
On its economic impact, independent analysis found that the University of Sunderland adds around £250 million a year to our city’s economy and supports more than 4,000 jobs in the city. It is one of our biggest employers. The university, however, is under real financial pressure, which has serious consequences for the city as a whole. Home tuition income has fallen behind costs, and the visa landscape for international students has changed rapidly and unpredictably. As a result, the university has had to set out plans to save £40 million over the next two years, and staff are understandably worried about their jobs.
That pressure did not come from nowhere. For years, the previous Government froze tuition fees while costs kept rising, with no long-term plan. As others have said, the Government now expect to fund just 16p in every pound of home student funding. Universities that do the most to open doors, like Sunderland, are left the most exposed. I know the Government are working with significant fiscal constraints. I know they have taken steps to set stable expectations for future fee income so that proper financial planning can happen. I, of course, welcome the return of targeted maintenance grants. But in previous responses the Government have been keen to highlight that universities have always been autonomous institutions. I understand that. In my experience, they take the responsibility to be financially sustainable seriously, even when that means making deeply painful and locally unpopular decisions such as the withdrawal of funding from our National Glass Centre in Sunderland. But we cannot treat them as autonomous institutions and assume that they will always be there as anchors in communities like Sunderland and across the country. I hope we will hear more about the Government’s long-term strategy.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this debate. Sheffield is an excellent place to ground this debate because it has two great examples of the origin stories of many of our universities. The University of Sheffield is a civic university in the truest sense. When it sought its charter in 1904, steelworkers, factory workers and other local people raised over £50,000 in penny donations to support it. Sheffield Hallam traces its roots to the School of Design, which was founded in 1843 to train designers for the city’s industry, and became a university in 1992. One red brick, one post ’92: both serve the city and both embody the idea of universities as anchors of their community. That idea is now at risk.
Later today the Chancellor delivers his first Budget; every signal is that universities should expect very little from it. We cannot continue to ignore the stark choice before us when it comes to university policy. Either we carry on with a managed decline—courses cut, talent lost, places left behind—or we can choose transformation with universities as engines of learning throughout life, as innovation hubs driving economic growth and as civic institutions embedded in the places they serve. The Liberal Democrats would choose transformation, and I hope the Government will do the same.
At the moment, too many universities are fighting for survival. More than a third of English providers were in deficit last year. The Department’s own costing study found that universities lose about £3,000 on every home undergraduate they teach. Research is worse: universities now recover only two thirds of research costs. According to the Russell Group, universities put in £6.3 billion of their own money into research last year.
For many years now, the funding gap has been filled by international students, but that income is now also falling away. Visa applications in August—the peak month—were down by 17% on a year ago. Of course, education as a great British export is about much more than money, but the business model that has saved the Government from spending more on home students and research is being undermined. The Government have said that they intend, in the Finance Bill that will follow today’s Budget, to legislate for a £925 levy on every international student. Only a tiny sliver of that money will go to the maintenance grants put forward as a justification for it.
This crisis does not simply affect an ivory tower elite who sit apart from our communities: in many towns and cities, the university is one of the largest employers and the source of the next generation of teachers, nurses, engineers and members of many other professions. Such universities produce graduates who are likely to stay and work locally and serve the students who are often least able to move away to study. When a nursing course or engineering department closes in such a place, it does not relocate; it disappears from the region. With it goes a route into a profession for everyone who cannot simply up sticks and leave.
Post-’92 universities carry a burden that their older neighbours do not. For no other reason than institutional history, they are tied into the teachers’ pension scheme, for which employer contributions reached 28.7% last year—roughly double what many older universities pay, and about £8,000 extra a year for a typical member of staff. In July the Government ruled out any help, but part of solving this crisis in the sector must include working towards a single, fairer pensions framework.
There is also the question of what happens when one of these institutions does not survive. The Office for Students told the Education Committee that 24 institutions could exit the market within a year. The Committee recommended a special administration regime so that a failing university could keep teaching while its future was resolved, but the Government have said that they are “not currently persuaded” because legislating would be too complex. I would say that that is an argument for starting now, not for doing nothing.
Further education colleges have had a special regime since 2019, and having no regime has its own risks. With no orderly way to fail, many simply assume that the Government will step in. Sir Philip Augar has said that a handful of universities are already getting secret bail-outs. When I asked Ministers about that, I was told that emergency support is not provided, but also that officials meet universities and their banks regularly in confidence. Discussing potential rescues behind closed doors gives us all the moral hazard and none of the transparency.
Liberal Democrats see universities as essential national infrastructure, not cost centres to be squeezed. That means a new settlement: in the short term, reform the levy before it reaches the statute book; reprofile student loan fee payments to ease the cash flow; offer low-interest loans for restructuring; and remove the VAT penalty that stops universities from sharing back-office services, so that they merge finance and HR rather than cut teaching. We need to fund the breadth of subjects in every region and make sure that public research grants actually cover the 80% of costs that they are supposed to. But this needs to come alongside obligations on universities. The money alone will not fix the problem.
After 2030, the number of 18-year-olds will fall by 17%, yet 82% of the growth in priority occupations in the industrial strategy sectors will require a higher education qualification. Put those two facts together, and a model built around school leavers simply will not work in the long term. Many of those who will fill the jobs in that growth are already in work and will need to retrain as technology reshapes what they do. Universities need to open up to adults through modular lifelong learning, which we suggest needs to be through lifelong skills grants, not simply loans. Universities also need to work hand in hand with further education colleges, with credits that transfer between them, and they need to turn British research into businesses that stay in Britain.
Dr Arthur
The hon. Member is diagnosing the problem excellently and detailing all the issues. I do not want to go back too far, but we have to think about the role the Lib Dems played in the coalition Government and the decision to go back on their pledge not to raise fees but instead raise them to £9,000. The Budget this afternoon is not just about spending money; it is also about raising money to pay for policies. A range of policies—
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Order. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) only has a minute left?
Ian Sollom
A lot of the interventions that I have suggested on the university side are cost-neutral and would involve restructuring.
I have three questions for the Minister. First, will the Government update their impact analysis to reflect this year’s fall in international recruitment and publish the effect by region and type of institution of the international student levy before the Finance Bill is debated? Secondly, will they think again about special administration before rather than after a university fails? Thirdly, will the Government commit to working with the sector to end the pensions penalty on post-’92 universities? Universities did not get to this position overnight and they will not recover overnight, but today’s Budget is a chance to stop the managed decline and start the transformation. I hope the Chancellor takes it.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, and to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s official Opposition.
I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for tabling this important debate and all Members for their contributions this morning. I have to say that I did not expect to hear quite so much agreement for Margaret Thatcher’s education policies this morning. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Members for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) for their positivity about that.
Let me pick up on the points made by the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey). Although I think we are the same age, he started at Southampton University a year after me, but we have many mutual friends from our time at university. It is worth noting that the changes we experienced as the first cohort that had to pay fees and take on a loan were due entirely to the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, which was snuck through by the new Labour Government and then conveniently forgotten about, in a time where social media did not exist. I dread to think of the furore if today’s students realised that that was going to happen to them, but I for one, aged 16, thought I was going to university for free, but by the age of 18 that was not the case.
Rebecca Smith
I am going to make some progress.
I do not want to burst the bubble of the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson), but Plymouth has also had dentistry offered as a subject. Unfortunately, only about 5% of the students are from Plymouth and nearly all of them leave the area, so although we absolutely need more dentistry students, so far that has not quite been the mechanism to solve the crisis that we hope it will be—although that is a debate for another time.
To respond to the topic of the debate, let me put it on record that the Opposition recognise the enormous value and significance of the UK’s university sector in terms of its economic and societal contribution. The National Centre for Universities and Businesses argues that the UK’s universities are
“one of our greatest strategic assets. They educate the future workforce, conduct world leading research, and act as anchor institutions in their regions—supporting businesses, driving innovation, and powering local growth.”
Economically, universities contribute around £265 billion to the UK economy and support more than 800,000 jobs. The return on investment is also staggering. For every £1 of public money invested in the higher education sector across the country, £14 is put back into the economy.
In addition, there is no doubt that universities are some of the most critical engines of growth and prosperity at the regional level. As the proud Member of Parliament for South West Devon, I know the huge role that the sector plays across the south-west. We have 10 universities with more than 200,000 students between them, employing more than 31,000 people and contributing £7.8 billion of gross output. Plymouth Marjon University, Arts University Plymouth and the University of Plymouth are certainly playing their part. I am meeting the vice-chancellor of Plymouth University tomorrow to discuss this very topic. Although I unfortunately cannot add any more today, I know that he wants to talk to me about the struggles that the university is facing.
Notwithstanding this vital economic contribution, it would be wrong to look at universities purely in terms of their economic output. Universities help to shape the society we all live in. They equip young people with the skills needed to navigate an increasingly fractured society. They teach young people to think critically and outside the box, skills that I believe will be essential in a Britain where communities are more divided than ever and the spectre of the AI revolution looms over us all. It is beyond clear that universities will play a central role in Britain for decades to come. That is our view, but we are not blind to the big challenges facing the sector.
It is no secret that real and imminent challenges face the UK’s university sector. A May 2026 report from the Education Committee went so far as to claim that the sector faces a financial crisis that poses a real risk of institutional insolvency. The report laid bare the terrible state of some universities’ finances, with the Office for Students fearing that 24 providers could face insolvency within the next 12 months. Against this uncertain backdrop, universities are being forced to close courses and sell buildings to cut costs and make efficiencies.
The difficulties facing universities are explained well in the Policy Exchange report, “Tarnished Towers”. It argues that high inflation, pension pressures and a reduction in international student numbers have created a perfect storm for our universities. It all seems to be compounded by a lack of action from the Government thus far. A Universities UK report from February 2026 found that Government policy decisions will
“lead to an estimated £3.7 billion reduction in funding to higher education providers in England from 2024-25 to 2029-30.”
Its analysis shows the impact of Government immigration policy, but also the damaging shock that the sector received through increased pension and employment costs.
In 2020, Keir Starmer made scrapping university tuition fees the centrepiece of his leadership campaign. Indeed, in June 2023, the previous Education Secretary even had the audacity to claim that graduates would pay less under a Labour Government. Students right across the country felt betrayed and let down by the Government’s broken promises when the previous Education Secretary announced in November 2024 that Labour would push up tuition fees for students. In that debate, the shadow Education Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), said that she would be willing to work with the Government to support universities and students. His Majesty’s Opposition are yet to be invited to work constructively with the Government on that—indeed, we have heard very little at all from the Government about what they want to do. I hope the Minister can shed some light on the Government’s plans to support our university sector.
The new Education Secretary has been keen to talk about her plans to reform technical education, but aside from providing a statement on that issue in the House, we have heard little else. She has not come to the House to clarify when the Government will bring forward the legislation they promised at the King’s Speech to support children with SEND and their families, or to talk about the challenges facing the university sector.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central for securing this debate, as it gives His Majesty’s Opposition some time to ask the Minister, whom I respect very much, some important questions about higher education funding. First, can the Minister shed any light on how the Government intend to support the 24 institutions that the Office for Students claimed are at risk of insolvency in the 12 months from May 2026? Secondly, can she confirm whether the Government intend to make any changes to plan 2 student loans? Thirdly, can the Minister tell the Chamber whether she has had any meetings with institutions that might be facing significant financial uncertainty during the remainder of this academic year? Lastly, will the Government rule out pushing up student tuition fees again before the end of this Parliament? His Majesty’s Opposition, the higher education sector and, most importantly, students right across the country need answers to those important questions. Universities need them to begin to develop long-term financial plans, and students need to have certainty about their finances and about the stability of the institution they are studying at and the course they are taking.
Regrettably, I hold little hope that the Government have answers to those questions, given the lack of focus that the new Education Secretary seems to have shown to higher education since coming into office. That is in stark contrast to the official Opposition: we have outlined detailed and fully costed plans to lower interest on plan 2 student loans and set out reforms to the university sector to ensure that the Government stop funding dead-end university courses. That is all part of our new deal for young people.
I reiterate His Majesty’s Opposition’s firm belief in the strength and value of the UK’s higher education sector; it is indeed a huge strategic asset. However, we must be honest and recognise that it will face huge challenges over the next decade. The digital revolution means that universities need to rethink how they prepare students for the world of work, and they must be open to accepting that they must adapt to stay solvent in the new economic reality.
The Government should be there to guide the sector through these turbulent headwinds, but we have seen little indication that they are. The new Education Secretary urgently needs to shed some light on what steps they will take to address some deeply concerning reports about the financial health of our institutions. The Budget is a little over an hour away; I hope that the Chancellor will set out steps to solve these problems, but I hold out little hope.
The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this really important debate. She is a passionate advocate for these issues: she has chaired the APPG on students and has regularly raised issues related to universities and students, and from her speech we heard how thoughtful and knowledgeable she is on these issues.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) for her characteristically thoughtful speech. She called for a wider debate, discussion and focus on these issues, and we have had a very important debate today. We have heard the range of expertise in the Chamber, from lecturers to others who have real experience of working in universities, and about the range of decades when everyone went to university—I cannot believe that anyone here looks old enough to have gone to university under Margaret Thatcher.
We should rightly be proud of our world-class higher education sector, which remains, by any objective metric, one of our nation’s greatest exports and a global beacon of intellectual excellence. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) that the UK’s university sector includes four of the world’s top 10 universities, of which we can be very proud. It contributes more than £265 billion to the UK and supports more than 750,000 jobs. In my work as Schools Minister, I get to see directly the contribution that universities make to places and how integrated they are in local innovation, support and access.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Sheffield and have seen the contribution that the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University make to the local area, whether through their pioneering work on opening up participation to university or some of their wider research: Sheffield Innovation Spine, the work that Sheffield Hallam University is doing on early years and Sheffield Children’s University, and the work that the University of Sheffield is doing on adult social care.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) was talking, I was reflecting on being in Sunderland two weeks ago, where we are working on Mission North East, and the role that Sunderland University is playing in partnership to support better outcomes for children in the area.
The Government are committed to maintaining a world-class higher education sector that delivers for students, our society and the economy. We of course recognise that the sector’s financial environment is challenging. The sector is rightly independent from Government, with providers managing their finances and ensuring that their business models provide long-term sustainability. However, I recognise the long-term challenges that many Members have raised and the strain that we saw over the last decade, including the legacy of seven years of frozen tuition fees. Universities have had to deal with the issues caused by that.
Dr Huq
I know the Minister is really passionate about this subject, and her Department has done excellent work with the Department for Work and Pensions on the phenomenon of those not in education, employment or training. A statistic shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) was that the UK has the lowest proportion of public tertiary education expenditure among OECD countries. Could the Minister have a word with Treasury colleagues about nudging that upwards, because that is a statistic we are not so proud of?
Georgia Gould
Of course, I always support greater funding for education and young people, but I was just about to talk about some of the changes the Government are making to support sustainability.
After they were frozen for eight years, we increased tuition fee caps in line with inflation for 2025-26. We will increase them once again in line with forecast inflation in 2026-27 and in 2027-28. We will then legislate when parliamentary time allows to increase tuition fee caps automatically for future academic years. Over the coming year, that is £6 billion-worth of safeguarded indexed increase in income underpinned by the Government, which will make a real difference.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central asked about the Government’s vision for universities. We have set out an ambitious programme of reform through the post-16 education and skills White Paper, with a clear vision for a more sustainable and collaborative higher education sector. We want providers to be clear about their distinctive roles but to be working in collaboration.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the importance of research. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) talked about the pioneering research on prostate cancer at East Anglia. Research is a critical role that universities play. The Government are investing a record £86 billion in R&D from 2026-27 to 2029-30; as part of that, UK Research and Innovation will deliver an expected £38.6 billion of research investment, rising to nearly £10 billion per year by the end of that period. In the Department for Education, we are working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to deliver the White Paper’s commitments, which include research funding reform and improvements to research grant cost recovery.
We heard from almost all the Members who spoke in the debate about the importance of opening up access and ensuring that young people who want to go to university can always pursue that route. That is why we do not support the Conservatives’ proposals, which would pull up the drawbridge because they are about reducing the number of young people going to university. We know that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds will be the ones who do not get that opportunity.
Jayne Kirkham
It is important to note that in the 1980s, only about 10% of people went to university. The Blair Government opened that up to 50% of the population, and that is worth putting on the record.
Georgia Gould
We want two thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning, whether that is going to university, pursuing an apprenticeship or a technical route. We see all of those as deeply connected.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for her helpful response. She has outlined a very clear strategy to try to address the issues that we have all raised. I ask her a specific question: would she consider sharing the strategy with the relevant Minister back home?
Georgia Gould
I regularly talk to colleagues across the four nations, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities, Baroness Smith, does the same. It is very important that we have that spirit of learning.
Those different routes are deeply connected. We think that the relationship between higher education and the Department is important, particularly on supporting outcomes for young people and as we think about how we respond to the changing nature of education, the introduction of the lifelong learning entitlement and long-term flexible learning. We want people to have access to education throughout their lives.
Georgia Gould
No, I must make progress. The lifelong learning entitlement will transform the student finance system, giving people flexible access to high-quality education throughout their working lives. From January 2027, for the first time learners will be able to use their entitlement to fund individual modules as well as full courses at levels 4 to 6 at colleges, universities and independent providers.
A number of Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central and for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), raised the issue of international students and support for them. I want to be clear: international students are welcome in the UK. They enrich our campuses and communities, and are ambassadors for this country long after they graduate. They made a vital contribution of £12.7 billion in fee income in 2023-24—almost a quarter of the sector’s income, as other Members said. The new international education strategy confirms our commitment to welcoming students who meet the requirements to study here.
A range of questions were asked about the international student levy. That is part of a wider package that also includes inflation-linked fee rises, and it is important to stress that every penny it raises will be reinvested in higher education and skills—including new maintenance grants for disadvantaged students, which many hon. Members raised, to remove some of the barriers around the cost of studying. We know how important those are. The levy is simple and proportionate: a flat £925 fee per international student per year from 2028-29, paid for by providers with an allowance of 220 students each. We listened to the sector; the flat fee is equivalent to around 4% of international fee income, down from the 6% first provided. To answer the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) and others, we will publish an updated impact assessment ahead of the Finance Bill.
I was asked a number of questions about the pressure that many students are facing, including from my friends from Cornwall, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham). We know that cost of living pressures have hit students hard. The previous Government removed maintenance grants and the real-term value of loan support for students fell by almost 20% between 2020 and 2024. We are taking action to put that right.
We are introducing a targeted maintenance grant from 2028-29 of up to £1,000 a year for disadvantaged students on top of their loan, putting cash in their pockets without adding to their debt. The new grants will support students from low-income households studying full-time courses, which is in line with the Government’s mission and industrial strategy. We are future-proofing maintenance loans by increasing them in line with forecast inflation every year, with the biggest cash increase going to students from the lowest-income families.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen raised the issue of student loans, and I want to address that in the time that remains to me. As we have heard from across the Chamber today, giving those who want it and have the ability the chance to study in higher education changes lives. We are determined to support students who want to go to university to fulfil their aspirations. We cannot lose sight of the value that student loans provide in enabling that and levelling the playing field at the point of access. They remove that upfront financial barrier to studying and enable students to repay when they are earning. We inherited a student loan system that is not working as fairly as it should, and we recognise that some students and graduates feel the impact of that.
We are making the tough but necessary decisions to deliver a fairer and more sustainable system. We increased the plan 2 thresholds in 2025—its first increase since 2021—and we again raised the plan 2 repayment threshold in April, to £29,385. We have also capped interest rates for plan 2 and plan 3 loans at 6% for the academic year 2026-27. There are a whole range of very important discussions that came up today. I know that myself—
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Rugby League Clubs
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
I will call Jon Trickett to move the motion. 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. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.
Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for rugby league clubs.
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I am sure that you will be very firm with us, but very fair as well. It is also a special privilege to see the Minister in her place. I know that Barnsley, which she is very proud to represent, has a strong rugby league tradition.
I will start by explaining why this issue is so important and why it is such a great privilege to speak on this sport. As we know, there are two codes in rugby: rugby union, which is very familiar and offers great sporting spectacle, and rugby league, which also offers great moments of sporting prowess.
I vividly remember attending probably the most iconic rugby league final ever in 1968 with my dad and granddad at Wembley. It felt like the whole of the north of England came down to invade London—quite rightly, bringing our civilisation to the south. It was one of those great days when the rain never stopped—it had not stopped for several days. The pitch was a mud bath, literally covered in mud and water. It was very exciting, and in the last two minutes it was 11-10 to Leeds. In those days, I was supporting Leeds, as somebody who was born there, against Wakefield, where I have proudly been an MP for 30 years.
In the last minute, a penalty was given to Wakefield, right under the post. We would have expected it to be converted by the great rugby league player, Don Fox—who came from a great rugby league family and was born in my constituency—but the weather was atrocious. Everybody turned their back, because they could not bear to watch—Wakefield supporters hoping to hear the victory and Leeds supporters fearing what might happen. It was an amazing moment, and I will never forget it: he missed the penalty. That is not to show any disrespect to the Fox family, who were brilliant, but it meant that Leeds were victors. It is something that is fondly remembered. I am sure that I am the only Member of Parliament who was there at that great sporting event.
Rugby league offers great spectacle, but it has been treated in a way that has not been fully appropriate, and I fear for the future unless we can correct things.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend for securing this important debate to Westminster Hall. My constituency, Blyth and Ashington, is well renowned for some world-class sportsmen—as it is commonly said, “You shout down the pit shaft, and world-class sportsmen will emerge.” Given my hon. Friend’s great wisdom and knowledge of rugby league, I wonder if he could say why, despite it being a traditionally working-class sport and despite the many opportunities, rugby league has not flourished areas such as mine in working-class Northumberland.
Jon Trickett
My hon. Friend is right that rugby league is a sport that grew up in working-class communities and especially in mining communities, so it is surprising that it has not taken root in his constituency. However, when we consider the discrimination that rugby league has suffered from over the years, it is maybe not so surprising. One of the things I will argue is that we need to do more to develop the sport across the whole country, especially in communities such as his. My hon. Friend is right, too, that whenever a player was injured in Featherstone in my patch, they would go to the pit head and shout down, “Send us up another forward,” or whatever it was, and one would emerge quickly, get changed and get on to the pitch. It was very much part of the mining tradition.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. Rugby union was my game—I apologise to him—but rugby league has had a magnificent, transformative impact across the United Kingdom. It is the beating heart of towns, providing vital structure, mental health support and community pride for young people, yet it is facing a financial squeeze. Does he agree that the Government must extend rugby league funding to support the sport’s future and enhance the funding strategy to protect these invaluable community assets from the financial ruin that they face?
Jon Trickett
The hon. Member makes an important point, and I agree.
To develop a bit about rugby league, in the areas I am most familiar with, rugby league—and sport in general—can be the most important agency for social cohesion. Sport can provide something that brings everybody together, whatever their different points of view or life experiences. In my constituency, Featherstone Rovers have played for decades, and there is a massive amount of pride in the fact that we have that team. I will come to the difficulties they are facing, and I hope we can find a way forward.
Let me remind the House that the BBC used to cover rugby league more or less weekly on “Grandstand”. Most people in this room are probably not old enough to remember the famous commentator, Eddie Waring, but I do well. So familiar was rugby league in those times, because of the BBC coverage, that many of Eddie Waring’s favourite expressions were well known across the whole country. Mike Yarwood, who was a great mimic at that time, used to talk with Eddie’s accent—which I cannot do. He used to talk about “up and under”, which was one of the ways a ball could be kicked. More importantly, when somebody was sent off, his favourite expression was, “Well, he’s been sent for an early bath”—I very much hope that you will not send me for an early bath today, Ms Vaz.
Rugby league ought to be a nationally recognised sport. I will come to the discrimination and the problems with television in a second, but let me remind the House that anyone who wants to watch rugby league on TV now has to go to two separate pay-per-view channels. It costs £61 a month, which is 5% of the total income of a person living on the minimum wage. People are being priced out of the spectacle, which is a great shame, because it is leading to the atrophy of the sport across the communities where it ought to be played. It is also stopping us from spreading rugby league further—I will come back to that in a second.
Rugby league was a product of the class system that operated in sport in those days. The so-called gentlemen, who did not need to be paid, would play rugby union. Those who were too poor could not afford to play rugby union, so rugby league was set up, so that players could be paid. That was the start of rugby league as a code; but the truth is that the divisions that existed then continue today.
I have identified one or two statistics that may surprise the House. If we look at the honours system, eight rugby union players have received a knighthood; there have only been two from rugby league, one of whom is the great Kevin Sinfield, who was knighted for his contributions to charity. That difference shows a level of discrimination. When we look at the national squads for rugby union, two thirds or more went to public school. I cannot find a single player for the national rugby league side who went to public school. It shows the class divisions, which surprisingly continue in sport after all these years.
It is disappointing that fewer than 40 universities have a rugby league side, whereas every single university that I can find has a rugby union side. Again, that shows that something is not quite working between the two codes. When it came to covid, as we know, sports were remunerated, but here is an astonishing fact: rugby union received about £130 million, whereas rugby league got £10 million or £11 million—ten times more went into rugby union from covid. I do wonder—perhaps the House would agree—whether those in the civil service making these decisions are often people who went to universities and schools that had rugby union, but have little comprehension of the importance of rugby league in areas such as mine. I think that demonstrates clear discrimination, and I hope that the Labour Government are aware of that—if they were not, then they are now, because I have drawn it to the Minister’s attention.
I want to move on to the situation facing Featherstone Rovers. Wakefield, which I now represent, has the honour of having three separate professional rugby league sides: Wakefield, Castleford and Featherstone. Unfortunately, due to bad management, Featherstone has gone into administration, and we have been struggling to find a way to bring the Rovers back to life. The team is the core of the people of Featherstone’s identity, as was mining—mining was stripped away many decades ago, but references to mining can still be seen everywhere in the township in Featherstone. The rugby league side, Featherstone Rovers, is a matter of great pride, and the fact that it went bankrupt and there is nobody playing on the pitch at the moment is heartbreaking for so many people I represent.
Gradually, we have been putting together a plan to try to bring Featherstone Rovers back to life. That has been difficult, and I have spent many hours trying to achieve it, but thanks to the recent appointment of a new chief executive at the Rugby Football League, we are now making progress. The RFL has said that it is prepared to help to acquire the assets, bearing in mind that there is a stadium with buildings around it and several acres at the back of it. The administrator has been difficult, but he has come to the view in the end that, because it is a community asset, he is prepared to sell it for slightly less than he might have thought it was worth in a completely commercial sense. We think that it can be acquired for about £1 million. When Labour was in charge of the council—it has changed hands recently—it put aside several million pounds for each of the three rugby league clubs. There is £700,000 still unallocated to Featherstone, and the council, under its new management, has now said that a substantial part of that, possibly half a million, will be made available to the rugby league for it to be able to acquire the assets.
Here comes the interesting part, because in Featherstone, thanks again to the Labour Government, we have something called Pride in Place, and we have been allocated £20 million over the coming ten years. I am a member of the Pride in Place board, by virtue of being the local MP—I do not know if I need to declare an interest, but I do in any event. The board has said that it is prepared to make a substantial contribution to the acquisition of the stadium and the surrounding land. It has been difficult to put this together, but the board is unanimous, and, led by the by the chair Kay Binnersley, we are now in a position to say that, when the money arrives from the Government in the next financial year, it can then be made available to the RFL.
I have met the new chief executive of the RFL, who is a dynamic and progressive individual, and we have agreed that we want to create a partnership between the Pride in Place board and the RFL to try to take this whole thing forward. That is desperately important, because without Featherstone Rovers playing, it has not been easy to create a fixture list, because there will be one less team than is required to set up the fixtures. There is an urgency to this. I have to say that it has been frustrating dealing with the RFL over the last year and a half on this matter, as it went from one temporary chief executive to another, but now it has a decision maker in place, and I am confident that he is determined to make this happen, and clearly he needs to do that for all the other teams in the rugby league.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend’s point about Pride in Place. I commend his efforts with the Pride in Place board. I have done something similar in my constituency. Our Pride in Place Farnley East board is giving money to Farnley Falcons. The club is at the heart of our community, bringing in young people from across the constituency and further afield. Will my hon. Friend join me in encouraging all those with Pride in Place boards to give some money to local rugby league clubs?
Jon Trickett
Many years ago, as a builder and plumber, I did lots of work on Morley Labour rooms, which my hon. Friend is probably familiar with to this day—that is completely by the by.
My hon. Friend is right that Pride in Place is there to give or reinforce pride in communities, now from the bottom up, with local people deciding what they need. Rugby league is part of that, but decisions needs to come from the community, not from above. In Featherstone and other areas, local councils need to be aware that their rules and codes do not apply to Pride in Place, although they currently manage the finances. The board itself has to decide the priorities.
We have a vision for a town of sporting excellence, bringing together all existing services. That could mean education, for which there is much to do in Featherstone, or health services, as there are many people with long-term illnesses and mental health problems. We have a vision for a town built around sporting provision, reaching out to the various cultural, health and educational needs of Featherstone people. They may have different views and experiences in life, but the one thing they have had is Featherstone Rovers, so it is important that the club is brought back together.
Our vision is for a renewal of the town, building on its existing pride, so that it is a place where people are extremely proud to live. They will be able to join in social and cultural activities as well. That all requires Featherstone Rovers to be brought back. We understand that the RFL cannot own the assets for ever, because other clubs will begin to resent it. The other clubs need to understand that, without Featherstone Rovers playing, they will not have a functioning league. It is important that the RFL does the things that the chief executive has said he wants to do.
The Labour administration at the council put in place a resilience fund. We have had different figures from the current leadership of the council, but I believe that there is still £700,000 in the kitty, with £500,000 going to the RFL. The other £200,000 will be needed for renovations to the stadium. I have now explained the background. It has been helpful for me to speak about rugby league in general, including the discrimination that it suffers and the situation in Featherstone.
As I said, I am delighted to see the Minister in her place, and I will press her on three matters. Could the Department consider carefully the RFL’s bid for funding? We need to develop the sport and take it into new areas. Many people are hungry for that kind of sporting experience. Secondly, could she take a close interest in order to ensure that the partnership I have described between the PIP board and the RFL proceeds at speed? We have an empty stadium and people asking what has happened to their team.
I have a final point. The problem for rugby league is that the feedstock has been cut off—that is, the ordinary kids who watch sport on TV and who live in poorer families. A lot of rugby league clubs are in deprived communities, such as Featherstone, where people are not able to pay for pay-per-view TV, so they do not see their heroes and they do not see the sport, its code or how it is played. That leaves us with a problem.
The Department has the power to list sporting events. It is disappointing and tragic that the rugby league world cup, which is happening right now, is not on terrestrial television. Of course, the BBC says that it has a deal to broadcast the event on the radio, but listening to it on the radio is not the same as watching our heroes on the pitch, as I did at 17, when I watched the match that I referred to earlier.
Will the Minister consider carefully whether we can list some of those matches so that communities everywhere can see the great sport that is rugby league? I look forward to hearing what I hope will be a positive response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Stephanie Peacock)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on securing this debate. He is a constituency neighbour of mine, and, as a fellow Yorkshire MP, I know how important rugby league is to his area. He is such a champion for the sport, both in this place—as he has shown this morning—and beyond.
For over 130 years, rugby league has made a huge contribution to our society. Week in, week out, local people come together to support their clubs, their children’s teams and the players. Rugby league clubs are places where thousands of people play sport and get active every week. My hon. Friend spoke passionately about the impact of rugby league in post-industrial towns such as those we represent. He was right to say that I am very proud to represent Barnsley South in Parliament. We have fantastic grassroots teams in Barnsley, such as the Dearne Valley Bulldogs and the Dodworth Miners. This week, the Dodworth Miners under-12s became the first junior rugby league team ever from Barnsley to win a league and cup double, and I am sure the whole House will join me in congratulating them.
We see such teams all across the north of England, and the vital role that they play is reflected in the interest in today’s debate. We know that community sport, and especially sports such as rugby league, can play a major role in building confidence and teamwork, supporting the life skills of future generations and improving community cohesion. The social value generated by community sport and physical activity is vast—in excess of £122 billion a year—and every £1 spent on sport by rugby league community clubs generates a social return of more than £4. Such figures underscore the vital role that sports such as rugby league can play in driving positive public health and societal outcomes. That is why the Government believe that someone’s access to sport should never be determined by their postcode, background or gender.
Jon Trickett
The Minister is right to raise gender. It is fair to say that in the dim and distant past, rugby league was kind of a male sport, but now there are women’s teams all over the country, including in universities. We are very proud that Featherstone Rovers has one of the most successful women’s rugby league teams in the country. I thank her for giving me the opportunity to celebrate their success.
Stephanie Peacock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and makes a really important point. That is why, as Sports Minister, I have set up the women’s sport taskforce. I will say more about women’s sport later in my speech.
The single biggest thing most likely to get a child active in sport is watching it live. If kids cannot watch their rugby heroes, they are far less likely to pick up a rugby ball. My hon. Friend is a huge champion for his local club, Featherstone Rovers. Featherstone Rovers has been at the heart of its local community for many years, and the uncertainty since it entered administration has hit the town hard. I commend the collective efforts of my hon. Friend, the local community and the RFL to revive the club.
Indeed, I met my hon. Friend to discuss this issue earlier in the year. As he mentioned, I understand that Wakefield council has set out proposals to provide £500,000 of emergency funding, match-funded by the RFL’s resilience fund, in a bid to get the team back on the field by 2027. Under those proposals, the likely scenario is that the RFL will take control of the ground and lease it to an ownership group.
On Pride in Place funding, power is being put in local hands through the resident-led Featherstone neighbourhood board, which is working with the local council and, of course, the constituency MP, my hon. Friend. Although spending choices rest locally with that board, I am fully supportive of local communities choosing to use the funding to protect and revitalise vital sporting institutions such as Featherstone Rovers, and I will raise that with the relevant Minister from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
I have seen at first hand the importance and impact of rugby league, having taken part in the Yorkshire versus Lancashire match at the Labour party conference at Everton stadium. I was joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards), who is in attendance today, and I am pleased to report a Yorkshire win. It was a great opportunity to showcase the sport and to learn more about its work with Community Integrated Care, a registered charity that supports people with learning disabilities, autism, mental health needs and dementia. It was a great opportunity to talk to the RFL, and I look forward to meeting members again soon.
Sport England has committed £15.7 million to rugby league up to 2029. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth, that support is already delivering on the ground, funding new facilities at Hemsworth Dragons and pitch maintenance at Rycroft Hammers. Nationally, we are directing £400 million into upgrading grassroots sports facilities, deliberately prioritising the areas with the highest levels of deprivation and inactivity. My hon. Friend highlighted the RFL’s bid for funding the sport, facilities and community programme. I cannot make spending commitments today, but I would be happy to discuss that further with him and the RFL.
My hon. Friend made an important point about broadcasting, and I have heard his concerns. Under the listed events regime, the Challenge cup final remains protected on free-to-air television, but I acknowledge the concerns raised before the world cup. The Secretary of State expressed that she was disappointed. There was a last-minute agreement that the BBC would carry highlights, but I appreciate concerns that that did not go anywhere near far enough. We must help sports rights holders to strike the right balance between broadcasting revenue that keeps clubs solvent and ensuring that matches remain accessible to the public.
On the subject of watching England play, this time last year I was pleased to be cheering on England at Wembley as they played in the Ashes. The team are now down under to compete in the world cup. I wish them all the very best as they prepare for their final pool game in two days’ time.
The value of rugby league goes well beyond the 80 minutes on the pitch. Through our £330,000 investment in Rugby League Cares, current and former players are in our schools and towns having open and honest conversations with young men about mental health, isolation and loneliness. My hon. Friend was right to mention the social impact of the sport. Over the summer, I was delighted to go to the home of the Castleford Tigers to meet Rugby League Cares and Men in Sheds, seeing at first hand the powerful role that sport, including rugby league, plays in tackling social isolation and loneliness.
I have heard my hon. Friend’s concerns about honours, which he has put on the record. I know that the Secretary of State is on the record as sharing those concerns. We have all witnessed the extraordinary bond between the late, great Rob Burrow and Sir Kevin Sinfield—a reminder of the loyalty, courage and compassion that define the rugby league family. We are seeing the same spirit drive the growth of the women’s game, through initiatives such as RugBees and the inspiring expansion of the wheelchair super league. Just a few weeks ago, the Secretary of State visited Leigh Sports Village to support Sinfield during a leg of his “7 in 7” endurance challenge, in which he ran seven ultramarathons in seven days. Sinfield’s runs raise awareness and funds for motor neurone disease in honour of his former teammate and close friend, Rob Burrow.
I thank my hon. Friend once again for securing this debate and for standing up so effectively for his community and his sport. I look forward to working closely with him and the RFL in our coming meeting to ensure that rugby league gets the fair treatment, support and long-term investment it so richly deserves.
Question put and agreed to.
Causing Death by Dangerous or Careless Driving: Sentencing
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of sentencing for causing death by dangerous or careless driving.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate, although I cannot honestly say that it is a pleasure to do so. We are here because people have lost their lives on our roads. Families have lost children, parents, partners and friends, and too many are left feeling that the justice system has not reflected the enormity of their loss. This debate is about accountability, public confidence and whether the law does enough to punish those responsible and deter others from making the same devastating choices.
I want to begin with the tragic case of my constituent Keely Morgan, a 15-year-old girl whose life was cut short while crossing the road in Cardiff. She was a much-loved daughter and a cherished granddaughter, sister and friend with so much to look forward to. On 1 May 2023, Keely was struck by a car while crossing at a pedestrian crossing in Caerau, in my constituency. She died at the scene.
The court heard that the driver was travelling above the speed limit, had been driving erratically and showing off, and had removed the vehicle’s black box, invalidating his insurance. The judge described him as an “irresponsible show-off”. He received 16 months’ imprisonment for causing death by careless driving, and 11 months for causing death by driving while uninsured, to be served concurrently. He was also disqualified from driving for two years and eight months, yet he was released after serving only around six and a half months.
Keely’s family must live with their loss for the rest of their lives. Her mother, Sian Morgan, has channelled her grief into campaigning for change. Her petition has attracted nearly 12,000 signatures, and I am pleased that Sian is in the Public Gallery today. I pay tribute to her determination to ensure that other families do not have to endure the same tragedy. Her campaign deserves to be heard, and, as her Member of Parliament, I will ensure that it is. This House must take seriously the questions that it raises.
I recognise that courts must consider the individual circumstances of every case. The distinction between careless and dangerous driving is important, and not every offence should result in the same sentence, but where a driver’s actions demonstrate a serious disregard for the safety of others and a life is lost, we must ask whether our sentencing framework adequately reflects such conduct.
Sadly, these concerns are not new in my constituency of Cardiff West. Almost a decade ago, my predecessor raised very similar concerns following the death of another constituent, in a case involving dangerous driving in Adamstown, Cardiff. The constituent was killed after two drivers deliberately pursued her and drove her off the road. Both were convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and sentenced to just six and a half and seven and a half years in prison respectively. The outcome then left the victim’s family members feeling that justice had not fully reflected the gravity of what had happened. How can I find myself, almost 10 years later, representing the same constituency, arguing the same point in the same Chamber? Why and how can history continue to repeat itself in this way?
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for shedding light on those cases. It cannot be easy for the families to hear again what happened. The reason we are back here, I expect, is because the sentences are not a deterrent, and because the term “death by dangerous driving” completely underplays what happens, particularly in the cases my hon. Friend explained. This is manslaughter. Does he agree that we should think not just about sentencing, but about how we present such cases to the courts?
Mr Barros-Curtis
I entirely agree. I will shortly come on to some actions that I am calling on the Government to take forward, some of which I think my hon. Friend will be pleased and will agree with.
In 2024, a collision in Carmarthenshire claimed the lives of two young people. In sentencing the driver at Swansea Crown court on 2 April this year, Judge Huw Rees observed that, although the driver had not exceeded the speed limit, his driving was
“simply not appropriate for the prevailing road conditions”.
Visibility was limited and conditions were extremely poor, yet the driver accelerated when greater caution was required. That driver received 16 months’ imprisonment suspended for 12 months on both counts of causing death by careless driving, with the sentences again running concurrently. He was disqualified from driving for 18 months and ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work. Two young lives were lost in that case, yet the driver did not receive an immediate custodial sentence.
That outcome and the others I have talked about in the cases of my constituents inevitably raise questions about whether the seriousness of the conduct and its consequences are adequately reflected in sentencing. Road safety cannot be measured solely by whether someone exceeds the speed limit: drivers must exercise judgment, adapt to conditions and put the safety of others first. When two lives are lost, the public must have confidence that the sentences reflect the seriousness of that failure.
Of course, sentencing is not solely about punishment; it must also be a deterrent. If we want drivers to think twice before speeding, showing off, using their phones at the wheel, taking risks in poor weather or disregarding other road users, the consequences must be clear and meaningful. When families repeatedly see outcomes that they perceive as inadequate, public confidence suffers. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. We must also consider what happens after an offender has been sentenced. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Where a driver has demonstrated a serious failure to meet their responsibilities, we must ensure that their return to the road is subject to appropriate safeguards.
I urge the Government to take action in four areas. First, driving disqualifications must be reviewed. Where a driver has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to drive safely, there should be a robust process for assessing their fitness to return to the road. The Government should consider Sian’s proposal for automatic licence revocation following serious traffic incidents, notably before an appearance at or a conviction by a court. Such steps should be considered alongside mandatory reassessment before driving privileges are ever restored.
Kim Leadbeater (Spen Valley) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate. Road safety is a key issue in my constituency, and he is absolutely right to say that the sentences should reflect these hideous crimes. Does he also agree that we must look at prevention? As part of that, will he encourage the Government to look at the introduction of graduated driving licences, which are a way of preventing these horrendous incidents from taking place? There is much international evidence that they save lives.
Mr Barros-Curtis
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. She makes the point excellently; I totally endorse what she said and I am sure that the Minister was listening carefully. I look forward to hearing what he has to say about that.
I am aware that the suspension of driving licences was consulted on as part of the Department for Transport’s motoring offences consultation. That covered not just death by dangerous or careless driving but drink and drug-related offences. I ask the Minister to do everything he can to ensure that the Department for Transport carefully considers this question, and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), as it analyses those consultation responses.
Secondly, sentencing guidelines must be reviewed. The Government should examine guidelines for careless and dangerous driving resulting in death, ensuring that excessive speed, deliberate risk-taking, previous offending and disregard for safety receive appropriate weight.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)
I have previously spoken quite vociferously on the issue. Tougher sentences have to happen, with the revocation of licences for a very long period. Two lives were lost in my constituency: two months ago, we lost a 60-year-old man, and on the same stretch last year, we lost a 56-year-old. We have to look at the causes. If that includes people taking balloons, we have to restrict them from taking and being high on the gases in the balloons, but we also have to implement safety measures that would prevent cars doing 89 mph in a 20-mph zone.
Mr Barros-Curtis
I thank my hon. Friend for sharing those stories, I extend my greatest sympathies to the affected constituents who he so admirably represents, and I entirely agree with what he said.
Consistency is important, but it must not come at the expense of properly reflecting the circumstances of each crime. Relatedly, the Minister will know that the unduly lenient sentence scheme allows anyone to ask for certain Crown court sentences to be reviewed by the Attorney General’s Office if they think they are too lenient. The review is ultimately conducted by the Law Officers—the Attorney General or the Solicitor General—and if they consider that a sentence appears unduly lenient, they can ask the Court of Appeal to review it. However, only sentences passed in the Crown court in respect of offences triable only on indictment—that is, in the Crown Court—or those offences added to the scheme by subsequent order may be referred to the Court of Appeal. The offence of causing death by careless driving is not triable only on indictment and although there is a long list of offences that have been subsequently added to the ULS scheme by various orders, the offence of causing death by careless driving has not.
Following the sentence of Keely’s killer, Sian was mistakenly told by the prosecuting barrister and the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer dealing with the case that the sentence imposed might have been too lenient and that they would consider whether the matter should be referred under the ULS scheme. Regrettably, and for the reasons I have mentioned, that was a mistake. I wonder whether the Minister might reflect on that disconnect and say whether he will seek to inquire whether the offence of causing death by careless driving should be added to the ULS scheme.
Thirdly, the Government should consider whether legislative changes are needed to strengthen custodial sentences.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I want to raise the really sad case of Sophie Brimble, which was brought to me by her sister. Sophie was killed as a passenger in a car with her boyfriend, who was driving at three times the speed limit. The driver was found unfit to plead and therefore walked out of court without having to face justice. The unfit to plead law dates back to 1836. Does my hon. Friend agree that reforming it is long overdue?
Mr Barros-Curtis
I thank my hon. Friend for sharing yet another tragic story. I again extend my sincere condolences to her constituents, and I entirely agree with her. I hope the Minister can address the issue she raised.
Of course a prison sentence can never bring back a loved one, but it must provide meaningful accountability and act as a genuine deterrent, as we have been saying. We must examine whether the sentences available and imposed in these most serious of cases adequately reflect the harm caused, including considering whether suspended sentences are appropriate in such cases.
Fourthly, we must address repeat offending and consider prevention. In my opinion, the Government should review whether the current penalties sufficiently address patterns of irresponsible driving before they lead to further tragedy. Stronger sentences alone will not solve every road safety problem. Enforcement, education and safer infrastructure must remain central.
Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)
Government figures show that rural roads account for 60% of road deaths but only 45% of traffic, and speed-related factors were recorded in over half of all fatal collisions in the last year. In my constituency of Gravesham, we lost two people in Sole Street who were cyclists on the road. Does my hon. Friend agree that in rural villages—where roads are narrower, without pavements, and shared by walkers, cyclists and horse riders—need particular attention and intervention?
Mr Barros-Curtis
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and I again extend my condolences to the people in her constituency who are affected. Part of my constituency is rural; indeed, these issues affect many constituencies across our four home nations. I am sure that the Minister was listening carefully to that intervention.
The debate is not about revenge; it is about justice, accountability and prevention. We cannot change what happened to the victims of these offences, but we can decide what lessons we learn from their deaths.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
My constituent Darran is the father of Aidan Venison, who was only 19 when he was killed by a driver under the influence of drink and drugs who was not a first-time offender—he had already been banned from driving before, and on that occasion he was also uninsured. Aidan’s parents do not understand the leniency that might have been afforded to such a driver, or why they are still allowed to be on the roads. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that sometimes sentences that are perceived as lenient add to the heartbreak of parents?
Mr Barros-Curtis
I completely agree with the hon. Lady and extend my condolences to the constituent she is so admirably representing. I agree that it is about accountability, justice and the message that it sends to the victims and their families who have to live with that loss for the rest of their lives.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I am so glad the hon. Gentleman has called this debate. I want to include the feeling of injustice that there is for those who suffer the loss of a family member. The person who killed the wife of one of my constituents with a car chose to give a “no comment” interview. There were only two vehicles involved: a bike ridden by my constituent’s wife, and a car. The perpetrator did not deny that she had done it, but she gave a “no comment” interview throughout the proceedings, which just added to the grief and injustice that that family feels.
Mr Barros-Curtis
I thank the hon. Lady for sharing that tragic story and I again extend my condolences to those affected. I entirely agree. We have to think of this issue holistically, because the impact is forever for the families and friends of the victims.
If two different families and two different MPs from the same constituency have been raising the same concerns for almost a decade, Parliament has a responsibility to listen. We must ask whether our laws provide sufficient punishment, deterrence and protection for the public. If they do not, we must have the courage to change them.
Every day, residents cross the zebra crossing in Caerau to visit the park. For the community there, it is a daily reminder of Keely and the life lost. I know that the community support for the family has been tremendous, but no amount of flowers, murals or kind words will bring Keely back to Sian and her lovely family. I am grateful and thank Sian and her family, as well as everyone who supported her campaign, for their courage. They have channelled their grief in an attempt to get the productive outcome that we are talking about here today.
Keely should have been able to cross that road safely and return home. She was so much more than the circumstances of her death. She was a daughter, a sister and a young girl with her whole life ahead of her. Her family should be able to remember her for who she was, rather than having to fight to ensure that no other family has to suffer the same indignity.
Ultimately, this issue is about ensuring that our sentencing framework reflects the seriousness of these offences, gives families confidence that justice has been served and acts as a meaningful deterrent to prevent further tragedies. We must ensure that the consequences are serious enough to reflect the harm caused, hold offenders accountable and deter others from taking the same risks. I urge the Government to review the legislation and sentencing framework and to take meaningful action. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and the further contributions of colleagues.
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should not speak about any live or ongoing court cases or inquests.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) for securing this debate.
To pick up on something that the hon. Gentleman said, driving is a privilege. Allowing somebody who has killed or caused serious injury to another person to be able to return to the road immediately seems particularly injurious. I hope that the Minister will be able to address the hon. Gentleman’s call for automatic license revocation. The current situation feels incredibly lenient, especially considering that people have to wait a very long time for court cases to come around. The perpetrator can carry on with the rest of their life while the family is suspended in utter grief. My sense is that suspended sentences are not appropriate either, particularly in the case I am thinking of, where somebody has given a “no comment” interview to the police and chosen not to speak. It just seems so desperately unfair.
It has already been mentioned, but I also want to address the fact that there are people who are driving without insurance, tax or a valid MOT, but the police are so stretched that they cannot deal with those sorts of issue when they come along. Those “minor” infringements, as considered by those who commit them, only increase the likelihood of someone carrying on to behave more irresponsibly. I ask the Minister to look at what is happening in France and Ireland, our nearest neighbours, who take different views and actions. I am happy to send the Minister information on that.
I want to talk about one other aspect: how to prevent dangerous behaviour before it results in even one more death. I will concentrate on speeding and racing, which is a serious concern in my constituency. Between 2019 and 2024, 204 people were killed or seriously injured: 29 lost their lives and 175 suffered serious injuries. I am thinking about accidents that happened in Dinder, just outside Wells; in Blackford; and recently in the village of Ston Easton.
Those incidents are catastrophic, not just for the people who live nearby and the families but desperate for everyone involved. The people killed or seriously injured are not just statistics; they represent individuals, families and communities, whose lives are often changed for ever. I do not suggest that all those collisions involved speeding, but nationally excessive speed was a contributory factor in around one in five fatal collisions in 2024. That surely underlines why tackling excessive speeding must be central to any serious strategy to reduce road deaths.
It is great that the Department for Transport has published the first road safety strategy in over a decade, but we have a Justice Minister here. I ask him to work with colleagues in the Department for Transport to address my straightforward question. The strategy includes a welcome ambition to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 65% by 2035, but where will that 65% reduction will come from? Many in the road safety community question whether the currently proposed measures are sufficient to achieve that ambition.
The strategy is relatively light on specific measures to tackle serious and persistent speeding, despite recognising speeding as one of the fatal four causes of death or serious injury on our roads. Since that strategy was published back in January, there must be an urgent need to finalise the Government’s response to the consultations, set out a clear delivery plan and to begin implementing the measures that will save lives.
I attended an event here in the Houses of Parliament where I was interested to see the intervening intelligent speed assistant, or IISA. I recognise that technology is fitted to new cars, but this feature can be fitted to cars that are already on the road. I have asked for some, as I drive 25,000 miles a year, going in and out of 20, 30 and 40 limits regularly, and I do not wish to get any points on my licence. I should declare an interest there.
Unlike the intelligence speed assistance technology fitted to new cars, which can warn drivers when they exceed the speed limit but can be overridden or switched off—although it should not be—intervening technology can actively prevent a vehicle from accelerating beyond the legal limit. That is not a theoretical idea; it is already happening in Virginia in the United States. A programme was introduced this year that allows the courts to require certain speeding offenders to use vehicles that are fitted with speed-limiting technology, which is an advance. Transport for London has also demonstrated high levels of speed-limit compliance, using intervening technology in its bus fleet.
Can this Minister get Transport Ministers to reassure us that the Secretary of State’s officials have examined the progress being made in other jurisdictions using IISA as part of offender management? Might he take a slightly different angle and just ask why we would not do that rather than why we would do it. It seems that it has been demonstrated to be effective and practical, and it has the potential to save lives, so I think that we should trial it at least.
I return to the families whose experiences lie at the heart of today’s debate. They deserve justice. They also deserve to know that we are doing everything reasonably possible to prevent other families from suffering as they have suffered.
Tahir Ali
I agree with the hon. Lady that we welcome the target of 65% by 2035, but by 2035 we could have had at least two general elections if not more. This is not fair on the families who have lost loved ones. We need to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries more quickly—more urgently—than 2035. If that target is set, perhaps it needs to be brought forward, into this Parliament, so that we can make a significant start on achieving that objective.
Tessa Munt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I would say to the Minister that, even with all the optimism in the world that there might be another two lots of elections, that does not provide a reason not to act. This timetable really does need to be contracted. When such simple wins could be achieved, we should do things as quickly as we possibly can: 2035 does seem an awfully long way away.
There is an ambitious target—I understand that—but we need the measures, the right timetable and determination. I ask the Minister to answer those questions that are relevant to him, and I ask him kindly to pass those that he will not be able to answer on to the Department for Transport and the Secretary of State in particular.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) on securing this debate on an issue that is particularly close to my heart, having seen two young women from my constituency lose their lives as a result of dangerous driving. I know that too many colleagues in this room will have supported families who have experienced similar tragedies.
I want to begin with the story of Lillie Clack, and the extraordinary work that her family have undertaken in her memory. On Christmas Day 2021, Lillie was a passenger in a car driven by a man who had been drinking. That driver, Charlie Hilton, was fleeing the police at speeds of more than 100 mph when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree. Lillie suffered catastrophic injuries and died three days later. She was just 22 years old. In February 2023, Hilton was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison for causing death by dangerous driving and other offences, but no prison sentence can bring Lillie back or undo the devastation caused to her family. And Lillie’s death is far from an isolated incident.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
This week marks a year since the death of Abigail Eggleston, the girlfriend of one of my constituents, in similar circumstances. She was killed by Liam Bowes in a hit-and-run incident. I am sure that the thoughts of all of us will be with her family and her partner, William Payne. Bowes was sentenced to 12 years in prison for causing death by dangerous driving. Does my hon. Friend agree that justice has to be delivered for victims of crimes like this, and does she welcome the Government’s commitment that those convicted of this crime, this offence, will not be eligible for early release, which would otherwise have effectively halved the time that Bowes would serve in prison?
Dame Siobhain McDonagh
I absolutely agree. I extend my condolences and, I am sure, those of all Members to Abigail Eggleston’s family that she died in such tragic circumstances.
According to the Stop Excessive Speeders campaign, between 2020 and 2025, 282 people were killed or seriously injured in road collisions in Mitcham and Morden, including five who lost their lives. Those figures seem extraordinary.
Another young woman from my constituency who lost her life as a result of dangerous driving was Aalia Mahomed. Aalia was just 20 years old and was studying at King’s College London. In March last year, she was sitting on a bench outside her university when a van mounted the pavement and struck her. She died at the scene. The driver, Christopher Jackson, subsequently pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Aalia had her whole life ahead of her. Her family have been left to come to terms with a loss that no sentence can undo. Her death is a reminder that dangerous driving threatens not only those travelling on our roads, but pedestrians going about their everyday lives. It is tragedies like these that have led families to campaign for change.
Since Lillie’s death, her mum Debbie and her auntie Donna have worked tirelessly to ensure that something positive comes from the unimaginable tragedy. I want to take a moment to recognise what Debbie has achieved. On what would have been Lillie’s 25th birthday, Debbie opened Lillie’s in the Garden, a beautiful tea room at Merton and Sutton joint cemetery. I had the pleasure of attending its opening, and I cannot speak highly enough of the wonderful space that Debbie has created. It is somewhere for people visiting loved ones at the cemetery to find comfort, and somewhere for anyone passing to enjoy a cup of tea, a slice of cake and a friendly conversation. I encourage any hon. Members who find themselves on Garth Road in Lower Morden to pay it a visit.
Through her charity Eyes Wet Now, Debbie is also working to support other bereaved families. It is a remarkable achievement and a wonderful tribute to Lillie. Debbie and Donna have also campaigned for the introduction of Lillie’s law, with more than 43,000 people having signed their petition. Their campaign has two demands: first, that a driver’s licence be immediately suspended following a fatal road collision, pending investigation, and secondly that anyone convicted of causing death by dangerous driving should be permanently disqualified from driving, whether or not alcohol was involved. Those proposals seek justice for those who have lost their lives; they are also about preventing further tragedy.
I want to recognise the extraordinary determination of Claire Corkery, who has been campaigning for justice following the death of both her parents. In January 2024, Tom and Sue Corkery were walking their dog in Bearsted, Kent, when they were struck and killed by a speeding driver. In a single moment, Claire lost both her mum and her dad. The driver, Scott Gunn, was subsequently convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but it took over a year for Gunn to be brought before the courts. Throughout that time, he was legally permitted to drive, and he admitted in court that he had continued to drive. Even after his conviction, Gunn received a driving ban of just eight years. Claire is understandably concerned that he could return to the roads once he has served his sentence and his disqualification has expired.
Claire has also campaigned against the early release of dangerous drivers. She is determined to ensure that their sentences reflect the seriousness of the lives lost. Her experience demonstrates precisely why the two demands of Lillie’s law are so important.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. There are 4,154 people still on the road who have 12-plus points on their licence but who are not disqualified, on the grounds that it would cause disproportionate suffering to a third party. But what about the disproportionate suffering to families? Does my hon. Friend agree that that get-out needs reviewing?
Dame Siobhain McDonagh
I agree with my hon. Friend on that point.
Lillie’s law is campaigning for the power to suspend licences immediately following fatal collision, and for permanent disqualification for those convicted of causing death by dangerous driving. Claire’s determination, like Debbie’s, deserves recognition.
I recognise the important progress that the Government have already made. In August, the Government confirmed that those convicted of causing death by dangerous driving would be excluded from the new early release arrangements. Debbie Clack wrote to the Prime Minister personally to thank him for that decision. For a family who have endured so much, it meant a great deal to know that the seriousness of what happened to Lillie has been recognised.
I welcome the Government’s road safety strategy, which was published in January and which sets out an ambitious target to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured by 65% by 2035. The strategy recognises the need for stronger action against dangerous drivers. It considers new powers to suspend the licences of those under investigation for the most serious motoring offences, resulting in death or serious injury. That is a significant step towards addressing one of the central concerns of Lillie’s law. I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on the progress of those proposals and on when we might expect to see them brought forward.
I also want to raise the question of permanent driving disqualification. I recognise that courts already have the power to impose lifetime driving bans. Will the Minister explain what consideration the Government have given to mandatory permanent disqualification, and whether further measures could be considered to strengthen the protection of the public?
The Government’s own road safety strategy makes an important point: holding a driving licence is not an automatic right. Principle should guide us as we consider how to protect people from the most dangerous drivers. I hope that the Minister will continue to listen to Debbie and families like hers, and work with them to ensure that we do everything possible to prevent another tragedy like those of Lillie, of Aalia and of Tom and Sue Corkery.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell, and to be called to speak. I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) for securing this incredibly sensitive debate, and I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. By the very nature of life, we will have circumstances in our constituencies where someone has passed away or been killed as a result of a road accident or has died afterwards.
I have to say this: I do not believe that anyone sets out in their car intending to take a life. Tragically, however, it does happen, whatever the reasons may be—from using a phone behind the wheel to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. I am old enough to remember when driving under the influence of alcohol was always the reason; then it was alcohol and drugs, or just drugs on their own. In the last few years, the prevalence of motorists using drugs that affect their driving and make them a threat to others behind the wheel, has become a massive issue.
The maximum penalty in England and Wales for causing death by dangerous driving is now life imprisonment, but in many cases, as the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) says, it is not applied. The hon. Lady referred to the possibility of a mandatory life sentence for the crime. That is probably what I would seek as well, rather than leaving it to the discretion of the magistrate or the judge handing out the sentence. Judges retain a large amount of discretion, allowing them to assess individual culpability. I am not quite sure how that is done. It is not for me to tell a judge that they are doing things wrong, because that is not my way of doing things, nor does my knowledge cover legal matters. However, I do believe that justice in these cases is best served by allowing judges to consider the unique circumstances of each case. It is clear that the system is largely effective, as 95% of those convicted of causing death by dangerous driving are sent to prison. The stats indicate that the majority receive a prison sentence, but often the cases that come to our attention are those in which there is no life sentence or no sending to prison.
I should have welcomed the Minister to his place; I apologise for not doing so earlier. I wish him well in his role, and I hope that Members can get the answers that we seek from him. None the less, we must continue to listen to the concerns of victims’ families, because that is what motivates us all as elected representatives.
As some Members highlighted, offenders can continue driving until conviction after causing a fatality, or can resume driving soon after leaving prison. When offenders receive a sentence and go to prison, it would be appropriate for them to have their driving licence removed. They should not be able to just resume driving as soon as they exit prison, in many cases probably after serving a small sentence. These gaps must be addressed, both to protect the public and to provide greater reassurance to families.
In Northern Ireland, the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving remains 14 years. That should be brought into line with England and Wales, giving our courts greater powers to impose even harsher sentences where they see fit. My Strangford constituency has seen the blight of dangerous driving, with people losing their lives as a result. Just last year, on the same night, two young people were killed in separate incidents: Lucas Trainor, aged 12, and Jaidyn Rice, aged 16. They were two lovely young people and had not even got to the prime of life when they lost their lives as a result of accidents. My thoughts continue to be with both families, whose lives have been changed forever.
Members have explained and retold the stories of families in the Chamber today. The families who have been left behind face the impact every day of their lives. The son of one of my good friends was killed in a different circumstance. I remember that my friend always told me, “Jim, when I go to bed at night, I think of Stuart, and when I wake up in the morning, I think of Stuart.” That is the kind of thing these families do. Something like a vacant chair is very real to them, as are the anxiety, angst and pain in their hearts.
I call on the Government to make jail time mandatory for these cases while retaining some judicial discretion when sentencing. These cases are immensely complex. They cause profound distress to drivers, victims and their families. Although no sentence can ever reflect the loss suffered, the court must be allowed to assign a sentence that is truly reflective of blameworthiness. I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West for giving us the chance to speak about this issue today, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) for securing this important debate.
Behind every road death is a family, a group of friends and loved ones who have been changed forever. Today, I want to speak about one such family from my constituency: the parents of Jess Waterman, who have joined us in the Gallery this afternoon, and whom the Minister kindly met earlier this year. On the evening of 19 February 2022, Jess’s partner—someone she knew and trusted—picked her up from the Watermans’ home in Bishop’s Stortford. He had never passed a theory test or practical driving test, and he took to the roads in full knowledge that he was not qualified to drive. He showed brazen disregard for Jess’s safety and the safety of other road users. He crashed that evening. When he fled the scene to avoid arrest, he left Jess behind, seriously injured. Tragically, Jess died the following day. She was three days short of her 21st birthday.
The police acted to apprehend the driver, but the outcome of this case raises serious questions about whether the law properly reflects the choices people make before getting behind the wheel, and the devastation that can follow when that goes wrong. The driver responsible for Jess’s death was convicted of causing death by careless driving rather than causing death by dangerous driving, and that distinction matters. Dangerous driving will generally involve driving that falls far below the standard expected of a competent driver. Careless driving can cover errors of judgment or lapses in attention. Driving without a licence is not simply careless. This was not a split-second mistake; it was a conscious decision taken before the journey ever began. It required premeditation. The driver knew that he was unqualified and that he should not be behind the wheel, but he chose to get behind the wheel anyway, with Jess in the car.
Jess’s death was treated in law as careless driving, in the same category as offences such as forgetting to get an MOT. As a result, in 2023 the man responsible for Jess’s death was sentenced to just four years in prison. Not only was he out of prison by early 2026 but, stunningly, he was caught driving again. Despite being handed a 10-year ban, he showed no remorse for the tragedy he brought upon the Watermans or regard for the one he might bring upon another family. He was rightly returned to prison. No parent expects to outlive their child, or to receive a phone call or visit from the police to tell them that their child is never coming home, but that is the reality that one driver’s actions have left the Waterman family living with every day.
Out of their loss, the Watermans have campaigned for change, calling for death caused while driving without a licence to be treated automatically as dangerous, and for stronger deterrents. They have worked tirelessly to ensure that no other family has to experience what they have endured, and I promised them I would do all I can to support their campaign and ensure that their voices are heard in the House.
As we consider these issues today, I ask colleagues to think about this: how can it be just that someone taking to the roads in the full knowledge that they are not qualified is not considered dangerous? How can we claim that there is a sufficient deterrent when Jess’s killer spent so little time in prison and immediately took to the roads again upon his release? We owe it to the Watermans, and to victims and their families, to ask in cases such as this whether sentencing powers properly reflect the profound harm that has been caused.
I stand with the Watermans as they call for a change in the law, and I thank the Minister for meeting us earlier this year. I would be grateful if he could update us on what actions he has taken, and if he would commit in this debate to working with colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and across Government to review whether causing a death while knowingly driving without a licence should automatically be treated as dangerous driving. The law should better reflect the poor choices made before a tragedy occurs and the consequences that families must live with forever.
I want to conclude by paying tribute to the Watermans. Out of grief, they have sought to make change and to protect others. I can honestly say that I cannot imagine showing the strength, determination and courage that they have shown, were I in their shoes. I am humbled by their commitment and their work, but they deserve more than just our admiration; they deserve our support. We must not fail to meet their call—for Sue, for Del, for their younger son, Jess’s brother, and, most importantly, for Jess.
Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) on securing this really important debate. I also commend him for his campaigning efforts on behalf of his constituents, especially the family of Keely Morgan, whom he referred to so powerfully in his speech. He was absolutely right that proper deterrents should be in place for offenders. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain that Keely’s family have been through following her tragic death, and the subsequent pain of navigating the justice system to address such serious failures of accountability and justice. Sadly, it is the same story for so many of our constituents up and down the country, including in one tragic case in my constituency, which I will touch on later.
I would like to take the opportunity to commend all hon. Members across the House, who have spoken so powerfully about their constituents’ tragic cases. Ther e are far too many similar experiences. On behalf of too many grieving families and the victims themselves, we Liberal Democrats are fighting for changes to sentencing for causing death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving. We believe that the sentences handed to those who kill someone by dangerous driving should properly reflect the seriousness of their crimes. We supported much tougher maximum sentencing and longer disqualification periods in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and we have long been calling for an updated road safety strategy, which must be delivered as quickly as possible, following years of neglect of Britain’s roads by successive Governments.
One shocking case relating to road safety in my constituency of North Cornwall involved the hit and run of a young man named Ryan Saltern. In 2019, Ryan was hit and killed late at night by a drunk driver who sped away from the scene, leaving Ryan alone in the middle of the road to die. Despite killing Ryan, fleeing the scene and hiding from the police for 36 hours, Ryan’s killer was spared prison entirely and was handed a four-month suspended sentence and a 12-month driving ban in a magistrates court. Because the Crown Prosecution Service could not prove that he had been driving dangerously, he was charged only with failing to stop and report a road accident—essentially the same charge as if he had clipped someone’s wing mirror and driven off without reporting it. As in the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt), witnesses at the scene gave a “no comment” interview and experienced no consequences whatever. Imagine the heartbreak that that added to Ryan’s family.
In response to Ryan’s tragic death, his parents, Mark and Helen, and his sister, Leanne, launched their Ryan’s law campaign. Their aim is to widen the causing death by dangerous driving offence by including a failure to stop, call 999 and render aid at the scene until the emergency services arrive as an aggravating factor. Their online petition garnered 167,000 signatures, and support for the change is extremely strong, both locally in Cornwall and across our country. Sadly, hundreds of families do not see justice served.
During my first two years in this place as North Cornwall’s MP, I have been taken aback by the sheer dedication and perseverance of the Saltern family in campaigning on this vital issue. They have committed to ensure that no more families in Britain are left feeling badly let down and lost in the justice system after a road traffic collision. They are doing incredible work with RysHaven, which provides a safe, dedicated space where families grieving a loved one killed in a road accident can escape and process what happened.
I have joined the Saltern family in meetings with various Roads Ministers at the Department for Transport, the most recent of which was last month. I also raised their case with the previous Solicitor General, and I have tried to champion their cause in a number of debates in this House to demand the change that they and so many other families are calling for. That is why I was pleased that the Government announced a new road safety strategy at the start of this year, given that previous road safety strategies successfully delivered good improvements in road safety. But almost one year on, we are still seeking clarity on when the strategy will be implemented and how the several consultations that have already taken place will feed into it.
Monica Harding
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as part of the road safety strategy, we should consider graduated driving licences, which have been introduced in Northern Ireland? He talked about the risks of dangerous driving, and he mentioned drink and drugs, but youth is also a danger, because if kids get into a car and start to speed, it can end up being a tragic situation. Does he agree that England, Wales and Scotland should have the same rights as Northern Ireland?
Ben Maguire
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent contribution. I agree that there is a strong case to be made for graduated licences—the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) referred to international research showing the success of that scheme in Northern Ireland, and my hon. Friend talked about it too. Hopefully, the Minister was listening to that.
I welcome the Minister to his place. From having served with him on the Home Affairs Committee, I know he is very diligent, and I hope he will at least speak to his colleagues in the Department for Transport to get an update on the timing of the road safety strategy, which Members are still waiting to hear about. At the heart of submissions to each consultation on that strategy was the actual impact of road traffic collisions on victims and their families. The human cost of inaction is staggering: each of the 1,500 fatalities on Britain’s roads last year left a grieving family who wanted justice to be properly carried out on behalf of the loved one they had lost.
In August, the Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, set out six clear recommendations in relation to road safety in her report on barriers to justice. She said:
“Behind every road death or serious injury is a victim, a grieving family and lives changed forever. Yet too many victims told me they felt road crime was not treated with the seriousness it deserved”.
Her formal recommendations set out areas for improvement, including implementing stronger national standards for investigating road collisions, trauma-informed training for police officers and staff, and sustainable funding for specialist traffic collision victim support services.
I ask the Minister, when he winds up, to confirm whether he has read the Victims’ Commissioner’s report in full, and whether his Department is working cross-departmentally to implement its six recommendations. Will he also please provide clarity around the timeline for the road safety strategy, including when the Government will respond to the consultations held earlier this year? Finally, will he look into adopting a much more victim-centred approach in the new road safety strategy so that families like the Salterns and parents like Keely Morgan’s, as well as the countless families hon. Members have spoken about so powerfully today, can finally feel that their voice is being properly heard?
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell.
I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) for securing the debate, and for the way in which he spoke about his constituent Sian and her daughter Keely; he made their case powerfully. Preparing for the debate has given me the opportunity to read more about Sian and her campaign, and about Keely. As the hon. Member described, Keely was just 15 years old when she was killed in May 2023, struck by a car while crossing the road. The driver was convicted of causing her death by careless driving and of causing death while uninsured. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
In my work with victims and campaigners, I have got to know that until we speak to a person individually, we do not always know the ins and outs of a case, and I would not want to say anything incorrect. However, I can say confidently that a 15-year-old girl died, a family have been changed forever and the sentence was measured in months, not years. I know how I would feel if my similarly aged niece was killed in the same circumstances, given the criminal background of the individual concerned. I want to speak out for Sian and the way in which she has campaigned. More than 11,800 people have signed her petition calling for tougher sentences and for changes in the way such cases are handled.
As other hon. Members have said, under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, introduced by the last Government, the maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving and for causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs was raised from 14 years to life imprisonment. I know that those were not the exact same charges involved in Keely’s case, but that penalty demonstrates an attempt to recognise such offences and the impact they have. However, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) described, maximum sentences are one thing and what judges give is another.
I will talk about a family with whom I have worked directly and about whom I can speak more confidently. Glenn and Rebecca Youens lost their daughter, Violet-Grace, in March 2017 when she was four years old. She was walking with her grandmother in St Helens when a stolen car driven at 83 mph in a 30 mph zone hit them. Violet-Grace died and her grandmother was left with life-changing injuries. The driver fled the scene. He was later sentenced to nine years and four months, but because he pleaded guilty he received a reduction and was released after around four and a half years. As Glenn powerfully described, the driver spent less time in prison than his daughter was alive.
I have been proud to support Glenn and his family. They are part of a group called Justice for Victims. In what I hope will be an inspiration to Sian, they also launched a petition and campaigned vociferously in their daughter’s memory, and they were a big part of why the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving was increased. I also mention them because, like so many of those mentioned today, they really understand what it is to not get justice: they cared deeply and loved someone deeply, and they live in a country where they expected that if you do the right thing and someone does the wrong thing to you, the system will deliver justice for you. You cannot bring somebody back, but you do not want revenge; you want justice.
The concerns in these and many other cases demonstrate that, for many decades—this is not about one Government or another—the justice system in this country has not been delivering justice anywhere near as often as it should have been, particularly for serious offences and serious offenders who commit crimes again and again. During our time in government, we took some steps to try to address that. We did so in a major way by rolling back the automatic release point from halfway to two thirds of a sentence for some offenders. We have talked today about sentences, but we have to remember that the time someone spends in prison can be very different from the sentence that was passed down in court. Prior to that change, essentially everybody except those serving a life sentence served only half their sentence, so that was an important step.
Since then, this Government have taken a sledgehammer to victims’ ability to get justice by introducing even earlier release, at the one-third point of a sentence, for offenders sent to prison for most crimes. Prior to the later changes that we managed to help secure, offenders just like the person who killed Sian’s daughter would have been asked to spend only a third of their sentence in prison. That was disgraceful, and the Government’s aim was to make the release point even earlier, not just for those responsible for causing death by dangerous driving, but for those committed of rape and a whole series of other very serious crimes—this Government attempted to let them out of prison earlier, too.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West talked about whether Parliament listens enough. Very many MPs from different parties did listen to what people said about that and attempted to stop the Government doing it.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh
Is the hon. Member prepared to give credit to my constituent Miss Corkery, who campaigned tirelessly for death by dangerous driving to be excluded from the early release scheme, and to recognise that she and other campaigners were successful?
Dr Mullan
Yes, I will go on to speak about that in detail.
It is important for people watching and listening to the debate to know when the Minister gets up and gives us lots of warm words that he is the Minister who argued specifically to let people just like the gentleman involved in this case get out of prison after serving just a third of their sentence. It was only as a result of campaigners like Sian and the person that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned, who fought the Government and had to tell their stories again and again in public, which I am sure Members know is a deeply traumatic thing to have to do, that the Government were forced into U-turning.
All this was based on a set of plans for an independent review that did absolutely nothing to engage with what victims actually want from sentencing policy when it comes to justice. As I said, this issue has gone on for decades. There was an opportunity to grapple with it properly and seek to understand why there is such a big gap and why we see these campaigns again and again, in relation to not just driving offences but a whole series of offences where victims feel so badly let down. Nothing was done to engage with what victims actually want from sentencing. Even today, the Government describe those early releases as “earned releases” when in fact they are automatic. These people automatically walk away from prison even earlier. Thank goodness that because of the campaigners, that does not apply to those more serious offences. I welcome that.
It is not only on this issue that Parliament sought to improve the situation. A new clause tabled during the passage of the Sentencing Act 2026 would have provided for automatic disqualification of those convicted of causing death by careless or dangerous driving. Hundreds of MPs clubbed together to defeat that amendment, including, I am afraid, some of those who have spoken in this debate in support of the people who have been affected by these sorts of cases. I understand that the hon. Member for Cardiff West actually did not oppose that measure and saw the sense in it that many other MPs saw. I congratulate him on that.
The Minister has to answer some basic questions. Do the Government believe that the current sentencing framework and the way it has been applied properly reflect the seriousness of causing somebody’s death through dangerous or careless driving? If the answer is yes, the Minister must explain why so many families and members of the public believe otherwise; if the answer is no, he needs to tell us what the Government intend to do about it.
Other Members have described things that the Government could do in the short term that we support. The ULS should absolutely be extended to those who cause death by careless driving—surely, if an offence was so serious that it led to the death of a person, it should be eligible. We continue to want to see automatic disqualification of those convicted of causing death by careless or dangerous driving. There is absolutely merit in providing the police, for example, with an opportunity to ensure that someone’s licence is temporarily revoked as they consider the facts on the ground. The police seek bail conditions to restrict what suspects can do prior to conviction all the time, and I see no reason why that should not also be applied in this case.
There is a broader question that this Government and previous Governments have failed to grip and sort out. With these serious offences, there is a massive, yawning gap between the justice that the public, and victims and their family members, just like Sian, want to see, and the justice that they actually get in court. The Opposition have committed to seeking to address that if we get back into government, but whichever party is in government, we have to finally grip this—even if it is difficult or expensive—so that we do not see victims of serious crime deeply let down, again and again, by a system that they expect to be there for them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jake Richards)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) for securing this incredibly important debate and raising these issues, both in the Chamber and outside of it with me and others in the weeks preceding the debate.
I start, as many have, by paying tribute to my hon. Friend’s constituent Sian, who is here today. She has shown extraordinary courage in fighting to make sure that the death of her daughter, Keely, was not in vain, and to make changes to improve the country for others. We should applaud her for that. It is not easy, and it is hugely admirable. I want to apologise Sian, too, because she wrote to me, through her Member of Parliament, and did not receive a prompt response. There has been an error in my office. That is unacceptable, and I am getting to the bottom of it. I look forward to meeting her later today, hopefully to talk about the substantive issue, but also to apologise to her personally.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean). I met him and the Watermans, and it is good to see Derek and Sue here again today. After that meeting, I committed to raise the specific issues of their campaign and the tragic death of Jess with the then Roads Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I did so in writing and then met her, her officials and her special advisers, who are political appointees in the Department for Transport, to make sure that those issues are really high on the agenda as the Government’s strategy on road safety comes into force. There is more that we can do; this is work in progress. The Roads Minister has changed since then, but I have also met the current Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders)—indeed, because of the debate today, I wrote to him again this morning—to make sure that the campaigns and issues we are talking about are right at the top of his agenda.
I am not trying to duck the issues raised during the debate, but some of them are for the Department for Transport. I will try to address as many of them as possible and, of course, to deal with the sentencing aspects, but if I cannot address an issue, I will make sure that the Member who raised it gets a written response from the Roads Minister, who deals with some of the road safety issues.
Jim Shannon
I look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses to my questions. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) referred to graduated driver licensing in Northern Ireland, which we introduced after a long consultation and deliberation with all the bodies concerned. That seemed to be a strategic way forward, and it has certainly been received well by all sections of the general public in Northern Ireland. Is that something that the UK Government and the Ministry of Justice will consider introducing?
Jake Richards
Critically, it is not for my Department to consider it, but the Department for Transport is certainly looking at it and is alive to the international evidence that has been raised by a number of Members. I cannot get ahead of what the Roads Minister will set out, but I will make sure that he has heard the contributions to this debate.
I thank hon. Members from all parties for raising difficult cases, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). I was not aware of the work that Debbie has done around Lillie’s tragic death, so it was very moving to hear about that, and particularly about the café, which so many people will enjoy in her memory. I am very happy to meet Debbie if that would be helpful to her—or, indeed, I will get the Roads Minister to meet her if that would be more beneficial.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh
Debbie and Donna both met the previous road safety Minister to discuss their case and their reasons for asking for licences to be suspended after an accident, and then for there to be a lifetime ban. I thank the Minister for offering to meet them. I am sure Debbie will be marching her way towards him as she hears him speak.
Jake Richards
I look forward to Debbie marching into my office. Victims do not want to meet with a conveyor belt of Ministers from all different Departments. It is important that we have those meetings, because it is important that victims are heard and it is important for us to understand that behind every statistic in every paper we get to read in our ministerial boxes is a human life and a human tragedy, and I look forward to meeting her in due course, but what victims want is action. I hope that as I develop my speech, she will be reassured that we are taking these issues seriously and taking action.
Many other Members, some of whom made interventions and are longer here, raised important cases. It struck me, having been a Member of Parliament for only just over two years, that MPs get exposed to aspects of our country that normal citizens perhaps do not, and one of them is the prevalence and tragedy of road deaths. MPs are often notified if there has been an accident or if a criminal offence committed on our roads has led to a serious injury or death, and that happens far too regularly in our country. When you meet the families, as I have done in my Rother Valley constituency, it stays with you. I am determined to play my role to try to bring about safer roads.
I turn to the sentencing framework, because there has been some conflation of death by careless driving and death by dangerous driving. I am certainly not trying to educate Members, but it is my responsibility to set out the regime as it is today. Hon. Members know that sentencing within the framework that is set out in legislation is rightly a matter for the independent courts. Judges consider the facts of each case, weigh up any aggravating and mitigating factors, and follow relevant Sentencing Council guidelines before arriving at a sentence that is just and proportionate.
Some of the issues that have emerged in this debate are perhaps less about sentencing—although some certainly are about sentencing—than about the charging decision. I discussed this with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford and the Watermans. The CPS charging decision—the decision about what offence a defendant is charged with—is, and obviously should be, made independently of the Government, but the victims need to be involved in that decision. I am not saying that the CPS should do what they say, but it should involve them and communicate and engage with them. Too often, I meet victims of road traffic offences and other offences who simply have not been engaged with at all. I am talking to the Victims Minister to ensure that the CPS, where it can and where it is appropriate, is communicating with victims to make sure that the charging decision is the right one.
The law must reflect both the harm caused and how responsible the offender was for causing it, because while two drivers can cause the same terrible outcome, they may have done so through very different actions. That does not, of course, make one family’s loss any less than another’s, but the law has to distinguish between those different levels of blame.
Let me turn to the offences themselves. The most serious driving offence is causing death by dangerous driving. That is where someone’s driving falls far below the standard expected of a competent and careful driver, and where the danger should have been obvious. We are talking here about things such as excessive speed, racing and dangerous overtaking. For offences committed since June 2022, as mentioned by the spokesperson for the official Opposition, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is now life imprisonment. There is also a minimum five-year driving disqualification and a compulsory extended driving test before an offender can return to the road. Those are tough penalties, and rightly so. They give judges the power to impose the most serious punishment in the very worst cases. There is also the offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving. That covers driving that falls below the expected standard but does not reach the higher threshold for dangerous driving. The maximum sentence is a five-year imprisonment, alongside a minimum 12-month driving ban.
I raise the issue of the CPS because, of course, what the defendant is charged with is what the judge and the court can deal with. The charging decision is often just as important to get right for victims, families and wider society as the final sentencing, which then may not seem fair or sufficient to victims. The distinction between dangerous and careless driving is really important in our law, although of course I recognise that it is difficult for grieving families to accept that when, clearly, the loss they have suffered is exactly the same.
I want to deal with some of the specifics that have been raised in the debate, in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, about driving disqualification and whether there should be automatic disqualification—I think the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) also raised that. That is part of live discussions that I have had with the Department for Transport. It strikes me—I am very happy to put this on the record—that I have come across too many cases where driving disqualification is not taken seriously as part of the punishment. Often, a ban runs concurrently with a prison sentence, so there is the absurd situation that someone obviously cannot drive while they are in prison, and then they get out and they have never had any disqualification from driving at all.
I raised this issue in a meeting with the chair of the Sentencing Council; perhaps it was after the meeting with the Watermans that I raised it personally with the chair. I am not breaching any state secrets when I say that she was not persuaded, but I have asked the Sentencing Council to look again. The DFT is looking at the evidence to ensure that we have evidence-based policy, and I will continue pushing to see how we can ensure the judiciary use driving disqualification in a more muscular fashion.
The judiciary has the power to act. In this case, there is an issue about automating, but the judiciary has the power to implement lifelong driving bans, yet too often they seem not to be considered. I am not criticising our independent judges—I would never do that—but we must consider what we need to do as a Government and as a Parliament, while also considering the Sentencing Council’s role, in pushing this issue forward.
Dr Mullan
Just so the public can understand, there is a sentencing framework and judges have a role in applying that framework, but it would be totally within Parliament’s remit to make a ban mandatory—to make it automatic. We could do that. Indeed, a number of MPs voted for that last year, but it was blocked by the Government.
Jake Richards
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that Parliament could pass a law to introduce an automatic driving ban, but I think he was referring to a ban after conviction for dangerous driving. Automating such a ban before conviction would be more complex.
There is a general principle. As a Government, like Governments before us, we try to allow judicial discretion. Every case is different. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point; I am not trying to hide from the argument. The judges have the power. We need to get and understand the evidence on how often they use it and why they are not using it. Legislating to force judges’ hands can lead to further absurdities and injustices in very different ways. We allow judicial discretion because every case is different, but as I say, I accept the point.
Tessa Munt
I regard this as a really serious matter. I hope the Minister will address potential suspension immediately after an accident, so that people are not driving around for a year, two years, three years, or four years while they await a court case. In the same way as a perpetrator of sexual abuse, domestic abuse or whatever has to say where they live, so that the local police know where they live, one could ensure that the local police are aware that person X is not permitted to drive for a period of five years, 10 years or even forever. The local police will be the people who pick that up.
Jake Richards
The hon. Lady is right to raise the duration of the period before trial or conviction; too often, it is far too long, but solving this problem is not as straightforward as potentially suspending someone immediately after the event. As she is no doubt aware, often very complex investigations have to take place. Of course, suspension can be a bail condition, and I am trying to assess why in too many cases it is not used.
I remember a case raised with me by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes), in which someone had been bailed for causing death by dangerous driving—I think that is correct. They immediately got in a car and were convicted of drunk driving just a few hours later. That is absurd. More generally, we have to start taking driving offences, whether they are low level or high level, more seriously. The road safety strategy seeks to do that, and we want to get on with it. I am pushing the Roads Minister to work with me to make sure that seriousness of these offences is reflected in sentencing guidelines as much as possible.
As well as sentencing, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West spoke about graduated driving licensing. I hope I have dealt with that issue; it is on the agenda. It is very much a DFT issue, so I do not want to comment too much on it.
On sentencing guidelines, I am in a constitutional dialogue with the Sentencing Council on lots of issues and that is one of them. I will be careful what else I say about it, but I am very much alive to it.
I am also very alive to the ULS scheme. The Law Commission is working on the ULS scheme, as my hon. Friend no doubt knows from his time working with the Law Officers. We need to assess whether death by careless driving should be added to the list of offences that can be considered under the scheme. I can commit today to doing that.
Jake Richards
I am happy to write to the Law Commission to ask whether to consider that specific issue. I am going to consider it anyway. I want the Law Commission to do it—evidence would be helpful—but we will work with the Attorney General’s office to do that none the less. There will no doubt be some effects to that, but let us see what we can do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West talked last about prevention. Again, at its heart the road safety strategy tries to reach its 65% reduction target by through prevention. There is a serious amount of investment. This is the first road safety strategy in a decade, and it is backed with, I think, £18 million in prevention work, which is not an insignificant sum. We would like to do more, but I know that my hon. Friend the Roads Minister will work hard.
In terms of other questions from Members about the road safety strategy more generally, it is not my strategy, so it is difficult for me to comment on timings and when that will be. I will ask my hon. Friend the Roads Minister to write to Members who have raised specific questions and make sure that my office gets in touch with him on that.
Tessa Munt
I know that everybody has the right not to comment, but it is simply outrageous when that has no weight. It would be different if someone had had some sort of medical episode that meant that they were not able to remember what had happened, but where that is clearly not the case, and someone is advised by their solicitor not to comment throughout proceedings, it is really very tough on the families. Will the Minister consider that point and see if there is a way to put some weighting behind that? Will he also speak to the Victims Minister at the Ministry of Justice, because it happens repeatedly?
Jake Richards
The hon. Lady raises a wider point about defendant conduct during a criminal investigation and how that should be taken into account in the sentencing. There are mechanisms by which that is done already. The judge considers a large number of factors, including whether the defendant has taken responsibility for their actions. If they have undertaken a “no comment” interview consistently, and simply not engaged with the criminal investigation process, that should be taken into account in sentencing.
Tessa Munt
I do not want to whang on, but I know that the Minister’s Department has looked just recently at what happens to people who refuse to come to court to hear their sentence, so clearly there is the ability to intervene in the process. I entreat the Minister to do something more.
Jake Richards
I think the Lord Chancellor announced last week further action on getting defendants to face up to their actions as much as is possible. Frankly, that is what we are talking about. We cannot force a defendant to give answers if they do not want to, but that can certainly be reflected in the sentencing regime, and it is reflected in the sentencing regime. If there are any other suggestions about how we can go further, I would be more than happy to hear from the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills, as a member of the Justice Committee. She always gives me the signal that she will write to me, and I look forward to responding to her in due course.
Jake Richards
No. Too often, families feel let down by the justice system in lots of different ways, whether by the final sentence, by the way they were treated, or, in the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West raises, by misinformation being given about options at the end. That can cause huge damage. I am not criticising the individuals in that case; they are hard-working individuals and it is a complex area of law. We just need to get some of the basics right to make the system as amenable as humanly possible for victims when they are navigating the most traumatic time in their lives. Too often it is not. I accept that point in relation to sentences as well. We are in a complex constitutional relationship. I am not going to criticise independent judges or the sentences given in any individual case—it would be wrong of me to do so—but I accept that too often victims feel that justice has not been done.
When I knock on doors in my constituency, road safety is top of my constituents’ priority list, and that is the case in so many places, especially in rural villages, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West said. There is a real disconnect between the prioritisation of road safety and how often we talk about it in this place. If we can all do our bit to raise these issues—with me, but also across Government—we will be doing a service to the country and even more so to victims. I thank everyone here today, particularly those in the Public Gallery. I look forward to continuing this discussion and to taking action in the coming weeks and months.
Mr Barros-Curtis
Thank you, Ms Lewell, for your excellent chairing of this debate.
I thank everybody who has contributed. It has been incredibly humbling to hear the stories of loss and tragedy, and, as the Minister said, of such cases’ prevalence. I am particularly touched to have Sian and her family and Sue and Del Waterman in the Gallery, and to hear inspiring examples of individuals channelling grief and tragedy into learning lessons to ensure that people do not have to go through such tragedies again. That includes the example of Lillie’s law, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh).
We have been talking about this issue for too long and too often in this place, so I am grateful for what the Minister said about the action that I and others have called for. I shall appreciate anything he can do to impress the urgency of the situation on the new Roads Minister. Will he encourage him to meet me and no doubt Sian again, and to listen to the calls of action from me and others who have spoken, as well as the Watermans and the proposers of Lillie’s law? Anything he can do to drive change across Government will be central to ensuring that this pernicious issue is dealt with. It has gone on for too long.
In his discussions within the constitutional pool, will the Minister speak to the chief prosecutor of Wales about some of the challenges that have been found? Will he ask why, in the case of my constituent, sentencing was pegged and they had to go with the lesser offence? He could learn some invaluable lessons for part of the wider framework that he is putting together.
I will finish by thanking everyone for contributing. First and foremost, I send my condolences to all the constituents whose cases we have referred to. I particularly thank Sian and her family for inspiring me and allowing me to work with them to drive change.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of sentencing for causing death by dangerous or careless driving.
HCRG Care Group: Performance in the South-west
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. I call Sarah Gibson to move the motion.
Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the performance of HCRG Care Group in the south-west.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I am grateful for having secured this debate about the performance of HCRG in the south-west, and Wiltshire in particular. Over recent months, a growing number of constituents, carers and healthcare professionals have contacted me. I want to open by thanking the staff who have stuck their heads above the parapet and asked their elected representatives to put HCRG’s performance on the Minister’s radar. Some of those staff are sitting in the Gallery, and I thank them for coming.
The communities served by the HCRG contract are diverse: Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire. Each has its own challenges, demographics and patterns of service use. The issue is not whether one area matters more than another; it is whether local circumstances are properly understood. District nurses covering rural Wiltshire face challenges very different from those of nurses working in more urban areas, yet many of the staff who contacted me feel that those differences have not been properly recognised.
Wiltshire is a large, rural county, where patients can live miles from healthcare facilities. Community nursing teams often spend significant amounts of the day travelling between appointments. Aggregate figures for a large contract area tell part of the story, but they can also obscure local pressures and problems. A successful service model is one that understands those differences and responds to them. I am afraid that I have concluded that HCRG does not understand those differences.
When responsibility for community health services was awarded to HCRG in October 2024, patients were promised more joined-up care, easier access to services and simpler overall experiences.
Will Stone (Swindon North) (Lab)
I also thank the members of staff who have taken the time to come here and put themselves forward. Does the hon. Lady agree that HCRG’s promise of improving services through a single access point has been a historic failure and that, if it does not manage to get back on track, we should look at re-evaluating its contracts?
Sarah Gibson
The hon. Member is absolutely right. There is serious concern about what was promised and what has been delivered. The central part of that vision and delivery was the single point of access. As he has highlighted, that is an attractive idea on paper but the reality is completely different. Constituents repeatedly tell me about the long waits on phones, missed callbacks, referrals that are difficult to track and urgent cases not reaching the right team quickly enough.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most disruptive changes for frontline staff and patients has been the loss of dedicated admin support in favour of the so-called single point of access—or SPA—that simply does not work? If HCRG is serious about improving services, restoring adequate admin support for clinical teams must surely be part of the solution. Time spent on admin by clinical staff is time spent away from patients.
Sarah Gibson
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and will come to that point. The biggest concern for staff is patient safety, which they have clearly highlighted to us. One Chippenham resident told me they waited an hour to get through to the single point of access, only to be told to expect a callback, which did not arrive until the following day. A constituent from Calne described spending a week making calls, leaving messages and sending emails simply to secure a podiatry appointment. I understand that, in the end, he was so desperate that he just went into the offices, but not everyone can do that. I appreciate that the integrated care board, the commissioner, has the single point of access under surveillance. But as I will return to later, being under surveillance is just not enough for our residents.
Many of the concerns raised with me have come not only from patients but from staff. I have heard concerns about growing caseloads, vacancies, the loss of experienced staff and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) mentioned, the reduction of administrative support.
One nurse reported that what had previously been 10 visits per day had increased to approximately 15. Another described seeing 14 patients during a shift that overran by 90 minutes. Staff speak of chronic understaffing, excessive workloads, and concerns about the impact that the pressures are having on patients and the workforce.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. The HCRG took over a substantial NHS contract to run the community health service in the south-west of England. I share her concerns about the long delays faced by patients: similar issues have come up in my constituency in Northern Ireland, where the group struggles to provide services due to worker shortages and lack of funding. Does the hon. Lady agree that the ability of private care providers to deliver NHS-contracted services effectively and reliably must be more thoroughly assessed before the contracts are handed out?
Sarah Gibson
The hon. Member is quite right. We are seeing promises not being delivered; whether that is because HCRG is a private service or because of the management of the system is not for me to say. I hope that the Minister will be able to look into the matter.
I personally spend a lot of time in the NHS—not out of choice, but as a patient and a carer for my husband. The frontline staff are fabulous. They go above and beyond to support the patient, regardless of whether that patient happens to be their MP. But as their MP, I do find that the staff tend to approach me in confidence to say that they fear using the formal channels for feedback. Patients and staff working across the community-based healthcare system are raising the same issues with me: delays, difficulty navigating the referral pathway and concerns about whether requests always reach the right clinical team. I think Ministers have a responsibility to take those concerns as seriously as the Members sitting next to me.
Patient safety is my chief concern since HCRG took over. One community nurse described families contacting nursing teams because a loved one approaching the end of life was experiencing severe pain despite being told that help would be available. The nurse reported instances of when no referral appeared to have reached the community nursing team at all. Visits were eventually arranged, but the patient spent several hours without adequate pain relief. A former community nurse separately described trying to obtain additional medication for palliative patients and not being able to get it. Nobody approaching the end of their life should spend hours in avoidable pain because the system is inadequate.
I have also heard concerns about delayed wound care, time-critical medication and urgent catheter issues. One district nurse described attending a patient whose leg wounds had leaked through his dressing. His daughter had contacted the service twice over the weekend without receiving assistance. By the time the nurse arrived, the patient had resorted to wrapping plastic bags around his legs—and I understand that the same problem occurred the following weekend.
The concerns I have received are not limited to community nursing. A physiotherapist working in Chippenham hospital described concerns about the introduction of the new referral system. According to the information, staff noticed that referrals were dropping dramatically under the new system. But when those delayed referrals were eventually identified and processed, clinicians faced a sudden influx of cases, including urgent post-operative patients.
We are talking about knee replacements not being seen in a timely manner, in which case they will end up being re-done. That is a cost for no reason. Clinicians describe patients waiting around eight weeks after knee replacement surgeries, despite the treatment being expected much sooner. The concerns raised are not simply about waiting times, but about the possibility of avoidable deterioration and long-term impacts on recovery. They are not simply administrative inconveniences; they are potentially about patient safety.
I want to touch briefly on wheelchair services. I understand that Wiltshire currently has one wheelchair technician, although it had originally been intended to have four. One constituent from Calne told me that she was supplied with an unsuitable wheelchair without being properly measured. She raised concerns about the difficulty, her safety and the fact that she could not get on to the bus. Despite repeated attempts over months to resolve the matter, she is getting nowhere. Another constituent reported from Chippenham that their replacement battery and updated seating did not arrive, which meant that they were unable to get to college. When repair and maintenance services are not functioning as they should, the consequences for the patient are immediate and profound.
Something that particularly troubled me was a comment made to me by some patients who were no longer bothering to complain because they had become accustomed to the delays and difficulties. Sometimes, the absence of formal complaints reflects a loss of confidence rather than anything else. That is particularly concerning when we think about older patients, disabled patients and those already struggling to navigate a complex health system. The people who find it the hardest to access services are often the people least likely to make their voices heard. That is why scrutiny and transparency matter.
When constituents raise concerns about HCRG services, they expect clear, simple answers. Who is responsible? We have an ICBC contract oversight group that reports to the ICBC collaborative oversight forum. We have the BSW community delivery group, which oversees transformation across the system. We have joint contract oversight groups, quality boards and safeguarding groups that all scrutinise performance, but many of the same organisations sit across multiple levels of that oversight. The integrated care board, the local authority commissions and the HCRG itself are involved throughout that governance structure. The organisations commissioning the contract and managing the contract are also scrutinising the contract—all of them seem to be on the same table. Frankly, even we elected representatives struggle to work out who is accountable.
When everyone is involved in the oversight, it can be remarkably difficult to identify who is responsible for acting when problems emerge. There is a risk that organisations end up marking their own homework, with concerns passing between governance groups rather than being subject to genuinely independent challenge. Patients deserve a system in which responsibility is visible, understandable and transparent from the outset. Where persistent concerns are being raised about access to care, referral pathways and patient safety, it is entirely reasonable to ask whether the Care Quality Commission should take a closer look. We should not worry about independent scrutiny; we should welcome it, because it will lead to improvements.
I would be grateful if the Minister addressed two specific points. First, will she ask BSW’s ICB and the HCRG to publish some comparable pre-transformation and post-transformation performance data that includes call waiting times, callback performance, referral processing times, complaints and patient outcome, broken down where possible to a local level? In that way, patients and parliamentarians will be able to see whether the promised improvements have actually been delivered a year and a half into the contract, despite the fact that the group had six months before the contract started to provide for the transition.
Secondly, will the Minister engage with the Care Quality Commission about a case for further independent scrutiny of HCRG’s Wiltshire services and clarify what further regulatory action may be available if the persistent concerns about access, referrals and patient safety continue, as was referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Melksham and Devizes?
Patients do not really care how many committees or meetings are called; they want answers. Their concern is whether they are getting the care they need, when they need it.
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) for securing this debate and for her well-informed and considered set of proposals about a contract of which I am aware. I will try to address most of her points. The contract was signed just after the general election, but it was on my radar before then, partly as a local MP. As I think the hon. Lady said, there are staff here today, and I am conscious that this remains a concern for staff and some of the trade unions—not least because my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) has kept it on my radar. I am absolutely aware of the genesis of the process by which this contract came forward, and I want to make sure that people know that. I will not rehearse it, however; we are where we are now.
As I think the hon. Lady said, now we need to make sure that what was promised is delivered. That is what we all want to see for the people of her community and across the wider ICB. I want to be clear on our general expectations of community services: they are really vital to the left shift, particularly in rural areas. A wide range of services is delivered under that umbrella—from district nurses to services provided by allied health professionals, such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy—for adults and children where they live, in local communities. They also provide really good local jobs.
Those services are vital to supporting our ambitions for neighbourhood health, which is why we set out clear ambitions for them in our medium-term planning framework. For the first time, we have set a target for systems to reduce long waits for community health services: by 2028-29, at least 80% of activity delivered by community health services should take place within 18 weeks, bringing community health services in line with targets for elective care. We have also published guidance outlining the core components of community health services for children, young people and adults that ICBs should provide. That guidance is hugely important for many of the issues that the hon. Member for Chippenham has raised today. We know that there is variation in the services available across the country, and that people are waiting too long to access community health services. That is why this Government are taking action to reduce unwarranted variation, cut waits and improve access to high-quality community services. That is where we want to get to.
Moving on to HCRG Care Group’s performance, as we know, it has taken on the contract to bring together more than 130 community health and care services across the ICB area. It is a large-scale “transformation” programme, as it is called. Since the contract was awarded, the ICB has obviously had to work very closely with it. The ICB is responsible for managing the contract, and I met it in advance of this debate to hear from it as well. As I understand it, the ICB has arrangements in place—the hon. Lady alluded to how many there are—to oversee quality, safety and performance across all those commissioned services, and performance is regularly monitored. I recognise the concerns about delays, callbacks and referrals across the teams, and about getting people through the single point of access. Single points of access have been worked on for many years under many different contracts. Generally, they should do what they say on the tin and actually help people move forward, so HCRG does need to make its work.
I understand that, as a result of some of the issues that have been raised, the ICB is increasing its oversight, bringing together the provider and the system to support improvement. It is really important that that work also brings together patients, carers, the local community, staff and other stakeholders as it develops. The ICB assures me that it remains committed to engaging openly with those communities, with MPs and with Healthwatch throughout the delivery and development of those community services.
Sarah Gibson
Does the Minister agree that the complexity of the oversight system, with the same people in every single one of its groups, does not help staff or patients to feel that there is genuine, independent scrutiny of what is happening? We are getting the same answers from the same people.
Karin Smyth
I will come on to some of that, because it is also tied up with the Health Bill and the things that we are proposing to do for the future. The hon. Lady also touched on one of my favourite subjects: the accountability of local health systems.
The hospital at home services are also important—as it says on the tin—to keep people out of hospital when they do not need to be there and to support early discharge. They remain an important part of the community services offer across Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB. There have been changes to the service provision and I am assured by the ICB that there are no plans to reduce capacity or withdraw the hospital at home service—I am sure that the hon. Lady will correct me if that is wrong. The ICB is currently undertaking a review of the services following concerns raised, and will continue to monitor the impact of those changes to ensure that safe and effective care is maintained. Again, that is absolutely the direction of travel in that we want to see those services change and improve.
Sarah Gibson
At the risk of delaying her, will the Minister give way on that point?
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
Order. Will the hon. Member refrain from shouting out, please?
Karin Smyth
Industrial relations are also important. We cannot run a health and care service without good staff who are well supported, nor without maintaining good industrial relations at a local level. That is a matter primarily for the group, its employers and recognised trade unions. The ICB needs to continue to monitor that and go through those established processes for doing so. It needs to keep working with them and we certainly support that at a national level.
On the wider issues about supporting ICB performance, I sympathise. I have spoken many times in Opposition and Government about the frustrations of local Members of Parliament in understanding the very fragmented system left under the Lansley reforms. I appreciate what the hon. Lady is saying from her position in Chippenham, and that may be different from other positions—it is a large geographic area. That is one of the issues that we need to get right. We are working closely on it in the Health Bill, where we are devolving responsibility and accountability for commissioning and providing services at a local level. That is the right thing to do. We also need to get right the link to neighbourhoods and place through local authorities while strengthening health and wellbeing boards. That is the direction of travel in the Bill and what we are currently trying to make happen.
ICBs are held to account nationally for delivering for patients. The oversight framework provides a transparent approach for assessing performance. Another thing that we have changed since coming into power is that from 2026-27 every ICB will be placed in a delivery segment based on national performance measures. That will help to identify when greater support, scrutiny or intervention is needed at the national level. That will be complemented by an annual assessment of how effectively each ICB is discharging its statutory functions. Where performance is falling short, oversight can be increased and support can be targeted at the areas of challenge and, where necessary, formal intervention powers are available. That brings ICBs into line with other providers.
At the same time we are strengthening ICBs’ commissioning capability, partly through the Health Bill. We have the strategic commissioning framework setting out what effective strategic commissioning looks like, and the strategic commissioning development programme provides targeted support to strengthen those capabilities in local systems. We recognise that there is variability across the country. To be clear: ICBs are responsible for assuring the quality, effectiveness and value of the services that they commission, while NHS England oversees the performance of ICBs through the oversight framework, including consideration of how effectively they discharge those commissioning responsibilities.
Finally, we have heard about issues with palliative and end-of-life care. Patients approaching the end of life and those important to them—their closest friends and family—should absolutely receive compassionate, dignified and personalised care in an appropriate environment. That is why the Government are committed to improving access to high-quality palliative and end-of-life care, and to shifting more care from hospitals into the community and, where appropriate, the home. NHS England requires ICBs to commission appropriate palliative and end-of-life care to meet the needs of their local populations. To support ICBs in that duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.
In addition, we are developing a modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care, which will be a clinically led, evidence-based framework to support sustained improvement in outcomes for patients and carers, including identifying, measuring and reducing health inequalities, and reducing unwarranted variation in access, experience and outcomes.
We continue to work hard to strengthen community care services and shift care closer to home. As the hon. Lady said, what was promised to her population and the wider ICB area must be delivered. All too often, community health services do not get the attention that they deserve, and staff on the ground do not get the recognition that they deserve. This debate has raised some important questions about how we hold organisations delivering and commissioning services to account.
The hon. Lady asked two questions about comparable data. If anyone has not read the transformation and opportunity packs that I sent all MPs last year about their local systems, I recommend that they do that. I will continue to get information on their local systems to them. The hon. Lady probably knows that we cannot compare like for like, but she should have that information; we are getting it on stream. I am happy to write to her with details of what is or might be made available.
The hon. Lady asked about the CQC. As she knows, it is an independent regulator, but I will ensure we write to her about it. I thank her and other Members who contributed to the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. From Saturday, councillors across England will lose powers—powers to bring planning applications before elected committees. For communities like mine in Aldridge-Brownhills, which are already facing huge speculative development, this is a serious loss of accountability. My residents have faced an onslaught of applications in relation to green-belt sites, including York’s Bridge for 330 houses, Queslett Road East for 850, Barns Lane for 77, Longwood Lane for 78 and Bosty Lane for 550. Those are just some of them. These applications have brought the debate about the future of our countryside very close to people’s doors. These green spaces help to give our communities their identity. Residents want to know what development will mean for their already busy roads, school places and GP access. They are right to expect those questions to be properly considered before Ministers introduce sweeping changes, yet here we are, just days before the new rules take effect, still looking for answers.
It seems that of the outstanding applications for 2,350 homes across my constituency, 80% will be determined under the new rules and behind closed doors. Residents and councillors will not easily be able to ask questions of the developers or raise issues in open committee. Of course, we agree on the need for homes that local people can afford. I want brownfield sites brought back into use, with supporting infrastructure. As I have said time and again in this place and will probably keep saying, once agricultural land is built on, it is gone, and it is gone forever. I want to see planning consents built, not banked. That brings me to the current consultation on Walsall borough’s local plan.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the right hon. Lady. I spoke to her beforehand, and I always look to be helpful by talking about what we do back home. In Northern Ireland, under section 31 of the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, each of our 11 district councils is legally mandated to operate its own bespoke scheme of delegation. Although that gives local authorities excellent democratic autonomy over local developments, it has at times led to the exact regional inconsistencies in application processing times that the new English model explicitly seeks to correct. Does the right hon. Lady agree that the learnings from Northern Ireland’s process should be shared to achieve best practice in planning and hopefully address some of the very issues that she is highlighting?
Wendy Morton
I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he always makes useful contributions in Westminster Hall that allow us to reflect on and share our different experiences. To me, the fundamental thing is making sure that our communities feel that their councillors have a voice, rather than the democratic deficit that we are faced with. I thank him for his intervention.
Our local plan consultation closes on Monday, and over the last six weeks I have been encouraging residents to respond. I have been holding public meetings, helping with objections and making it clear to them that their views, whatever they are, matter, including when the plan goes before an independent inspector. But what message are the new regulations sending? Residents take the time to go through the documents, attend the meetings and help shape their area’s future, while the Government restrict their councillors’ ability to secure full and public scrutiny when an application arrives. That is not democracy in action—it is neither scrutiny nor accountability—so what is the point of asking communities to invest their time in a local plan if contentious decisions about its application are then to be taken behind closed doors?
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
I suspect I am doing neither the right hon. Lady nor myself any favours by saying I absolutely agree with her. It is our duty as MPs to robustly defend local democracy. Does she agree that, when the communities we represent and their directly elected councillors oppose speculative development, the answer is not to silence their voices but to secure genuine public consent with a higher standard of development that meets local needs and hopes for the future?
Wendy Morton
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that he is not upsetting me with those comments—far from it. His point, that local democracy and local accountability matter, is exactly the one I am making. It is so important that we include local voices, because it is local voices that have local knowledge that can help to shape the community. If we want truly cohesive communities that work together, we need to make sure that their voices are heard—and that they do not have targets and housing imposed upon them.
Several hon. Members rose—
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her important speech. Recently, a development in my constituency for 8,500 homes that was due to go to the local planning committee was suddenly taken away from it, having been called in by my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna). The decision now sits with the Secretary of State, taking this important decision, which will have a huge impact on the area, out of local hands.
This is clearly denying local democracy, given that we have locally elected councillors who know the impact this development will have on my constituency. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is completely wrong to take those powers to influence local planning decisions away from local councillors, and that it is absurd that a Government who talk about increasing devolution are the ones taking these powers away from local councillors?
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. She mentioned accountability and democracy. As she knows, the Government are currently taking the Representation of the People Bill through Parliament. The Bill rightly tries to encourage increased participation and accountability in our electoral system. Does she share my concern that the role of councillors is undermined by these planning changes, that local people will lose confidence in the democratic checks and balances of local government, and that we therefore may see turnout and participation go down?
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend is right. For a long time, it has concerned me that turnout at elections, particularly local elections, has been falling, and I do not believe the answer is simply to lower the voting age. Rather, we should be seeking to engage with people and communities on a cross-party basis. What we are seeing now is a Government who impose top-down targets, say it is all about devolution and go through the mayors, but when it comes to accountability and scrutiny, I cannot scrutinise the Mayor of the West Midlands. He does not even reply to my letters, yet he is getting more powers.
These planning measures come down to local councils, and once again, local councillors are losing their voice—our communities are losing their voices. How can we say that we want to engage with communities? How do we shape the future of our country and our communities if we are taking away transparency and accountability, which are the very foundations of good, strong democracy?
Delegation is a familiar concept. In fact, the Government’s own paper said that officers made 96% of planning decisions in the second quarter of 2024, but that cannot become how every application is determined. Where is the evidence about delays as a result of planning committee call-ins? How much delay arises from waiting for the committee, and how much from staffing shortages, outstanding technical advice or the complexity of the process?
Under the new rules, ordinary applications for up to nine houses on sites smaller than half a hectare must be decided by officers. Larger applications are not guaranteed a hearing either. Referral requires that the nominated officer and the chair of the planning committee agree and that a test of significance is met; if they disagree, the decision stays with officers.
Even reserved matters for a purely residential scheme of several hundred homes can be subject to mandatory delegation, so why exclude councillors from details that materially change the make-up of their own community? A ward councillor will know exactly why a proposal matters locally, but under the new rules they cannot make sure it is heard at committee. It would be helpful if the Minister could outline how the Government will ensure that the significance test is applied consistently. What can a councillor do when a well-founded referral request is rejected? How can it be that an application concerning a protected tree can still be eligible for committee consideration while an application for nine houses can be excluded? What principle explains that distinction? Why should councils be able to consider the future of a single tree—I am not saying that trees are not important—but not the circumstances of a housing development?
We then come to the issue of transparency. Will reasons for refusing to refer an application to committee be published before the application is decided, allowing time to raise an error? Reporting afterwards will give no comfort to concerned residents if permission has already been granted. As the Minister is undoubtedly aware—and I appreciate this topic is not entirely in her brief—some councils are seeking to preserve democratic oversight through informal councillor panels advising on planning applications. What assessment has the Department made of the risk of developers alleging predetermination when councillors express a view through those panels and subsequently participate in the gateway decision or determine the application at committee? Could the resulting legal challenges and delays undermine the very house building targets that the regulations are intended to support? I would be grateful if the Department published clear guidance so that councils can retain meaningful elected involvement without creating further uncertainty.
There is also the question of neighbourhood plans. One council leader told me their council has called for applications that conflict with an adopted neighbourhood plan policy to be eligible for committee consideration. Communities spend years and thousands of pounds preparing these plans before residents endorse them in a referendum. They deserve a route to elected scrutiny when an application conflicts with those policies. Will the Minister provide that safeguard, including for applications otherwise subject to mandatory delegation?
There is a similar concern about houses in multiple occupation, which are used all too often to house those decanted from asylum hotels. Councils introduced article 4 directions because they identified a need for greater control over conversions in particular neighbourhoods, yet applications brought into the planning system by those directions can fall within schedule 1 to the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026, preventing elected members from determining them. Will the Minister clarify exactly which HMO applications must be delegated, and explain why an article 4 direction provides no exception? Where an application raises significant concerns about the concentration of HMOs, such as about parking or the loss of family housing, will the Government allow councillors to secure a committee hearing?
Let us not forget planning officers. They also deserve protection. They undertake difficult professional work, often with very limited resources. Moving contentious decisions away from committees has a real risk of leaving officers personally exposed. Councils are rightly asking what safeguards will protect officers from undue influence or pressure from developers, applicants and other interested parties. Will there be requirements to record substantive discussions, declare conflicts of interest and obtain a second opinion in contentious cases? What independent route will officers have to report improper pressure? Officers must act impartially, so how will the Minister prevent them from becoming a lightning rod for political criticism when elected council members have lost their decision-making role? The Royal Town Planning Institute has warned of the risk of increased abuse and public pressure. What support will be funded to protect staff and to help councils retain those important experienced planners?
Transparency protects officers and residents alike. People should be able to follow the evidence and understand who decided and why. Accessibility matters, too. Developers often have a planning consultant and a legal team, whereas residents concerned about an application only have the option to open the planning portal for the very first time. They should not need professional help to find out whether an application will reach committee, how to ask for scrutiny or whether their concerns have been considered. Will Ministers engage in a publicity campaign to update people on those changes and ensure that each authority has an easily understandable explanation of the new process on its website, including how residents can put their case where there is no committee meeting?
The Planning Inspectorate also has an important role. An inspector will examine whether the proposed local plan in my constituency meets legal requirements and is sound. Separately, inspectors determine many planning appeals, but how will local evidence about infrastructure and cumulative green-belt loss be considered through these processes? On another point of fairness, or rather the lack of it, applicants can appeal refusals, but objecting residents have no equivalent appeal on planning merits. Given that imbalance, why weaken scrutiny before the decision? What affordable option will residents realistically have if an application is wrongly kept away from the committee?
A separate part of this new scheme requires councils to consult the Secretary of State before refusing applications for 150 or more homes. How will that operate transparently? How can residents make representations? Ministers are creating an additional opportunity for Whitehall interference and involvement while restricting elected local councillors. That undoubtedly creates a democratic deficit. How does that sit with the Prime Minister’s promises on devolution and community empowerment? I do not see how it does. The Local Government Association’s Conservative group has organised a letter from more than 1,500 Conservative councillors calling for this scheme of delegation to be repealed; I put on record my thanks to them for that. Let us hope that the Prime Minister gives it his urgent attention when it is delivered to him at No. 10 tomorrow.
We all know that councils must comply with the law, but we must remember that agreeing to update their constitutions does not mean that they consent to these regulations or believe that they serve their communities. A Government talking about devolution should trust local representatives and communities. I hope that the Minister will reconsider these regulations. At the very least, the Government should restore an effective route to committee for contentious applications to protect neighbourhood plans and article 4 directions and provide clear safeguards for officers.
Before the scheme takes effect on Saturday, will the Minister commit to those changes and to publishing an assessment of the scheme’s impact ahead of the statutory review in 2028? My constituents are being asked to engage with their local plan by Monday. I want to be able to tell them that doing so will make a difference and that their elected councillors will still have a meaningful role when decisions are taken. That is the assurance that I am seeking.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for setting out her case so well. As their starting point, the Government need to be clear about what problem and which causes of that problem they are trying to solve. The vast majority of this House would agree that we need more house building, ideally with a particular focus on affordable and social housing, but there are many reasons why we are not hitting the Government’s housing targets, and they should not be lazily reduced to blaming the planning system or planning committees. The solutions that the Government seek to deal with that house building shortage should be based on evidence, not ideology. I fear that sometimes ideology dominates.
Removing local scrutiny in the way that has been described will not address the underlying causes of delay, which include capacity constraints in planning departments and the wider construction supply chain. We need a planning system that is simpler, more effective and capable of delivering homes that are well built, warm and cheap to heat, and that is accountable to local people and their representatives.
In South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils, the two district councils that cover my Oxfordshire constituency, the planning committees work well and there is no evidence that they are slowing development down. Some 95% of planning applications are decided by officers already. The majority of applications debated by the planning committees are also passed, but having complex and more contentious planning decisions made in public aids transparency and scrutiny over how planning policies are being applied. Vale of White Horse council has an excellent record on planning appeals: only 4.3% of appeals were allowed over the past two years, demonstrating that the decisions being made under the existing system are working well and are of a high quality.
In my constituency, we have seen huge rates of housing growth over the past 15 years. The key frustration for local people is that the infrastructure has not kept pace. A lot of the time, the local councils are not the ones able to dictate what we need in respect of housing, new railway stations or health infrastructure. Significant infrastructure is not something over which they have direct control.
Reducing the input of local communities and removing the ability of local ward councillors to call planning decisions to a committee could reduce the opportunity for those who understand our communities best to influence the infrastructure that developers provide alongside new homes. Over the past few years, there have been signs that house building is slowing down—the build rate of homes on some of the larger developments in my part of Oxfordshire has slowed—but the Government have misdiagnosed the cause of slower build rates. Planning committees are not the cause; there are wider economic causes and wider system causes. Developers will only build the homes that they are confident of selling. More expensive mortgages and potential buyers not feeling confident about investing in buying a home are significant factors.
I had the pleasure of serving on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee, alongside the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), who is in this Chamber. We both have very fond memories of it—a very rewarding and fulfilling experience it was. Indeed, the Conservative spokesperson, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), also served on the Committee. It was on topics such as the one we are debating where there were common amendments among Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Green party Members. How often does that happen? If I were the Government, I would be very worried about uniting three such different parties.
The wider philosophical problem that we are failing to address as a Parliament and as a country is the tension between national need versus local concern. We need to start approaching that question intelligently. It is yet another debate that has become polarised, with two tribes shouting at each other and not really engaging in dialogue. Maybe we need more Ministers coming to areas affected by significant planning issues—I am not talking about a little cul-de-sac of new houses, but maybe significant infrastructure projects. If Ministers were more willing to come to our constituencies, they could make their case directly and debate and could challenge local opponents.
Wendy Morton
I would be delighted if the Minister came to Aldridge-Brownhills to see the impact that 20,000 homes will have across the borough, where we have a lack of infrastructure. I am still waiting for the funding for Aldridge railway station.
Olly Glover
I was amazed that the right hon. Lady did not mention that station campaign in her opening speech, but she has now rectified that omission. Ministers coming and engaging directly in that way could be part of a campaign of national persuasion to tackle the causes for resentment of development in a given area, but too often that is left to large corporate interests to do, which fuels mistrust. Indeed, in my constituency, the main advocate of what would be the second-biggest reservoir in the country is Thames Water, and of course that really does not help to persuade people of the case. It is one of the major reasons why there is significant local opposition.
As a result, I agree with the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and the hon. Member for Hamble Valley that these changes being made by the Government run the risk of further eroding trust in local politics and local democracy. That is in none of our interests.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing this debate, and I welcome the Minister to her position.
I have serious concerns about this policy and agenda, and specifically about the future ability of residents to have a meaningful say in the development of their own communities. Now that I am no longer the shadow Housing Minister, I am happy that I can speak about these things in a much freer way than I possibly could at the Dispatch Box, although I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) will be absolutely excellent in his winding up. Like the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover)—he is my hon. Friend, actually—I have very fond memories of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee. I often found myself going home in the evening and thinking, “How could I have agreed so much with the Liberal Democrats?”, but I looked myself in the mirror, had a wash and got over it the next morning.
Planning decisions shape our towns and villages for generations to come. They determine where new homes are built, how much pressure is placed on roads, schools and healthcare services, and whether the character of our neighbourhoods is preserved. These decisions have real consequences for the people who live with them every day. It is therefore essential that local residents have a meaningful opportunity to influence them.
I say to the Minister that my big concern, which we warned about on the Bill Committee, is that the Government seem ardent on taking those decisions and that influence away from local people. The Government’s proposed approach risks weakening the democratic safeguards that allow communities to have their voices heard. This policy represents a significant shift in the balance between professional planning officers and elected local representatives. One of the most concerning aspects of these reforms is the removal of existing arrangements that allow ward councillors to request committee consideration or that enable an application to be referred automatically when a specified number of objections has been received. Under the new scheme, the volume of objections cannot in itself justify referral to committee. Instead, applications must meet the national criteria, and the nominated officer and nominated councillor must agree that they should be referred.
Let us consider what that means for residents who have legitimate concerns about a development in their neighbourhood. They may organise a petition, write detailed objections and encourage their neighbours to participate in the consultation process, yet the strength of their opposition will not in itself guarantee that elected councillors will debate the application in public. Residents retain the right to submit representations, but their ability to secure community scrutiny is restricted.
That raises a question: what is the point of encouraging people to participate in local planning consultations if the system provides fewer opportunities for their elected representatives to consider their concerns publicly? If we allow this proposal to go ahead on Saturday, as I suspect it will, many people will ask why they should bother voting for their parish, borough or county councillor.
Planning decisions are one of the most public-facing decisions that a councillor makes. Councillors live in their communities. If a housing development is being built round the corner, or if a pub is being closed so that it can be converted into something else, they know what should be referred to their planning committee. That local knowledge is being taken away, so that a faceless officer can make that decision instead. That is not accountable.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
In Buckinghamshire, we do not yet have a local plan. Right now, we are seeing speculative application after speculative application going in. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that removing ward councillors’ right to call those applications in not only undermines accountability, but makes our green belt even more vulnerable?
Paul Holmes
I absolutely agree. Councils are going through a process to develop a local plan. Alongside officers, they will know which applications should be capable of being called in if a local plan is ratified. If there is no local plan and there are small speculative developments happening across a whole constituency, that soon adds up. If the hon. Lady’s councillors are unable to play a massive part in shaping those developments and crafting those developments, it prompts the question: “What do they serve for?” That will be the question resounding across local government this afternoon.
A national framework cannot be expected to capture every local nuance. Although the Government argue that the scheme will create greater consistency and allow committees to focus on significant applications, there is a risk that standardisation will come at the expense of local discretion. The desire for consistency should not prevent councils from responding to the particular needs and concerns of their residents.
Minor delegations do not mean that planning decisions are any less important. Let me give the Minister an example from my constituency. The Pear Tree inn in Boorley Green is owned by a brewery that wanted to sell off a huge amount of the local play area and car park so that six houses could be built. Local councillors were dead against it. It is the only local pub in the area and is a very valued asset to the local community. Under this scheme, that proposal could not be referred by a ward councillor and could not be debated by ward councillors who represent the community. As the Member of Parliament, I could make a written representation but would not be able to go to a planning committee led by councillors to make that decision. That is fundamentally wrong. Under the current legislation, a parish councillor can submit the pub for consideration as an asset of community value. If an officer had been making that decision without a referral by a ward member, they would not have come to the same decision. Eastleigh borough council’s excellent decision to refuse planning permission was made by its ward councillors, who are elected by the people who live there.
I am not against building new homes and nor am I arguing against the expertise of planning officers; I am arguing for development to take place alongside transparency, public participation and democratic accountability. If the Government want communities to support development, they must recognise that people are more likely to have confidence in decisions when they feel their voices have genuinely been heard.
Finally, the Government have spoken hugely, including in today’s Budget, about devolution and empowering local people. The Minister will hear no argument against that from me—I hope her Department brings the mayoral elections for Hampshire forward to 2027. However, she cannot have it both ways; she cannot devolve to local people, while taking away some of the most retail decisions that councils and locally elected people make on behalf of those people—giving with one hand while taking with the other.
That is a topsy-turvy world that will cause the Government huge issues, prompting resentment from local people about the public participation processes they are expected to undertake, particularly with mayoral elections. I appreciate that this is not all in the Minister’s brief, but I seriously ask her to report to the Department the strength of feeling that the Government are creating among locally elected councillors. They are not happy, and nor are we or, more importantly, the people we serve.
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
If possible, could our final two Back-Bench contributors keep to five minutes each, so that we can hear from the Front Benchers?
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing this important debate.
Moira from Tring asked me:
“How we can take back our democracy which is being eroded at a shocking rate?”—
and, yes, she is talking about planning and about this change. She had read that these planning decisions are being taken from the councillors she has elected. She is absolutely right. First, we had the Conservative Government with their top-down targets, and now we have this Labour Government, who just keep taking power away from local councils and therefore communities.
There have been continual changes to the national planning policy framework, with more than 3,000 drafting changes, all taking power away. The introduction of grey belt has effectively opened our green belt to developers. Ever higher top-down targets mean that, after St Albans had adopted a housing plan, the Government are adding 9,000 more houses. For Dacorum, on the other side of my constituency, there are another 6,000, again after a local plan had just been secured. That is all while we are facing Luton airport expansion and Bedford Universal Studios, which impact infrastructure for local people. And now, from Saturday, this latest regulation means officers must decide householder applications and schemes of up to nine homes. Ward, town and parish councillors will lose the right to call those applications in, as has been reiterated across the Chamber today.
The hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) eloquently highlighted that the scale and nature of planning applications does not necessarily imply they are not controversial or important; even small things have a massive impact on our communities. Just because they are within scope, that does not mean they do not deserve to be looked at more closely by a committee of democratically elected councillors.
Lib Dem councillors from Dacorum and St Albans are horrified and share Moira’s concerns that their hands will be tied by this regulation and legal challenge, thanks to the Government. In the light of that, Liberal Democrat Dacorum borough council has voted to hold an extra meeting of its development management committee, so that as many called-in applications as possible can be heard before the changes take effect. However, that is no way to run our country or local councils.
What is really needed are long-term changes to planning law that support the voices of local communities, whether Tring, Redbourn, Berkhamsted or Sandridge. All that communities want is to get planning right for the places where they live and to raise legitimate concerns about their everyday lives. They know that we need to build, and they want a say in the homes, buildings and infrastructure that will impact their lives.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) highlighted—the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills raised this too—Ministers have given the excuse that this change will speed up house building. In fact, a survey of 62 councils found that more than 200,000 homes with planning permission still have not started, so committees are not the bottleneck. If the Government truly believe in power in every postcode, and if they are going to walk the walk instead of just talk the talk, people will feel it in their planning. That is so vital.
Will the Minister and the Government therefore stop taking powers from local communities and give them back the powers to get their homes and infrastructure right? Will they restore call-in powers for ward, town and parish councillors, and tackle the real problem of unbuilt homes with “use it or lose it” planning permission? Will they also look at wider reforms to bring our communities with us?
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing the debate, which will be so important to people in my constituency.
I have spoken at length about large-scale developments being proposed with insufficient infrastructure and with new homes sitting empty, and I hope the Minister can pass back to the Secretary of State the message that I am still waiting for the meeting she promised me in the Chamber. However, today I want to focus on schedule 1 in the scheme of delegation.
I accept that the vast majority of planning applications are rightly determined by professional officers, but when applications are controversial, when communities have legitimate concerns or when residents simply need confidence that their voices have been heard, planning committees play a vital role. They are there not to frustrate development, but to improve it. They bring together the three important sides of professional advice, local knowledge and public scrutiny, allowing elected representatives to listen to applicants, officers and residents and identify solutions to make development more acceptable to everyone. They are often the best of democracy, and they can be the closest that many of our constituents get to influencing the places where they live.
Recent examples from my area, shared by Lib Dem councillors today, demonstrate that value. One application, which councillors considered today, was refused based on height, density and design, but they were able to debate how the proposal could better fit with the character of the area. In a case last month, members considered the impact on neighbours of three bungalows being squeezed on to a plot for one, and discussed the conditions that might make a future application more acceptable. Both applications were rejected today, and members expect them to come back—but better. That ability to shape development, rather than just approve or reject it, is a crucial part of the process.
Supporters of the changes argue that community engagement should take place through local plans. I understand that, but local plans and planning committees serve different purposes and work to different timelines. As explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green), local plans are often out of date, and when they are rewritten they create a bird’s eye view of a community; they do not see inside the window of a neighbour’s poorly placed extension.
Local plans can allocate land, but they cannot say whether a particular design respects the character of a street, or whether a historic feature, such as the wall in my ward built by Italian prisoners of war, should be retained. That is something that only local councillors and local residents know. With the funding slashed for neighbourhood plans, which the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) and I discussed when we were on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill Committee, communities do not even have the opportunity to create new neighbourhood plans to get that much closer position.
I will give another example that was shared with me today. A recommendation for an HMO in Poole was going to be approved. Had there not been local concern, it would not have gone to committee, where a mistake was discovered. The planning officer thought that nine additional properties were going to be created and therefore that housing capacity would be affected, when in fact an HMO does not create nine additional properties. If the case had not gone to a planning committee, that mistake would not have been able to be fixed, because the decision would have been published too late and the community would not have had its say. These people are not blockers; they are trying to make their communities better. While they recognise that a planning officer makes recommendations based on law and policy, they contextualise cases.
Another issue that has not been covered is that many planning applications are now determined from afar. Since covid, we have had planning officers working from Northern Ireland and seeing the sites only on Google Maps. The councillors are the ones who can tell us the context of whether a site is overhanging another, not somebody who has been shipped in on a contract from afar. The Government frequently speak about devolution and empowering communities, but devolution should mean trusting local people and their elected representatives, not reducing their involvement in decisions that affect the places where they live.
One Dorset resident today put it to me far better than I could:
“If a community is going to feel that it’s been completely shafted by a decision, there should at least be a meaningful opportunity to secure measures that address its concerns and help rebuild trust in the process.”
That is ultimately what planning committees provide: trust, transparency and democratic legitimacy. By removing that layer of local decision making, we may make some decisions faster, but we risk weakening public confidence in the planning system itself.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate.
The Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned by the introduction of a national scheme of delegation, which gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers and allows planning decisions to bypass local planning committees. We opposed this approach throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and sought to protect the existing powers of committees. Faster planning decisions should come from having properly resourced planning departments and giving councils the freedom to set planning fees that truly reflect the cost of their job—not by shutting communities out of decisions about their local areas.
On Saturday, a national scheme of delegation will come into force. Every council in England must rewrite its constitution to match it, and none has been given a say on whether to do so. As many Members have said, planning is where most people first meet democracy, and it is one of the most important reasons why they vote for a councillor in the first place.
Household applications, minor commercial applications, schemes of up to nine homes and a range of technical decisions must now go to officers. For other applications, a committee can step in only where it raises a significant issue and an officer and nominated member agree; a councillor cannot refer an application alone. The ward member’s call-in has gone, and so has the route by which enough objections would bring an application to committee. Nine houses next to someone’s home are not a minor matter, and councillors will still be blamed for it. When something is built that nobody wants, residents will ask their councillor why, and the honest answer will be that they had no control over it whatever.
The Government’s case is that committees slow things down, but the reality is that this country does not have a big permissions problem in the first place; councillors already approve nine in 10 applications.
Paul Holmes
The hon. Member will know, as the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) said, that a cross-party delegation of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Greens on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee came up with sensible amendments to try to make sure there was a balance between efficiency in the planning system and the criteria under which officers could make more decisions, and still involving local councillors. Can the hon. Member elaborate on where the balance should be between councillors and planning officers?
John Milne
I very much agree, and I will come on to that.
Removing local scrutiny, as this scheme does, touches none of the problems I have mentioned. Where delay is real, it lies in planning departments running with about 80% of the staff they need, one in five major applications being decided on time, and fees that the Government accept do not cover the cost of the work. The Liberal Democrats made that point throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) tabled 78 amendments in Committee and more than 50 on Report, including some to try to protect planning committees. Unfortunately, the Government accepted none of those amendments.
The Government have decided that residents are just a nuisance to be overcome. Through these measures, which come on top of years of reduced neighbourhood control, they have killed one bird with a thousand stones. It is not as if local people had much say over things beforehand. The Liberal Democrats regret the lack of any attempt to build consent. This is just storing up problems and resentment for the future, as Members have said.
I ask the Minister: will the Government let a ward member bring an application to committee on behalf of residents as the locally elected official? Will they look again at the standard method—the flawed formula—that sets local targets? Will they commit to telling us in plain terms whether this change is doing what it is supposed to by 2028 at the latest? Finally, national fees are planned at an estimated 90% cost recovery. Will the Government commit to full cost recovery so that planning departments are properly resourced? We need to rediscover the principle of consent.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell, and to take part in this debate about the national scheme of delegation. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing this important debate. I know that my right hon. Friend always fights to protect the green belt in her constituency.
I was sitting here reflecting on what Members have said, and I do not think that there is much that I disagree with. I know that a number of Members from across the Chamber were on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee, and it took me back to some of the arguments we thrashed out during those debates.
When I speak to constituents right across Broxbourne, planning is one of the biggest issues that comes up, door after door, election after election. We know from hearing the accounts from Members from across the House today that that is also the case elsewhere across the United Kingdom—right from Aldridge-Brownhills to Hamble Valley, to name a few. The Government would love for everyone to think that local councillors are the main barrier to house building. They want to move to a system where new applications all over the green belt are rubber-stamped by officials instead. The truth of the matter, as has already been said, is that the vast majority of planning decisions are already made by officers—as many as 96%, according to the Government’s own figures.
The national scheme of delegation will not magically fix the Secretary of State’s failure to build the 1.5 million new homes that she promised. What these measures will do is undermine local government and expand the state even more. Unfortunately, we see it time and time again. The same developer comes along with a plan that is entirely inappropriate for the local area. Perhaps there are vague promises for a school or a park that we know will never get built. The local community then makes its view very clear that it does not want to see the plans happen. Even when the council’s planning committee votes against them, it gets overruled by the Planning Inspectorate as it decides that some bit of land is grey rather than green belt—often, as has already been said, without even visiting the site. That is just not right.
The Labour Government are forcing massive new housing developments on areas such as Goffs Oak in my constituency, while reducing targets in London to cover up Sadiq Khan’s failings. This is at the same time that we have a Prime Minister going on and on about devolution and how local leaders are the ones best placed to make local decisions. That is so inconsistent.
Wendy Morton
On that point about local leaders making decisions and showing leadership, does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we actually see that? In areas such as Walsall, what we do not see from the new leadership there—the Reform council—is strong leadership on this. One area that needs more pushback is the duty to co-operate with other areas. In our area, Birmingham’s housing target has gone down and ours has gone up. There are some towns and cities in neighbouring counties that actually want more housing and have more brownfield sites.
Lewis Cocking
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. She is right to mention the duty to co-operate. Local leaders must step up to the plate. That is what they are elected to do, and that is what their residents expect.
Residents expect their local councillors to represent them, not to hide behind the duty to co-operate. They must co-operate across borders. They do not need powers taken away from them and given to unaccountable bureaucrats in distant council headquarters. Under the national scheme of delegation, proposals for under 10 properties will only be looked at by planning officers. This means that only in very limited circumstances will there be a way for local councillors to bring those decisions before a planning committee. Planning officers are not elected and are not accountable to voters.
Everyone knows that sometimes planning officers get things wrong and the decisions need to be overturned. I have seen it. I have served on a planning committee and the trouble is that, once a planning application gets approval and gets built, it is there for a very long time. It is very difficult to rectify it once it goes wrong. Do the Government really think that unelected officials are better placed to make decisions on local issues than elected councillors? People vote for their councillors to represent them on planning issues and can hold their councillors accountable at the ballot box. However, it is not just planning that is at stake, but trust in politics as a whole. Removing powers from elected representatives is an attack on British democracy, and the British people can see right through it.
Local action groups such as Goffs Oak Community Association are already fighting tooth and nail to stop their towns and villages being wrecked by inappropriate developments, which are often proposed without any sort of adequate infrastructure. The Government clearly do not care about their views, otherwise they would not be bringing in this national scheme of delegation. These changes also ignore the fact that planning committees are not just there to approve or deny applications. Councillors talk with local people and can address their concerns by putting conditions on development.
Paul Holmes
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Another concern of mine is that, when looking at infrastructure such as healthcare facilities or larger-scale road networks, local councillors and MPs quite often work together to secure the funding from central Government and maybe a county council. Does he share my concern that in some of the larger schemes that will be decided by planning officers, the ability to get that multi-layered approach to funding will not be there, because there will not be the political will to do it?
Lewis Cocking
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If local people—including local councillors with input from the local community and MPs—do not have a say over planning applications, development will not come forward with the appropriate infrastructure. That is what our constituents right across the country expect. I am pleased to say that my party has firmly stood against these proposals from the start. If the Minister really wants to deliver on the Government’s promise to devolve power to every postcode across the United Kingdom, she will stop this attack on local democracy and bin this scheme once and for all.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Sally Jameson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. As hon. Members have identified, I am not the Minister for Housing. He is in another Committee as we speak, but I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Government and I will make sure that the strength of feeling and the questions that have been raised today are fed back.
Wendy Morton
I can assure the Minister that I will not persistently intervene. But on her last point, can she reassure me that if she is unable to answer questions that were asked today—I appreciate that this is not in her portfolio—she will ensure that the Minister for Housing and Planning responds to Members in this Chamber and the public in writing before the regulations come into force on Saturday? It is absolutely critical that Members here, and councillors across the country, fully understand their implications.
Sally Jameson
I will ensure that that request is fed back to the Minister for Housing, as well as the strength of feeling behind it. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing today’s important debate, as well as hon. Members for their contributions on the subject.
The modernisation of planning committees, as many will know, is a big part of the housing and infrastructure delivery that the Government intend. Our reforms are about creating a level playing field across the country to give certainty to communities and developers about the process their applications will follow. We recognise the vital role that planning committees play in providing local democratic oversight for important development decisions in their area. Our reforms were a key measure in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and are intended to support planning committees in this crucial role so that they can be effective as possible.
Paul Holmes
I thank the Minister for giving way and I will not intervene on her any further. She talks about giving people certainty, but this Government could have created certainty by standardising the planning system in favour of councillors making the decisions that they were sent to local councils to make. Does she agree that the reason the Government have not done that is because they have made a political decision to take that power away?
Sally Jameson
I do not agree with that. Extensive consultation was done around this policy before it was brought in—in fact, I believe there were three rounds of consultation.
The national scheme of delegation, which will come into force this Sunday, will allow committees to focus on the larger and more complex development proposals that really require member input. The applications that matter most to communities are those that will deliver the kind of development that local people desperately want to see. We also want to ensure that skilled planning officers in councils are trusted and empowered to make decisions on more applications more quickly to ensure that development is brought forward in the right place at the right time.
The national scheme of delegation will mean that officers will spend less time and resource preparing for committee meetings for smaller applications, speeding up decision-making processes more broadly and freeing up time to focus on larger and more complex applications. It will also provide greater clarity and consistency across the country about who in a local planning authority will determine applications. Irrespective of whether a decision is made by an officer or a planning committee, the important thing is that both are working to serve the interests of their community.
I want to thank the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), who praised his council’s record on planning, and I hear the concerns he has raised. As I have said, I will make sure that they are fed back.
Lewis Cocking
I did not want to interrupt the Minister’s flow, but she said that planning officers are there to serve their community. Could she explain what the community can do if it is not happy with the decisions that the planning officer makes?
Sally Jameson
I will come to that later in my speech, but I will canter through, as I am conscious of time. During the many consultations and parliamentary debates on the planning committee reforms, the Government have been clear that they are not in any way intended to be an attack on local democracy. We recognise that councillors and communities are central to deciding what development is right for their area, but the Government believe that the best way for them to do that is at the beginning of the process, when the local plan is being developed.
The national scheme of delegation will support the plan-led system. It will allow planning committees to operate as effectively as possible. For example, they will not need to revisit the same decisions that have already been considered through the local plan process; instead, they will be able to focus on those applications that really require member input. I must also stress that decision makers, whether they are members or officers, must determine applications in accordance with the local plan unless other material considerations indicate otherwise. Having an up-to-date local plan will have the biggest bearing on the outcome of a robust decision.
Importantly, we are not changing the consultation rules on planning applications. Local residents and elected councillors will still be able to make their views known on individual applications. Regardless of who the decision maker is, where those representations relate to the planning merits of the development, they will continue to be taken into account in reaching decisions.
On transparency and reporting, it is clearly important that local communities know about decisions that are being made on their behalf. That includes decisions on the referral of schedule 2 applications to the committee. We have set out requirements for that in the statutory guidance to which local authorities must have regard. As a minimum, we expect local authorities to keep a record of the cases that the nominated officer and nominated member have considered for referral to committee, the outcome of their consideration and the reasons for their decision. That should be reported to the planning committee on a regular basis and made available on the authority’s website.
A couple of points were made on HMOs. A strong local plan, particularly featuring HMOs, should be able to guide planning officers, but I will ask the Minister for Housing and Planning to write to hon. Members who raised that and provide further information. I will also feed back about websites and the council advertising campaign.
On devolution and powers of strategic authorities, I am, as it happens, the Minister responsible for the devolution strategy and the rewiring the state plan. We will set that out later this year as part of the Government’s 10-year plan. Hon. Members will see that this Government are serious about putting power back in communities. Part of that is having a strengthened local government system. I can give an example: in my own strategic authority, we announced this week that we will reopen Doncaster Sheffield airport, which will have a massive impact on the local community for jobs and growth. That is a prime example of how rewiring the state can bring the power and prosperity mentioned by Members today.
On mandatory training for members, the Government’s priority has been getting the national scheme of delegation in place. Now that that is complete, we will resume work on member training. Further stakeholder engagement is needed on how we will make that a credible and cost-effective system. I know that the Minister for Housing and Planning will work with local government and hon. Members to ensure that that is robust.
On the approach to the size of the committees, planning committees need to be the right size to inform decision making. There have been examples of sprawling committees having unruly debates and not getting anywhere. The intention behind introducing the cap was to ensure that they are more focused and of better quality. I think that initially, the planning committees were going to have 11 members, but that has been increased to 13, as a number of political parties are represented in some councils. That changed as a direct feedback from consultation.
On the national scheme of delegation, it is something new. We recognise the need to ensure that it works on the ground as intended. That is why, following the consultation on the draft regulations earlier this year, we inserted a further provision into the regulations to require that they are reviewed within two years of coming into force. That will give an opportunity to monitor the implementation of the regulations. I will feed back the request that that be looked at before the two-year mark to the Minister for Housing and Planning and ask him to come back on that, even if it is with some kind of interim or informal assessment of how that has been going.
Once again, I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for securing this debate and for the contributions from other colleagues on this important issue. I recognise that not all questions may have been answered, but I will ensure that the Minister for Housing and Planning comes back to hon. Members where I have not had the time to do so. I close by reiterating that the reforms to planning committees, including the national scheme of delegation, are intended to support, not undermine, committees. We want them to be as effective as they possibly can be, so that they serve the best interests of our communities.
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
I call Wendy Morton to sum up, if you can do it in a few seconds.
Wendy Morton
I thank all Members across the House for their contributions. It is clear that there is a lot of cross-party support, but it is noticeable that some of those who protesteth about saving the green belt—namely, our Reform colleagues—are nowhere to be seen in Westminster Hall. I know who is fighting for residents and standing up to protect the green belt.