Commons Chamber

Wednesday 8th July 2026

(began 1 month ago)

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None Portrait Prime Minister's Question Time
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Alex Norris Portrait Alex Norris MP, The Minister of State, Home Department (Nottingham North and Kimberley, Labour )
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available within the legislation to minimise disruption for UK citizens. The government has supported all The government has supported all three juxtaposed ports to ensure that they have the right technology and processes in place to make sure and processes in place to make sure EES registration runs as smoothly as possible, and this has included providing £3.5 million worth of providing £3.5 million worth of funding to each of those ports to help make them change, make help them make changes to their infrastructure and purchase the infrastructure and purchase the equipment they need to be ready their sites for EES.

It is not unusual to see queues at the juxtaposed ports during peak times due to the unique geography, and this has been the case prior to EES. However, we want to minimise the impact of EES at the late May Bank holiday weekend, both Ministers and officials engaged French authorities to ensure arrangements were in place to handle large volumes of traffic. This resulted in assurances from France that they would have adequate staffing levels and clear escalation plans in case of severe disruption.

These arrangements were made use of on the 23rd of May, when the police, French Police aux frontieres employed flexibilities available within the regulations to alleviate congestion on the road network. I, my officials and ministerial colleagues across government are actively engaging with France and the EU to make similar arrangements ahead of the summer period. The Department for transport continues to support the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum, who have tried and tested plans in place to manage disruption to the road network in Kent for passengers travelling to Schengen countries by air.

EES registration will take place in their destination. It will not take place in UK airports, and queues in EU member states are for those states to manage. However, this government continues to engage with the Commission and relevant member States to advocate for the pragmatic use of these flexibilities allowed to avoid delays for passengers. We are also engaging our European partners on the use of technology to move elements of registration away from the border, such as the EES app, and we continue to encourage travellers to check with their travel operator before departing so they know when to arrive and any possible impacts on their journey.
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Matt Vickers Portrait Matt Vickers MP (Stockton West, Conservative)
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European Entry Exit system, understands why the scale of the challenges over summer are so great. Despite all those problems, it has now been reported that a separate new online system to authorise new online system to authorise entry to the EU will be delayed until next year. This is a pitiful response indicative of the problems response indicative of the problems facing so many UK travellers. There is nowhere near the urgency needed is nowhere near the urgency needed to address the problems facing the EES as we enter the summer holidays.

As the President of Airports Council, International Europe recently expressed, politicians should stop pretending that the EES is working just fine. It is not. This delusional attitude among EU colleagues is not acceptable, with the EU telling representatives of the travel industry that a full suspension of the system is not needed and not possible. The government must stand behind the interests of British travellers. For instance, there appears to be a ridiculous situation in which a facility built in Dover cannot be activated until the technology for the kiosks, which is the responsibility of the French authorities, is working.

My hon. Friend, the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee is right. It is time to apply maximum pressure before chaos arrives at the border at Dover. I hope the Minister can detail what conversations they have had, what pressure they will apply. Have they asked for a temporary suspension, relaxation or phased use of EES checks at periods of exceptional congestion and given the increased traffic? What has the government done to strengthen plans in case queues spill out of Dover or Folkestone? It is in all our interests to ensure people can get through border checks quickly, so it's time to ensure that that happens.
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Alex Norris Portrait Alex Norris MP, The Minister of State, Home Department (Nottingham North and Kimberley, Labour )
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Minister. Minister for his questions there. I share his point, and he heard me say in opening about the importance and and the the impact that Pre-authorisation can have. We want that to become the norm. We are, as I said, engaging with member states to to encourage them to take that use of the app up. He asks about intent in our colleagues in the European Union, whether in the Commission or in member states. I have to say I don't detect a lack of intent.

They are very keen to engage with us. We engage with them very frequently indeed. They want this system to work. It's very important that it does. And it is worth saying, Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing that our neighbour wants really good security arrangements. We benefit from that too. But I do think we have that that we certainly have that level of engagement. He talks about full suspension. I have to say, as I said, to the to the right hon. Member, the chair of the Select Committee yesterday in Select Committee proceedings, I would not set that as the goal in the aspiration, because I don't believe that's deliverable.

What we delivered in May. What we will seek to do here is that when we get to peak times and the system is clearly not managing flow appropriately, having the right flexibilities in place on the ground for Path staff to make those changes that prioritise flow, that's my priority. He talks about the facility. Well, I would gently say it isn't going to be able to be used until the technology that it's used from based on works. Of course it's not. We want that to be the case as soon as possible.

That is not a business for us. We have made the money available so that the infrastructure is there. It is there. We have delivered on that element, but the technology is still clearly taking time to stand up. He talks about pressure. Will. The engagement we have is at all levels of government? Yes, in the Home Office and the Home Secretary is engaged with her counterpart and with the Commission, as has DfT colleagues, DfT Secretary of State, as has the Minister for the Cabinet Office.

We are raising these on a daily basis and then on the on the point on contingencies. I would take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to say what a good job that the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum have done on this. I am a big Resilience Forum enthusiast. Those are local people making direct local changes to improve their community. When under pressure there is Operation Tap, there is Operation Brock. Those arrangements are in place and we will work with them so they can make the best operational decisions they can along the way.
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Max Wilkinson Portrait Max Wilkinson MP (Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
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Max Wilkinson Liberal Democrat >> Max Wilkinson Liberal Democrat spokesperson thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is now ten years on from the Brexit referendum. And in the words Brexit referendum. And in the words of the right hon. Member for Newark, where are we? Where are we? We're here. We're stuck in queues at the EU border for hours at a time because he and his acolytes forced a damaging Brexit on this country. It is interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that the Conservatives have come to the chamber today complaining about the consequences of the Brexit deal they negotiated.

It is the Member for Clacton's Brexit plan implemented by the Conservatives and unresolved by this government, which has left British holidaymakers in this position. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, this government is guilty not of just failing to plan, but of political and diplomatic failures which have let down holidaymakers. We are already seeing reports of queues of up to five hours. What a way to start our holidays. So what immediate steps is the Minister taking to mitigate disruption? Will he seek an immediate meeting with the European Commission so that contingency measures that can be put in place protect passengers as a matter of urgency? And will this government drop its red lines on Europe and commit to joining the single market and customs union? Not only, Mr.

Speaker, would this reverse the damage done by Brexit and get our economy back on track, but it would mean that we would not be subject. Sorry, you've gone way over your one minute. I think.
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Alex Norris Portrait Alex Norris MP, The Minister of State, Home Department (Nottingham North and Kimberley, Labour )
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The hon. Lady may or may not have had the chance to see from the transcript or indeed the film that transcript or indeed the film that I was in the subsequent panel on that discussion. That isn't the view of the UK government. The point being made here was with regards to the enforcement of the Common Travel Area, we do significant levels of immigration enforcement done over 2600 visits since the general election. More than a thousand people have been removed from the UK as a result of them, 500 of them back to the Republic of Ireland.

We take them very seriously. There is, of course, for very good reason. We focus on all of our ports as a point of challenge, but that enforcement activity happens across Northern Ireland, not just at the ports. You know, we take an intelligence led approach to Northern Ireland, and we always will do because we do not want to see the CTA abused.

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Speaker. Now, further to the excellent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway, the Minister will no and Galloway, the Minister will no doubt be aware that Bridlington is the lobster capital of Europe, and therefore any delays at Dover have therefore any delays at Dover have a very serious impact on our vital export market. But I want to address the wider issue of tourists this summer, and whether the Minister agrees that other countries like France, like Spain and like Portugal, should follow the lead of Greece and delay the

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implementation of the EAS system until such time it is fit for purpose. Well, first of all, I commend Bridlington's lobster industry. I have to say that was a new one to me, but I'm going to correct that error at the first possible opportunity. That is, of course, the ultimate lifetime product I would suggest in seafood. I'm stretching my seafood knowledge to some degree, and we're therefore very aware of the impact on Bridlington's seafood industry. On the point on member states using their flexibilities, I do share that I want to see, and these are the nature of the conversations we're having, yes, with France, but with the Commission and across EU member states that they use flexibilities to prioritise flow.

And I think that's the right thing to do. And I think all colleagues would agree with that.
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Keir Mather Portrait Keir Mather MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) (Selby, Labour)
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Mr. >> Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I begin by thanking the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland for bringing forward this urgent question on what is an incredibly important matter. I welcome the opportunity to set out the government's position on the remuneration of coastguard rescue officers, and I want to begin by recognising the extraordinary contribution made by CROs across the United Kingdom for generations, his Majesty's Coast Guard's coastal response has depended on people from local communities who choose to serve, often alongside full time employment and family life.

The reason we are here today is because the model had to change for years. When people signed up as volunteers, they had their expenses covered and an offer of hourly pay, which they did not need to claim. In recognition of the incredible service that they undertook and the impact that it had upon their personal life. The Court of Appeal judgement clarified that this payment overwhelmingly shifted what many considered to be a volunteer relationship into a work wage bargain, and that this in turn conferred worker status.

Everything we have done since then has been to respect that judgement, to understand what we do next, and to allow CROs to continue fulfilling their vital public service and retain operational capacity. There is no perfect solution to this, but ultimately the volunteer model was judged at the time to be the better outcome for the service. This was the judgement that was reached by the MCA who, as experts in search and rescue, took into account a variety of factors including profiles of incident types, geographies, organisational implications, as well as a survey of CRO sentiment and legal analysis with which they made a recommendation.

This recommendation allowed CROs to retain volunteer status, with the aim of protecting flexibility and the ability for people to serve alongside their primary employment. Careful consideration was given to options including legal position, the operational implications and the wider organisational impact. Now I have heard the concerns of the CRO community about this change and that is why the next stage of the process, the engagement sessions that were due to take place this week, have been postponed while I carry on working with them.

Trade unions and colleagues across the House, I will reflect on what has been raised in these discussions and consider in the long term how our coastguard volunteers can be recognised. Volunteering has been at the heart of His Majesty's Coastguard response for over 200 years. It enables individuals to serve their communities alongside their primary employment, maintaining choice and flexibility. I remain grateful to all members of the CRS for their unwavering commitment to their communities and people in distress around the UK coastline.
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Jim Allister Portrait Jim Allister KC MP (North Antrim, Traditional Unionist Voice)
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Alistair Carmichael thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for that answer. As the Minister for that answer. As the Minister knows, last week we had more than 30 members in Westminster Hall for a debate on those changes. Hall for a debate on those changes. I am pleased to hear that it was a result of his intervention that the check in meetings were postponed, and that the matters are now under full consideration. Is the department actually considering the possibility of legislative change to deal with this problem? Madam Deputy Speaker, the House goes into recess at the end of next week.

So can the Minister give the House an undertaking that those check in meetings and this process of change will not be resumed during the recess and without a statement first being made to this House? Since last week's debate, I have been contacted by a number of full time officers who have described to me a toxic management culture within the agency. I have been told of at least three whistle blowing complaints that have been made to the department in March. Despite the passage of time, the whistleblowers themselves remain unclear about the progress of their complaints.

Can the Minister give me some reassurance that those whistleblowing complaints will be properly and speedily investigated, and that a proper and independent investigation will now be initiated into the management culture within the Maritime Coastguard Agency? Finally, Madam Deputy Speaker, information obtained under a Freedom of Information Act release indicates that responses to the MCA's own survey show that almost 40% of CROs would reduce the number of callouts to which they would respond or leave the service completely. This contradicts what members of this House were told by the MCA.

Can the Minister please explain why this information was not disclosed voluntarily by the agency? And will he now give the full disclosure of the outcome of that survey?
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Keir Mather Portrait Keir Mather MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) (Selby, Labour)
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Minister. >> Minister. >> May I begin by thanking the right hon. Member for his championing of CROs, but doing so championing of CROs, but doing so in such a fair minded, open and constructive way to respond substantively to some of the points that he has made in terms of parliamentary scrutiny of prospective changes or working through options in relation to the future of CROs. Let me make a commitment to him that Members of Parliament will be updated fully on any changes that I can commit to informing the House on what the next steps will be, and he raised a very important point during the Westminster Hall debate on this issue, that MPs need to be allowed to be able to access CROs and have meaningful conversations with them about what they think the future of the service should look like.

He asks me about subsequent data and whether that was used to inform the judgement that was made. Can I just confirm to him that survey data was one constituent part of a package of advice that was put in regard to an operational recommendation made by experts at the MCA about what future models should be comprised of. That is alongside impact assessments and modelling. If he has, and he raised this as part of his Westminster Hall debate contribution and subsequent information about how CROs believe this will impact them, and about the reality for his rural constituency and the island communities that he represents.

So fulsomely, I would strongly encourage him to share it with me. But may I just reiterate the fact, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I want Members of Parliament to be able to play their full role in representing CROs throughout this process.
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Greg Smith Portrait Greg Smith MP (Mid Buckinghamshire, Conservative)
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Shadow Minister Greg Smith. securing this urgent question. And to Mr. Speaker, for granting it. There is deep concern across the whole country on the decision of the government, particularly affecting our coastal communities, demonstrated clearly in the Westminster Hall debate from all sides last week, where the Minister said he would reflect on what he's heard and he's repeated that this morning. But from the answers he has given so far, I suggest he reflects a little bit harder and more urgently.

I particularly like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the Isle of Wight East, for his tireless work in highlighting these issues. The problem is not speculative. The data revealed by The Times from the MCA survey is absolutely clear. This change will decimate the Coast Guard. The survey showed across all regions between 25% and 58% of those who responded said a volunteer model would lead them to quit or reduce their hours, including 56% in the south east and southern England regions, which covers the busiest stretches of coastline in the UK.

A decrease in the number of Coast Guard officers at this scale would put people's lives at risk. It is that simple. However, despite knowing that this was coming for months, there appears to have been a complete failure from the department in appreciating and anticipating the impact of the decision. Why is that? Why was the impression, given that even though it was a tough decision, the Coast Guard would be able to carry on as normal and that there was sufficient support for the changes? Can the Minister explain who within the department and the MCA knew about the revelations in the times this week, and how this was allowed to be shared by the MCA to members of this House in what can only be described as a questionable manner? The data is the data, not part of some sort of package.

The first responsibility of government is to protect the public. But in this matter I fear it has failed. As we look ahead and approach the height of summer, protecting our waterways is critical. So can the Minister answer a simple question? What is he going to do urgently and immediately to solve the problem?
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Keir Mather Portrait Keir Mather MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) (Selby, Labour)
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I thank the Shadow Minister for >> I thank the Shadow Minister for his contribution in regard to what I'm doing personally to solve the problem. The reason that those consultation sessions are not going ahead this week is because I'm honouring the commitment that I made to the House last week in the Westminster Hall debate to respond to the concerns that have been raised by members of Parliament on a number of issues about the operational implications of the decision that was taken about very serious concerns raised by the right hon.

Member for Shetland and Orkney, as well as questions around parliamentary engagement with CROs and allegations being made that MPs were not granted proper access to be able to engage with CROs prior to this decision being taken. Those are all things of serious concern to me. They are the reason that this pause has gone ahead. I would question what he said in regard to the data. Standing alone in terms of the operational judgement that was made, I would reiterate the fact that a package of measures is put to enable us to make a decision based on impact assessments, based on operational evidence, and based on the surveys that he references.

But the surveys only form a constituent part of how that process works. But the salient point remains that it is right to reflect on the concerns that have been raised across this House, to consider long term options about what can be done to ensure that CROs feel valued, and that operational capacity is not just retained, but is retained in every part of the United Kingdom, including in our rural areas. And that is what I'm committed to do.
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Chris Coghlan Portrait Chris Coghlan MP (Dorking and Horley, Liberal Democrat)
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of course, have the opportunity to raise this issue with the Leader of the House at Business Questions the House at Business Questions tomorrow. Which brings us to Royal Assent. I have to notify the House in accordance with the Royal Assent Act, 1967, that the King has signified his Royal assent to the following acts and measures. National Security State Threats Act, 2026. Clergy Conduct Measure 2026. Which brings us to presentation of Procurement.

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British Goods and Services Bill. Second Reading What day? Friday the 4th. Of September. Madam Deputy Speaker. Speaker.

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Friday the 4th of September. We now come to the ten minute rule

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motion Chris Coghlan. Madam Deputy Speaker, I beg move

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Madam Deputy Speaker, I beg move that leave be given to bring a bill to require persons discharging functions on behalf of certain other persons to assess the mental capacity of those persons in specified circumstances and for connected purposes. At issue is the devastating misuse of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which has resulted in hundreds of preventable deaths. King's College London found 160 of these deaths in 2023 alone. This bill is in honour of Christopher Laskaris, whose mum Fiona is here.

Christopher was not unlike many autistic children. He was a sensitive and intelligent boy who once asked his mum to stop on the way to school to rescue a lamb stuck in a fence. I first met Fiona when I was eight. I had stayed in my bedroom and ignored her. Perhaps I was angry that she was buying my home off my dad. My mum had died a few months after I was born and I was a sensitive boy. Well, they moved in.

Christopher grew up in my childhood bedroom and he loved the house as much as I did. But as a young autistic man living alone in Leeds, he was in danger. Despite Fiona raising credible doubts about his capacity on numerous occasions over eight years, she was never able to secure the mental capacity assessment that she needed to protect him. Horrifically, Christopher was exploited and murdered in his home by a man who had just been released from jail. Christopher was 24.

Under this bill, Christopher would have been granted that mental capacity assessment, and he might still be with us. I've been working with Fiona for over two years to close this loophole. We have worked cross-party, we have worked with the government and we have worked with ITV, who have mounted a national campaign exposing this injustice across the country. I am grateful for all this and the result that the government has committed to review and reform the Mental Capacity Act.

This bill offers an opportunity to realise that commitment. The Mental Capacity Act states. A person must be presumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity. Too often, public officials have used this presumption to not take action. Failing vulnerable people because if a person's capacity is merely in doubt but not yet established as lacking, then they are presumed to have capacity and too easily disregarded. This bill has been drafted by one of the most prominent mental capacity lawyers in the country, Alex Ruck-keene KC, Honorary King's counsel.

It has two key clauses a duty to assess capacity where a person is reasonably understood to have an impairment or disturbance in their functioning of their mind or brain, and a duty to assess capacity where a person properly interested in the circumstances in the person's circumstances has raised the
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Mike Martin Portrait Mike Martin MP (Tunbridge Wells, Liberal Democrat)
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concern as to their capacity. Although these safeguards are in Although these safeguards are in the existing code of practice, they are too often ignored. This bill are too often ignored. This bill seeks to bring these existing safeguards into law to mandate safeguards into law to mandate compliance. It will enhance the presumption of capacity because it will ensure that it is not used will ensure that it is not used against people to their costs or the cost of others.

Charlie Gooding. His mum Annabelle is here. Charlie had prior a Willi syndrome, which in his case gave him a genetic compulsion to overeat. Annabelle repeatedly begged authorities for help. They repeatedly ignored her. She locked the food cupboards, but she could not prevent Charlie from buying food or going to food banks. Ultimately, his weight reached 30 stone and he ate himself to death. stone and he ate himself to death. Charlie was 35. Under this bill, authorities would have had to grant Annabelle that assessment.

Harlow Annabelle that assessment. Harlow Watson. His mum Jo is here. Holly was 12 years old when he died after paranoid schizophrenic Terrence Glover drove a car into a crowd of schoolchildren. Glover had told the police. Police beforehand, repeatedly in nine, nine, nine calls, that he intended to run over and kill schoolchildren. The police knew about his paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis and they knew about his impaired judgement. Yet they took no action. Under this bill, the police would have had to have referred Glover for a mental capacity assessment, which might have saved an innocent 12 year old boy.

In 2014, a House of Lords Select Committee recognised the failures in the Mental Capacity Act. These past 12 years, Parliament has failed to act. The cost in lives lost is unimaginable. Amongst the hundreds of dead. Fiona lost her. Christopher. Annabelle lost her. Charlie. Jo lost her Harley. These three mums are here today, not only in grief but also with the highest of all hope to save lives. I commend their courage and this bill

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to the House. The question is that the hon.

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The question is that the hon. Member have leave to bring in the Member have leave to bring in the Bill. As many as are of that opinion say aye. Of the contrary, opinion say aye. Of the contrary, no. The ayes have it. The ayes have it. Who will prepare? And whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa. Who will whoa whoa whoa whoa. Who will prepare and bring in the bill?

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Madam Speaker, Ed Davey Danny Chambers Jeremy Hunt Andy Slaughter. Florence Eshalomi John Grady Wera Florence Eshalomi John Grady Wera Hobhouse Liz Jarvis. Vikki Slade. Manuela Perteghella Ben Maguire. Manuela Perteghella Ben Maguire. And myself, Madam Deputy Speaker

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Mental Mental capacity. Mental capacity. Duty Mental capacity. Duty to

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Mental capacity. Duty to assess bill. Second Reading. What day?

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Second Reading. What day? 29th Friday 29th January.

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Friday the 29th of January 2027. I will allow a couple of moments for the frontbenchers to swap over. We now come to the backbench debate on UK rearmament and war fighting

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readiness. Mike Martin to move. Thank you. Madam Deputy Speaker. The key words of the motion on the Order Paper today is rapid, rapid Paper today is rapid, rapid rearmament, not eventual rearmament, not rearmament with an asterisks, not rearmament with an asterisks, rapid rearmament. And the reason that that is the key word is that that is the key word is because the clock is not ours to choose. So three weeks ago, before the Defence Investment Plan came out, the Prime Minister said, and I quote, it is our intelligence assessment and the assessment of other countries in NATO that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the deadline is not contested. Intelligence confirms it, NATO proclaims it. They are speaking of this in Ankara today, and our government accepts it. We must be ready by 2030. And this is why the Defence Investment plan is so maddening. I read it from cover to cover. I'm that kind of guy, and I. I cannot wrap my head around it. It fails the test of its own threat assessment. It does not go far enough. And what it does do, it does too slowly, and large parts of it are unfunded.

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is too little, too late, and there is not enough cash. So it's worth considering how this plan came into being. So Lord Robertson, who was the lead author of the Strategic Defence Review, wanted to have the dip. So that's the money bit as an annexe to the SDR. And this is really good practice. When you're making strategy you set out a vision. That's the SDR. And then you set out your dip your investment plan. That's the resources.

And if you don't have the resources to deliver your vision, you either need to downgrade your vision somewhat or you need to increase your resources. And this decoupling of the two by a year, the vision in the SDR a year ago and the money, the resources in a dip just recently is the greatest failure of statecraft committed by this Labour government. In the two years that it has been in office. So allow me, Madam Deputy Speaker, to speak about the money in some detail.

I think quite well ventilated in the media is the £4.7 billion. That quite blatantly is to be found in the next Budget in the autumn. And whilst the right hon. Member for Makerfield has said that he intends to fund defence seriously, he has not specifically said that he will find those sums in that Budget. And as the government repeatedly tells us, defence of the realm is the most important duty of any government. So why is £5 billion of that sacred duty in the next Chancellor? Persons unknown at this point? Why is it in their in-tray? Secondly, I'd like to talk about these efficiency savings, £10.7 billion of them.

And the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, when he was sitting just over there, called this the oldest accounting book accounting trick in the book. And if you dig just one layer below and look at the detail of this 2.4 billion of that £10.7 billion of what the MoD calls high maturity initiatives, that's a quote. And I find it's always worth really looking into what the MoD says, because the remaining 8.4 billion of that nearly £11 billion of efficiency savings is what the MoD calls lower maturity plans, lower maturity plans.

Madam Deputy Speaker is mod speak for. We haven't worked out how to deliver those savings yet. Yeah. And thirdly, and most egregiously, and this is the theme that I will keep returning to, is that this is a dip of two halves. We have the period from now until 2030, and this is covered by the current spending review, subject to the caveats that I laid out earlier. But there is a further bit from 2030 to 2035 that has to be confirmed in a forthcoming spending review.

And if a future Chancellor or Prime Minister doesn't agree to those sums going into the next spending sums going into the next spending review due in the spring of 2027, one assumes then the dip doesn't one assumes then the dip doesn't exist. It's just an unfunded piece of paper. On that point, I will go then. then.
14:49
Al Carns Portrait Al Carns MP (Birmingham Selly Oak, Labour)
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I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and he's making an excellent speech. Would he agree with me that not only does that near-term investment period cover until the next election, the first four years, the second half, the longer term investment period covers the next five years all the way up to 2035. But the dip is a ten year plan, so it should, in fact go beyond 2035 and beyond two elections time to 2036. And it clearly does not mention that because the number 2036 does not

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appear in the Defence Investment Plan once. Well, I think this actually

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Well, I think this actually speaks to the delay. Had the dip come up when it was meant to in 2025, it would be a ten year plan 2025, it would be a ten year plan because it would go 2025 to 2035. But the government was unable to get its ducks in line. And so it get its ducks in line. And so it was delayed by a year. But but, you know, for them to then rejig the plan and do it. 2036 I mean, we'd plan and do it.

2036 I mean, we'd be waiting till 2040 to get the plan. So this is a dip of two halves and most of the investment. And this is the really worrying bit. Most of the investment is in the second half that is unfunded. And I'll just give you some examples. In the air domain. It's 27.8 billion before 2030, 70 billion after unfunded in the maritime domain. It's 18 billion before 2030, 32 billion after unfunded in the land domain, 19.2 billion before 36 billion afterwards, unfunded weapons and munitions, 11.1 billion before 20 billion after unfunded.

It beggars belief. Why bother publishing a plan when, by my calculations, almost two thirds of the investments that you seek to make are in the second half. That is unfunded. And one of the reasons that we have pulled this plan together is to give certainty to industry, so they know how to invest. But I will.

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Alan Gemmell my concern that the only British company offering to build an advanced jet trainer build an advanced jet trainer replacement for the Red Arrows Hawk Jet Calder Valley, has gone into receivership because of the delays receivership because of the delays on the dip, meaning they will not assemble those lovely British jets in my constituency.

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in my constituency. So the firm in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, I think Gentleman's constituency, I think we all have stories either whether it's in our constituencies or that we know from the conversations that we have as members of Parliament who are interested in defence. It has been catastrophic for British industry and rushing out an unfunded dip, which is effectively what this is, has not helped. It's meant that for some small investments, one third of the total pot for the next four years, small capital investments can be made by firms, but anything that requires that stretches beyond 2030, nobody can for sure make that investment.

Very briefly, I will, and then.
14:55
Bernard Jenkin Portrait Sir Bernard Jenkin MP (Harwich and North Essex, Conservative)
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I thank you, mate. He's making a >> I thank you, mate. He's making a very accurate critique. Is he aware that at lunchtime today, the Treasury Select Committee, led by the redoubtable lady for Hackney, looking at defence funding, and in that hearing, barely an hour ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted under persistent questioning the government has done no work on how to get to 3.5% of

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GDP on defence. Mike Martin. All I will say is that defence

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All I will say is that defence of the realm is the most serious

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of the realm is the most serious will. Use a very kind Madam Deputy Speaker, because he's right in the middle of unpicking the dip thread by thread. But does he agree with by thread. But does he agree with me that we need to look at the manifest and substantial disappointment that we, and all of the people in uniform see in the dip now that it's announced, and try and reconcile that with how delayed it was. What does he think the government were doing, given that there are so many black holes and missing spaces in the dip? What does he think they were debating over those 11 months that the dip was delayed?

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The original sin is the divorcing of the Strategic Defence Review and the dip, the vision from the resources. And for the previous year, the Department has first been year, the Department has first been arguing with itself about whether it can downgrade some of the things it can downgrade some of the things in the Strategic Defence review. And there are a couple of things that where that's happened, as I'll come to those and then been arguing come to those and then been arguing with the Treasury as to whether they can get more money to fill the gap effectively, they wrote a vision that was far too grand for the money that was ever going to be available.

So let me turn from the money to, to the metal and have a look at some of the capabilities. And I could give a very, very long speech of, you know, military analysis about which capabilities should be in or out of the I won't do that. I think it would test. I know, I know the honourable and right hon. Members would want me to do that. Perhaps I will start up a Substack or something and. But let's look at the Royal Navy, the senior service, and at the turn of this century, which someone born in 1982, it still feels very weird for me to say that.

But at the turn of the century, we had 20 frigates. The UK had 20 frigates. By the end of this year, we will have five and predict they were scheduled to go out of service in 2035. And in a little notice line in the dip. Actually we're bringing forward that date. So now our frigates, all of which all five of them are well beyond their service date. They're going out of date in 2033. And their replacements, the type 26 and the type 23 are going to be coming into service, you guessed it, between 2030 and 2035.

So what we have is old ships retiring on a fixed schedule and new ships coming in on an unfunded one. And by my, you know, back of a packet maths. Madam Deputy Speaker and to be honest, it's probably about the same quality of analysis as is going in in the MoD under this government. But we will have three frigates, three frigates in 2030 and this is the year supposedly according to our own intelligence assessments of maximum Russian threat against NATO.

We need a frigate to protect our cables. We need a frigate to get the carrier group out at sea. We need a frigate for our deterrent and rule of threes. You know, for every three ships, you can only have one at sea at any one time. That's nine frigates. And there's no contingency in that. So if anything else kicks off in the Middle East or anywhere else, there's no contingency. But you can see straight away that there's a huge gap, the frigate gap, as many are calling it.

And the dip has made the frigate gap much worse. And the picture with our current type 45 destroyers and their replacements is not much better. So our type 45, which provide air defence primarily. We had one parked in the Thames estuary to defend the Olympics in
15:04
Tim Roca Portrait Tim Roca MP (Macclesfield, Labour)
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2012, for instance, because we don't have any other air defence, don't have any other air defence, they go out of service from 2035 and their replacements are meant to and their replacements are meant to be these crude common combat vessels, like Motherships and around them are meant to be around them are meant to be arranged. Various autonomous ships that provide missiles or sensors or underwater above water. So there's underwater above water. So there's a whole fleet of different ships that are meant to replace the destroyers.

And some other elements of this was the hybrid navy that was much touted last week with the media around the dip. And to be clear to the House, I am totally in favour of moving towards autonomy as fast as we possibly can. It is worth saying, however, that the maritime domain is the most difficult domain to do. Autonomy in particularly the high north. I have spent quite a lot of time at sea and I can tell you everything breaks all the time.

And there is a reason why the maritime domain is the last domain to be autonomous. We started with air because that's quite predictable, quite easy to do. They still don't fly in bad weather and we then we went on to ground stuff to pick up casualties and drop off ammunition. But the idea that we can and these new ships, these common combat vessels, are PowerPoints at the moment. So we expect to go from PowerPoints to power projection on the high seas in nine years with not just one class of ships, but several classes of ships that have to work together.

That seems quite risky to me. And I think if you take these two things together, what's happening to the frigate fleet and what is happening to the destroyer fleet, I think it's fair to say that the dip is spent. Is spelling the end of the Royal Navy as we know it? I will to the former Minister.

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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman agree with me The hon. Gentleman agree with me that from sale to ironclad, ironclad to dreadnought, dreadnought to highly capable frigate, we need to make the next frigate, we need to make the next generational leap. And if we find ourselves caught into programs now that deliver last year's capability, that deliver last year's capability, we will remove any wriggle room or space to make that jump into

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autonomy and automation. Mike Martin. I absolutely do agree with everything the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, has just said. Thank you. However, all I'm highlighting is that on past performance, to go from PowerPoints to ships at sea in nine years for several classes of ship seems extremely risky. And moreover, you know, come back to the dip. Only £1.3 billion has been set aside in this first funded period to to to, to set up that entire class of ships.

And the remainder of the investment falls beyond 2030. And so it seems risky. I want to move to autonomy. I think that's the right thing to do. But that that

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seems like an incredibly risky bet. Well, my friend. Goodwin. I will make a little bit of progress and then I will, if that's progress and then I will, if that's OK, because I'm I'm having eyes made at me by Madam Deputy Speaker.

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made at me by Madam Deputy Speaker. So the the. If you want.

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To interrupt that. Think of it.

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So then there is the Global Combat Air programme and the. The Dip commits £8.6 billion to this. So this is the sixth generation fighter jet that we're building with Italy and Japan. And it's. Well, really, we're probably going to get these in service sometime after 2040. And it's a manned fighter jet. So what I would ask the House is just to cast their minds forward to beyond Putin's death. Putin will probably be buried by this point.

And ask

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yourself in 2040, are we going to have humans flying fighter jets? Yes.

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I think the answer is no. And I know that the Minister is next pilot, so he will be he will always argue for humans in fighter jets. But allow me to lay out my argument. But allow me to lay out my argument. And I think when you dig into GCap, what you find is that the reason it's a crewed system rather than an it's a crewed system rather than an uncrewed system is because that is what the Japanese partners wanted. So we are I'm afraid I'm not going to if that's OK, because I want to.

So what we are doing is we are
15:13
Ian Roome Portrait Ian Roome MP (North Devon, Liberal Democrat)
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privileging a diplomatic relationship, a good diplomatic relationship that would weather the storm of us pulling out of GCap. We are privileging diplomacy over military capability. And I think military capability. And I think what we have to look at is whether we want manned fighter jets in 40 we want manned fighter jets in 40 years, or whether we want a or whether we want a a Royal Navy right now. Do we want frigates and destroyers in the next four years? Do we want to transition effectively in a funded way to a hybrid Navy, or do we want manned fighter jets to arrive in 2014? Madam Deputy Speaker in conclusion.

The same story repeats wherever you look. Deep precision strike, early 2030s nuclear enabled F-35s early 2030s. 76,000 soldiers in the British Army to reverse the Tory cuts and investment through to 2035. I know they were waiting for it, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I had to just get one little elbow in the ribs time and again, time and again, the capability that the threat demands by 2030 is delivered after 2030, funded by a spending review that has not happened and has been signed off by no one.

Which leaves

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one final question. Madam Deputy Speaker. What do you do?

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Does the current Prime Minister believe his own threat assessment? Because if he does and he's not funding it, so he's putting his money where his mouth is, or rather our money where his mouth is, then our money where his mouth is, then that is highly negligent. Or perhaps he doesn't believe his own perhaps he doesn't believe his own intelligence assessment and those that shared with his partners, in which case he should tell us that he does not. I fear that future generations will look at this Labour government's approach to defence with their head in their hands.

Thank you.

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Yeah. The question is, as on the Order

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The question is, as on the Order Paper and with an immediate six

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Paper and with an immediate six minute time limit. Al Carns yes. Madam Deputy Speaker, everyone in this debate will rightly speak in this debate will rightly speak about defence spending, procurement and munitions, and they all absolutely matter. But I want to just ask a broader question what just ask a broader question what does warfighting readiness actually mean in 2026? For too long, we've measured military strength by the number of ships afloat, aircraft we fly, or tanks that we field, and those capabilities will remain essential.

But recent conflicts have reminded us that wars are rarely won by militaries alone. Wars are won by nations. They are won by industries that can outproduce an adversary, economies that can absorb shocks, and societies resilient enough to sustain conflict over time. Now, I have seen this first hand in Ukraine. Time and again, I have met individuals whose courage goes
15:19
Graeme Downie Portrait Graeme Downie MP (Dunfermline and Dollar, Labour)
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beyond question. But courage alone is not enough. Success depends on whether you have. The ammunition whether you have. The ammunition arrived when it was needed, whether new technology could be adapted in weeks rather than years, and whether industry could keep pace with the demands of the battlefield. The side that learns fastest, The side that learns fastest, adapts fastest and regenerates fastest gains the advantage. And that should challenge how we think about readiness. Warfighting about readiness. Warfighting readiness is no longer simply the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence.

It is an industrial strategy. It is an energy strategy, and it is a technological strategy. Ultimately, it's a national resilience strategy. If our energy networks are vulnerable, if our communications can be disrupted, if our supply chains depend on hostile states, if our British industry cannot rapidly increase production when conflict begins, then our armed forces inherit those weaknesses from day one of any crisis. That is why resilience must sit at the heart of our national security. We often talk about stockpiles, and rightly so.

But I think the more important question is not how many missiles are sitting in a warehouse today. It is this after six months of a sustained conflict, how many can British industry produce every month? Modern warfare consumes munitions at a pace that few of us can comprehend or indeed imagine. But Ukraine is teaching us lessons.

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7 to 10 000 drones flying a day. 12,000 artillery rounds fired a day. 12,000 artillery rounds fired a day. 1 million drones, in some cases produced over two months. I will. produced over two months. I will. Yeah. Can I thank my hon. Friend for giving way? I've recently met with a number of SMEs and start up with a number of SMEs and start up companies who produced want to produce drones and autonomous produce drones and autonomous systems and greater integrate AI, but they're really concerned about the pace of change in the MLB.

Do you believe that really the MLB needs to start pacing up and getting on with the job of working with these companies to provide us with the sort of protection that we need? I couldn't agree with the hon. Gentleman more. A data as a new gunpowder AI is absolutely critical in defence, and we use all of our technological advantage to move faster and further than ever before, and be bold and jump to the next generation of systems. And don't wait for anyone else to lead.

But we should lead ourselves. The lesson is clear from my my perspective. Madam Deputy Speaker, stockpiles matter, but the ability to regenerate them matters even more. And that is why I welcome the government's commitment to rebuild munitions stockpiles, expand domestic production capacity, and invest in British defence industry. Those are investments not just in military capability, but in national resilience. The same is true for technology. Ukraine has demonstrated that innovation cycles measured in months can be outperformed, can outperform procurement cycles measured in decades.

Drones, autonomous systems, software and artificial intelligence are changing warfare at an extraordinary speed, and it is only ever going to get faster. Readiness, therefore, means building a procurement system that can adapt just as quickly, giving innovative British companies a route into defence and ensuring our armed forces can evolve as rapidly as the threats they face. We have at present over ten 000 people in DCMS 10,000 people doing procurement. I'm not saying that it's inefficient, but I'm saying

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the bureaucracy sometimes gets in the way of speed. I will give. You would make an excellent

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You would make an excellent speech. I wonder if you would agree that embedding that culture of innovation and iteration in the mod

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is absolutely critical to make sure we can move as quickly as possible? Yeah. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is actually about Gentleman. This is actually about cultural changes as much as adopting technology. If we were to adopt even the very simplest AI adopt even the very simplest AI models now in how we do procurement, how we move, how we move on to the next generation, we'll find the system will speed up, the efficiencies will fall away, and we'll get the right kit into the right hands far quicker than we do now.

Ultimately, however, rearmament is not about preparing for war because we expect it. It's about making sure war never happens in the first place. And the purposes of rearmament is deterrence, and deterrence rests on three foundations capable armed forces, political resolve, and the industrial capacity to sustain both. If any one of those is missing, deterrence becomes far less credible. When you're focusing against an autocratic nation with huge industrial resilience. So as we discuss rearmament today, let us think beyond platforms, procurement and spending lines.

The defining lesson of modern conflict is that warfighting readiness is not simply a military condition, it is a national condition. I will give way.
15:28
Steve Barclay Portrait Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
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I'm very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He's in a unique position to advise the House on his assessment of the dip as published. So can he give us his view on whether the quantity of funds provided and the certainty of the period over which they are provided is sufficient to achieve the kind of industrial step change that he is advocating in his excellent speech.

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So I've been really clear from several weeks ago that I wasn't content with the funding around the content with the funding around the dip or the transformational nature of it. I've been really encouraged in the last couple of weeks the speed in which it's moving. We need to move more, and I think the spending review in due course will round that off. Don't underestimate, round that off. Don't underestimate, from my perspective, the level of change that is required. It's systemic within the department.

systemic within the department. It's systemic within the single services. And it's got to move a quantum leap forward, no pun intended. If we're going to deliver the change that is required. If Britain wants armed forces capable of fighting and winning. Madam Deputy Speaker, then we must build a country that can endure, can adapt and sustain them. Because in modern conflict, as Ukraine has taught us, the line between the military and civilian worlds has all but disappeared. And that is what true readiness looks like.

And it is indeed the challenge that is

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before us. The. Bernard Jenkin. Thank you very. Much. Mr. Speaker. If I may say it's

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Mr. Speaker. If I may say it's an honour to succeed in this debate. The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, honourable, gallant gentleman who has just spoken, and gentleman who has just spoken, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman who opened this debate and a very timely debate. It is, too, and I particularly commend the point that particularly commend the point that the former Minister for the Armed Forces just made about how this being a whole of nation approach, because we are preparing for war, we might actually be at war in some senses, because the Russia is knowingly saying they are conducting a war against NATO, and we are subject to certainly a hybrid war against our national infrastructure, hacking our hospitals, closing down Jaguar Land Rover, harassing our shipping.

This is a very low level of war, but we certainly have been under attack. By the way, they ration gas to Western Europe as a weapon, turning energy into weapon, turning food into a weapon. Russia's doing the lot and the writing is on the wall. And the idea that this government still has not really woken up to the fact that the head of NATO and even the Prime Minister at Munich is saying, we've got to be ready to fight a war against NATO, a shooting, kinetic war against NATO by 2030.

There is no sign in the implementation of policy that the government understands the urgency of that. There are people in government, and I was I met some with Lord Robertson earlier this week to be briefed on national resilience. There are plenty of people in government who get the urgency of this, but there's a deep, deep reluctance for the government to recognise that to mobilise for war is not about the armed forces and a few branches of government. It's armies may fight battles, but nations fight wars.

And if the whole nation is not galvanised to do what is necessary and to be ready for what is going to happen, be ready to make the sacrifices, to suffer the pain of of diverting resources to less popular things than some of the very popular things that governments tend to spend their money on, then we're spend their money on, then we're not ready for war. I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
15:35
Kevin Bonavia Portrait Kevin Bonavia MP (Stevenage, Labour)
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Very good and strong point. Would he agree with me? Quite frankly? Basically, it boils down to this the government must be much blunter with the British people

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about the nature of the threat that we face. And the government has plans for

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And the government has plans for that, but they keep pulling back because it's a difficult thing to talk about. And the spin doctors talk about. And the spin doctors and the SPADs will tell their political masters, oh, no, don't talk about that. The polling says talk about that. The polling says it's terrible. Well, I'm afraid we've just got to confront the polling. We've got to confront the population with the ugly truth. population with the ugly truth. This country is at far greater risk than it's ever been since the

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height of the Cold War. And I can wait. Donald Ed Davey. For giving way on that. On the

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For giving way on that. On the point about communicating with the public, there is a way to do it. I visited Norway recently, and they have communicated with their have communicated with their population incredibly well. To the extent that they have this concept of total defence and civil preparedness, where everybody in preparedness, where everybody in the entire nation recognises that they have a role to play. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that

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hon. Gentleman agree with me that we can learn a lot from some of our friends and allies? Yes. And in the paper, which I'm just about to explain very briefly to the House, we refer to Norway's concept, and Norway's total war concept is being embedded in our national life, embedded across government policy through all branches of government. For example, one of the things we refer to here is the need to galvanise our universities to be ready for war, so that research and development programmes are directed towards suitable and useful capability, and creating sovereign national capability, and protecting those research programmes from foreign infiltration.

I love having foreign students in our universities. It's very good for the economy and it's very good for our universities, but we cannot have Chinese nationals at the heart of a chip manufacturer and chip design, or at the heart of of robotics or or AI systems. We have to protect our national technology from being spied on by people who are sent to this country to go to our universities in order to collect the information and steal it and give it back to our enemies.

So the context of this paper, which now seems sort of almost old hat even this is only a few months old, is the changing geopolitical situation, the withdrawal of America from European security, the collapse of the rules based international order, the failure of democratic governance models to rise to the challenge, the unpreparedness of most Western democracies to be ready to confront the hybrid warfare that were already in, the lack of adaptability. And I really commend that point made by the former armed forces Minister.

There is no point in ordering a whole lot of kit that is going to be out of date as soon as we start the next war, the next war, if it starts in the Balkans, the Baltic states or it starts in Poland, is going to be about drones. Well, I think the government is moving some way on that. But we're so slow. Ukrainians were way ahead of us and helping to protect the Gulf states when we were still sending multi-million pound aircraft that cost £25 million an hour to fly, to shoot down a drone
15:42
Neil Shastri-Hurst Portrait Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst MP (Solihull West and Shirley, Conservative)
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that cost £150,000. What we've got to adapt our industry to producing is really cheap, very numerous capability in order that we've got capability in order that we've got scale to be able to deal with that whole thing. But we need this whole of society mobilisation. We need of society mobilisation. We need much more adaptable government governance. We need resilient financial systems, we need financial systems, we need sovereign defence capabilities and sovereign QNI. I'm glad we stopped handing over so much of our CNI to foreign foreign owners.

An immediate radical transformation is required and this document is 19,000 words drafted. For my hon. Friend, the hon. Gentleman for witness on the Defence Committee, renowned expert on defence in this House and for me by Chris Donnelly, who used to be a Soviet expert at NATO, who worked in the Ministry of Defence and who is who finished up teaching at Shrivenham, a wise defence guru. And if you want to know how much really needs to be changed, just read through this 19,000 words of of analysis and recommendations.

It's a huge task. But to carry this task through, we need to carry the people. The SDL promised a national conversation. Where is this national conversation? There's a national conversation about who's going to be the next Prime Minister, or whether there's going to be a by election in Clacton. But there is no such national conversation about the existential threats to our freedom and democracy and its democracy across the Western world that is failing this challenge. The autocracies are winning at the moment, and we are facing circumstances where Russia may well be struggling in the Ukraine war, but that makes them more unpredictable.

What is Putin going to do as he feels his political support slipping away? And he feels that the the vulnerability of Russia is increasing now there are petrol queues in Moscow and explosions going off in Russian cities. There is a growing awareness. It's even been said just in the last 24 hours by a very serious propagandist for Mr. Putin, that this is no longer a special
15:46
Brian Leishman Portrait Brian Leishman MP (Alloa and Grangemouth, Labour)
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military operation. It's a war. So the circumstances are changing as the circumstances are changing as we speak, and the lack of urgency that I'm afraid this whole house, that I'm afraid this whole house, apart from, say, the defence committee or the National Security Committee, is showing this, this Committee, is showing this, this this is how we get into wars by being unprepared for wars. We need being unprepared for wars. We need to change our whole concept of deterrence. Because the old concept that somehow just having a nuclear weapon keeps us safe.

No, we've got to have much more flexible ability to respond to changing circumstances. What happens when the Russians moved in, move into a Russian speaking town in one of the Balkan states? What are we going to do as our soldiers start being being killed? Are we just going to start losing off nuclear weapons, or have we analogous, appropriate, flexible military capability in order to be able to respond and escalate at pace? Our inability to escalate is the greatest danger at

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the moment. Tim Roca thank you, Madam. Deputy Speaker.

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Deputy Speaker. And I want to thank the Member for Tunbridge Wells for calling this debate together with himself, the Member for Spelthorne and the the Field Marshal, the Lord the Field Marshal, the Lord Richards. I was very proud to join them in creating the APPG on national rearmament, and we are here, I think, today discussing a here, I think, today discussing a topic that we all agree on, which is the threat that faces the country and the necessity for us to rearm.

I was hoping the tone of the debate would be slightly less political, and I feel like we've had a little bit of amnesia as to how we've got to where we are. I don't intend to focus on that too much, but others, I'm sure, will make the point about the decline in the size of the Army over the past 14 years, about the decline in the size of the Air Force, about the frigate fleet. We talk about Frigate Gap, what happened to frigate and destroyer construction. And we should remember, the threat hasn't just arrived.

There was not a meaningful increase in defence spending after the annexation of Crimea. There wasn't a meaningful increase after Putin violated Minsk or Minsk two. Indeed, there wasn't a significant increase in defence spending after the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And that context is really important. Very happy to take an intervention.
15:50
Gideon Amos Portrait Gideon Amos MP (Taunton and Wellington, Liberal Democrat)
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He's right on the funding, and I will mention that later. But one very important thing that did happen after 2014 was under what was then called Operation Orbital. We began training Ukrainian soldiers on Salisbury Plain because they knew what was coming, and I think perhaps so did we. So we'll talk about the money in a minute. But in terms of training Ukrainian troops, that did start fairly shortly after 2014 in Britain.

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Member for his intervention. I agree with what he says. I'm not sure it's relevant to the point I sure it's relevant to the point I was making about the broad context of defence procurement. And actually there has been a great cross-party consensus on what we're doing with Ukraine, and we should make sure that that continues. I also want to make a comment about the defence nuclear enterprise. If the defence nuclear enterprise. If you look at the dip, we will be spending £45 billion over the forthcoming period on the incredibly important nuclear incredibly important nuclear deterrent.

It's absolutely right we do that. But that amounts to 25% of the defence Budget. And I know the Member for New Forest East is in his seat. I was reading the other week his arguments at the time of the coalition government urging them to press ahead with renewal of Trident, which they did not do, and that cost us many, many years. It's cost us many, many billions of pounds that we could be spending today on conventional forces. It means we have tired Trident submarines heading out to sea beyond when they should be going out to sea.

And we have crews on extended patrols of 150, 200, 250 days. That is the cost of the decisions that were made at that time. I also want to talk a little bit about making sure we don't fall into Russia's Russia's trap, which is there is a significant threat from Russia. Of course, there is both conventional and hybrid, but let's not talk ourselves. Well, the hon. Gentleman didn't give me interventions to this side of the chamber. If it's relevant, I'll be happy to take it to agree with him.
15:54
Amanda Martin Portrait Amanda Martin MP (Portsmouth North, Labour)
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About the failure of the coalition government to make progress with the deterrent. But progress with the deterrent. But there were many of us complaining about that at the time, including my right hon. Friend for a New my right hon. Friend for a New Forest East and indeed as shadow Defence Secretary in the early 2000, I was complaining about the cuts in defence spending that were then being made as we went to war in Iraq, as we went went to war in Afghanistan.

So I very much welcome his bipartisan approach to this. But don't pretend to be bipartisan. Be bipartisan, rather than by making oblique references to what happened under previous governments. And then we'll all get on much better.

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I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advice, and he may find that that comes later on in the speech, because it gives me time. But we shouldn't allow Russia to talk ourselves into a place of weakness. As the deputy chief of the defence As the deputy chief of the defence Staff at that time once put it to the Defence Select Committee, if the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight. tonight, it would fight tonight. Our readiness is not where we would want it to be.

But that's not the same as saying that Britain is same as saying that Britain is defenceless and I am not trying to be complacent. I'm just making the point that we have excellent armed services, we have excellent people in uniform and we shouldn't talk as if those things don't exist. What we're saying is they need more. And we have watched a country considerably smaller than our own, with far fewer resources in Ukraine, resist Russian aggression with extraordinary determination. And we have to remember that Russia's greatest weapon these days tends to be psychological.

It wants us to believe it cannot be beaten, that resistance is useless, that despite four years of attritional warfare, 1.4 million casualties, it somehow remains an unstoppable European military power that could overwhelm

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Britain and her allies. But it is not. Yes, I. Think he's making a really excellent and very thought out speech. He talks about the weapons that Russia are using, but he also reflect on the weapons they're using in terms of disinformation and some of the things that they're doing on social media, on the doing on social media, on the internet. And we need to be alive to that as well. And I think, you know, I look across at the Member know, I look across at the Member for New Forest East, and when we talk very regularly about the importance of the BBC World Service, and we really appreciate that those services are vital to the defence of this country as well.
15:58
Richard Foord Portrait Richard Foord MP (Honiton and Sidmouth, Liberal Democrat)
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Absolutely. He makes the point really well, and indeed, the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak was recently interviewed. I remember hearing an interview recently where he talked about the recent attacks on Iran had destroyed a huge propaganda apparatus, which had actually contributed to, I think it was 3% of total nationalist propaganda for Scottish separation in the United Kingdom. So it is an important. It is an important point. And following on from that, he made the important point about strength being a foundation of deterrence.

What we're trying to do here is deter war, not just through having capable armed forces, but having industrial capacity, well stocked armouries, cutting edge technology, and of course, a properly funded plan, because the stronger we are, the less likely conflict becomes. Every capability we field, every production line we expand, every drone we manufacture adds to our deterrence. And that's incredibly important. So at the beginning of the debate, we talked about the credibility of getting to where we need to get and to be straightforward.

It is my belief that we need to reach 3% of GDP by 2030. I think that's the minimum needed for us to show that we are committed to our plans and to our NATO allies to have the capabilities that we need. Now, in fairness to the government, it has made significant progress. We will be at 2.7% in 2728, and that is the highest defence spend in three decades, and the defence Budget will be 27% higher in real terms than it was at the start of the Parliament.

And those are significant commitments. They need to be recognised, but unfortunately, I'm worried that they do not meet the strategic moment that we are at the pace at which Russia might reconstitute. The lessons that are emerging from Ukraine are the technology, the threats in the Far East to our allies and our interests and the demands placed upon us by NATO to meet certain targets means that we do have to move faster than what the government currently is saying. A spending review published in 2027 could, in theory, postpone most of the increase until the final year of the period, and that would technically fulfil the commitment, but it would not reflect the urgency of the moment.

There is a significant difference between spending 2.8% in 2028, 2.9% in 2029 and 3% in 2030, or remaining broadly flat and trying to make a leap. If you can prove that you can do that at the end of that spending period. So I guess my argument, Madam Deputy Speaker, is the government deserves credit for changing the direction of travel from what it was in the past, but events have accelerated, and so we need to accelerate our rearmament beyond those plans. And there's no shortage of priorities.

The dip was a significant document, as colleagues have gone into. I share colleagues concerns about some of the autonomy in the Royal Navy. You know, the idea that we will have these new ships designed, tested and deployed within ten years seems unlikely to me. I think they will have to be service life extensions for the type 45. I do worry about the lack or the absence of. Very happy to give way.
16:04
Dave Doogan Portrait Dave Doogan MP (Angus and Perthshire Glens, Scottish National Party)
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I thank the Member for giving way. He's making a very important speech. I totally agree that there should be a life extension plan for the type 45, but we know that there is not a life plan for the type 45 isn't costed, it isn't in the plan, and the plan is to take them out of and the plan is to take them out of service. Over the several years from 2035. Does he agree with me that the common combat vessel would be better suited in terms of putting that capability within the type 30 ones that are currently

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being built, and indeed, that is the plan that will likely happen. Thank you. Makes a very good

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Thank you. Makes a very good point, and I think eventually we'll have to look at the type 31 hull as a possibility, and maybe the Minister will comment on contingency plans if the key doesn't develop as it should. I also wanted to comment on the lack of commitments around ballistic of commitments around ballistic missile defence. We are now an outlier in Europe in terms of air defences. Many countries in Europe, defences. Many countries in Europe, Spain, Germany, France, etc. have

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Patriot or Samp, T etc. order. Ian Roome. Thank you, Madam. Deputy Speaker. I want to thank

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Deputy Speaker. I want to thank my honourable and gallant friend from Tunbridge Wells for securing this debate. Madam Deputy Speaker, this debate. Madam Deputy Speaker, there are moments in politics when delay is not just a mistake, but a delay is not just a mistake, but a danger. This is one of those moments. The truth is that the world has become more dangerous, much faster than Britain has become ready. The Strategic Defence Review mattered because it stripped away comforting illusions from the end of the Cold War, we enjoyed a peace dividend that offered more security and more money for public services.

But war has returned to Europe. Hostile states challenge us daily with cyber attacks and sabotage, flouting international law and the liberal rules based order. The absolute supremacy of the Western alliance is no longer absolute. The SDR set out the right ambition, a more integrated force, a more digital force and a more resilient Britain, ready to learn lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East. The Defence Investment Plan accepts that analysis. But next comes the hard part. Not only recognising the problem, but solving it.

Does this plan move quickly enough to make Britain safer? I fear it does not. We lost nearly a year waiting for the Defence Investment Plan to be published. Months of hesitation when industry hold its breath investment stalled, contracts went unsigned and momentum was lost. The SDR talks of mobilising rapidly in the event of a crisis. If only that sense of urgency was reflected in government capability delayed is capability denied. The pace matters as much as the decision. The review rightly placed the digital targeting web at the art of Britain's future military capability, the system that links sensors, commanders and weapons into one integrated force that can identify a threat and destroy it.

The Defence Investment Plan commits money for our armed forces to do more, but too much of that funding is still on the other side of 2030, the Prime Minister has said himself Naito could face an attack from Russia before 2030. Yesterday, Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons pointed out to the Defence Select Committee that many of the capabilities deemed urgently needed in the SDR are only due to arrive at the end of a nine year investment cycle.

For example, air and missile defence, where the and missile defence, where the scale of the £790 million investment falls short of what was investment falls short of what was planned and arrives years down the line.
16:12
James MacCleary Portrait James MacCleary MP (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)
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On that point.

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That we're threatened with at the moment, with Putin on our continent, and the desperate need for us to rearm and to rearm for us to rearm and to rearm quickly so that we've got the right war fighting equipment. And I think just the recent example of Ajax in just the recent example of Ajax in the 16 years that it's taken to try to procure that is just a demonstration of how difficult and challenging the MoD procurement is, challenging the MoD procurement is, but also how we actually need to improve on that, because obviously we can't wait 16 years if suddenly there was a threat on our doorstep tomorrow.

So does my hon. Friend agree with me that we really urgently need to be working with

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our European allies more to ensure that we can develop joint capabilities together here? I certainly do agree, and I'll come later on to that in my speech. Then there are areas where the government seem to have cut corners, government seem to have cut corners, munitions reserves, medical support, industrial resilience, all essential to enduring a longer crisis. Madam Deputy Speaker crisis. Madam Deputy Speaker Professionals talk logistics. In 1940, Sir Winston Churchill, a pointed Lord Beaverbrook to rapidly streamline aircraft production.

Lord Beaverbrook responded by throwing out all of the old rules and doubling production output inside of 12 months is sayings have become famous. The factories are the front lines of. This war organisation is the enemy of improvisation. Committees take the punch out of war. The need is great. The time is short. Urgency must be the watchword. He sounds like a knight to work for. But I'll rescue this country in hour of great

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crisis. I will give way. I'd like to thank the hon. Member from North Devon. I think he Member from North Devon. I think he brings a huge sort of historical relevance to today and actually, throughout history, whenever we've throughout history, whenever we've been moving towards crisis, we've got rid of almost all of our procurement rules and regulations procurement rules and regulations to streamline capability and get it into the hands of warfighter. Would you agree with me that the procurement system and those 10,000 procurement system and those 10,000 people in DNS could really use AI and some of the quantum capabilities coming in to

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streamline our whole procurement process? I do agree with the gallant and

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I do agree with the gallant and hon. Gentleman, and I thank him for his distinguished service to us. And we are seeing that where we're And we are seeing that where we're learning lessons from Ukraine, where we've I've been out there and personally seen the systems there. So I totally agree with that. And I So I totally agree with that. And I think defence reform is a very important element that the MoD should be looking at. And I'm sure the Minister will have something to say about that.

I cannot find that. I can't find that spirit in the Defence Investment Plan. The urgency that Lord Beaverbrook
16:17
Mark Francois Portrait Rt Hon Mark Francois MP (Rayleigh and Wickford, Conservative)
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actually did in 1940. The purpose of rearmament is not to prepare for of rearmament is not to prepare for war. It is to prevent that disaster, to deter aggression and bolster our allies as liberal Democrats. And I'm sure across the House, we believe Britain's security depends on our alliances. A stronger Britain means a stronger NATO. A safer Europe means a safer United Kingdom. We must preserve the peace. Previous generations sacrificed so much to secure. Let this House be remembered not as the house that

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scrambled in an emergency, but saw the danger coming and acted. Yes. Graeme Downie.

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Graeme Downie. Thank you very. Much. Madam Deputy Speaker. And can I also congratulate the

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And can I also congratulate the member on Tunbridge Wells for helping secure this debate today? Madam Deputy Speaker, others have already spoken about rearmament and already spoken about rearmament and the focus on budgets, procurement and force structures. And while those things definitely matter, those things definitely matter, there is another question that I believe we must confront as well. And that is as touched on briefly by the Member for Harwich and North Essex. Are we honest enough with the British public about the nature of the threat that we face? Madam Speaker, I have repeatedly argued in this place that the United Kingdom should regard itself as already being in a sustained confrontation with the Russian state, not a conventional shooting war, but a prolonged campaign of hostile activity directed against our people, our infrastructure, our economy, and our democratic institutions.

And that raises a fundamental question. Madam Deputy Speaker, we often hear the phrase subthreshold, but what exactly is the threshold, and when are we going to give an indication to the British people of where that threshold is? Madam Deputy Speaker, the answer to this question matters because it is the hard line in deterrence and absolutely key when we are considering rearmament. Now, I would expect the government to ever provide a precise answer to this question. But in a written answer this week, the Minister for the Armed Forces said, and I quote, we cannot provide detail on how the MoD would respond to certain activities versus others, as this would assist our adversaries.

So, Madam Speaker, rather than burden the Department with a load of additional written questions, can I ask the Minister some very specific questions? Is using a cyber attack to steal the electoral register? Subthreshold is stealing email addresses of Foreign Office diplomats. Subthreshold is using ransomware to disrupt NHS patient care, contributing to the deaths of UK citizens. Subthreshold is using lasers to threaten the safety of RAF pilots. Subthreshold is targeting a major UK business, with a cyber attack costing hundreds of millions of pounds and meaningfully impacting the Bank of England interest decisions subthreshold.

Madam Deputy Speaker One has to assume the Dutch government does consider all of these to be subthreshold, because Russia has undertaken all of these activities. But let me go further. Is poisoning UK citizens on UK soil. Subthreshold is firing shots near civilian yacht in the English Channel. Subthreshold is launching drones from a shadow fleet vessel to monitor UK air bases and critical national infrastructure. Subthreshold is recruiting activists on signal and having them commit arson attacks against property. Subthreshold is endangering UK aircraft carrier by dropping sonar buoys in its immediate vicinity.

Subthreshold is attempting an arson attack against the British Prime Minister Subthreshold once again. Madam Deputy Speaker, Russia has undertaken all of these activities and we are not alone. And for anyone who does want to track this activity across Europe, Emma Burrows from AP news has fantastic website online with up to date information. But Madam Deputy Speaker, at what point do governments say enough is enough and at what point, crucially, do they tell the British people that a line has been crossed? The Kremlin does not view these kind of activities in isolation.

It sees them as different tools being pursued, being used in the pursuit of the same objective to weaken our democracy, undermine confidence, gather intelligence, create division and to test our resolve. And while we might not be the only country that this is happening to, I am concerned that our public might be the least aware of these coordinated actions and the effects they have on their daily lives, and that is why warfighting readiness is much more about much more than what sits in the inventory of our armed forces.

It is about national capability and public awareness. Madam Deputy Speaker, in a recent article written with my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet. We argued that politics too often becomes obsessed with targets instead of capabilities. We must show Russia that we have the capability to effectively respond and to deter these kinds of attacks. Government must begin to attribute these attacks directly to the ultimate perpetrator in the Kremlin and trust the British people with that information, and ask for their help in building the necessary capabilities to defend against it,

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I am happy. I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He's giving way. He's giving a superb speech there. And giving a superb speech there. And it's it's an honour to listen to it. I was at Bournemouth War Memorial Homes on Friday, helping to open Homes on Friday, helping to open the new bungalows for our veterans there, which actually my on on my honourable and gallant friend had toured when he was in post as a Minister and speaking with the veterans there.

They were under no illusions. They were aware of the illusions. They were aware of the threat posed by Russia. I think in talking with constituents, there is a concern, though, that we've been on a roller coaster as a country since 2008 at a minimum, minimum. And there's a feeling that because our our psyche is somewhat low spiritually, we feel somewhat deflated. To talk about the threat from Russia is to add to the feeling that we have. But actually, as a constituent said to me on the doorstep, it's fine to talk about the fear, talk about the plan, talk about how you'll meet the fear, and then we'll come with you.
16:28
Calvin Bailey Portrait Mr Calvin Bailey MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for Veterans and People) (Leyton and Wanstead, Labour)
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Can I thank the hon. Friend for his intervention? I believe he's absolutely right. And I actually absolutely right. And I actually think one of the ways we can go about building trust in government and building trust in how government responds to a crisis is by trusting the people with the information. The people will be the ones who can press us to take the action that they know requires to be taken. If we give them the information, I think we must use our secrets more effectively and actually is something we bring the British people along with.

So the the central question cannot just be whether we spend 3% or 3.5%, or some other percentage of GDP. The real question must be what capability are we creating? And this is actually where I believe the government deserves a lot of credit. Although the dip was delayed, what we are seeing in the dip is a commitment to fighting the next war and not the last one. That includes the improvements in pay, support for serving personnel and their families in housing, which is leading to increases in recruitment, retention and morale.

And that is all a vital part of rearmament and deterrence, showing our armed forces that we have a set of armed forces that are showing our adversaries that our armed forces are ready to fight tonight, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend, earlier on and alongside the human infrastructure, the government has invested in physical infrastructure as well, and I know it is attracting some scepticism and questioning across the House. The leap to hybrid warfare is the right thing to do, and that is why I welcome the decision to build six common combat vessels and make sure we are building ships quicker, to give us flexibility on the capabilities that we need.

I hope we make progress on that very quickly indeed, something I have raised with the department already since the publication of the Dip and on future infrastructure capability, I will be slightly parochial and ask the Minister to respond to a couple of questions when he is winding up, particularly around submarine infrastructure. First, we know that to bring dreadnought into service as quickly as possible, we need a contingent docking facility. The Royal Navy has said that that would have to be at risk and with time, moving on to get that operational, can I ask the Minister for an update on progress? Second, around the decommissioned nuclear power submarines that remain tied up at both Devonport and Rosyth occupying valuable dock space.

Can the Minister update the House on when the next part of this programme will commence, releasing capacity in both the dockyards and strengthening our sovereign capability? Madam Deputy Speaker, Preparedness for war is not war mongering. War fighting readiness begins long before the first shot is fired, but it must start with an honest assessment and acknowledgement of the threats that we face. Making clear to the public and our adversaries what we mean by subthreshold rearmament. Preparedness and public clarity are the best way to ensure that Vladimir Putin and those around him never conclude that Britain lacks the capability or the determination

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to defend itself. And the time limit will be reduced to five minutes after the

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reduced to five minutes after the next speaker. Steve Barclay. Thank you. Madam Deputy Speaker. The Member for Dunfermline and

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The Member for Dunfermline and Dollar highlighted a number of very pertinent questions, which I think collectively pointed to the collectively pointed to the increased threat that we face. And indeed, I very much agree with the Member for Macclesfield. I think Member for Macclesfield. I think there's a lot of common ground in the chamber today. One example of that is I agree fundamentally with the comment from the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak when he said that we should not, and I quote, underestimate the level of change that is required.

But none of that, I think, detracts from the points that the Member for Tunbridge Wells highlighted in opening the debate. The the structural flaws in the defence investment plan in terms of the funding that has been allocated. And let me just give a couple of examples here. Liberated in more depth, but less than half of the headline figure announced is actually new money. So all the 15 billion actually 6.9 billion over four years is new money with 4.7 billion, as he alluded to for the next Budget and 3.4 billion from asset sales and moving liabilities around.

But that is in addition to the fact that there's, as he again highlighted, 10.7 billion of efficiencies. And just in adding to his remarks, I wanted to give an illustration of how the government's own narrative contradicts itself with regard to those efficiencies, because three government documents that the government itself agrees with actually contradict. So if I take the date itself, if one turns, as he did to page 79, we see the. There are a total of 7 billion. That's for savings on a.

Of staffing and the capital C del of 3.4. So that is the government's figure in its own annexe. And yet just last year, in no less than the Secretary of State's own foreword to the the Strategic Defence Review, he says, and I quote on page five, we will unlock nearly 6 billion of new savings. So in a year, we've gone from the Secretary of State saying, we're going to unlock 6 billion to we're going to unlock over 10 billion. And there's no clear plan, as he alluded to, the confidence around that is low.

But it's not just the confidence is low because the Defence Investment Plan itself says that actually it is low. I mean, indeed its particular, Woking says, of which remaining plans at lower maturity, 5 billion on our debt and 3.4. So £8.4 billion of low confidence. But if you actually then look at the independent findings of the National Audit Office, if I just take one of their most recent reports, the December report on the Department, December 2025, where it says on page ten that the accounts were qualified in a number of areas and two areas, and one of those lack of effective department oversight of a number of these arrangements has meant that the MoD did not have appropriate information nor assurance to ensure the transactions and balances applied.

So in other words, the department doesn't even have a grip itself. So we've got, quite rightly, the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak pointing to the scale of challenge. But we've got a set of efficiencies that are in a ten year plan, which contradict fundamentally to the Secretary of State's own assurances
16:40
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16:42
Rosena Allin-Khan Portrait Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MP (Tooting, Labour)
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Can he give any colour on that? And can he explain why the reserves are not being prioritised more than they are? And then the third point they are? And then the third point I just wanted to, given the time limit to to bring out, speaks limit to to bring out, speaks directly to this point on national resilience that the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak correctly Birmingham Selly Oak correctly identified. Now, if we are going to have national resilience, why is it just to look at the Red book, you've got 310 million just being agreed for a digital compass in Manchester.

You've got the boiler upgrade with 1.196 million. So 1.2 billion over four years on boiler upgrades. But that's not enough. So the government's extending that by 400 million this year, 600 million next year, over 600 million a year after. And I'm not saying those programmes are not useful. I'm sure they are. But if the Munich speech from the Prime Minister is correct, if the comments of colleagues in the House, is that really the priority is 4.7 billion over four years in cycling and walking? Really this government's priority, if we are to boost national

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resilience? And finally, when he winds up, can the Minister say, of course, you mentioned. Reserves during the armed forces

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Reserves during the armed forces bill debates. We talked about enhancing the reserves a lot. Is my hon. Friend aware that while there is some funding for the so-called active reserve within the dip, there is hardly any funding at all there is hardly any funding at all for the strategic reserve, which the government made a very, very big thing of for five months while big thing of for five months while we were debating that bill. There's hardly any money for it.

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Well, my friend is is right to highlight just the broader point, which is there's a lack of detail in terms of reserves other than to in terms of reserves other than to say it's all been parked to the next Parliament. And I just think that is a wasted opportunity. But that is a wasted opportunity. But also for reservists now need clearer communication for the government, including for the training days this year, the training days this year, the reserve service days this year.

So I hope when he winds up, he can say a bit more of that. And then a bit more of that. And then finally, Madam Deputy Speaker, we know a government reshuffle is coming. Quite rightly, if these issues are to be addressed in terms of national resilience, they require an all of government response. And yet there's very little detail. And as the member said, in terms of the response to his written parliamentary questions, often the MoD is reluctant to answer on national security grounds.

There's very little detail around how other departments are going to prioritise their budgets and what the KPIs are, particularly when new Ministers are likely to be going in. So can you clarify whether there will be KPIs relating to the Defence investment plan for the

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departments, and if so, when will those be set out? And with their five. Minute time limit?

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Minute time limit? Kevin Bonavia thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker and can I also congratulate the. Member for.

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Member for. Tunbridge Wells for securing this really important debate today? this really important debate today? We live in a time where our country is being targeted, not only is being targeted, not only threatened, not just tested, but actively targeted. We've already heard from many members today that the reality is that hostile states are seeking to harm us every single day. Cyber attacks batter our systems, malign actors, push relentlessly at the seams of our national security and disinformation campaigns, seek to warp our public debates, including in Clacton in the weeks ahead, where Russian bots will have to decide is it going to be the current outgoing member for Clacton, or is it going to be Count Binface? That is the choice they have to face.

But more seriously, all of us as members, we see this. We know that in our day to day work as members, it happens to us. It happens to anybody who wants to speak out in public debate. And why is that? That is to undermine our common security. Look, we've had debate and discussion today about whose fault it was that our defences have been run down in recent years. Let me be bipartisan, cross partisan about this. We all lived off the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War.

And that's understandable. We get that. But in that time as well, we came together as a country and as a house to defend countries in need, not least in Ukraine. We have done that. But now we need to look to our home defence. And that is under threat

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in a way that has never been since at least the Second World War. My hon. Friend. Happy to.

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Happy to. Thank my hon. Friend for giving way. And would he agree. With me that it's incredibly

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With me that it's incredibly important that we are at NATO? The Prime Minister is at NATO right now Prime Minister is at NATO right now and working to calmly and strongly ensure that we are right at the ensure that we are right at the heart of that alliance. And would he join me in congratulating him and the rest of the EU, because we have agreed to invest with 11 other countries, £37 billion over the next ten years on a new long range missile to protect Europe, and that is incredibly important.



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I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which is making that point, which is fantastic news for the future of NATO. And I want to pay tribute to our Prime Minister for speaking up for NATO. And this country has a NATO first policy, and rightly so. We put our nuclear deterrent taxpayers money, our taxpayers taxpayers money, our taxpayers money to the service of NATO. And so for that, we must, as an alliance, come together and recognise our contributions.

And this country's contribution has been great, no matter what the debate about how we get to that 3.5% in the years ahead. And I want to thank my own government as a Labour MP, I should, for what it has done in supporting our armed forces that increase in pay, taking housing back into public ownership so that they can have that morale that they deserve. But we need to keep doing more. And I want to thank our defence industry, true in this country.

As the Member of Parliament for Stevenage, I have two primaries in my constituency. I have Airbus, which helps produce between a quarter and a third of all satellites in space, just in my town alone. But we can't just manufacture it there. We have to do it across the country. And I see sitting beside me, the Member for Portsmouth North, where we Airbus collaborates in both those sites and beyond, because we need to come together and we need to support our SMEs.

Last week I went to astute to defence logistics firm in my constituency. They need that support too. And this government is and must do more to support them. Armed forces industry. But that is not enough if we are going to truly make our country safe. The Member for Dunfermline Dunfermline and Dollar made an excellent point about how we have to face the threats that are from hostile actors around the world, and it isn't just about the hardware, it isn't just about the people that we need to recruit for our armed forces.

It is, as many members have said in this place, about the whole society approach. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak talked about national resilience, and it really has to be a national cause. And the excellent Strategic Defence Review finishes with that. About that whole society approach. Can we really do that? Members in this place today have said that the public don't really feel that yet. Many members do. Veterans do armed forces. They see our intelligence services.

They see it. There are things I don't even know about, but I know, but I do know from what I am allowed to know that it is serious and it's affecting us now. That grey zone wall from Russia is there. And it won't just be Russia in the years ahead. There are others too, we know. So how do we do that? Before the Second World War, many people were thinking, never again. We can't rearm. We can't do all this. There was a debate in the Oxford Union famous debate where they voted not to fight for king or country, and they say that our young people now, today.

I don't believe that. I see countries, I see Ukraine and others, Poland, the Baltic states, they feel that urgency. They see that urgency. Maybe we don't feel it yet in this country, but I think it behoves all of us in this place and beyond to help people understand what is going on. And it will be harder now. In the 1930s, we had the mainstream media, whatever it was called back then, now we are going to be dealing with this information. When we try and make that case, there's always somebody out there to talk about poor, maligned Putin.

I have it in my patch. Only a few days ago, a Russian wanted wanted him to be attacked with missiles. We must do better and I'm sure we will, Madam Speaker, Deputy Speaker.

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Doctor Neil Shastri-Hurst. Thank you very much, Madam. Deputy Speaker. And I should start by referring

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And I should start by referring to my register of interests and in particular, my participation with a parliamentary delegation to Ukraine in February of this year with the in February of this year with the UK friends of the Armed Forces. And I want to build on some of the arguments by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar, because as I was sat here listening to what I think has been a thoughtful and think has been a thoughtful and valuable debate today, I think the issue that really struck me above anything else was that in many ways, we're preaching to the converted in this chamber.

I think those of us who are here recognise the seriousness of the moment. We understand that defence isn't an optional extra. We understand that it cannot wait for a more convenient fiscal moment, but our responsibility goes much further than this chamber. Of course, our responsibility is to that of the British public, and that means telling them the truth. And the truth is, as we have heard repeatedly through the course of today, the world has changed and the threats are very real and for far too long.

Madam Deputy Speaker, we have risked treating defence as something done by someone else, by sailors, under the waves, by soldiers, on distant deployments, by pilots in the skies. But modern deterrence asks us to do much more individually. It also requires government to be honest and and for the public to understand what is really at stake. The government, as we've heard, have have clearly set out that Russia could be in a position to attack a NATO ally by as early as the end of this decade.

The chief of Defence staff has warned that we're not as ready as we need to be. And the noble Lord, the Lord Robertson, a distinguished former secretary general of NATO, has gone even further. He's been really blunt in his assessment that we're simply not ready. And those are the judgement of people who have spent their entire lives defending our country. Madam Deputy Speaker, we mustn't treat the British public like children. They don't need comforting slogans. They need searing honesty from people in public office because on the one hand, we cannot set out a case where we are saying to them that Russia is probing our waters, that hostile states are targeting our energy networks, our satellites and our cyber systems, and then suggest that the answer to those dangers are promises that begin in the next decade.

Quite simply, Madam Deputy Speaker, we can't describe a 2030 threat and offer a 2035 solution. And that, I believe, is the central weakness at the heart of the government's approach to date. Readiness is not simply about owning equipment, it's about having the people who are trained to use it. It's about having the stockpiles behind it. It's about having the reservists who are able to mobilise. It's about factories that can surge. It's about ports that can receive and energy systems that can endure.

It is not simply the case to say a nation is ready, because a Minister declares that it is ready. A nation is ready when the whole system is ready to row in behind it. And the reality is that national security requires choices. It requires discipline. And we have to be blunt. It requires sacrifices. For the last 30 years or so, we enjoyed a peace dividend. Too often we behaved as though this would never end. But we forgot the simple truth.

The simple truth that freedom is never free. There is always a cost to be paid. There is a different cost depending upon the generation, and each has to deal with it in different ways. Our duty is to ensure that this generation pays in preparedness, so that the next generation doesn't pay in blood. The British people understand that if we level with them, and that's why the the arguments around 3% of GDP for defence spending in this Parliament aren't an extravagant ambition.

They are the bare minimum in. As a response to what is a deteriorating world. Madam Deputy Speaker, Britain is not a weak nation. We possess one of the most extraordinary armed forces in the world. We have outstanding intelligence services. We have world class scientists and engineers, and above all, we do have a people who have never failed this country when they've been told the truth. Therefore, if we want to, if we want to defend the peace that we so cherish, we cannot have a resilience that starts after the crisis has already begun.

And it's perhaps worth ending by remembering that the cost of preparedness will always be far less than the cost of war itself.
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Alison Bennett Portrait Alison Bennett MP (Mid Sussex, Liberal Democrat)
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Yes. >> Speaker, I took the underground to Westminster this morning and at the entrance into Parliament. At the bottom of the steps there was a the bottom of the steps there was a homeless man lying down, sleeping against the wall on the cold, dirty floor of the tube station. He was the last thing I saw before coming into this grand palace where we sit as legislators, taking decisions, making political choices that impact that man and everyone else in the country.

£15 billion was found last week for weapons that will get us ready for a conflict that many politicians and much of the media and various think tanks and lobbyists say is imminent, and that hawkish rhetoric is ramping up. Of the 22 questions at defence on Monday, three had mentions of Russia, two about defending the High North and a consistent theme ran throughout, pushing the narrative that we must spend on defence above all else. Now, of course, I appreciate that the first duty of a government is to keep our citizens safe and defend the realm.

But what about that man at the bottom of the tube station steps who is keeping him safe? What about the children that are going to school with no food in their bellies? Do they feel safe? There are over 3 million people needing a food bank to survive. People that, when the winter comes, will have to decide whether to eat a meal or put their heating on. How safe do they feel because of political choices that have seen other departmental budgets cut? I don't think it needs to be this way.

Tony Benn used to say regularly in this place, if you can find money to kill people, then you can find money to help people. Now, when I put the news on my television or I scroll through my phone and I see conflict, ethnic cleansing, the displacement of millions, the destruction of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war on Iran. And remember, a girls school got bombed. I don't think you know what the world needs. We need more weapons.

We need more death. What I think we need is obvious. We need diplomacy. We need the de-escalation of tensions abroad. We need a domestic agenda, not of war, but of prosperity and peace. I want us to invest in health, education, public services, all the good stuff that keeps communities together. I want better wages. The reindustrialisation of forgotten heartlands across the country, the redistribution of wealth and power to create equal opportunities for people. I want a social security system that is a genuine safety net and stops people descending into poverty.

Madam Deputy Speaker we are at war right now with poverty and inequality, and our people are and inequality, and our people are dying because of it. So I urge members, don't look the other way. The next time that you're in Westminster Tube station.
17:17
Rebecca Long Bailey Portrait Rebecca Long Bailey MP (Salford, Labour)
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Gideon Amos thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given Taunton and Wellington important Armed Forces community 40 Commando, Royal Marines 675 Squadron, Army Air Corps RCN Air Cadets, armed Army Cadet Force. I want to start by thanking all those who are serving and all the veterans in my community who have served at the weekend. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to thank Ed Cullen and all the veterans who organised our superb Somerset Armed Forces Day, attracting drawing 49000 people record attendance.

I also hope the Minister will join me in congratulating them, as well as Terry Williams, who is fundraising to establish the Poppy of honour, 1.1 million named paper poppies for every individual lost in World War One. Indeed, I'll call on the government to support that fundraising effort in a meaningful way. But speaking of those who have been on active service, I also want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells for his. He brings to these benches the sharpest of insights on defence and rearmament and his great experience as well.

How we treat our veterans is a vital component of how we will attract the men and women to serve in the forces and deliver the war fighting readiness that this debate is about. That's why the superb work of the NHS Somerset Armed Forces Link team must not be cut back as a result of cuts by icbs to icbs by the health department. Former Royal Marine Stephen Summers said to me the superb. The support provided has been life changing. They have helped bridge the gaps between the NHS, local GP surgeries and the commitments made under the Armed Forces Covenant.

Their work really does make a difference. The support we give we should give our veterans is also why those who served in Operation Banner in Northern Ireland should never have to face double jeopardy, which is why the Democrats voted against carrying forward the government's Northern Ireland Troubles bill in this heat. I also want to spend a moment to thank soldiers on ceremonial duties. I'm personally appalled by the way a minority of members of the public treat the guards and their horses as regularly shown on social media, something veterans in my constituency have asked me to raise here today, and I urge the government to consider whether anything can be done to better prevent people interfering with their duties.

Cadets, of course, are tomorrow's service men and
17:21
Rebecca Paul Portrait Rebecca Paul MP (Reigate, Conservative)
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women. So I welcome our cadet forces are set to keep growing. The forces are set to keep growing. The 30% target must be met as soon as possible, and because a decent home for serving personnel matters. I for serving personnel matters. I was proud as Liberal Democrats housing spokesperson, to take forward the work begun by my hon. Friend for North Shropshire and Friend for North Shropshire and propose amendments to the Renters Rights Act, eventually made by the government to bring service family government to bring service family accommodation up to a decent home standard by law, and I'm delighted, my hon.

Friend for Lewes amendments, which would extend that single living accommodation in the Armed Forces bill. So I welcome the 15

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billion Defence Investment Plan. But as my hon. Friend said, it does not go my hon. Friend said, it does not go nearly far enough and with 4.75 billion of that yet to be found, any raising of the Budget for our any raising of the Budget for our military housing will be a very false economy and bitterly opposed by liberal Democrats on these by liberal Democrats on these benches. If this defence investment is to be well, the promise made to our small businesses to properly integrate them into procurement must be kept Madam Deputy Speaker.

The current 5% procurement Budget for SMEs is a pittance. The SME, an SME, for example, in my constituency, Coker Engineering in Taunton needs reliable access to steel imports and I repeat the call for defence companies to be granted the exclusions from steel import tariffs. They need to make the arms our forces need. In conclusion, Madam Deputy Speaker, if the government's ambition for fall short, the Liberal Democrats does not. Our calls for a new EU. UK defence pact providing the basis for negotiating UK entry into safe security action for Europe.

Decent homes for service, family and single living accommodation, and a £20 billion programme of defence bonds to inject the capital. Our forces urgently need to meet the challenges set out by my hon. Friend and the Strategic Defence Review itself. That's the defence of our country Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for and

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that's what we would deliver. Amanda Martin thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have an increasingly unstable world, from Russia's illegal invasion to Ukraine to the conflict in the Middle East, the threats to our national security have grown, and families across the country have felt the consequences through higher bills and rising prices. We cannot afford to ignore the reality cannot afford to ignore the reality of the world we face. But as my friend from Birmingham Selly Oak so eloquently put, if we need to address what does we need to
17:26
Naushabah Khan Portrait Naushabah Khan MP (Gillingham and Rainham, Labour)
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address what does we need to address? What does war fighting readiness actually mean to this government, to our forces, and to our country? And it is worth reminding the House and our constituents that it would not have been thought from the opening speeches in this debate, that this government inherited an armed forces that had been hollowed out by years of underinvestment, overstretched, and a failure to keep pace with modern warfare. I'd like to point out to the member of Tunbridge Wells that this destruction was a result of initiatives such as the 2011 Coalition Basing Review, which reduced the number of services for our type 45, thus giving us this challenge.

Madam Deputy Speaker, ships, aircraft and tanks and indeed personnel do not get built overnight. And so I'm proud that this Labour government is beginning to put that right and putting it right across government. It's not just simply the role of the Ministry of Defence. This government does deserve credit for the changing its course. Over the next four years. We will invest £298 billion in defence. The Defence Investment Plan will help modernise our armed forces by investing in drones and autonomous systems, but at least six new warships and strengthen the capabilities our services need to respond to today's security challenges, and it reflects and learns from the lessons of recent conflicts and ensures our defence capabilities keep pace with the changing nature of war.

So whilst I do not agree with my hon. Friend from Tunbridge Wells that this is too little, too late, I do agree that we need to move and ensure the sector is more rapidly, rapidly equipped for national security and for growth. Because, Madam Deputy Speaker, we know that increasing defence spending alone is not enough. We also need stronger industrial bases, a system that allows for swift procurement. And that means backing British defence manufacturers and innovative SMEs with better access to finance so they can grow and create skilled jobs and apprenticeships and strengthen our national resilience, including in my city of Portsmouth North, where defence, jobs and national security go hand in hand.

And that is why I'd like to ask the Minister if the government will look again at joining the defence, Security and Resilience Bank, spearheaded by Prime Minister Carney in Canada, the DSR could help unlock private investment for defence sector and support the industrial capacity our armed forces really need. We should seize every opportunity to work with our allies to strengthen our defence industrial base, and we should seize every opportunity to ensure we can not only have R&D here, but the opportunity to scale up British companies.

So British companies choose to invest and grow here and not abroad. Finally, Madam Deputy Speaker, defence is far more than equipping equipment and technology. Our greatest strength is the people who serve this country. That is why, alongside defence design and manufacturing, we must continue to improve the support they receive. When we extend the Armed Forces covenant across government, we must make sure our people know about it and we must continue to deliver the 9 billion Defence Housing strategy to improve service homes. And as I've constantly argued, we should look to improve paternity leave for fathers and families.

If we are serious about national security, we must also be serious about recruiting, retaining and supporting the people who keep our country safe. Madam Deputy Speaker, Britain faces significant security challenges and meeting them requires sustained investment and strong defence industry, and a firm commitment to those who serve our country. It also requires, as my hon. Friend from Dunfermline and Dollar so brilliantly argued, an open and honest conversation with the public so that citizens in the United Kingdom can really understand what warfighting
17:32
Iqbal Mohamed Portrait Iqbal Mohamed MP (Dewsbury and Batley, Independent)
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readiness means, so they can understand the challenges, the very real threats that we face in the UK, the priorities we may need to make, the priorities we may need to make, and the misinformation and dangers that the cyber world has out there, conversations that we know are conversations that we know are happening in our allied countries, such as Norway and Finland, conversations that will make us all conversations that will make us all war fighting ready. Madam Deputy Speaker, this Labour government is rebuilding our armed forces and it is backing British defence job, and is backing British defence job, and it is strengthening our national security of the future.

Much has been done and there is still much more to do. But I have every faith that we as a Labour government will rise to this challenge.

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Richard Foord Madam Deputy. Speaker and I'd like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for tribute to the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells for for making this debate happen this afternoon. I've debate happen this afternoon. I've been to see his bookshelf and the. Trust me, the the books on on Trust me, the the books on on strategy and military affairs in his library are well thumbed so he knows what he's talking about, and knows what he's talking about, and he's done well to corral us all into talking about this.

Today, I'd like to talk about firstly, defence spending, and it's fair to say others have covered it, but I'll repeat the fact that we are not spending sufficiently on defence and I want to I want to just challenge the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth. I think it's it's a bold thing that he did, which is to challenge the prevailing consensus to challenge the mood of the House and the sort of the the views of what are now quite mainstream in this House.

But while it's compelling to think about all of the welfare need that exists in this country, and there's a great

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deal, I will acknowledge he has a constituency. No, he.

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No, he. Doesn't forgive me, but Grange, Grangemouth, I understood at least Grangemouth, I understood at least was a, a a a crude oil refinery. was a, a a a crude oil refinery. And I mean, we need only look to Eurasia. We need to look only at what's been happening in Ukraine what's been happening in Ukraine and Russia to see that war comes to those who don't really want it to
17:36
Sarah Hall Portrait Sarah Hall MP (Warrington South, Labour )
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come to them at all. And yes, that's a failure of diplomacy, but it is also a failure of it is also a failure of preparedness. And that's really where I want to have my remarks today on this business of of today on this business of of readiness. So on defence spending, we are currently spending 2.5% of we are currently spending 2.5% of GDP on defence. The target is 3.5% by 2035. We really ought to be getting midway between those two by the year 2030.

And yet we are projected to be at 2.68% of GDP by 2030. Of course, the Prime Minister is currently in Ankara at the NATO summit, Nye Bevan said in 1957 to the Labour conference that his his party members should not send him, quote, naked into the conference chamber. And I fear that the Prime Minister has been sent naked into the Ankara conference chamber. This. This Defence Investment Plan is indeed a skinny dip. The hon. Member for Stevenage talked about King and country.

That famous Oxford Union debate from from 1933, and I. I completely agree with him that those people who in 33 thought that they would not perhaps fight for fight for King and Country, found that by 1939 they had no choice but to do so because of the circumstances. And he knows a great deal about this from his time on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

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Very quickly, I will. University's records show that we don't know how every individual we don't know how every individual student voted, but we do know that many of the students who were present at that famous debate in present at that famous debate in 1933 subsequently signed up in 1939 and 1940.

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The Secretary of State is exactly right. And and of course, exactly right. And and of course, we we know that that these people had grown up with their own parents, having fought in the First World War. They were a generation that really didn't want to meet war, but war came to them nonetheless. I just want to remark on, on Clausewitz that that philosopher of war who talked about government, military and people being that remarkable trinity concerned with war.

A lot of the debate today has centred on the military and on defence, on procurement, perhaps a little bit on on government as it pertains to policy. We talked a little bit less about people, although the hon. Member for Portsmouth North did talk about our service people. I want to add to that by talking about people in the country more broadly, the people
17:42
Ellie Chowns Portrait Dr Ellie Chowns MP (North Herefordshire, Green Party)
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who we represent, because we need to think about how defence is, is a to think about how defence is, is a national endeavour that builds on everyone's understanding of the everyone's understanding of the threat and the need to defend the threat and the need to defend the nation. Because when discuss war fighting readiness, we're not only talking about platforms, about talking about platforms, about information. The Foreign Affairs Committee published a report on disinformation, and we talked about the use of military and non-military, covert and overt methods to blur the lines between war and peace, to sow doubt in the minds of target populations and destabilise and undermine societies.

And the Strategic Defence Review last year was was good at covering subthreshold attacks. And it talks about how such attacks are difficult to attribute to a perpetrator with certainty, due to the methods used in the frequent reliance on proxy actors, the focus has to be, I think, on countering Russia's hostile activities in in the information space, as well as thinking about preparing to fight a war and have war readiness, because that is the reality of the modern character of conflict.

Conflict doesn't begin when a missile is fired or a border is crossed. It can begin when public trust is systemically eroded. It can begin when elections are manipulated. It can begin when information is weaponized, and it can begin when hostile actors succeed in weakening a society's confidence in its own institutions. Madam Deputy Speaker, this is not merely about propaganda. It's not merely about the spreading of false information. It is often the objective to persuade societies that a particular lie is true.

The objective is really to persuade them the objective truth no longer exists. And I want us to think exists. And I want us to think about war readiness in the round, including in the information space. Thank you. Thank you.
17:46
17:49
Yasmin Qureshi Portrait Yasmin Qureshi MP (Bolton South and Walkden, Labour)
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defence in one of his Ministers. If you speak to men and women in uniform, as I and many others in here are privileged to do on a here are privileged to do on a regular basis, you will sense the palpable fog of dismay that exists palpable fog of dismay that exists within people in uniform as they try in vain, largely to figure out what it is they are expected to do what it is they are expected to do and how it is they are expected to do it.

And with what the debt do it. And with what the debt generated, such expectation as the SDR which precipitated it. And once they were finally published, they generated more questions than answers. Platforms matter. I hear all the time we need to learn the lessons from Ukraine, and we do need to learn the lessons from those brave warriors defending their homeland in an existential fight with zero strategic depth. We are not Ukraine. This is not Ukraine. We have access to platforms and systems that they do not.

We have strategic depth from the contemporary threat that we face from Russia. I am not inviting people to be complacent. I am inviting people to see beyond. We need to learn the lessons from Ukraine and platforms do matter and replacement thereof. The UK just now, in a very brief summary, is fielding clapped out Vanguard nuclear bombers. When you see them coming back up the Clyde after 200 days under the waves, they look like they've been raised from the bottom of the sea, not out patrolling what should be 90 days, not 200.

It is a dreadful way to treat sailors. Not one of the six completed astute class submarines is available for service. It's absolutely unbelievable. New medium lift helicopter rumbled on for a decade. Finally got a grudging order. Half the size of the original Ajax is now in its 17th year. It's absolutely incorrigible. And that is not a sophisticated novel system. It's a very good system, but it shouldn't take 17 years. By the time it gets into service, it will be obsolete. So these are just ordinary things that
17:53
Simon Opher Portrait Dr Simon Opher MP (Stroud, Labour)
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defence in the UK has demonstrated that it cannot pull off. But yet, according to the dip, we are going according to the dip, we are going to start doing all this exquisite novel stuff that nobody has done before us, and we are going to be world leaders, as the UK seems to think it always has to be, but I do not believe it. I do not believe a not believe it. I do not believe a word of it. I hope it is true. I hope I am wrong, but if we can't do ordinary, how can we expected to ordinary, how can we expected to believe that exquisite is just around the corner? I heard the hon.

Member for Macclesfield talk about £45 billion for the nuclear enterprise. I will give way.

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Did he just refer to the nuclear deterrent as ordinary?

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deterrent as ordinary? It's been around for 50 years. It's not novel. He referred to £45 It's not novel. He referred to £45 billion. I think it's 64 in the dip. But that's an important point, Madam Deputy Speaker, because the government and the one before it refuses to publish what the nuclear enterprise rolling ten year Budget is. So I wonder if the Minister is. So I wonder if the Minister could clarify what is the nuclear enterprise Budget over the rolling ten year period? That would be helpful.

I am a supporter of defence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and there are a few people in here that will testify to that. But MoD does have a case to answer. It increasingly looks in the UK, if you want to get £1 million of output, you need to put £2 million into the pot of the mod. And if you look at any public accounts Committee report into defence, you'll see what a troubled enterprise it is and that needs real root and branch reform. I am heard people talk quite a lot today about.

We have not told the public about the threat that we are under, and I agree with that. I think that's true, and I think that is an honest assessment. But we need to see beyond the transmission of the threat and be prepared for the response that we might get back. I am not making a constitutional point. I am not talking about Scotland. I am talking about housing schemes and communities up and down these islands. If they are asked to put their families and their own lives on the line for the United Kingdom, they might well not just be quite as enthusiastic as we might wish.

After thinking, what's my country done for me? What's ever been. If you're 25 years old and grown up over the last 20 years, what's the UK done for me? Because I see me and my generation getting poorer than the generations that went before it. I might be wrong. I

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hope I am wrong, but he does not know it. I say this. I call Liberal Democrat

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I call Liberal Democrat spokesperson James MacCleary. Thank you. Madam Deputy Speaker, and I must start by thanking and start by thanking and congratulating my colleague, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, for securing this extremely valuable debate today. Now, much valuable debate today. Now, much has been said about rearmament and defence in this House in recent months. It's widely accepted that successive governments have allowed successive governments have allowed our nation's defences to decline to a perilous extent. This debate should therefore, be an opportunity
17:58
Peter Prinsley Portrait Dr Peter Prinsley MP (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, Labour)
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for the House to come together to address the first duty of any government. Defence of the realm is a conversation that cannot be a conversation that cannot be limited to this building, but needs to be had in every corner of our great nation. The Prime Minister great nation. The Prime Minister and others tell us that the point of maximum threat from Russia is in 2030. That's just over three years 2030. That's just over three years away. If that is the case, then we must show urgency and we must show clarity.

It is for this reason that clarity. It is for this reason that the long delay of the publication of the Defence Investment Plan was so serious and so damaging. Those delays cost us precious time. Time that our adversaries have spent building their own forces and probing our vulnerabilities. The Public Accounts Committee has already told us what that delay cost us. It called the resulting bureaucratic drift damaging to Britain's international credibility, and warned us that it has created deep uncertainty across our defence industrial base, while sending a weak signal to allies and adversaries alike.

And when the plan finally arrived, what did we find? The Secretary of State told the House that he had secured an extra £1 billion, yet it has come to light since then. The most of that money has simply been taken from cancelled transport and energy projects, or clawed back from funds that were meant to improve military housing. Worse still, 4.7 billion of the 15 billion promised increase is, in the government's own words, still to be confirmed at the Budget. That, I'm afraid, is not a funding plan.

Defence chiefs have been explicit that anything below 28 billion would leave this country vulnerable, and would force Ministers into hard choices about capabilities that we simply cannot afford to lose. The figure the Prime Minister has now settled on falls well short of that warning. Nowhere is this more alarming than in air defence. The Strategic Defence Review recommended that we spend at least a billion in this area. The people of this country rightly assume that they are safe from missile and drone attack.

We must urgently work with our NATO allies to build up our collective integrated air defence. It is folly to spend billions on equipment if it can all just be destroyed in an instant by Russian ballistic missiles. The SDR was also clear that we needed pace in investing in
18:02
Andy MacNae Portrait Andy MacNae MP (Rossendale and Darwen, Labour)
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the capabilities needed to deter Russia. That is why Liberal Democrats have argued for issuing Democrats have argued for issuing defence bonds to make £20 billion available in the next two years before 2030, to spend on plugging before 2030, to spend on plugging those gaps. We have also urged the government to explore multilateral efforts to fund rearmament, such as the Defence, Security and the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, or leading on the establishment of a European rearmament bank. The threat is real rearmament bank.

The threat is real and the money is needed now, not years down the line. But we need not only spend more but to spend it better. Around 5% of the defence procurement Budget currently reaches small and medium sized enterprises, and 42% of contracts remain concentrated with the same ten suppliers. These smaller firms are a source of much of the flexibility and innovation that the sector needs, and they are supportive, and they support skilled jobs in every part of the United Kingdom. The long delay to the Defence Investment Investment Plan left them in limbo for over a year.

Some of them went out of business in that time or even moved overseas, and the 4.7 billion gap still had to be resolved at the Budget means that uncertainty has not been lifted from their shoulders. The government has also started chipping away at its previous commitment to fix mouldy military homes and crumbling barracks in order to make its own funding numbers add up. Liberal Democrats have supported the government's efforts to sort out this mess, so to hear that hundreds of millions have been trimmed is bitterly disappointing.

Liberal Democrats changed the law so that service family accommodation must now be assessed against the decent homes standard, and we forced the government to concede that principle in the House of Lords. We went further still and sought to extend that same standard to single living accommodation, so that no member of our armed forces has left living in substandard conditions. The government voted that down in committee. If Ministers are serious about retention, about persuading talented people to stay in uniform, they must reverse that decision and
18:06
Jayne Kirkham Portrait Jayne Kirkham MP (Truro and Falmouth, Labour )
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bring all military housing under a single decent standard. They must also stop their backsliding on also stop their backsliding on their commitments to fully fund the recovery of our military housing stock. Finally, Madam Deputy stock. Finally, Madam Deputy Speaker, we cannot meet this moment alone. Our security is bound up with that of our European neighbours because geography has neighbours because geography has not changed. Even if American commitment is growing less certain. The Liberal Democrats want the government to show real ambition to restart negotiations for Britain to join the Security Action for Europe programme, to work with partners towards a European rearmament bank and to help build a European Security Council that can coordinate our allies efforts to meet NATO's requirements.

Even as Washington draws back. Our alliance is one of our greatest strengths and should the worst ever happen, we are far stronger standing with our friends than on our own. That is why squandering soft power through cuts to international development aid and to the FCDO are an entirely false economy. Those cuts diminish our standing in the world and just create issues for which we will have to pay far more down the line. It is always cheaper to prevent a war than fight one, which is why our hard and soft power must go hand in hand.

I'll end where I started. It's time that the government and the new Prime Minister, when he takes office, leads a serious national conversation with the public. We hear endless rhetoric about tough choices, and those will not get any easier without public support. Parties represented in this chamber will come up with different answers to the question, and we can debate that here. But every party will find it harder to justify those choices unless they are as part of a real national conversation on defence, which is simply not happening right now.

Just this week, the United States warned there could be an imminent attack by Russian forces in Poland to test NATO defences. The threat is not abstract, it is real. It is the safety of our children and it is our nation's future. So I urge Ministers and the incoming Prime Minister to be decisive. Issue defence bonds, take the conversation on defence out into the real world and show the urgency that the moment deserves before it's too late. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
18:10
Sojan Joseph Portrait Sojan Joseph MP (Ashford, Labour)
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Shadow Minister Mark Francois. >> Shadow Minister Mark Francois. >> Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I'd like to begin by congratulating the Member for Tunbridge Wells and the Member for Tunbridge Wells and the backbench Business Committee for scheduling this important and very timely debate, which coincides with the NATO summit. Perhaps I could then make a consensual point yet again, when we debate the defence of the realm, the first duty of government, the reform bench is empty. Empty yet again.

The plastic patriots have gone AWOL. When we discuss the defence of this country, Count Binface clearly has them worried in Clacton. Now, as I am a historian by training, perhaps I could offer some historical context. Arguments about military readiness are not new. The Roman military theorist Vegetius some two millennia ago coined the now famous phrase civis pacem para bellum. He desires peace, should prepare for war in order to deter it. There have been times in British history when we've disregarded legislative sage advice.

For instance, following the First World War, when Britain fought at great cost, both human and financial. In 1919, a Liberal led government introduced the concept of a ten year rule, a pan Whitehall edict that no major war was likely for at least a decade. This continued on a rolling basis into the 1930s. On the 9th of February 1933, just ten days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in the now famous Oxford Union, debate referred to several times already, the students resolved by more than 2 to 1 that this House would under no circumstances fight for king and country.

And yet, a few years later, many of them we know did. The ten year rule was only finally rescinded in the mid 1930s. Nevertheless, as general, the Lord Dannatt pointed out in his excellent recent book, Victory into Defeat, our armed forces still didn't recover sufficiently in time to deter Hitler from launching what eventually became World War Two, in eventually became World War Two, in which some 60 million people perished worldwide. Yes.
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Amanda Martin Portrait Amanda Martin MP (Portsmouth North, Labour)
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I'm grateful to my right hon. Friend, and for once, having spoken on this very subject the week before last, I thought I would sit and listen to what others have to say. And does he agree with me that one of the reasons for the failure of deterrence in the second, the beginning of the Second World War and at the beginning of the First World War, was that the United States was detached from the future of security in Europe.

And the success of NATO has hinged on the knowledge that an attack on any NATO country would mean war with the United States from the outset. So does he share my concern that the United States at present is led by someone with insufficient regard for that history.

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And NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history, and article five is its absolute fulcrum. We must maintain our fulcrum. We must maintain our commitment to article five to keep commitment to article five to keep all NATO nations safe. At Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, Churchill said that an iron Curtain had descended that an iron Curtain had descended and that led us into the Cold War. In the mid 1980s under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Defence spending was gusting about 5% of gross domestic product.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Countries across the West took a peace dividend. Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous book, The End of History, in 1992, and many in the West believed that the threat of World War had finally receded. When the Conservatives left office in 1997, we were still spending around 3% of GDP on defence. That downward
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Beccy Cooper Portrait Dr Beccy Cooper MP (Worthing West, Labour)
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trend, though, continued under Tony Blair's government, although, in fairness, he was only doing what fairness, he was only doing what many other Western democracies were doing too. However, if we come forward to today, we now face a Russia led by Putin in a moment led Russia led by Putin in a moment led by Putin, who launched an invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and then an even more brutal full and then an even more brutal full scale invasion in 2022.

The summit he visited Ukraine in February of this year. I'd remind the House, the Ukrainians would argue they therefore been at war with Russia not for four years, but for 12 even longer than the First and Second World wars combined. Against this rising threat, Labour produced its much vaunted strategic defence review and there was much good in it. But it still contained echoes of the ten year rule declaring the government's intention. On page 43 to deter, fight and win with allies against states with advanced military forces by 2035, that's nine years away.

The chief of the General Staff has warned we might have to fight Russia in 2027, the First sea Lord said 2029, and even the outgoing Prime Minister said it might be 2030. So how are we supposed to deter Putin with not a single attack submarine currently at sea? Still with no new Awacs aircraft in service in the Royal Air Force and Ajax almost a decade late and still not in operational service, despite Ministers previously promising us it was fine.

That really is corrosive complacency, isn't it? The threat is now and we need to re-arm accordingly, including spending 3% on GDP by 2029 at the very latest,
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Matt Turmaine Portrait Matt Turmaine MP (Watford, Labour)
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if not earlier. The three co-authors of the SDR were adamant co-authors of the SDR were adamant that the cost of implementing it was 3% of GDP on defence, and a year after SDR was published, we finally received Labour's plan of how to pay for it, the so-called Defence Investment Plan. But this was not before Labour's defence secretary in their armed forces Minister, who was in his place, had Minister, who was in his place, had both resigned on the 11th of June after months of frustration with the Treasury over the paucity of funding in the plan.

As the outgoing defence secretary powerfully wrote in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister, you've been unable and the Treasury has been unwilling to commit the resources the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats. That is damning. His armed forces Minister said in his own letter. I've sat in the rooms, seen the assessments and spoken to the commanders who will be asked to do more with less, and I cannot in good conscience stand at the despatch box and defend the level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task.

Moreover, the outgoing defence Secretary revealed what he'd been offered was an increase in defence spending to only 2.68% of GDP by 2030 billion, short of what the SDR authors required. The new defence secretary has tried to argue he has been given some additional funding a bit over a billion, but this only takes defence spending to barely 2.69% of GDP by 21st. By 2030, the difference that doesn't really even touch the sides. In fact, it's
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James Naish Portrait James Naish MP (Rushcliffe, Labour)
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sadly worse than that. The Chief of staff have been urging the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to Minister and the Chancellor to invest an additional 28 billion defence over the next four years, in part to enable them to implement Labour's SDR. They were offered Labour's SDR. They were offered barely 15 billion instead. However, on closer examination, even this on closer examination, even this sum unravels very rapidly. To begin with, as we've already heard, 10.7 with, as we've already heard, 10.7 billion of that money is reliant on so-called efficiency savings, which is Whitehall code for cuts in spending over the next four years.

The bulk of which haven't even been identified yet. The chairman of the PAC on the day of publication, described this as an old accountant's trick, and it still doesn't disguise that the mod itself would have to make massive in-year spending cuts, including from operations and training, in order to recycle that money to fund their own Defence Investment Plan. In fact, the chief of the Defence Staff has warned of the implications of doing that. Only the other day. The disastrous dip also relies on a further 4.7 billion, which has not yet even been cleared by the Treasury, and it will be subject to another public spending round.

In other words, the two sums combined will be more than the 15 billion of extra money that was promised. So there's practically actually no new money for defence at all. All we've been offered is Enron accounting and smoke and mirrors to try and pretend that a massive increase in defence spending is barely 0.01% of GDP over four years. Now I'm summing up. Lord Robertson, the lead author of the SDR, told the Defence Select Committee only yesterday we are running out of years and the challenge is now bigger and more serious and earlier than we anticipated.

And yet the defence investment plan does not come up to it. General barrons is co-author told the same committee the Prime Minister says Russia could attack NATO by 2030. We've essentially lost a year of mobilising for that, and even the Dipp says on page 78. Incredibly, I
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Helen Morgan Portrait Helen Morgan MP (North Shropshire, Liberal Democrat)
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quote it, the figures presented are indicative rather than precise, cost estimates. They do not constitute binding commitments and constitute binding commitments and are subject to the government's approval processes. Affordability considerations and contracting procedures. Figures have been rounded and therefore may not sum well. You can say that again. In well. You can say that again. In other words, this document isn't worth the paper it's printed on, worth the paper it's printed on, and it relies on extra money that doesn't actually exist.

We're not going to deter the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping with unfunded proposals like this. If Trotsky was right and war is now interested in us, we must rearm now to deter it. So I conclude by reluctantly finding that Labour are failing the people, the people of this country, in the first duty of government, the defence of the realm. If the incoming Prime Minister can't plug that 5 billion black hole which he's just about to

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inherit, then he should make way for some people who can. Yeah, that's.

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Yeah, that's. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I'm pleased to have been a and I'm pleased to have been a signatory for this debate, and I congratulate the Member for Tunbridge Wells on securing it. Therein is a lesson the subject, today's subject of rearmament and readiness could hardly be of greater importance for our constituents and for our military and for the future security of our nation. So I thank the members on all sides who have contributed to a compelling discussion.

I welcome this chance to respond to some of the points that you've raised, and you can enjoy the confusion between moving between my speech and my notes, where I will attempt to explain how the Ministry of Defence is working to get our armed forces war fighting ready as an urgent priority. But I will start with responding to the member of Rayleigh and Wickford when his principal criticism is about no new money, £300 billion is new money, £15 billion is new money.

And I will never, never let you forget the cold water that I endured in the messes of the bases that I serve of the Minister.

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You need to sit down, please. Can I remind you that you is not acceptable in this chamber because it refers to me, Minister.

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it refers to me, Minister. That the opposition, the removal of funding specifically in 2010, of funding specifically in 2010, which resulted in the removal of Nimrod in the reduction of our ship and boatyards, which lead to the and boatyards, which lead to the risks that are manifesting today. And you cannot. And they the
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Caroline Johnson Portrait Dr Caroline Johnson MP (Sleaford and North Hykeham, Conservative)
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opposition cannot deny, is the reason that we are in the position that we are in now, because two that we are in now, because two years ago, this government, in time, this government inherited a defence program that was overcommitted and underfunded and fundamentally suited to countering the very real suited to countering the very real threats that we are not countering the very real threats that we now face. And since then, we have face. And since then, we have committed to we have published a strategic defence review, defence Industrial Strategy, and most recently the Defence Investment Plan.

We are building a far more modern and lethal military through massive increases in defence spending and radical reform of the armed forces and close collaboration in the mouth and close collaboration with other NATO partners to protect Europe and Britain's borders. Showing Putin that the alliance remains as strong as ever as technology reshapes warfare, its fastest pace in history, and as the world becomes increasingly dangerous, our overwhelming focus of the Ministry of Defence is to get war fighting ready as fast as possible.

And that was the critical tilt in the change between the two defence secretaries. Dip. This dip is defined a defining moment in that journey, committing, as I reiterate, £290 billion for our armed forces over the next four years, making sure that they have the kit and the weapons that they need, which is £15 billion more than in a which is more than significant. And 1.5 billion more that was announced just a few weeks ago. The dip means that the UK defence spending will rise in real terms by 27% between 2324 and 2930, the largest sustained increase since the Cold War.

Indeed, the Ministry of Defence Budget will grow faster over the Parliament, over this Parliament than any other major government department. The 74 billion allocated next year, 27 to 28 is 20 billion more for our armed forces than the last year of the previous government, and the Budget will continue to grow in real terms. For the rest of this Parliament. I

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will take to. Congratulate the Minister on acceding to office, but he needs to appreciate that the cost of all appreciate that the cost of all government departments goes up in absolute financial numerical terms absolute financial numerical terms year on year, but the way in which you measure the investment in you measure the investment in defence is by looking at it as a proportion of GDP. And during the Cold War, when the risk was as high as it is now, almost as high as it is now, we were spending four and a half to 5% of GDP, and Vladimir Putin does not have nine years for us to spend 3.5% of GDP.

Those are the measurements he has to look at. We are nowhere near spending enough to.

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I thank the Member for his

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I thank the Member for his intervention. 24 years of serving this great nation means that I'm acutely aware of the risks that you acutely aware of the risks that you present, that the opposition presented me and manifested on my presented me and manifested on my time during service, and that is why I'm resolute in addressing these challenges and why I am these challenges and why I am backing the defence investment. The dip, as is put. And let me make one point crystal clear Britain has always met its NATO spending obligations in the past, and under this government we always will.

That begins with the early delivery
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Karin Smyth Portrait Karin Smyth MP, Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care) (Bristol South, Labour)
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of our first commitment to raise defence investment to 2.7% of GDP defence investment to 2.7% of GDP next year, compared with just 2.3%, next year, compared with just 2.3%, which was missing in your in the opposition in lieu lieu. In the opposition in lieu lieu. In the analysis of the decline of our defence and spending that we heard

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defence and spending that we heard recently, this solidifies I will. I thank my hon. Friend for. Giving way.

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The debate we're having on percentages of GDP is slightly irrelevant because actually, even irrelevant because actually, even if defence spending was raised to 3%, we have no ability to actually 3%, we have no ability to actually spend that money within the industrial base because we don't industrial base because we don't have the industrial capacity. So does he agree with me that we do need to look at a much more innovative approach to some of innovative approach to some of these things, multilateral options.

And, you know, I have been campaigning for the defence, Security and Resilience Bank of the UK to join for over a year.

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I thank the hon. Member for my hon. Friend for Aldershot. She has hon. Friend for Aldershot. She has advocated for defence and security and resilience and alternative and resilience and alternative finance methods for the previous two years, and it was very pleasing to see the DSR bank announcement to see the DSR bank announcement from Canada over the last couple of days. Alongside the MDM announcement from our own government, which significantly was joined by Poland, and I hope that we can see both DSR and MDM aligned as we go forward.

Not at the moment, but let's jump forward on to tech because it's not how much we spend, it's how we spend it. Something we've heard repeatedly over the course of this debate, how we rearm and how we get to warfighting readiness. The dip will energise the transformation of our armed forces and target resources to reflect the way war is waged. Today, we will sequence the delivery of NATO first transformed and integrated force powered by modern technology through the Dip, AI autonomy and uncrewed systems will now receive the sustained increase in support that reflects the strategic importance, and I just will pivot to the remarks made around the hybrid Navy, because the dip speeds up the transition to the hybrid Navy.

But in his opening remarks, the member from Tunbridge Wells. I have to say, someone who I have great deal of respect for but is incoherent to talk down future manned flight. But talk about an but talk about. But talk down an autonomous fleet. So my visit to Portsmouth only last week, as I walked past a member of our Royal Navy, said never again. As we walk past 45 and made clear that the work on the 83 had stopped a significant time ago because it is an incoherent conversation for two for the type 23 that he.

For type 23, every refurbishment takes 2 to 3 years and costs us £100 million and at the same time £115 million has given our nation the autonomous capability that we are rolling out at the moment in the Middle East. That is how incoherent that

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argument is. I will give way. You said I was fully in favour of moving to autonomy as fast as we could. All I questioned was whether we could go from a PowerPoint we could go from a PowerPoint concept for multiple vessels to being at sea on operations within

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nine years. That's all I questioned. Not the actual idea that we need to move to autonomy. And the answer.

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And the answer. And I thank my hon. Friend for his the hon. Member for his intervention. I agree that this will be testing, but it's a challenge that we must take up, and we need people like him on the defence Committee to make sure that we are held to account whilst we proceed ahead and deliver that to a digitally enabled army that is ten times more lethal to the next generation of combat air, including a potent mix of crewed and uncrewed air power to a new uncrewed systems task force to radically develop and deliver filled and filled autonomous capability, and to Europe's biggest drone testing site in Swindon, and to those that do down our nation and say that we can't, we aren't building enough.

I remind them that we are providing 150 000 drones per year at the moment to Ukraine. So as I come to a close, I.
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19:01
Edward Morello Portrait Edward Morello MP (West Dorset, Liberal Democrat)
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My hon. Friend and I are not performing a double act today, but he is in fact leading me perfectly on to the next part of my speech where I go on to say that corridor care is something of a misnomer. Treatment in a corridor far away from oxygen, from proper equipment, emergency cords to pull without privacy or dignity, without access to decent and appropriate toilet facilities, and without the highest standard of infection, prevention and control cannot be classified as care in any realistic sense.

It is very important that I do say that the staff go above and beyond with what they have got there. It's not that patients are suffering in pain because the staff there do not care and provide first class service. It is because, quite simply, a corridor or any other space not built to serve and care for patients is not the right place for a patient to be. Leading on from this, it's not just corridors. Patients across the NHS have been seen in antenatal rooms, store cupboards, waiting rooms, even car parks filling every conceivable inch of a hospital.

And if you can imagine that for people coming feeling particularly vulnerable, they're happy to get the care wherever they can get it. And I have never had a patient that I've heard of any of my colleagues speaking about across the country, saying that they will refuse to be seen in a cupboard. They're just grateful to be seen. Even the official definition of so-called corridor care is problematic. NHS data relies on local clinical judgment about whether an environment is safe and whether patients privacy and dignity are being maintained.

Trusts are applying these standards differently, and some feel the need, sadly, to have to game the system to artificially lower their corridor care statistics. I'd be delighted to. I thank my friend for giving way. I'd just like to highlight that the Scottish Government does not record or publish any statistics on the number of patients being treated in corridors. However, we know that it does happen and the hospital that serves my constituency of North Ayrshire and Arran, called Crosshouse, was was recorded in January as being one of Scotland's most under-pressure.

Emergency departments exceeded capacity by 50% in December. Revealing corridor care conditions in hospitals. It is important moving forward that we record accurate data so that we can we can actually track improvement. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a way forward? My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am so sorry to hear of the situation in your community in Scotland. It is regrettable and patients and their families deserve better. And absolutely to this point, if you can't accurately assess the issue in full, it is impossible to deal with.

And I hope the Minister will talk today about how she will commit to revising this definition to make it more robust. And when someone yes.

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A friend for securing this debate and for allowing me to intervene only in the first time in intervene only in the first time in Mid Yorkshire Trust in May did they publish data about patients in publish data about patients in corridors, and in May they were recorded 121 patients per day that recorded 121 patients per day that were being treated outside of clinical rooms and areas. And a constituent of mine, Catherine, constituent of mine, Catherine, wrote to me and saw first hand elderly people on corridors, waiting hours with no family members to support them.

Would my hon. Friend agree with me that Corridor Care has moved from being an exceptional problem to an everyday issue in many NHS trusts, and the government must act to really address the root cause of these. This issue.

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Member for his intervention and he is right and I will say that I know the government do care deeply know the government do care deeply about this. This is not something with which I am intention in any way with the government. I have spoken to the Ministers, I've spoken to the Ministers, I've spoken to the Secretary of State, and I know that they are committed to acting and ensuring that every to acting and ensuring that every single patient across our country gets the best possible care.

Because let's be really clear, the NHS shouldn't be a political football. Safe healthcare, dignified healthcare shouldn't be a political football. I am hoping that we are all in agreement on this issue today. I would have hoped to see more people on the benches opposite, but I. I hope that that's not a reflection of how much they care about the issue, because, quite frankly, we owe it to all our communities to get this right. And I know from my experience, and I know I have hon.

Friends in in this in this chamber today who will have their own experiences that when someone comes to the A&E, very often it is the worst day of their life. It's the worst day of their life in their experience as a patient. But it also can be the very worst day of their life because someone that they love their child, their partner, their mother or father is dying, has died. And when we think about the dignity and care that we give, we have to look at it holistically, not simply as a set of symptoms that we're treating, but a family and the experience that they take away with them from what has happened on that day.

People are in tears, people are in pain, and we owe it to them to get this right. Yes.

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Because in my constituency of Epsom, we've had many people who've written in experiencing corridor written in experiencing corridor care and just really experiencing that loss of dignity when they've been experiencing loss of care and been experiencing loss of care and the corridor care, vulnerable elderly and patients sitting in corridors. So does the hon. Friend agree with me that we absolutely, desperately need that urgent action to make sure that dignity is prioritised wherever care is given? Absolutely right.

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I do agree with the hon. Member and she makes a very, very valid and she makes a very, very valid point. Look, people can be enduring a heart attack. They can be losing a baby. They can have had a road traffic accident and be lying on a trolley, blocked and collared, trolley, blocked and collared, lying on a board, looking up at the ceiling. Wonder when they may make it into the scanner. They definitely will be having a time in hospital that will be etched on their memory.

And sadly for many patients and many loved ones, it's the last day they will ever see. The A&E will be the last place they know and in the NHS we want that experience to be as comfortable and reassuring as possible. We want the best possible care delivered in the fastest possible time to patients treated fairly efficiently and with compassion and dignity. And, quite frankly, that is impossible in a corridor with the greatest will in the world. Look, in my alley in Saint George's, we have patients, as we do across the whole country in corridors, but we do have nurses who are there dedicated to check their observations, ask if they need pain relief, try and still deliver, and they do the best possible gold standard care.

But there is no privacy in a corridor. There's no privacy in a corridor. There is no privacy in a in a cupboard. There is no privacy anywhere where there should be. And that quite simply isn't right. And in emergency departments across the country, regardless of whether some data that trusts try to put forward shows that it's in, it's in only a certain number. We all know from

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Well. The hon. Lady to give. Way, of course.

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Way, of course. I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and for bringing this debate. She's spoken about some of the She's spoken about some of the impacts. My own 80 odd year old mum was recently admitted to hospital was recently admitted to hospital with acute respiratory, and she had to wait in a chair for over 12 to wait in a chair for over 12 hours alongside my dad, in a very undignified way. Does she agree with me that ideally we should be preventing admissions for older and frail patients, and whether she believes that the stronger, proactive, primary and community care services proposed by the government in neighbourhood health teams could help prevent some admissions for older and frail elderly people like my mum.



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Thank you. Firstly, I hope the hon. Member's mum is making a swift hon. Member's mum is making a swift and healthy recovery. I'm sorry to hear that that was your experience hear that that was your experience as a family, and I do agree that prioritising care for the frailer prioritising care for the frailer older population can be dealt with more effectively very often before someone even comes to hospital. But someone even comes to hospital. But I also know that in my own hospital of Saint George's in Tooting, they have a special, dedicated frailty unit that does go a long way to speeding things up for people.

But there are some really good pilots going on around the country now where care can be taken to our elderly community before they even come in. And tackling social care is something that I am coming to in my speech, because I don't think we could have a speech on corridor care without the really huge nod, slash entire body bend to social care and needing to to fix that. And, but I think it's really important to say that while this is extremely hard for patients and their families, the toll it takes on healthcare staff is huge.

And by healthcare staff, I don't just mean like doctors like myself. It's the nurses, the porters, the healthcare assistants, the cleaners. We are one big family in the NHS. There is no one job that is more important than any other. We are unable to do any of our roles without all of the others and for that we are truly grateful. But the toll that it takes on your mental health to know that you might be seeing a patient who is in their mid 80s, who is trying to hold back tears because they don't want to upset anybody very publicly in a corridor is absolutely heartbreaking.

And our nurses, doctors, all the staff I've mentioned already, they are going home absolutely burnt out. This is not what they trained for. This is not what they studied for. This is absolutely not what they go to work to deliver. They go to work to deliver the best possible gold standard, care for the community that they care about.

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On that. Point, yes. I thank the my hon. Friend for giving way. And on that point of of burnout, we are entering what, for burnout, we are entering what, for many Cornish men and women is the dreaded tourist season. When our population doubles or trebles. And population doubles or trebles. And my constituents in Campbell, Redruth and Hale are concerned about the chronic capacity issues about the chronic capacity issues and its impact on patient safety. At Treliske, our one general hospital to cover the whole of Cornwall.

Does my right hon. My hon. Friend agree with me that the NHS workforce planning and funding for places like Cornwall needs to reflect the additional pressures placed on healthcare services during periods of peak tourist activity?

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My hon. Friend and I in fact, remember meeting you before you even became an MP and I visited a hospital in your community, and I hospital in your community, and I know you've been a powerful advocate from long before you were in this place. So thank you and thank you for raising that again, thank you for raising that again, because very often we think about winter pressures and people forget that different communities, it's just not a one size fits all just not a one size fits all situation.

And looking at tourist season in Cornwall, it's really important and I am hopeful that the government do take all that into account when they look at their planning. But Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be appalled, as we all are, to know that there are places up and down the country where bodies are being wheeled to the mortuary, past living patients in corridors, people spending hours in pain and distress, desperate for privacy and exhausted staff working, feeling as though they've got one arm tied

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behind their backs. This. Yeah, I'm very grateful to be very generous in taking interventions. And there's very few members of this House, if any, who know it in more detail than her. I just want to raise in Scotland, just want to raise in Scotland, where my constituents have are facing the problem of the Royal College of Nursing said just a few weeks ago that we are trailing weeks ago that we are trailing behind even what's happening in England, partly because the NHS in England is publishing stats on quarter care.

I wonder if you'd quarter care. I wonder if you'd agree with me that the Scottish Government should do the same, so we can track it and therefore help resolve it?

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I thank my hon. Friend. He's a powerful advocate for the people of Scotland and yes, of course, because for us to have any because for us to have any understanding of the issue, we have to have the data. Without the data. It's it's quite frankly, quote It's it's quite frankly, quote unquote not happening. So yes, and that is something that we should keep pushing for. And I hope you put your little clip here today on social media to spark a little fire up some bottoms to make it happen.

So the, the reality that I've spoken about already is happening in every corner of the country. The drivers of the issue of corridor care are multifaceted. But one key cause that we cannot escape is our failing social care system that forces medically fit patients to sit and wait in hospital beds seemingly endlessly, understanding that without a back door of a hospital that works efficiently, we simply cannot get people through the front door, treat them effectively, and move them on appropriately.

The social care sector must be empowered because this will prevent hospital admissions in the first place and support timely discharges. There are all sorts of names that are quite unappealing, given to people who have to spend a long time in hospital waiting for appropriate social care our vulnerable elderly, our grandmas and grandpas being called bed blockers because they cannot get the social care that they need to safely be able to look after them in their homes. This requires a complete change in thinking and approach, one that understands the inherent link between NHS and social care.

Most significantly, we need leadership that is willing to address the crisis with the urgency it deserves, so that people get the highest quality of care.

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We. Yes. I thank you. For giving way. One of my family relatives went into hospital to get relatives went into hospital to get intravenous antibiotics and later on actually died in that hospital due to being stuck in the hospital, due to being stuck in the hospital, was ready to move on to a community hospital. She gave up because she was scared in the hospital. They didn't keep an eye on her. She fell didn't keep an eye on her. She fell out of bed and cracked her head open.

She then passed away later on. Do you agree with me that social Do you agree with me that social care. We really do need to put a lot more investment to make sure that that doesn't happen. And we

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don't have to have those relatives go in hospital in the first place. I'm heartbroken to hear about the hon. Member's relative. I'm so sorry to hear about that. And of course, this is the this is the point. Anyone that works in a hospital understands, even by virtue of the fact of waiting in a waiting room, in an emergency waiting room, in an emergency department, you. You are accessing people who are unwell and it is possible to catch other illnesses.

Quite frankly, one of the things that we try to do is prevent unnecessary admission, because we know that, particularly when vulnerable elderly person comes into the hospital and they are admitted, they are then more at risk of being on a ward with people that are unwell catching illnesses. But also in the case of your relative being vulnerable and not potentially being in in a bed that's appropriate, or having enough staff that are able to check on her appropriately and absolutely, without tackling social care, we're never going to get on, on, on top of that.

And but I am truly, truly sorry to hear of that. Simply put, we cannot dither or delay. We need answers to the social care crisis already. We need them quickly coming on to another group of people who are very often overlooked. Madam Deputy Speaker, I'm going to come on to mental health patients who continue to spend extraordinary amounts of time waiting in A&E, people experiencing mental health crisis are two and a half times more likely to face long delays in A&E.

I'll just paint a picture for a moment what that looks like. That can be somebody with auditory or visual hallucinations, feeling extremely scared, extremely vulnerable, needing security to make sure they don't leave their room, wondering what they've done to deserve this. Not having the staff there that know about their usual medication, very often shouting very loudly and and other patients concerned, not understanding that they have a mental health issue. And as doctors and nurses, we're not allowed to talk about somebody else within the hospital.

So you can have a very loud A&E department with someone very, very vulnerable who is screaming and shouting, really suffering completely in the wrong place, being in A and E for so long, and everyone very confused as to why they're there. It's not appropriate, it's not safe, and it's also not dignified for the mental health patients. We are as far away as ever from parity between mental and physical health in the NHS. And as I've just outlined, we witness that daily in the emergency departments across the country, and we need to create more partnerships between our emergency departments and mental health trusts, where mental health patients can be triaged and seen by a mental health team in a more dignified and appropriate manner.

At Saint George's Hospital, where you all know by now I work my A&E shifts. They are exploring a partnership with South West London and Saint George's Mental Health Trust, which would set up an assessment unit to triage mental health patients outside of the emergency department where it is safer, more appropriate and more dignified and in a more calm and pleasant environment where they

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could be assessed by mental health professionals. With mine, my friend would agree with me that this matter is often compounded where you've had somebody who's been arrested, and you've also got police officers you've also got police officers standing or sitting for hours. I was recently in the ER and there were two police officers there for the duration that there was a the duration that there was a member of the public there as well. Should they also maybe need somewhere else to be able to do

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that? I thank my hon. Friend, I think you've been on most of my last daily shift with me. In fact, this this is an absolute common occurrence and it is not the best, safest, most efficient place for any of our incredible teams of police officers, you know, mental health patients, mental health nurses who are trying to get on with their jobs. Because also it's, it's, it's incredibly distressing because sometimes there are parts of hospitals where colleagues are telling me they're waiting in relatives rooms with the police officers and the mentally unwell patients.

Next to the Resus area of an A&E department with bereaved families. None of this should be happening for anyone involved, and I am sure the Minister will agree with me that the best solution to this crisis will involve a holistic, multi-agency approach involving council, social care providers and NHS trusts, and I would mention that this unacceptable and dangerous situation, as I've just outlined, is shared not only by patients but by their families and NHS staff trying to do their best in difficult situation and moving on to the professional bodies.

Corridor care has rightly, rightly been condemned by the Royal College of Nurses by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, my Royal College, the BMA and other professional bodies and trade unions, and 65% of respondents to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Violence and Aggression Survey, which is due to be published later this year, said that care in inappropriate and non-clinical spaces contributes to the increase in violence and aggression towards staff and other patients. It is so clear that the impact of corridor care is so much more wide reaching than we even realise.

The fact that it results in violence against our own NHS heroes, the very best of humanity in a fractured and dangerous world. These people exemplify compassion, decency and selfless care for strangers. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that staff in emergency settings are upset, traumatised, driven to tears of rage, and we know that NHS staff have to take a disproportionately

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large number of days off for their mental health. Staff. Of course.

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Of course. Thank you very much. For giving way. You're doing a fantastic. The hon. Member is doing fantastic. The hon. Member is doing a fantastic speech on staff. One of the biggest problems we have in Yeovil Hospital is bullying culture for the staff we've had. We've seen for the staff we've had. We've seen this in the Baroness Amos report with maternity. Do you believe that the staff should be able to free, the staff should be able to free, be able to free and speak up without having the worry of losing their jobs?

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I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. It does digress from intervention. It does digress from the corridor care debate. However, I'll happily answer that question. I'll happily answer that question. I think everybody in the NHS must be able to go to work free of be able to go to work free of intimidation, bullying and harassment and that wherever that may happen, someone should feel may happen, someone should feel free to speak out, but not to their direct line manager because very often they can be involved, but to a safe third party within the hospital or clinic or public setting where it happens, where they can not be concerned that they're going to find themselves moved or no longer in that job that they love.

So thank you for raising that though. I have gone off topic, but I think it is important to acknowledge, and I am pleased that I am sure that the hon. Lady understands how much support there is in the room for this topic, and will be very shortly coming to a conclusion. Thank you. I'm nothing if not a talker. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker for for raising that. I am sorry that I am taking such a long time.

I will move forward very quickly that there are a number of recommendations that myself and the Royal College of Emergency Care and myself as the chair of the All-Party parliamentary Group on Emergency Care have put together, we have a number of recommendations. Firstly, restore patient flow by reducing delayed discharges. Secondly, focus equally on four hour and 12 hour performance. Third, reform funding and incentives. Fourth, spread responsibility for patient flow across the hospital. And lastly, address inequalities in access and outcomes.

Look, we can't have a debate like this without recognising the terrible inequalities that scar our healthcare service. We have to work to reduce the disproportionate burden of long waits on deprived communities, older patients and people with mental health needs. These measures would make a real difference to hospital systems, patient experience and overall effectiveness of the NHS. The founding principles of the NHS are stretched to breaking point. Every time someone waits for ten hours under the harsh strip lights of a corridor in terrible pain, feeling completely undignified, sometimes in their own urine and unable to feel as though they can ask for help.

And I will end my speech today by saying she will be very familiar with the stats that we have sent to the department. That shows the disproportionate number of deaths that we have in our country due to corridor care. The fact that we live in the UK and have people dying by virtue of the fact that they have been treated in a corridor, is simply unacceptable to me and other members of this House. So let us commit today to ending it once and for all and ending corridor care forever.

Thank

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you. The question is. As on the Order Paper, and we'll start with an immediate five minute time limit. Alison Bennett thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to begin by thanking the hon. Member for Tooting for setting out so brilliantly with her professional expertise and her professional expertise and her human touch, actually, what it means to have corridor care as a means to have corridor care as a normal habit right across the NHS in all parts of the country, not just in the winter, in winter pressures, but right through the year.

She's made many good points and I'm hopefully going to be able to add to some of them with some context. From the stories I've gathered in Mid-sussex, from my constituents who have experienced corridor care first hand, both as patients and as staff, they have shared some of the most frightening, painful and vulnerable moments of their lives with me. So first of all, thank you to them and to those whose stories I can't share today due to a lack of time, I apologise. Many of the people who've talked to me wanted me to tell this House one thing before anything else.

The staff who cared for them were extraordinary. They spoke of nurses who never stopped smiling despite being exhausted, doctors who apologise because they knew patients deserve better. Paramedics who stayed compassionate under impossible pressure. One constituent arrived at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath after falling and breaking both a shoulder and a kneecap. It was a Friday night. A&E was overflowing after X-rays. They spent hours on a trolley in a corridor beside the nurses station because there was no one else for them to go.

They told me the nurses were attentive and kind throughout the night. They checked in constantly. They did everything they could. But kindness cannot create another treatment cubicle. Compassion cannot magic up another doctor. Dedication cannot create a bed that is simply not there. Another constituent, Chris Philpot, shared an experience that I found impossible to forget. Following a ruptured appendix and serious complications. He spent 19 hours on a trolley in the corridor at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, 19 hours.

During that time, he watched an elderly lady have her blood pressure taken while resting her arm on his leg because there was nowhere else to support it. No privacy, no dignity. That is not the standard of care patients

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should expect in modern Britain. The number, thank. I very much

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The number, thank. I very much appreciate my friend giving way and my hon. Friend has just highlighted my hon. Friend has just highlighted a point which was mentioned by the Member for Tooting, that that kind of experience isn't only about the of experience isn't only about the lack of dignity, it's also a very concerning situation. And we're looking at infection control, driving antimicrobial resistance, acquiring hospital acquired infections. That kind of treatment is not only a lack of dignity, it can actually be lethal.

That is a huge public health issue. And I think that was highlighted very well in that specific example.

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Yes, I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution and agree. What we see time again is that one problem see time again is that one problem becomes another, until eventually the patient pays the price. There the patient pays the price. There is my constituent, Catherine Jeter. She has seen corridor care as a patient and a relative of one. She watched her father being treated for appendicitis in an emergency department so overcrowded that patients were double parked on patients were double parked on trolleys, changing into hospital gowns in full view of strangers.

And months later, while undergoing chemotherapy herself, she attended the Princess Royal Hospital with a chest infection. Because she was immunocompromised, she should have been isolated. Instead, she received intravenous antibiotics, sitting on a chair in a corridor because there were no cubicles available. She told me. The staff were amazing, but she also made clear that amazing staff should never have to work in those conditions. Perhaps the most difficult responses I've received were from the healthcare professionals themselves. One doctor told me they very regularly examine patients in corridors.

Another said that corridor care is not just an A&E problem, it is now normal for people to be on trolleys in non-clinical areas throughout the rest of the hospital, and this means that there are no curtains to provide privacy. There is no piped oxygen, there is no name above the bed and patient safety is inevitably compromised. A senior nurse described to me the moral injury that they and their colleagues face every day, having to try to deliver the best care possible in terrible conditions, all the while apologising for something that is beyond their power to fix.

They have to do this every single day. I am not personally enjoying this third heat wave, but imagine A and E without air conditioning. They become furnaces. Imagine trying to treat incredibly frail patients when it's 40 degrees on a corridor. Another clinician wrote something that stopped me in my tracks. They said that corridor care has become so common. They are teaching medical students and junior doctors how to provide it. And it's not just during winter pressures, it's year round.

Madam Deputy Speaker, this should really trouble every single one of us. We are training the next generation of clinicians to adapt to something that should never have become normal in the first place, because that is the real danger, not simply that corridor care exists. Not that we begin to accept it, that we shrug our shoulders, that we tell ourselves this is just how the NHS works now. The solutions are not easy. Hospitals cannot fix this on their own, but we do need to get it right.

We need to invest in capacity, in workforce, in social care, in reducing waiting lists so that treatable conditions don't turn into emergencies. I won't, in the interest of time, I'm sorry. And it's not happening because our NHS staff are failing, but because they are being asked to deliver excellent care in circumstances that make excellence almost impossible. My constituents have not shared these stories because they have lost faith in the NHS. They have shared them because they believe the NHS can and should be better than this.

So I end with a plea that we never describe corridor care as the new normal, because there is nothing normal about receiving IV antibiotics during chemo in a corridor. There is nothing normal about waiting 19 hours on a trolley. There is nothing normal about you losing your privacy, your dignity, and sometimes even your safety, simply because there is nowhere else to go. The NHS was founded on the belief that every person matters. We need

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to make that happen once again. Rebecca Long-Bailey. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and huge thanks to the hon. Member and huge thanks to the hon. Member for Tooting, for her brilliant speech and for the work that she does most weeks and doesn't speak does most weeks and doesn't speak loudly enough about it, in my opinion. Now my mum has been rushed to A&E twice in the last two months to A&E twice in the last two months and I've been with her and the paramedics were amazing.

The hospital staff were absolutely hospital staff were absolutely amazing but nothing prepared me for what I witnessed. Trolley after trolley backed up along corridors as hospital staff and family members of those visiting patients within A and E hurriedly wandered up and down, trying to cause as little as disruption as they possibly could, I saw staff trying to pull across a curtain halfway down the corridor to provide some semblance of dignity to those vulnerable patients who were trying to use bedpans. But it was futile.

With a number of people walking up and down. It was harrowing, and I can only describe it as something that you would see in a war zone, not in modern Britain. And I asked the staff, is it always like this? And they said, yes, it comes and goes. When it gets busy, it gets worse at weekends. But ultimately we don't have enough beds and we don't have enough staff to be able to cope with this level of pressure. I also heard similar stories from my constituents.

I'll just give you one today. An 80 year old who attended A&E with his frail wife, spent 15 hours in A&E, eight in a wheelchair, the rest on a trolley in a corridor. And this is not just a symptom of winter pressures, it's the visible sign of a healthcare system that's been stretched beyond breaking point by years of political decisions. For years we saw hospital beds disappear, staff vacancies grow, social care, neglected, community health services hollowed out, and local authority budgets slashed.

And the consequences were entirely predictable. And now we've got patients who are well enough to leave hospital but have nowhere to go. We've got emergency departments overflowing with wait times that no sick person should ever have to endure. And we've got people being treated in places that were never designed to deliver health care, and no one should pretend that this can be fixed overnight. But if we're honest, we know that we've got to act fast. Emergency departments are still operating beyond safe capacity, and people remain stuck in hospital because social care, community services, mental health support and general practice still don't have the capacity they need.

So if we want to end corridor care, we've got to deal with its root causes, not just the consequences, because it doesn't just begin when someone arrives at A&E. It begins when they can't get a GP appointment, when mental health support isn't there, when local authorities can't provide a care package, it begins when care can't happen at home. Community nurses who should be visiting vulnerable patients regularly can't because they are stretched beyond breaking point. And there's lots of talk about virtual wards, hospital grade care at home.

It sounds brilliant, but the fact is the system doesn't have the staff capacity to deliver it. So we need a properly funded long term workforce plan that delivers fair pay, expands education and apprenticeships, improves retention and ensures that we have safe staffing standards and gives frontline staff a real voice in how services are designed. It also means delivering, finally, a national care service that brings care back under public ownership and control, and delivers a universal entitlement to care based on need, not ability to pay, which is publicly accountable, properly funded and built around people's needs, not the fragmented marketized provision that we see at the moment.

And it also means investing in community nursing, neighbourhood health teams, rehabilitation services and mental health so that fewer people reach crisis and more people can leave hospital safely when they're ready. And it means taking prevention seriously, too, because every pound spent improving housing, reducing child poverty, cleaning up our air, and supporting healthier communities strengthens public health, and it saves many more pounds further down the line. Now, our NHS was founded on a simple principle healthcare should be based on need, not the ability to pay, and corridor care betrays that principle.

So we need to see our government restore the promise that when someone is at their most vulnerable, our National Health Service will be there for them. Not in a corridor, not in a trolley, but with the compassion, privacy and care that every person deserves. Thank you.

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Rebecca Paul. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker and firstly, I just.

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and firstly, I just. Wanted to. Say a big thank you to the hon. Lady for Tooting. I think this is a really important think this is a really important topic, and I don't think there's been enough focus on it in the last few years. And and her speech was very powerful. And I also think the hon. Member for Salford made really important points about corridor important points about corridor care not being something that happens in a silo. There is this broader system of things that are going wrong.

So we do need to look broader on this. So I feel strongly about this issue because I've seen the shocking reality for myself in my constituency at East Surrey Hospital and also in Saint Helier Hospital, which is outside of my constituency, but that serves some of my constituents. So in those hospitals, patients being cared for, they're being cared for in spaces never designed for clinical treatment, and staff are trying their best to do their jobs in entirely difficult and impossible circumstances.

And I really cannot imagine how upsetting it must be to go into hospital with a serious medical problem, only to spend hours or more on a trolley surrounded by noise and footfall, without any sort of privacy and denied basic dignity. In fact, I saw one example of a patient that was near the automatic doors that were effectively opening and shutting every time someone walked past them. It's just not dignified or appropriate in any shape or form. So. And how can it be right that doctors are forced to discuss private medical matters with patients in public hallways, or even attempt examinations and treatment without the facilities they need close at hand? And to be really clear, all the staff I met on my visits were doing the best they could in extremely difficult circumstances.

The problem was not down to their lack of either commitment or compassion. It was a system operating without enough physical space to meet the excessive demand now placed upon it. And the previous Secretary of State did promise to eliminate corridor care by the next general election in 2029. So I think what we need to understand is how that is going to be addressed. I think we all accept this is not an easy thing to solve, but it would be good to understand what measures and steps will be taken to address this big issue.

And the crux crux of the issue appears to be sort of around hospital flow. So emergency departments cannot move patients into wards when beds are full and beds remain occupied, when people who are medically fit to leave cannot access the care, rehabilitation or support they need outside of hospital. Delayed discharge therefore, remains part of the problem. Without sufficient social care capacity, community service and intermediate care, hospitals cannot safely discharge discharge patients. But at Saint Helier in particular, there is another, more fundamental issue,
19:16
Michael Shanks Portrait Michael Shanks MP (Rutherglen, Labour)
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which is that of physical space. The hospital is trying to offer a modern service in buildings, which the trust itself says are no longer the trust itself says are no longer fit for purpose. Much of the estate is older than the NHS itself. Staff contend with leaking roofs, contend with leaking roofs, flooding, damp mould and buildings which are difficult to keep at suitable temperature. Those suitable temperature. Those conditions make it harder to provide safe care and place still more pressure on staff who are more pressure on staff who are already overstretched, and one example of the type of challenge faced is related to the women's health block, which is currently a big issue.

Routine testing has identified low levels of Legionella and Pseudomonas in the water supply, while filters have been installed and regular testing commences. Commences. This highlights the fact that these measures are not a sustainable, long term solution, given the age and complexity of the building's water system, so this is hugely disappointing for patients and staff, particularly considering the hard work that has gone into improving the hospital's women's health services. And this is why I strongly support the planned new specialist emergency care hospital in Sutton to be delivered alongside significant investment to modernize both Saint Helier and Epsom hospitals.

The new hospital would bring together major emergency care, acute medicine, critical care, care and emergency surgery in modern facilities designed around the needs of patients and staff, whilst crucially leaving 85% of services at the existing hospital site. So this is exactly the sort of investment urgently needed to reduce overcrowding and end the indignity of patients being treated in corridors. Yet we have seen a delay to the start of construction back to 2033, and I would I would urge the government to reconsider that timeframe, as I think that will be an important part of helping towards addressing the challenge that we face with

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Corridor Care. Thank you. After which, the speed limit

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will drop to three minutes after. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I would like to thank my hon. and I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting for bringing this important matter to the House today and for talking about it so eloquently with her about it so eloquently with her experiences on the front line. Few issues speak to the state of our National Health Service more than National Health Service more than this one. And since being elected, my inbox and advice surgeries have been inundated with heartbreaking and frankly harrowing stories from my constituents in Gillingham and Rainham, who have either themselves experienced care in a hospital corridor or have witnessed the experience of loved ones.

We know that in May alone there were more than 90,000 instances of patients receiving care in clinically inappropriate settings. That's almost 3000 people every day across our nation. Patients in their most vulnerable hour, stripped of privacy and dignity, left without a call bill, or even sometimes access to a toilet. To give members some examples of the cases that have been raised with me, one constituent wrote to say that their mother was on end of life care, was treated in a corridor.

I cannot even begin to imagine how distressing that must have been. Another report on how she was treated in a single patient cubicle, stripped of its bed and fitted with six chairs. Hearing other people's medical history, watching their cannulas being inserted and harrowingly witnessing a confused elderly man beg for his daughter. I do look to the members opposite. Unfortunately, not many of them are here today when talking about this, because exactly how and when talking about exactly how we got here, the normalization of these practices over 14 years of conservative government has brought us to this point.

Indeed, it was under their watch that 12 hour waits in A&E rose 20 fold, and Lord Darzi's report lays it all bare. We inherited a health service in a critical condition, broken by over a decade of underinvestment.

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Would my honourable. I'd like to thank my hon. Friend for giving way and it is important to recognise and it is important to recognise this wider legacy in my own area. In reading we are waiting for a new hospital to be built. One was hospital to be built. One was promised by the last government but no funding was provided and there are very real world implications of are very real world implications of continuing under old buildings such as the state of our A and E, so I do appreciate my hon.

Friend

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raising this, and I look forward to providing further details. Thank my friend for that point. And he raised a really very important issue. But yet, while care was rising in our hospitals, the previous government did not count the numbers. And I do pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North, who as Health Secretary, chose to publish the official data because how can you fix what you cannot measure? And I do welcome steps taken by the government to turn the tide on the mess that was inherited.

Millions of extra appointments delivered, waiting lists brought down from record highs, and the commitment to end corridor care by 2029. But corridor care does not begin in the corridor itself, as many here today have noted, it begins with the hospital bed that cannot be freed. The lack of investment in the wider landscape and the lack of support in our communities. This January, the data suggested that 1 in 10 NHS beds were occupied by people who were medically fit to leave, but have no safe place to go, a failure that cost the state £2.7 billion a year.

And for some of our constituents, their lives could be.

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Very much for giving way. My mother, who is 94, who was fit and healthy, fell and fractured her collarbone, went in the same day and was medically discharged. But and was medically discharged. But because there was no care support for her, she was then in hospital for a week bed blocking. Then, for a week bed blocking. Then, because of the quality of care that she received when she came out, she ended up with a very severe urinary ended up with a very severe urinary tract infection and sepsis, and then stayed in for six weeks in hospital, which cost, I mean, obviously cost my mother a lot, but costs the NHS a huge amount of money.

Would she agree that that

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the problem is one of the problems is adult social care and we need to fix it. The hon. Member and she makes a

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The hon. Member and she makes a very powerful point. And I will come on to the point about adult social care. At the moment, we simply cannot attend and corridor care at the front door of the hospital when the back door remains jammed shut. So whilst I welcome the steps taken to reform adult social care. £3.7 billion funding boost for local authorities, it is boost for local authorities, it is clear that we must go further. I eagerly await Baroness Case's Independent Commission on Adult Social Care.

However, I am concerned that the terms of reference of the review call for recommendations to be implemented in a phased way over a decade. This simply is not fast enough. Social care reform must work in lockstep with NHS reform. A commission reporting in 2026 and 2028, with implementation stretched over a decade beyond that, would not be able to enact the scale of change needed to meet our targets, and I would urge the government that we move at pace on this. Lastly, I will not take any further interventions.

Thank you. Lastly, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to just pay tribute to the nurses, doctors and staff that keep Medway Hospital in my constituency of Gillingham and Rainham running in this House. We all receive correspondence from frustrated members of the public regarding the state of our NHS. However, it is the staff that carry the moral injury of apologising shift after shift for conditions that they did not create.

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Here I have a correction to make. Back to four minutes. Speaking limit. We found some more time. Iqbal Mohammed.

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Iqbal Mohammed. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting on securing this debate. Very, very important points debate. Very, very important points have been made to in the debate until now, and I'm going to just skip through some of the important points to reinforce the message and bring forward a issues raised by my constituents directly with me. What we've heard is what was once regarded as an exceptional state of affairs in the NHS has become so commonplace that Parliament is now debating it as a national issue in its own right.

We've heard about the lack of investment and the redirection of resources, and the sort of compounding of this issue over the many years of the previous government, and I do acknowledge and recognize the efforts made by the current government to try and address this, as well as many other challenges in the NHS, and I congratulate their efforts to bring down waiting lists by by many, many thousands. And my constituents appreciate that. We heard that more and more patients are being treated away from clinical and sterile places, corridors, cupboards and other places not designed for treatment, and they are being denied their privacy, dignity and adequate support.

One doctor described patients dying because they could not access appropriate clinical areas in time. And this is not what we would class as jewel in the Crown public services, which the NHS is, and we all across this House want to restore the NHS back to being the world class free at the point of care service for every single person in our country. For many years, hospitals under pressure often managed overcrowding by keeping patients in ambulances outside emergency departments while they waited to be handed over and moved into clinical areas.

And we rightly recognise that resulted in ambulance waiting times going through the roof and many patients not receiving the emergency paramedic assistance that they clearly required. And yet, under the previous government, that issue was just displaced from holding patients inside ambulances to moving them into the building of the hospital and freeing up the ambulance to go and and serve other patients. So one of the root causes and an engineer, I'm not a medical doctor, but I'm a scientist and an engineer.

And what we know, and it's obvious is that the 40 hospitals that were promised under the previous government, we know not all of them were new, but even the ones that were to be refurbished and expanded, those projects didn't get delivered. And we similar to prison spaces, we lack the number of beds that our country needs in the NHS to provide safe and dignified care for every patient that seeks treatment. So. One of my constituents wrote to me, she went into hospital, Catherine with her husband.

She waited in a corridor for five hours, but she saw many elderly patients with no relatives or friends with them. We had who had been waiting there for many hours before she arrived, and nobody was able to look after them or offer them water, and they had to keep asking for water for other patients. And this kind of experience will exacerbate somebody's medical condition and and increase the demand on the NHS. So we've, we've heard the, the, the asks from the hon.

Lady who brought the petition.

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Order, order, Sarah Hall. Thank you, Madam. Deputy Speaker.

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Deputy Speaker. Let's be clear from the beginning. Corridor care is unacceptable. No patient should be unacceptable. No patient should be treated in a corridor. No family should watch a loved one receive care without the privacy and the dignity that they deserve. And no dignity that they deserve. And no member of our brilliant NHS staff should be put in the impossible position of delivering care in an environment that they know is not right. I know how deeply my constituents in Warrington South feel about this, and hardly a week goes by without someone contacting me about their experience of Warrington Hospital.

They tell me about the kindness of the staff. Despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Others tell me about the length of time that their loved ones have been waited to be seen, and those and those figures are reflected, sorry, those experiences are reflected in those figures. In May this year, Warrington Hospital recorded the second worst 12 hour A&E performance in the entire country. Those figures are deeply concerning and it would be wrong of me to stand here today and pretend otherwise. But if we only talk about A&E waiting times, we miss the bigger picture.

Corridor care doesn't begin in a corridor. It begins when patients are medically fit to leave hospital, but the care or support they need at home is not yet in place. It begins with patient flow slows down, leaving emergency departments carrying pressures that they were never designed to absorb. It begins when a town like Warrington grows significantly without infrastructure keeping up. Yes.

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I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I absolutely agree with her that it's not about fixing the her that it's not about fixing the problem at the front door, but it's fixing the problem at the back door. Does she agree with me that closer Does she agree with me that closer integration of health and social care is part of the answer to enabling that flow through hospitals out into the community? And I hope during the summing up, that the Minister might also that the Minister might also consider carefully my amendment to the health Bill, and I hope my hon.

Friend might also look at that on

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health and care integration. Thank you. I thank my hon. Friend, I absolutely agree. I think Friend, I absolutely agree. I think the NHS system as a whole is very fragmented, and that lack of connectivity is a big issue, social care being a core component of that,

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care being a core component of that, and that needs to be a priority going forward. We should give way. Yes. I thank her for giving way

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I thank her for giving way because of course, we must fix the back door and help people get out of hospital quicker as well. But of hospital quicker as well. But there is also a challenge with the front door, with too many people feeling that they need to go to secondary care for health treatment. Isn't that why it's so important that we fix the foundations of the NHS by having that shift to community treatment, so that fewer people feel that they have to go to a hospital in the first place.



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I think my absolutely agree with that also, and I will touch upon that in a second as well, specifically with Warrington as an example. I'm pleased that our local trust has already taken steps and is rightly treating corridor care is rightly treating corridor care and waiting times as a priority, but there is more to do. That's why I've been working closely with our local NHS Ministers and Cheshire local NHS Ministers and Cheshire and Merseyside ICB to move beyond talking about the problem and to start changing how urgent and start changing how urgent and emergency care works in Warrington.

Together with our local trust, I've developed a three part pragmatic plan to improve health services for our town. Given the pressure on A&E and waiting times, the first priority is clear for us. A new urgent treatment centre for Warrington. In April, I was pleased to announce that proposals have moved forwards, with architects beginning the initial design work, and since then the proposal has moved forward again and detailed design and site survey work is now underway. An urgent treatment centre in Warrington means families would not have to travel out of borough for things like minor injuries, sprains, cuts, burns, infections or a child with a fever who needs checking over.

Conditions like these can still be serious, but they do not need the full resources of an emergency department set up for life threatening situations like heart attacks, strokes and major trauma. An urgent treatment centre would help free up space in A&E for the sickest patients and improve the experience for others by helping them to get the right care in the right place. So easing pressure in A&E is the first step, but it is not the whole answer. Part two of my plan is about moving routine appointments, diagnostics and planned care into the community so people can be treated closer to home, and the hospital can focus on the patients who need the most specialist care.

But there is one issue that none of us can ignore, and that is the hospital itself. People back home know that we need a new hospital. They see it when they go to A&E and they visit relatives and staff feel it every day. Much of the site was built in a different century for a different population and a very different NHS. We urgently need a new hospital. There is absolutely no question about that. Warrington. Much to the deep disappointment, Warrington was never included in the previous government's so-called new hospital programme, despite warm words hinting to the contrary.

So that brings me to the third part of my plan modernising and replacing outdated hospital facilities built in phases with vital. While vital services continue to run. When I was elected, I said I would be honest about the challenges in front of us. Yes, Warrington needs the new hospital, but it also needs a proper plan and funding behind it, not just empty promises. So my approach is a pragmatic one. We must ease the immediate pressures today, build better services around the hospital tomorrow and put Warrington in the strongest possible position for investment in the years ahead.

That's what I'm fighting for and I will keep challenging where challenge is needed. I will keep working with our local NHS where partnership is needed, and I will keep putting Warrington South first until we get this right, because my residents, in their time of need and our

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excellent NHS staff deserve better. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I. Thank the hon. Member for

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Thank the hon. Member for Tooting for bringing this incredibly important debate. I've heard from literally dozens of my heard from literally dozens of my constituents about why this issue is so important. They've told me their individual stories about their individual stories about elderly relatives stuck in corridors, and the terrible effect that's had on their treatment and that's had on their treatment and care and health outcomes. And I've heard from staff in my local hospital sharing exactly the same concerns about the conditions in which they are forced to work.

Patients universally tell me how

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proud they are of the NHS, how Much. They value the incredible.

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Much. They value the incredible. They care they get at the hands of the people who keep it going. And they universally tell me that they universally tell me that corridor K corridor care is shameful and should not continue. I raise this directly with the chief raise this directly with the chief executive of my local hospital, Hereford Hospital, just recently in our regular catch up, and I was to our regular catch up, and I was to hear that in Hereford, they're not just aiming to meet the government's targets of ending corridor care by 2029.

We locally have a target of ending corridor care by this autumn. I am really pleased that it has been prioritised so much locally, and I will be keeping a careful eye out to ensure that that happens. But I wanted to raise a particular issue that's been touched on by many colleagues across the House this afternoon, and that is the integral relationship between the NHS, what happens in our hospitals and the social care system. We simply cannot fix the problem of corridor care unless we fix the problem of social care.

For too many years, for decades, in fact, social care has been a political football kicked down the road by governments of all stripes. Because it is difficult. We have to grasp this nettle. We cannot. We simply cannot fix the NHS unless we fix social care. And in fact, Lord Darcy said exactly that same thing himself. But sadly, we have not seen the attention given to fixing social care that is needed. Yes, we have the Casey Commission. I value it very much.

I'm very pleased with the work that has been done by Baroness Casey. But there is insufficient political effort being put into it. It took nine months until we had the first cross-party meeting that the previous Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that he was going to call. We've only just recently had the second. We must put our shoulders to the wheel collectively to fix the challenges of social care, to have the difficult conversations about how we will fund it, because it does need funding, we do need those political conversations, and we need to find consensus because unless we address the issues at the back door, that mean that too many people are stuck in hospital when they would be better cared for elsewhere, better for them and their health, certainly better for the national Budget, because it would be cheaper and better for our outcomes.

Overall, it is shocking to know that the Royal College of Emergency Medicine calculates that 15,000 excess deaths happened just last year because of corridor care. This is utterly shocking. Should not be taking place in our country today. So I urge the Health Minister and her colleagues as strongly as possible. Please, can we have the same level of attention to fixing social care as to fixing the NHS, and let us all across this House put that effort into. It is notable that health and social care.

Oral questions. There's normally one question on social care and. 19 on health. We must redress the balance. Collectively putting that focus in to fix social care and thereby fixing corridor care. Thank

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you. Madam Deputy Speaker. A number of constituents who work as nurses of constituents who work as nurses in the A&E department at Saint Helier Hospital contacted me and asked me to come to see for myself what they were dealing with. They asked me to come late on a Monday asked me to come late on a Monday morning rather than on a Saturday night or Sunday night, as I had anticipated. What I saw was deeply troubling. Around 250 patients were coming through the department every day.

Elderly people were being cared for on trolleys out of nurse sight lines. But what really struck me was the staff packs of staff wandering around the A&E without anywhere to do their job, from, not able to do their paperwork, sit near their patients or monitor anything. But corridor care does not begin in the corridor. It begins long before a patient ever reaches A and E. For years, community services and alternatives have gradually disappeared. The walk in centre at the Wilson Hospital in Mitcham, which once treated patients every day until midnight.

Even Christmas Day is gone out of our GP services have been reduced. Those patients have not disappeared. They are all now going to Saint Helier. If we want fewer people waiting in our overcrowded emergency department, we must invest in the services that prevent them needing to be there in the first place, particularly in communities like mine, where people are more likely to live with long term health conditions and greater health inequalities. An A&E department cannot function in isolation.

It depends on having the services, capacity and infrastructure around it to keep patients flowing through the hospital. That's why I have spent years campaigning for Saint Helier. I am delighted that NHS London announced up to £57 million to expand and modernize St Helier's emergency department, but it can't be the end. Saint Helier needs renewal. Only days later, there was an announcement that the disrepair in the women's services meant that it would have to close. I am delighted that the chief executive of the trust has said that those services will return, but the situation is nevertheless a stark reminder of what happens when hospitals are expected to serve growing populations from ageing buildings that have been allowed to deteriorate over decades, decades.

Corridor care never should never become normal in our NHS. My constituents deserve a Saint Helier hospital that is properly equipped to care for them when they need it most, and that is what I am

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determined to continue to fight for. Order! Order! I will now announce the result of today's announce the result of today's deferred divisions on the draft Children's Wellbeing and Schools Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. Establishment of Schools Consequential Amendments Regulations 2026. The eyes were 369. The nose were 102. To the ayes have it. The ayes have it on the draft it. The ayes have it on the draft supply of machinery, safety amendment, etc. and the EU machinery, regulation, enforcement, etc.

in Northern Ireland Regulations 2026, the eyes were 317, the nose were 103. So the ayes have it, the ayes have it, and the draft town and country planning discharge of local planning authority functions. England Regulations 2026. The eyes were 283. The nose were 182. So the ayes have it, the ayes have it. And Yasmin Qureshi.

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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I congratulate the hon. Member for Tooting on securing this debate and Tooting on securing this debate and the tremendous work she does in this area, both in this House and this area, both in this House and as emergency doctor in the NHS. Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to begin not with statistics, but with begin not with statistics, but with something that happened to me last year. At about 9 p.m. in the evening, I stood up to go to watch evening, I stood up to go to watch a film with my family, but suddenly felt faint and nauseous.

Home blood pressure machine showed that my reading with over 200. I went to an A&E. I was seen and a CT scan was arranged. Then I sat on a chair in what was essentially a public waiting room, where I stayed for the entire day. I had my scan, my blood test. Everything was based in that room. It was only in the evening later that I was managed to get a bed on acute unit, so I spent 24 hours in effectively what you would call a corridor.

The next day I had an MRI and then went on to see a neurologist and a stroke team. Let me be absolutely clear. I do not blame the hospital and I do not blame the staff. They have a professional and compassionate throughout, but they are working under a chronic pressure in a system that simply does not have space or the beds to care for patients as they would wish. The first official NHS England Day on Corridor Care, published last month, showed that the Royal Bolton Hospital, an average of 13 patients a day, were treated in accordance spaces in May.

I welcome the honesty of the trust chief nursing officer, who said that even when one patient is cared for in this way is far too many, and I commend the Trust's commitment to eliminate the practice ahead of the National Shrine Framework. But Bolton is not an outlier. It reflects a national emergency across the United Kingdom, and about 2200 patients experienced this just in any day in the month of May. While many hundreds were treated in unsuitable spaces. Nearly 148,000 patients waited 12 hours or more in an ER in that month, the worst record in May, and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine warns that the official figure may still understate the true scale.

This is not just undignified, it is deadly. The Royal College estimates that in 2025 alone, there were over 15,800 excess deaths associated with long waits in emergency department. The uncorked study found that quarter care leads to longer hospital stays and a greater risk of death. There are many reasons for this delay, and many of them have been mentioned. But bed occupancy is running at 93%, far above the safe level of 85%, while some 13,000 beds are occupied. Patients who are medically fit to leave but cannot be discharged for want of social and community care.

So I ask the Minister, I know the government has spent a lot of money in the NHS, such as getting rid of the sorry ending the doctors dispute, but will they now commit to a full commitment to ensure that corridor care does not occur in our country, and that no patient in United Kingdom, or in Bolton or Walkden or anywhere else, spends a day of acute illness on a chair in a

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waiting room. The staff of our NHS deserve better, as do our constituents. Yes, Doctor Simon. Yes.

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Yes. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I thank the Member for Tooting for securing this debate and for for securing this debate and for her years long work on in A&E and in Saint George's. I think what in Saint George's. I think what this shows us is emergency care is in is in crisis in the NHS. And in is in crisis in the NHS. And actually the corridor care is just an overspill. And because we can't cope, and that's because we're doing a few things wrong that we could remedy.

I, I work as a GP, I did a, I did a surgery last Friday and I actually tried to admit someone and I rang up and they said, well, I wouldn't send them up at the moment. We've got a six hour wait. And I realised that we haven't got an operable emergency care service quite often. And this is something that we really need to, to work on. So I thought I'd just very briefly go through a few causes and then a few remedies. And the remedies could be clinical as well as organisational.

So I just wanted to go through that. First of all, we've got an ageing population. Frailty is increasing in Stroud alone. In four years, the number of over 90 year olds went up 29%, just in a very short period of time. So we've got an enormous cohort of very elderly and frail people as as we've heard, we've got lack of lack of beds due to delayed discharge. I won't say any more about that. And I think thirdly, we've got lack of care beds in the community to enable discharge at the moment.

There's also a lack of capacity in GP surgeries for on the day appointments. Now, in my surgery, we have 45% of our appointments are on the day, but we obviously need to increase that so we can absorb the demand in primary care. And the

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other thing I would say yes, certainly. Giving way. I've sat through here through the debate, and I don't believe that community don't believe that community pharmacy or independent prescribing have been mentioned. I wonder, with his experience as a GP, whether he his experience as a GP, whether he would endorse changes that the government is making to maximise the use of pharmacists to deal with some of the pressures you're

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some of the pressures you're talking about facing GPS? Can I can I thank my hon. Friend for that? And that is absolutely true. And I think we need to look at all these ways of reducing demand on, first of all, GPS and therefore on A&E departments. And that's really what my speech is totally involved with. And I think pharmacies have a really good role to play. Can I also say there's another thing here, and this was a notice in the doctors strike.

If you get senior clinicians on the front door of A&E, they're actually make the department much quieter because they make decisions quickly. They take a bit more clinical risk because they're more experienced. So maybe we need to rearrange how care works in A&E departments so we don't get a backlog. So the remedies partly were beginning to turn the NHS around. And I think that's very clear from working in it and also from what my patients say, things are beginning to change.

We need to do a lot more, but we are investing a lot of money in it and we mustn't say that things are getting worse because I believe they are slowly getting better. We need to fix social care, as so many people have said. And can I say that? Should I think we could have a system where the community was responsible for a patient as soon as they were ready for discharge, and they would perhaps have to pay for the patient to remain in hospital to encourage them to pull the patient out of hospital.

Also, we must stop agency working in social care because that is causing a huge amount of stress to carers, and we need to make caring based on a community model so that carers cover small areas and don't have huge travel times. We've got to improve GP access and I think we should make A and E, so that only sees accidents and real, genuine medical emergencies. So. So we need a little bit increase in funding for primary care. And also I think we need GPS to be assessing emergencies up till 10:00 at night to relieve the pressure on A and E.

The other couple of things I've said about the getting more experienced doctors earlier on in the process. We also need to invest in scanners. So many people in A&E are waiting for tests before they go home. And also as. As the hon. Lady said, mental health assessments are not appropriate in A&E. We need to have mental health assessment units and I do believe the government is bringing those in. So a few clinical factors. Perversely, we need to not to be so risk averse.

For example, admitting a patient for a risk of falling is ridiculous because you're more likely to fall in hospital than you are in your own home. So that's one of the things dementia fluctuates. So just because someone's been a slight increase in confusion doesn't mean they need a whole batch of tests. We need to we need to treat it more holistically. Polypharmacy. That's old. People on loads of drugs causes about 10% of admissions. Let's reduce polypharmacy. Good end of life care.

50% of people with cancer die in hospital. And we need to reduce that because most of them want to die at home. And many of those patients on in corridor care are with that. So every older person, I believe, needs an advance care plan. So when they become ill, we know whether they want to go to hospital or not. And I think that's incredibly important in, in, in pathways of care. So, Madam Deputy Speaker, corridor care didn't appear overnight and it won't disappear overnight.

But by rebuilding the NHS from the community upwards, fixing social care and investing where it matters most, we can ensure that no patient is left waiting for care in a

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hospital corridor ever again. I'm now to call another doctor. It's easy to see a doctor here and

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It's easy to see a doctor here and get a GP appointment, really, isn't it, doctor Peter Pinsley. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. So it is true. It is true. I am another doctor I qualified in in 1982, long before probably my distinguished colleague from distinguished colleague from Tooting was even born. But I thank her very much for bringing this very important debate. So I just for context, when I was a registrar in 1988, the NHS had 300,000 beds. By the time I was a senior consultant in 2020, we had 140,000 beds. That's less than half the number of beds we had.

When I was a registrar, I recall the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield had rows of Nightingale wards with crisp white linen stretching as far as you could see, down to the end of the ward, and there were always beds. There was no such thing as corridor care. That's right. So just to echo what my distinguished general practitioner colleague said was, we have an elderly woman. She goes off her legs. It's 5:00 on a Friday evening in February, the family called the general practitioner.

The answerphone says, dial 111. So the call handler triages her and advises 999. She arrives at the A&E at 9:00 in the evening. She's actually seen at one in the morning and she gets admitted because that's what happens if you're seen at one in the morning. Now, if we had a functioning community health service with more neighbourhood health services, that patient would probably have been visited by a GP, perhaps up till 10:00 at night, and a diagnosis of a urinary tract infection would have been made.

The patient would have been given an antibiotic, and somebody would have come to see the patient in the morning, who would probably have been a lot better by then was never admitted. So we can definitely reduce admissions if we think more carefully about how we treat patients in the community. Now, corridor care is actually an oxymoron. There should be no corridor care. And as we've heard, it happens when patients arrive in A&E, overwhelming the available cubicles and rooms, and the wards have no beds.

And we know that patients are sent to A&E because the GP system simply cannot cope. Now, I understand that the APPG on emergency medicine care found that 20% of major emergency departments were had patients being cared for on trolleys and chairs and corridors, and almost 80% of all the clinical clinical leads said said that patients were being harmed by corridor care. Now, my son is an A&E doctor, actually presently in London. He texted me shortly after I was elected.

He said, dad, bring that health secretary here right now so he can see what is going on. There were queues of trolleys and patients waiting in ambulances and trolleys in the car park. Now we know that many patients come to serious harm while waiting. And as my friend says, A&E means accident and emergency. That's what it's for now at West Suffolk Hospital in my constituency, Doctor Cameron, the chief executive, said that Corridor care had been sorted out through a whole hospital approach.

Everyone was thinking about patient flow planning, discharge early, involving social services, allied health professionals and the pharmacy. The West Suffolk Hospital simply refused to accept that corridor care was inevitable and I believe we should take the best of

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these ideas to the rest of the NHS. Andy McNay. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker,

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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and thank you to the for securing this debate and to all my esteemed colleagues for covering the issue colleagues for covering the issue so brilliantly and with such expertise. It allows me to be very brief. You'll be glad to hear and brief. You'll be glad to hear and focus down on Blackburn A&E, which has long been one of the busiest in the country. It serves East Lancashire and it's been one of the Lancashire and it's been one of the starkest examples of corridor care.

I could tell so many stories of constituents suffering indignities and poor care that are the inevitable consequence. Like a 70 year old lady with spinal cancer was stuck there for 72 hours. Or the young woman who was historical sexual abuse victim, physically shaking with fear, being left in a corridor surrounded by men. The 90 year old with dementia and double incontinence, reliance on her daughter to change and clean her. Desperate for privacy, comfort and reassurance. And I've been there myself, unable to walk after a fall, 13 hours overnight in a corridor that felt like a war zone next to an old lady who was in constant pain, fearful and alone, crying out for her family.

Just one voice amongst many. Corridor care at its best is undignified. At its worst, it's heartless, heartbreaking and cruel. It's normalization is a scandal, and one of the starkest examples of a health system failed and broken by Tory austerity. We must end it. And I'm pleased to say that in Blackburn we are now

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finally seeing progress. I will. Go away and talk about keeping

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Go away and talk about keeping people out, getting people out of hospital but also keeping people out of hospital. I spent years in and out of hospital as a teenager. and out of hospital as a teenager. I was one of the youngest people in Britain to have a hip replacement when I was in sixth form, the rehabilitation services I relied rehabilitation services I relied upon at the Royal Hospital were sadly closed by the last government. Does he agree with me that it's Does he agree with me that it's really important that we invest in those services to reopen, so when people leave hospital, they can stay out of hospital.



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And the investment in prevention and redoing, repairing a massive damage done by the previous government on on our health system was absolutely crucial, absolutely fundamental. So we're finally seeing progress in Blackburn, and seeing progress in Blackburn, and that's because of additional resources and support from NHS England. And the government's getting it right. First time getting it right. First time initiative East Lancs Hospital Trust and the leadership must be praised for this, have been working praised for this, have been working hard and with real focus to address the underlying drivers of corridor care, like safe and timely discharge and the presence of senior clinicians.

It's not about quick fixes but looking to end the practice for good so far. Waits for 12 hour plus have reduced by 18%. It means there's a long way to go, and myself and fellow East Lancashire MPs are working with the trust to challenge progress, but also argue for the resources they

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need to do their job. This I will. I'm grateful to. I'm grateful to

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I'm grateful to. I'm grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. We share the same local authority and both our constituents are affected both our constituents are affected by the corridor care crisis at the Royal Blackburn Hospital, which Royal Blackburn Hospital, which ranks seventh in A&E corridor care and fifth for Ward Corridor Care. and fifth for Ward Corridor Care. Despite the management, the executive executive team working extremely hard. Would my hon. Friend agree that with places like Blackburn with Darwen, with the highest level of deprivation and it also has the highest levels of health inequalities, therefore, one of the solutions is by having a targeted needs based funding system.



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A the crucial thing is we recognise the scale of the challenge and and work together to challenge and and work together to solve it. This needs to be a shared mission on behalf of our residents, our friends and our families. In a our friends and our families. In a year's time, I intend to be here, standing here, having us with us, ending together. Corridor care in ending together. Corridor care in Blackburn, A and E for good. And I hope the Minister and the Department of Health continue to Department of Health continue to share that commitment.

This is a moral imperative, and together we must deliver the care and dignity

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that our residents deserve. Yeah. Deputy.

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Deputy. Speaker, and thank you. To the. Member for Tooting for organising this debate. It's really, organising this debate. It's really, really important and very timely. One, it's a visible symptom corridor, care of the pressure our corridor, care of the pressure our NHS is under. According to age UK, the number of people experiencing the number of people experiencing corridor care has grown 563 fold since 2015. It's no longer a seasonal response to winter or summer pressures in Cornwall where I'm from, but it's all year round and this is true of Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust in my constituency, which includes Treliske, our only major acute hospital in Cornwall.

On any given day in May, 31 patients in arched were receiving corridor care in the emergency department and 16 on the wards. One clinician said to me that corridor care distresses patients, costs lives and demoralizes staff. Patients treated in temporary escalation spaces face a lack of privacy, dignity and limited access to those necessities like food, water and toileting. They experience worse outcomes as well. We've seen that the RCM estimated that there were 16,500 plus associated excess deaths related to stays of 12 hours or more before they were admitted.

We know that part of the root cause of the problem is a lack of bed space, and staff in hospitals, while overall for our performance has averaged at 45.8% so far this year, it's performance for patients admitted to hospital averages at 26.3%, so patients just aren't moving through the system quickly enough. Since this government came to power, there have been some welcome improvements, particularly in ambulance handover times. Our local ambulance trust has got much faster at moving patients from ambulances now, so they don't waste so much time sitting outside Ed.

But of course, moving patients faster can increase the queue in EDI and the need for the corridor care there. On any given day in May, 103 hospital beds were occupied by patients who were fit to leave, which represents over 15% of all general and acute beds within the trust. It's crucial that we address gaps in community and social care provision and strengthen the integration between hospitals and social care so these patients can come out faster, reducing the pressure.

The ten year plan committed to ending corridor care, and I welcome its emphasis. Part of that approach is strengthening coordination between the NHS, social care and voluntary sector. We have very good neighbourhood health teams in Cornwall and they're ahead of the game and their community health and wellbeing workers have proven to make a real impact on hospital admissions. The NHS is urgent and Emergency Care Plan does set out a number of other important measures to reduce corridor care, so internal discharge delays reducing internal discharge delays for more than 48 hours, investing £450 million in same day emergency care.

I welcome expansion of same day emergency care capacity at our community hospitals and the efforts that are being made by mobilising the third sector. However, that must be balanced with the fact that sending people home so early without proper rehab can increase the risk of them coming back, and then demands on the GP surgeries. Of course, Kernow CIC runs out of GPS, a one on one advice service and a line for less for clinicians to talk to paramedics. So that has led to some people not having to go into hospital.

And we do have a specialist falls car, which can help with nine call outs. Didn't stop people going into hospital when they fall. So much more could be done. There have been many suggestions. Corridor care, ultimately, though, needs to be treated as a system wide problem and looking again at the way we treat people at weekends, because closure over weekends can make such

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a difference. So, John Joseph. Thank you, Madam. Deputy Speaker.

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We need to continue to highlight the issue of corridor care as it puts a spotlight on the pressures puts a spotlight on the pressures facing the NHS. One of the first visit that I made after being elected to this House was to William Harvey Hospital in my constituency of Ashford. During my visit I was shown around A&E department where there were 19 patients being treated in corridors. Even in the summer months, when emergency departments are typically under less pressure.

This was deeply concerning. It demonstrated how, under the previous conservative government, corridor care became increasingly normalised. I have previously spoken in this House about the incident at the William Harvey Hospital last September, when a coffee shop had to be converted into an emergency ward to accommodate any patients. Because we run out of corridor. This was not an isolated incident, but part of a wider pattern caused by years of underinvestment and rising demand. NHS staff continue to provide outstanding care in difficult circumstances, often without the capacity, workforce or facilities they need.

One of the lessons we must learn from the failures of the previous conservative government is that health infrastructure must keep pace with the population growth. I recognise the need to build more homes to address the housing crisis that this government inherited, but we must ensure that there is sufficient capacity in GP surgeries, community health services and urgent care facilities. While schools and shops often come as part of a new housing development, healthcare infrastructure has too often been an afterthought. We need sufficient primary care capacity to prevent avoidable hospital visits and admissions, which can make care more likely.

Will my hon. Friend the Minister, set out what steps the government is taking to ensure that as new homes are built, health infrastructure, planning and investment keep pace. I welcome the government's commitment to end corridor care. By the end of this Parliament. We should never accept a situation in which hospital corridors become makeshift wards. No patient should receive treatment without privacy and dignity, and no member of staff should have to provide care in an environment that falls below the standards they strive to uphold.

Our constituents rightly expect to be treated in safe, appropriate and dignified settings locally. I was pleased by the announcement a few months ago that East Kent Hospitals, which covers the William Harvey, will be part of the new intensive recovery programme. I'm hopeful that this integrated. This targeted support will help tackle the significant challenges facing the trust, reducing waiting times, improving patient flow and ensuring that people across East Kent receive the timely, high quality care that they deserve. I hope the programme will help ease the pressures that have contributed to the corridor care, and I hope the Minister will give some update on the new intensive recovery programmes.

I also welcome the forthcoming opening of an upgraded same day emergency care unit at William Harvey, which I recently had the opportunity to visit, funded through the trust use of part of a £29 million investment from the Labour government. The unit will increase the capacity and help to relieve pressure across the hospital by enabling more patients to receive timely assessment and treatment. And I also welcome the recent announcement by the local ICB about the single neighbourhood provider, which the GPS services in our constituency are taking a proactive reach out to the frail patient, which will help patients not going to A&E.

The government has made important progress through additional investment, workforce expansion, improved discharge arrangements and targeted support for struggling trusts. Those steps should be welcomed, but this is more to do if the government is to fulfil its commitment to end the corridor care. It must continue to pursue reform with urgency and determination. Patients deserve.

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Better. Or. Amanda Martin. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to start by thanking my hon. Friend from Tooting for her service Friend from Tooting for her service and for bringing this debate. There is no clearer sign of the failure of the NHS under the Conservatives than the fact that corridor care than the fact that corridor care was allowed to become normal. Only a few weeks ago I was in the Queen Alexandra Hospital in my constituency, watching my dad being constituency, watching my dad being cared for in a corridor.

It brought home just how far standards have fallen, and no family should have fallen, and no family should have to experience that. Corridor care has real consequences, as we've heard today, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that in 2025 alone, more than 15,000 excess deaths associated with long waits in emergency departments. It's not just the physical impact on patients that is damaging the emotional impact on patients, on loved ones and on the NHS staff who come to work every day wanting to provide the care that their patients deserve, yet are too often forced to do so in impossible conditions, is degrading, undignified and should never have become an acceptable norm.

Madam Deputy Speaker, before I go further, I want to thank the incredible staff across Portsmouth NHS care and services from those working in hospital to our ambulance crews, GPS, pharmacists, community teams and carers. They continue to deliver outstanding care despite extraordinary pressures. Last winter it was an absolute privilege to spend a night shift with Nigel and Sam from our local ambulance service, seeing firsthand their professionalism, compassion and resilience only strengthened my admiration for everything they do, often in incredibly difficult circumstances, and I want to recognise the work already being done across Portsmouth to help access the right care, strengthening general practice and supporting people arrive at A&E with conditions that are not emergency.

To receive care elsewhere is helping ensure emergency department is there for those who need it most. That work matters and deserves recognition. So I want to thank Linda Stead and her team at the Ports of Primary Alliance Limited and Southampton Primary Care Alliances. I welcome the decision by the previous Health Secretary to ensure that NHS England has finally introduced a clear definition of corridor care and began publishing trust level data. We cannot solve a problem if refused, if we refuse to see it or refuse to measure it.

But sadly, the first set of figures make difficult reading for Portsmouth. In May this year, Portsmouth Hospital University NHS trust ranked eighth worst for corridor care on hospital wards and ninth worst in emergency departments. That is simply not good enough. I welcome the government's commitment to shift more care into the community, because preventing unnecessary admissions is essential if we are to reduce pressure on hospitals, because corridor care starts with a lack of community services. However, I remain deeply concerned by my integrated care boards approach and its failure to engage meaningfully with me.

The initial discussions on health hubs focused on potential sites. Yet astonishingly and not surprisingly, the proposed locations were all in parts of South. That is simply unacceptable. If we are serious about reducing health inequalities and improving access to care, these services must be available across the whole city. Yet, as with so many decisions affecting Portsmouth, residents in Portsmouth North are neglected and overlooked. To help me change this, will the Minister outline what expectations have been placed on integrated care boards to work constructively with local MPs? Of course, reducing emissions is only one part of the answer.

We must also improve patient flow through our hospitals. So I welcome today's announcements on a ten year capital plan for health and social care. Because buildings and modern facilities are important, if we're to move people from corridor to beds and from A&E to GPS. But too many remain in hospital because the social care support they need is simply not available, or because the pharmaceutical system is not fit for purpose. So will the Minister update the House on what further action is being taken to improve hospital discharge and tackle the pressures in social care and pharmaceutical services? I am proud that this government has already begun turning NHS around.

We have seen the fastest ambulance response times in five years. The shortest A&E waits for four years and the biggest fall in dissatisfaction with the NHS since 1998. But none of us should be satisfied. While patients are still receiving treatment in corridors, people in ports have deserved dignity when they need care. NHS staff deserve the resources and conditions to do their jobs and together we must ensure that

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corridor care becomes not the accepted reality of our NHS, but a thing of the past. Becky Cooper. Thank you.

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Thank you. Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this very timely, important debate to the timely, important debate to the chamber today. Corridor care, as we've heard, is one of the clearest signs of wider pressures across urgent and emergency care services, including rising demands, delayed discharge and constrained hospital discharge and constrained hospital capacity. In my remarks today, as so much has already been said, I just want to focus on a couple of areas. As the MP for a coastal community, I would like to make it very clear to the Minister that when we are looking at these pressures, there are additional pressures facing specific communities and coastal communities have tend to have older populations, poorer health outcomes.

And Worthing West does sit within one of England's coastal communities. And I can say to the House today that their population is older than average, even though I'm not older than average, frailty is increasing. Multiple long term conditions are common. Emergency admissions are correspondingly higher. Recruitment is harder in coastal communities, and deprivation does exist alongside affluence. All these things contribute to the pressures that we have discussed. This afternoon. We have University Hospitals Sussex, in my constituency of Worthing West and as we have discussed, NHS England's data is not completely useful in many instances, but it is the best that we've got.

So I have had a look and for University Hospital Sussex we have four emergency departments and across those four emergency departments they are seeing on average each day, 65 patients in their emergency department, corridor care service, 65 patients each day, and in their general and acute ward, they have corridor care for 39 patients each day. That is not insubstantial. We need to think about we've talked about the back door, and I really want to talk about the front door. You'd be surprised to hear that as a public health doctor, I want to say that prevention is a corridor care policy and that government needs to ensure investment in prevention and public health is recognised as part of the solution to reducing corridor care.

We have got to reduce the flow of avoidable illness into our hospitals in the first place, and that means tackling smoking, poor housing, air pollution, obesity, loneliness, poverty and delayed access to community care. Corridor care begins long before a patient reaches accident and emergency. On that point, I will.

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Thank you, thank you, and I very much thank my hon. Friend for giving way. My local hospital, giving way. My local hospital, Basildon, is one of the 40th worst trusts for delivering hospital care. trusts for delivering hospital care. And in regards to what she was just saying there, will she agree with me that having not having the right me that having not having the right community equipment, community disability aids and also adaptations to homes can quite often be a leading cause of often be a leading cause of discharge? And will she delayed discharge and will.

She urged the Minister to look at this when they commit to ending corridor care by

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the end of this Parliament. I thank. My hon. Friend for those excellent remarks, and I absolutely excellent remarks, and I absolutely agree with her wholeheartedly. So, as I've said, corridor care is a symptom, and our challenge is to symptom, and our challenge is to identify the underlying causes rather than simply measuring the symptoms. It is what happens when symptoms. It is what happens when demand delayed discharge, workforce shortages, social care pressures and preventable ill health collide and preventable ill health collide in one place.

Stakeholders that I speak to, and I'm sure colleagues across the House speak to, repeatedly called for public health investment, stronger community services, social care capacity and prevention of avoidable admissions. Every preventive stroke, every smoking cessation intervention, every warm home, every child who grows up healthier, every patient supported early in the community is one less avoidable admission into an already overcrowded emergency department, such as my hon. Friends from Tooting Bec.

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Hear, hear. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting for securing this important debate. The previous government wreaked havoc on the NHS, with waiting times being at an all time high even before Covid-19 hit time high even before Covid-19 hit a bruised and battered system, underinvestment and undelivered underinvestment and undelivered promises saw corridor care become commonplace with its subsequent indignity, risk and a clear visual demonstration of a system on its knees, this Labour government is determined to act.

The Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2526 provided over £450 million of investment in urgent and emergency care, additional millions of pounds of capital investment reaching £1.9 billion of capital funding over the next four years, will help deliver it now. Links between hospitals and social care are clear and critical, which is why it is working to implement a national care service and initiatives such as the first ever fair pay agreement for adult social care staff. Watford General in my constituency is on the new hospitals programme, but previously endlessly delayed under the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government and subsequent conservative governments after that.

But under this Labour government it is seeing tangible action in preparation for the rebuild. Now in my constituency, West Herts Hospitals Teaching Trust has worked incredibly hard to deal with the issue of corridor care, and I am delighted to say that it has. At Watford, General Corridor care has been eradicated altogether. How is it managed to achieve this remarkable achievement? They've not had a single incident of corridor care for six months. Well, firstly, they've taken a whole hospital approach to follow and making it everybody's business and therefore everybody's concern.

The trust states. The simple rule is we don't accept corridor care on our wards. We find other solutions. Now, secondly, they've embraced data, embedding it into everything that it does to manage the flow of patients. So real time data tools such as electronic bed management, e whiteboards and a digital command centre. Six key measures have been identified which staff are using and are easy to understand. And thirdly, partnership working. It couldn't tackle corridor care in A and E alone.

Care, a care coordination centre to reduce the ambulances coming into A&E. For those who don't need emergency treatment, a multidisciplinary team or MDT to advise paramedics where people should be treated, and close. Working with social care and treating people away from hospital, as is included in the NHS ten year plan. So in conclusion, I would like to place on record my thanks and admiration to the staff at the trust. Their hard work has paid off and is demonstrative of what can be achieved when working together as a team to deliver for their patients and population.



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Final backbench contribution James Nash. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I appreciate being called. And just I appreciate being called. And just before I begin my main speech, I do want to reference my hon. Friend from Worthing West. She mentioned from Worthing West. She mentioned coastal communities and she's absolutely right to do so. May I also reference rural communities because there are equally challenges in delivering healthcare challenges in delivering healthcare to those particular that particular demographic. Let me start with some good news for my constituents.

Last year, Nottingham University Hospitals was named among the ten most improved trusts in England for for our A&E performance and sixth nationally on 12 hour waits. That is not a small thing. It reflects genuine hard graft by staff at the Queen's Medical Centre and City Hospital, and it earned the trust a share of a £3 million reinvestment fund from NHS England. It sounds good, but I would be doing my constituents a disservice if I stood here and pretended that the job was done, because just over a week ago, on the 29th of June, NIH declared a critical incident after the recent extreme heat drove demand across the trust far beyond what its emergency department could safely absorb.

What's more, this was the fourth critical incident of the past year at its worst. In the latest incident, there were 188 patients in the emergency department and 20 ambulances queuing outside. Patients were experiencing lengthy waits on corridors and more people than expected were medically fit but unable to be discharged. I recently asked the government about this and the minister's response was clear. They said corridor care was, quote, unacceptable and should never become normal practice. But Madam Deputy Speaker, this shouldn't even need saying.

And it's only after 14 years of drift that it did. What matters now is action, and the government has for the first time published a national definition of corridor care and started daily reporting so that trusts can no longer hide the problem. And neither can we here in this place. That transparency, thankfully, is being backed by some new money. Over £450 million is going into urgent and emergency care capacity urgent and emergency care capacity this year alone, and £250 million of.

Capital funding is delivering 40 new and expanded urgent care sites across England. Locally. For my constituents, this means two things which I genuinely welcome confirmed funding for an expanded urgent treatment centre at Qmc, and a trust funded reconfiguration of the emergency department. Because our chief executive has found the money internally to get on with it now rather than wait. I was particularly pleased to be able to tell this to one of my constituents, Renee, after she contacted me to tell me about her experience in A and E as a lady in her 70s with a long established heart condition for which she has ongoing consultant care, she found herself after after a heart attack, spending nine hours waiting for care in A&E for a condition which should have been seen immediately nationally.

Madam Deputy Speaker, A&E waiting times are at their best level in five years, and elective waiting lists are at their lowest in three and a half years. That is progress, but it will ultimately count for nothing in Rushcliffe if a bad winter, a system failure or a staffing gap can still tip a good department into crisis extremely quickly. So, Madam Deputy Speaker, my ask of the Minister is simple keep the funding for urgent and emergency care. Keep the pressure on trust that are lagging behind, and keep listening to backbenchers who are hearing from this about from doctors and from constituents at our surgeries regularly.

Thank

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you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Right. Can we now come to wind ups? And I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Helen Morgan.

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Democrat spokesperson, Helen Morgan. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. And can I start by thanking the hon. Member for Tooting? Her opening speech was Tooting? Her opening speech was excellent, as I think we would have expected, given her unparalleled experience and knowledge in this experience and knowledge in this area. And as we've heard over and over again, our A&E departments are at breaking point. Ambulance at breaking point. Ambulance services have been overwhelmed. The corridor care data, which was finally released this last month, confirms the extent of this crisis well after the end of what we would consider to be the winter peak.

Corridor care is no longer a phenomenon confined to the winter months. It's a year round crisis, and I've no doubt that the recent heat waves will have put unbearable pressure on services yet again. The scale of the impact of corridor care on patients is huge. 36% of visitors to hospitals have seen care delivered in a corridor. A Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrats revealed that the average hospital trust now sees nearly 3000 patients wait more than 24 hours in A&E each year.

It's also extremely detrimental to staff. The Royal College of Physicians survey in 2025 found that 78% of doctors had provided care in a temporary space. In testimonies collected by the Royal College of Nursing, nursing staff described patients deteriorating unnoticed and suffering avoidable harm. They expressed their anxiety and demoralisation at the level of care they were able to give. Being unable to guarantee patient safety because corridors are unsafe for patients and they are unsafe for staff to staff are losing hope, and corridor care has become so normalised that one hospital advertised for dedicated corridor care nurse another, as we've heard, even created a makeshift ward in an on site Costa Coffee.

The government now owes it to patients and staff to make fixing this crisis an urgent priority. Even the release of corridor care data was a shambles, arriving late after months of the former Secretary of State paying lip service to transparency and delaying the publishing of the data. Concerns have already been raised over loopholes in the government's definition of corridor care, which anecdotal anecdotal evidence suggests have encouraged trusts to hide the true extent of the crisis, with treatment being pushed back into ambulances to avoid incidents labelled as corridor care.

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire Trust had no patients being treated in corridors, while ambulance crews were providing care in its car parks, according to a recent West Midlands Ambulance Service Board paper. Increasing ambulance handover times will not tackle the indignity of corridor care. It will only compound it and it will prevent the release of those ambulances to people with potentially life threatening conditions. Now the corridor care data, which is the best that we've got, revealed that a shocking 9000 incidences of corridor care took place in May alone.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine's recent report estimated that long waits caused at least 15,860 excess deaths in England in 2025, 15,860 excess deaths in 2025. All of the evidence is there. The Royal colleges have been sounding the alarm for years. Data and reports demonstrate the huge scale of this scandal. Countless individual stories remind us of the personal tragedies behind the numbers. One of my constituents, a carer for three adult sons, called after a truly awful experience last year.

His eldest son had collapsed on the stairs in the middle of the night after calling 999 and being told no ambulance was available for some time. My constituent drove his son to A&E himself with some difficulty, and only once his son had regained consciousness, they waited in A&E for 28 hours to then be putting a holding area for one and a half days before being transferred to a ward. Each of these numbers and cases is a person. Madam Deputy Speaker, it could be your child, an elderly relative or a vulnerable friend, each experiencing no privacy, no dignity and suffering poor outcomes.

So I'm looking forward to hearing the government's plan to resolve this crisis. Liberal Democrats have an action plan to fix our corridor care, and we believe hospital capacity is a key issue, and that this cannot be done without fixing social care. One of the biggest factors behind lack of capacity is the lack of social care. Baroness Casey's final report is not due until 2028, and I hope the Minister will be able to announce it. The Secretary of State will be able to bring this forward so that we can solve the social care crisis, because without those beds, people are either held outside in ambulances or provided on corridors, outside wards.

What we have suggested is that we would invest £1.5 billion to provide total capacity of 6000 more beds across the system. These would be provided through new staffed hospital beds, investment in safety net, social care beds, proper step down care packages and more support for carers and hospices so that thousands more patients can leave hospital to solve social corridor care. We have to fix the front door and the back door, invest in primary care as well as social care, and that would include boosting recruitment and retention to provide 8000 more GPS to reduce pressure on hospitals and save the NHS time and money in the first place.

We'd also place a duty on the Secretary of State to to prevent 12 hour waits in A&E and ensure that this doesn't continue to happen year in, year out. So Liberal Democrats have a plan to bring the dignity and safety that patients deserve and the working conditions that NHS staff deserve to. So I hope the government will listen to our plan, and I look forward to hearing from the

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Minister. I called the shadow Minister, Doctor Caroline Johnson.

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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. And before I start, I should declare an interest as a member of the British Medical Association, a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and an NHS paediatric consultant. I'd an NHS paediatric consultant. I'd also like to begin by thanking the hon. Member for Tooting for bringing forward this debate on this extremely important topic this extremely important topic today. As a practising doctor like me, I know she understands the importance of Kodak, particularly as someone that works in the emergency department.

And I'd like to pay tribute to staff working right across our health service, some of them in quite difficult circumstances. And so I'm glad to respond this afternoon to this debate to discuss what is a very important but very difficult issue. Madam Deputy Speaker, every day in May, nearly 3000 patients spent time in so-called clinically inappropriate spaces. These are corridors. But as we've heard, they also can be cupboards, waiting areas. This is not good enough. Corridors are no place to provide clinical or nursing care.

There is no privacy and dignity for getting changed, for examinations, for people overhearing what is said about your medical conditions, it is not safe. As a member for Mid Sussex said earlier, there is a risk of infection control. Availability of oxygen has been mentioned. Where is the space? If someone has an arrest and collapses for them to be looked after? I wonder if the Minister could say whether the government intend to support new clause 84 of the health Bill when we discuss that later, probably next week, which will measure and record the number of patients who die as a risk, with a risk of 12 hour waits being a contributory factor.

We've heard upsetting stories this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I've heard some myself in my own constituency, including one of a gentleman who sat for over 660 60 hours in a plastic chair receiving IV antibiotics for sepsis. These are all examples of a much broader and serious problem. Every day, patients are kept for hours on trolleys, in corridors, on chairs, in waiting rooms, often frail and elderly patients. And as the hon. Gentleman for Stroud said, though we have an ageing population and so this is applying more pressure and indeed any attendances increased 2.5% last year.

However, the latest figures show in May 2026 alone, more than 50,000 people. In fact, 50,212 patients waited in A&E for more than 12 hours after a decision to admit them to hospital. That represents a 17.1% increase from last May. Last year, the government produced its urgent and emergency care plan. In this plan, it set its targets, including that an absolute minimum of 78% of patients are admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. Now that target is well below the constitutional NHS standard.

But. But not only that, Madam Deputy Speaker, the latest NHS data shows the government have missed that target, with 25.7% of patients seen within four hours in May 2026, down from 26.9 76.9% the previous month. So things are actually going in the wrong direction. So we need to consider why are patients being cared for in corridors? Essentially, it's a reflection of a lack of appropriate spaces. Very often spaces on an inpatient ward. And so we need a structured plan. Now, the hon.

Member for Shipley and the hon. Member for Worthing West spoke about where we start, and we start with prevention, care at home, the virtual wards. But we need to think about delivery in rural area. We talk. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds talked about care in the community, treatment in the community. Others have talked about improved social care and I hope the Minister can indicate if she's going to accept new clauses 105 and 106, which talk about with the health bill, Madam Speaker, which talk about how people can care for themselves, education, the safety and classification of prescription only medicines so that the more simple conditions can be managed

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closer to home by pharmacists. And I will give way. I thank.

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My friend for giving way. Community care. She just touched on is is so important, particularly for preventing the need for for preventing the need for corridor care. In my Gordon and Buchan constituency. Inch War Memorial Hospital has been earmarked for closure. This is completely wrong. The trustees have done an amazing job raising money to keep this vital community asset to keep this vital community asset open. Does she believe that these community hospitals are so vital, not just for rural communities, but also for helping the larger

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hospitals as well to manage their own patient care? Yes. I absolutely agree with my hon.

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I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend now, Scottish, the NHS is of course devolved in Scotland, but it sounds like it's a very unwise sounds like it's a very unwise decision that they should certainly reconsider. And I'm sure the hon. Lady will be a doughty campaigner, ensuring that they do exactly that. ensuring that they do exactly that. And she brings me on to the the next part of my speech, which is the extra space in emergency the extra space in emergency departments, the importance that people are cared for well in A&E.

And I asked the Minister for an update on the work that Doctor Atchison and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine have been doing on on time medication, making sure that patients do not suffer detriment in A&E because they are not given the medications on time. The. One of the hon. Gentleman, the honourable mention has talked about the extra space on wards, the number of beds now, the number of beds has reduced over time and in part that's because we do clinical care differently. Thinking about, for example, maternity people stay in hospital a much shorter period after having a baby.

And that is true of other operations to the. My understanding is the total number of beds has dropped further since Labour came into office, and I wonder if the Minister could explain why that is and why we didn't get everything right. It's fair to say when we were in office, but we did increase the number of emergency department doctors by by 100% between 2010 and 2024. We met the manifesto commitment for 50,000 new nurses. We developed a long term workforce plan, but this government said it would deliver.

It didn't want our workforce plan. It wanted its own OK, but it said it would deliver it by the autumn and then the spring. It has now been imminent for quite some time. I ended up speaker, but how soon is imminent? And as many have said, we need to tackle social care. We also need to tackle the back door. We need to tackle social care. This government started two years ago promising cross-party talks and, as has been raised already nine nine months to take the first meeting and only recently the second meeting that isn't developing it with the urgency it needs.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the case report is not due till 2028. This is being kicked in the long grass now, perhaps, and we can only hope, Madam Speaker, that the new Prime Minister will make a difference to that. As my hon. Friend from Reigate said, the government need a plan. So I hope in summing up, the government will. The Minister will explain in detail how they intend to deliver on their plan because delivery is key. We often hear of targets and aims, but targets and aims are easy to set but hard to reach.

And what have we seen so far? We see long A&E waits up. We see an overall waiting list up 112,000 on the previous months. The number of people waiting for operations and procedures up on last year and last month, the ditching of the promise to deliver a doubling of medical school places, a delayed workforce plan that promised to roll out fracture liaison services, running behind schedule and still no response to the huge report. I could go on, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the basic issue is that the government seems keen to set targets worthy and important goals, but without knowing how to deliver them, leading inevitably to disappointment, so can the Minister, in her closing remarks, say how she will meet the target of abolishing corridor care, what effect the reduction of capital Budget announced in the Defence Investment Plan will have the effect that she thinks removing of social care voice from the ICB boards will have.

And importantly, as we look forward to winter, what winter planning is being done now to make sure patients are kept safe in the

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autumn and winter of next year. Minister Karen Smith.

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Minister Karen Smith. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker and the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham and North Shropshire and myself are deep in Shropshire and myself are deep in bill committee and I've not seen them all morning. So it's nice to have the opportunity to get back have the opportunity to get back into the swing of our discussions. And I look, I'm really grateful to my friend, the Member for Tooting, for securing this debate and really for securing this debate and really her commitment and her pride in Saint George's and all the staff that work.

There is is always so clear to say, and I think she did a great job for them and the rest of the country again today, and bringing that opportunity to discuss this that matters so much to patients, their families, NHS staff and members across the House and indeed the staff that work here as well. It is a really, really important issue and I want to recognise the important contribution of frontline clinicians, professional bodies and organisations such as the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and Corridor Care Coalition.

Now, their experience and their expertise has helped shape our work to establish a consistent national definition of corridor care and strengthen that national guidance. We share the same objective, ensuring that every patient receives safe, dignified care in an appropriate clinical setting, and we will continue to work with these experts across the NHS England and the Department of Health. And let me be absolutely clear, Madam Deputy Speaker, corridor care is not an acceptable standard of care and it must not become normalised, as was the Member for Mid Sussex said a habit patients should, wherever possible, be assessed and treated in an appropriate clinical environment with dignity, privacy and the highest possible standards of care.

And equally, NHS staff deserve to work in an environment that allows them to provide the compassionate care they are trained to deliver, and that is why we are tackling corridor care as a priority for this government. If we are to solve this problem, we have to be honest about why it occurs and we've heard some of those reasons today. Corridor care is one of the clearest symptoms of pressure across the entire urgent and emergency care pathway. It is not simply an emergency department issue.

And as we've heard from our friends in Rushcliffe and Worthing West, it also responds differently in different places rural cities or coastal areas. Historically, care in Non-designated clinical areas was an exceptional escalation measure during periods of peak demand, but over time, sustained increases in demand alongside capacity constraints across hospitals, community services and social care have meant that what was once exceptional has become more routine in some places, and that is not acceptable. I think the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham maybe not remembering exactly how and when that happened, but I know when I worked in urgent emergency care in Bristol under the last Labour government, we eradicated these pressures in A and E and they somehow crept back, not by magic but by neglect.

Under their stewardship. We have heard from my member for Salford about her mother's experience. I do hope she's experiencing people are witnessing this. But Paul Smith talked about her father's experience. My friend from Bolton, Salt and Walton had a terrible experience of her own. And again, my friend from Ashford, who's also on the Bill committee doing great work, Winston observed his Ed department as well as I know many hon. Members do, so we have that experience directly in the House. We see it ourselves and I, of course, have visited my local systems in Bristol.

Pressure in one part of the system affects other parts, and when patients who are medically fit cannot be discharged because appropriate support is unavailable, beds remain occupied, reducing hospital's ability to admit new patients from emergency departments. And the result is overcrowding, delayed patient flow

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and an increased risk The patients being cared for in these temporary environments. And we heard that in again, detail from we heard that in again, detail from my friends from Warrington South. Stroud, Stroud, Truro and Falmouth. And that is why we are tackling it. And that is why we are tackling it. The first step was bringing consistency and transparency as to how care is measured, because for too long there has been no single national definition, making it really difficult to understand where the pressures were greatest where the pressures were greatest or to compare performance across the NHS.

And you cannot improve what you do not measure. As noted by my friend from Gillian and Rainham, NHS England introduced a clear national definition of care and began daily reporting in March 2026, and since June that data has been published, providing greater transparency and enabling targeted support for those organisations experiencing the greatest pressure. And can I be clear to the Lib Dem spokesman that the hon. Member for North Shropshire, that part of getting the definition and the data right did lead to that not coming out immediately? It is.

It is difficult to get this right. We continue to do so. But can I be also really clear in my overseeing of this, that we are not hiding the experience by things such as ambulance waits, and we are absolutely monitoring that as part of my overseeing of of the wider system. So alongside improved reporting. NHS England has strengthened the national guidance for trust, where temporary care environments cannot immediately be avoided. That guidance is clear that patients must continue to receive the same clinical standards of care wherever they are treated.

They must be prioritised according to clinical urgency, supported by senior clinical oversight, named nurse and responsibility and ongoing monitoring with clear escalation arrangements where required. And I know members are rightly concerned by safety of patient safety. Of course, no patient should receive a lower standard of care because they are being treated in a temporary clinical environment, but the safest care is in the right clinical setting, and that's what we're aiming to do. The other thing that we have made sure happens is following the spending review, the government allocated up to £1.9 billion of capital funding over the next four years to support improvements in urgent and emergency care to help restore those constitutional standards talked about by the member opposite.

They didn't hit any constitutional standards for over ten years. We are determined to right that wrong. Also along this investment, NHS England has published its Model Emergency Department guidance supporting faster clinical decision making, improved streaming of patients and stronger whole system responsibility for performance. And while there is absolutely much more to do, these reforms are already contributing to improvements. As we heard from my friend the Member for Stroud, including shortest waiting times for four years and the fastest ambulance response times for around five years.

Despite continued increasing high demand, targeted support is where we need to do the most work, and early national data shows that much care is concentrated in some in some key places and getting the specialists getting it right. First time teams are therefore working directly with those trusts, helping to improve patient flows, strengthen discharge process, making better use of data, and share learning from organisations that have already made progress. And can I commend my friend from Bury St Edmunds and Stomach highlighted the improvements at West Suffolk Hospital, Rossendale and Darwen for the great work that's happening at Blackburn and the work that he's doing with other East Lancs MPs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Watford talked about the improvements that are happening there, and we heard from about North Herefordshire going to hold them to that autumn deadline that the hon. Member raised there. Nothing like putting it on the record for them, is it? But this great work, and as colleagues have said, we want to take the best to the rest, and some people are doing some amazing work in difficult circumstances. But ultimately, as members have said, eliminating corridor care means improving flow across the whole system, and that requires faster discharge, stronger community and neighbourhood services.

As highlighted by my friend from Mitcham and Morden, improved social care and more people receiving care closer to home so hospitals can focus those who need inpatient care. That ambition sits at the heart of our urgent and emergency care plan and our ten year health plan, which does include, of course, more prevention. As mentioned by my friend from Worthing West, the shift from hospital to community care will improve patient experience, reduce avoidable hospital attendance and create the capacity needed to restore urgent emergency care standards.

This is about lasting reform, not a temporary response to seasonal pressures where they be the current heat or winter. But before I conclude, Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to acknowledge the extraordinary professionalism of NHS staff, doctors, nurses, paramedics, healthcare assistants, porters, pharmacists and so many other people who continue to provide outstanding care under immense pressure. No member of staff comes to work expecting to treat patients in corridors, and many have spoken openly, rightly about the moral distress this causes. They deserve not only our gratitude, but practical action to improve the conditions under which they work.

And part of what we are doing is introducing that national definition, being transparent about the data, strengthening patient safety guidance, investing additional urgent care capacity, providing targeted support to the most challenged trusts, and addressing the wider pressures that drive corridor care, is the start of doing just that. Madam Deputy Speaker, every patient deserves care delivered with dignity, compassion and respect. Every member of staff deserves a system that enables them to provide that care safely. Corridor care is not inevitable. It is the consequence of pressures that are built up across the health and care system.

And it's a challenge this government is determined to overcome by improving patient flow, increasing capacity, supporting frontline services and delivering long term reform. We will restore urgent emergency care standards and end the routine use of corridor care before the end of this Parliament. That is our commitment to patients, to NHS staff and to

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this House here. I now come to Doctor Rosena Allin-khan to wind up.

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Thank you. Thank you very. Much, Madam Deputy Speaker. And as I stand. Here now to. Give my closing

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Here now to. Give my closing remarks, I'm filled with a sense of pride. There are very few occasions where we all come collectively where we all come collectively together across the house, in unison on an issue. And today is an unison on an issue. And today is an example of where people from every party and those who sit as independents have come together to say, enough is enough. We all stand united against the scourge that is corridor care. It wouldn't be fair of me to single out individual contributions, because they are all worthy of accolades.

People have shared their own deeply personal experiences, that of their families, and they have highlighted how important it is that we understand the geographical implications of how. This is a challenge that doesn't require a one size fits all approach. I am really pleased to hear the commitments from the Minister, and especially as that we've heard today and we now know that, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, 1300 excess deaths due to long A&E waits occur every month.

That is the equivalent of a plane crash of people dying every single week. We cannot allow this to happen, and though I appreciate everything the Minister has said, my final closing request is can we please do everything we can to heed the remarks of everyone across this House today and speed up whatever we can to make sure that there isn't a single excess death attributed to something that could be avoided. Because for every person that dies, where that could have been prevented, we have a family in grief.

We have lives taken too soon. And if we know there are things that we could be doing money, we could be spending a social care system that we could be fixing in order to ensure that people have that extra precious time with their loved ones, and have dignity on what is the last day of their life. On very many occasions that we spend every ounce of every ounce of energy in the Department of Health and Social Care to fix this problem. So thank you to everyone that has taken part in this debate today.

Thank you to the Minister. And let's end corridor care for good care.

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The question is, as on the Order Paper as many that say I. I as Paper as many that say I. I as contrary. No. The ayes have it. The ayes have it. I'll give the ayes have it. I'll give the frontbench a moment to shuffle over. Of order. People are sitting or exiting. Point of order. Matthew

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Pennycook. Madam Deputy Speaker, I'd like to correct an inadvertent error I made earlier today during the ninth Delegated Legislation Committee debate on the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation Establishment Order 2026, I inadvertently stated that a relevant Powers and functions order will fall under the affirmative procedure when it will actually be made under the negative procedure.

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I thank the hon. Member, the Minister, for notice of his point Minister, for notice of his point of order, Mr. Well done, well done. I thank the member, the hon. Member, the Minister for his notice of his the Minister for his notice of his point of order and for seeking to correct the record so quickly, which he has now done. Hopefully that draws a line under it. I think we can now move on to petitions, but allow the front bench quickly to shuffle over and those that are to shuffle over and those that are wishing to exit to do so.

Helen Hayes.

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Thank you, Madam Deputy. Speaker, I rise to present a petition on behalf of residents of the Loughborough Estate in my constituency. In introducing this petition, I wish to say that the petition, I wish to say that the conditions in which the residents of Loughborough Estate are currently forced to live are shocking. The lack of a straightforward remedy to those conditions is completely conditions is completely unacceptable, and the need for change is urgent. The petition of the residents of the Loughborough Estate in Brixton says that the right to manage for residents of social housing is important, and that tenant management organisations often deliver high quality services.

But the Loughborough Estate is under the long term control of a tenant management organisation, which has lost its democratic mandate and fails to deliver the essential services in respect of which it receives over £3 million per year of funds from the London borough of Lambeth, and further declares that the current right to manage legislation is not fit for purpose, lacks essential safeguards and enables rogue entities to retain control of council housing without democratic mandate and oversight. The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons considers this issue and urges the government to produce regulations amending the Housing Right to Manage England Regulations 2012, introducing essential changes to safeguard the democratic integrity of tenant management organisations and publish updated guidance in relation to the application of any such regulations, including a new modular management agreement and

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Thank Thank you. Petition.

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Petition. and.

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The right to manage. Petition. Sadiq al-Hassan. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to present a petition for a railway by Long Ashton on behalf of North Somerset and the behalf of North Somerset and the village of Long Ashton, which remains significantly underserved by public transport infrastructure, with no viable railway connection to Bristol and beyond. The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons urges the government to undertake a feasibility study for the construction of a new railway station by Long Ashton, North Somerset, in order to serve the existing community and support the sustainable development of the

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Thank Thank you.

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Thank you. Petition railway station in Long

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Ashton. Petition. Adam dance.

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Petition. Adam dance. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. After amazing campaigners got over 900 signatures on their over 900 signatures on their petition in Yeovil, I'm presenting this petition on the closure of the hundred Stone Post Office in Yeovil. The closure will leave locals with no in-person post office and banking services. The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons urge the government to put pressure on the Post Office to ensure a replacement operator for the Post Office in the area is in place before the current site is closed, and to consider how to provide communities with more resilient in-person services and

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Petition Petition hundred.

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Stone Post office. I beg to move that this House do now adjourn. The question is that this House

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The question is that this House do now adjourn, and I call Edward Morello on government support for

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the greenhouse gas removal sector. Edward Morello. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to bring this adjournment debate to the House and make the case for greater government support for the greenhouse gas removal sector. I'd firstly like to thank the sector for engaging so openly with me about their businesses and their concerns. The Minister for his continued cooperation on this issue and for Doctor Alan Whitehead for publishing his extremely important review. Before entering this place, I spent almost a decade working in renewable energy and before that on climate impact projects.

I would certainly not claim to be an expert on Jaeger, but through my work in the renewable energy sector, now as chair of the APPG on Climate Technology and the co-chair of the Net Zero APPG, I have at least become a passionate advocate. It is also been encouraging to see a Secretary of State and Ministers who genuinely recognise the scale of the climate challenge, but warm words now must now become concrete action. If Britain is not to miss yet another opportunity to become a world leader in one of the defining industries of the next century, climate change is here.

It is happening now. We see it through rising temperatures, increasingly frequent heat waves, flooding, drought and wildfires. The changing climate is already affecting our communities, businesses and public services. Much of the conversation has rightly focused on reducing our emissions. And let me be clear decarbonisation must remain our first priority. Every tonne of carbon dioxide we avoid emitting now is better than having to remove it later. But even if we achieve every single one of our net zero targets and we absolutely must, we will still have a problem.

Net zero does not remove the carbon dioxide that is already sitting in our atmosphere, which is why this debate is not about carbon capture and storage. It is about carbon removal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been absolutely clear. Without greenhouse gas removal, keeping global warming within internationally agreed limits becomes effectively impossible. Today, humanity removes only about 2 billion tonnes annually, 99.9% of which is done by trees and plants. Meanwhile, we continue adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere every single year.

The scale of the challenge is enormous. Whenever I speak about this issue, someone invariably says, why don't we just plant more trees? And I agree, trees are wonderful. We should absolutely plant more of them. But to keep global temperature increases below the 1.5 or 2% target, we need to remove 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every single year. That would require us to plant roughly 50 million hectares of New forest every single year. That is an area equivalent to covering the entirety of the UK with trees twice every single year.

Even the most committed of environmentalists

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would accept that that approach has practical limitations. The hon. Member give way. Of course I will.

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I'm grateful to him. And in recognising the challenge of planting enough trees on the land, I wonder whether he has thought I wonder whether he has thought more about capturing carbon in the ocean. He and I share the Lyme Bay ocean. He and I share the Lyme Bay Marine Protected area, and the vision group for Sidmouth was telling me that despite covering telling me that despite covering less than 1% of the ocean floor, seagrass beds are responsible for 15% of its total carbon capture.

Does he agree that we can also look to the sea for the capture of carbon?

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I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for his intervention and he is absolutely right. Madam Deputy Speaker, there are many very exciting nature based solutions which I have high hopes for. Obviously, in my role as the chair of the APPG on climate Technology, of the APPG on climate Technology, my focus today is mainly on the engineered solutions, but we absolutely need to be looking at

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absolutely need to be looking at all solutions in order to meet the challenge ahead of us. On that point.

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Of course. Madam Deputy Speaker, first of all, I commend the hon. Gentleman for West Dorset. I spoke to him for West Dorset. I spoke to him today about this issue, and I congratulate him and highlighting the environmental issues. Does the the environmental issues. Does the hon. Member not agree that we must ensure that areas of the United Kingdom all receive its fair share of investment, including Northern of investment, including Northern Ireland, and that government must ensure that the G, G or strategy must support our rural communities, must support our rural communities, utilising natural land based solutions, rather than just financing large industrial projects

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elsewhere. Above all, we must protect local jobs and ensure common sense always prevails. Thank you.

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Thank you. I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I believe that we should be backing any and all solutions that help us face the challenge, and I think Northern Ireland is as well placed as any Ireland is as well placed as any part of the UK to offer up innovative solutions. Technology innovative solutions. Technology such as direct air capture and engineered removal methods will become an essential part of moving beyond net zero towards net negative emissions. These technologies are Nasir.

The businesses that will develop these technologies need to be founded today. They need to scale over the next decade. They need investment, certainty and confidence if they are to become globally competitive and properly supported. The encouraging news is that Britain already possesses almost everything needed to succeed. We have world class universities producing cutting edge research, we have exceptional engineers, we have innovative start ups and university spin outs. We have globally respected financial services and investors. We have advanced manufacturing capability.

The UK's greenhouse gas removal sector already contributes about £1.2 billion to the UK economy. Looking ahead, it has the potential to contribute between 7 and 9 billion to GDP by 2050, while supporting over 100,000 skilled jobs. The countries that build these technologies first will not simply reduce emissions at home. They will be central to global emission reductions for decades to come. Britain should aspire to become the global centre of carbon removal innovation, the home of future climate tech unicorns and a leading exporter of Jaeger removal.

Jaeger

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technologies. Of course I will. Well, I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and I wonder if he agrees with me that creating industrial clusters is the best route to bring in some of these new companies that are looking to scale companies that are looking to scale up and invest. I recently met Union DAC who are looking to invest in Teesside, and in part that is because of the huge amount of because of the huge amount of investment that's coming in in the East Coast cluster project, which is creating 3000 construction jobs is creating 3000 construction jobs as we speak.

So does he agree with me that the government must continue to maintain the momentum for these clusters and new ones in next year's spending review to

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create skilled jobs across the UK? I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I think there is a lot of truth to what he has outlined. Ultimately, you know, where we get innovation and expertise clustered is where we see the most rapid transformation and the most rapid transformation and progress made. British innovators are already developing world leading GR technologies. The leading GR technologies. The problem is that many of them are struggling to raise the long term investment needed to move from successful demonstrations to commercial deployment.

British companies have told me that they will be European or American by the end of next year. If the UK does not do more to support them. The Whitehead review made this point very clear. It recognised that the United Kingdom possesses many of the ingredients required to become a global leader, but that early stage companies continue to face significant barriers to scaling up. Many of these businesses require substantial upfront capital before they generate meaningful revenue. Private investors understandably look for long term certainty and a return on their investment.

Without that certainty, investment simply flows elsewhere. UK startups struggle to access patient capital at precisely the moment they need it. Most of all. Climate tech early startups that failed 62% of them fail at series A, the start of the so-called Valley of Death. Britain has repeatedly invented world leading technologies, only to watch other countries commercialize them. And we cannot allow that to happen again. If we get this right, Jaegers could become one of Britain's great industrial successes. If we get it wrong, we will once again become purchasers of technologies developed elsewhere.

The government can create the long term policy framework that gives the market confidence. The publication of the greenhouse gas removals business model, alongside the Whitehead review, were important milestones. The commitment to integrating GR into the UK Emissions Trading scheme is another positive step, but companies developing Jaegers are making decisions today about where to build their first commercial facilities. Those decisions will determine where future supply chains develop, where highly skilled jobs are created, and where intellectual property remains. When speaking to the sector, they tell me that they are calling out for low or no cost policy changes that would make a real difference.

Until the response to the Whitehead review finally stops gathering dust on the minister's desk, these solutions could be amending the SAF mandate, improving access to finance from public finance bodies. VCM changes expanding UK Jaeger standards to wider methods or endorsing interim standards. A new UK Buyers Club regulations audits departmental sandboxes and standards for the EPS. We must give the market the certainty it has been asking for and the investors the confidence to unlock that potential, and that gives me, brings me to what I believe is the single most important proposal the government should now consider.

I believe the answer lies in creating a British Carbon Bank, a government ceded revolving fund that will crowd in private finance. A British carbon bank would provide long term advanced market commitments for verified GHGs. This. De-risk the purchase for the off taker. As the credits are certified, provides the capital. The Jaeger project needs to start capturing greenhouse gases and generating carbon credit, and improves investor confidence. Because there is a guaranteed purchaser, rather than the government attempting to fund every project itself, it would create guaranteed demand for high quality renewables over many years, allowing businesses to secure investment and scale their technologies with confidence.

The Whitehead Review recognises exactly this challenge. It concluded that demand certainty will be fundamental if Jaegers are developed at the pace required without long term, without reliable long term demand, many technologies will simply struggle to reach commercial scale. One particularly interesting example is Terra Set, a US charity. Rather than relying solely on traditional grant funding, Terra set uses philanthropic finance to early pre-purchase commitments to vetted projects, giving them the capital, giving those projects the capital to actually remove greenhouse gas removals.

Those advanced commitments provide early demand, giving companies confidence to develop technologies while demonstrating to investors that a future market exists. These projects deliver verified carbon credits to Terra Set, which it then sells to buyers. Any revenue generated is then returned to the fund and gets deployed into new projects. For every £1 they deploy, they unlock sorry, for every $1 they deploy, they unlock $5 in private finance and achieve a 15% mark up for credits under this de-risk model. As a result of this profit margin, they are now attracting interest from institutional investors, including pension funds.

A British Carbon bank would take that principle and apply it at a national scale. It would provide a clear signal that Britain intends to become the best place in the world to develop, deploy and commercialize greenhouse gas removal. One of the strengths of a British carbon bank model is that it addresses the greatest barrier currently facing the sector risk the bank would purchase future carbon removals in advance, holding those credits until they have been independently verified and certified. There is, of course, a risk that the government for the government that some projects may ultimately fail to deliver the promised removals will not achieve certification.

However, that risk can be significantly reduced through robust due diligence and careful project selection. As organisations such as Terrassa have already demonstrated successfully. Importantly, the model also overcomes the current chicken and egg problem in the market today, many buyers are reluctant to pre-purchase carbon removals because they bear all the delivery risk. By contrast, a British carbon bank would offer only certified verified credits to the market, making them far more attractive to businesses seeking high integrity carbon removals whilst simultaneously providing developers with the upfront certainty they need to secure investment and scale their technologies.

The market will determine which solutions ultimately prove effective, whether nature based approaches direct air capture or entirely new technologies that are yet to emerge. With a relatively small government investment, we could see this market crowd in 5 or 10 times more in private finance. Terror set supported graphite, who needed early stage capital to move from planning into commercial deployment. Private buyers recognise the value of the project but were not yet ready to commit at the scale or speed required. Through its revolving fund, Terra set made an advance commitment of just over $100,000, providing the confidence and working capital that enabled the project to proceed.

Once graphite had delivered independently verified carbon removals, those credits were purchased by a commercial buyer, with the proceeds going back into the revolving fund to support the next generation of projects. I believe a British Carbon bank could replicate this revolving model at scale, helping promise helping promising British companies bridge the gap between innovation and commercial success. Net zero is today's problem. Net negative is tomorrow's. But if we do not start thinking about it now, we will not be ready to meet that challenge.

We should be ambitious. We should not settle for for participating in the market. We should aim to lead it. So in closing, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister if he will confirm precisely when the government intends to publish its full response to the Whitehead review and whether it will be before the House rises for summer recess. Can the Minister confirm whether the government is giving serious consideration to the proposal for a British carbon bank or revolving fund to provide the long term market certainty? This sector has consistently called for? If not, if the government is not yet in a position to introduce longer term reforms, what interim measures will it take to ensure that promising new UK businesses are supported and not lost overseas, while policies are being developed? And finally, will the Minister commit to continuing to work closely with the sector over the coming months, listening to businesses, investors and researchers so that the UK can seize this opportunity to become a global leader in greenhouse gas removals, rather than watching others move ahead.

Carbon does not recognise borders or respect international treaties. It is a global challenge that demands world leading solutions, and I believe that those solutions can and should

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be developed here in the UK. Thank you. Minister, are you ready, Minister Shanks?

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Minister Shanks? Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. And can I begin by congratulating the hon. Gentleman from West Dorset for securing the from West Dorset for securing the debate on this important topic? Can I also thank him genuinely for all his engagement on this and many his engagement on this and many other issues, and for his leadership on the energy transition in the sort of rising noise of this in the sort of rising noise of this place and outside of this place, against facts on the climate crisis that is in front of us today, it is genuinely a relief to have conversations with the hon.

Gentleman about what we can do about reality, and that is a hugely important contribution that he makes to to this House. And in all of my engagements with him, I always come away learning something new myself and I thank him for that. Can I also just start where he started? By recognising that the climate crisis is not something that we can put off to tomorrow to respond to, we are living through now extremely hot weather, caused in part by the action that we have not taken in the past to tackle the climate crisis.

And while this is one of the hottest summers we've lived through so far, it is almost certainly one of the coldest summers we will live through in the future. And so every single step that we have to take to tackle this should be taken. We absolutely need greenhouse gas removal technologies in order to reach net zero and to tackle the climate crisis. But this also gives us a huge opportunity. It is an opportunity to balance those residual emissions from the hard to decarbonise sectors that we know there will be, but also at the same time, and we have said this throughout all of the work that the government is doing on the Clean Power Mission and beyond.

There is a huge opportunity here, an exciting opportunity to grow our economy and to secure new investment into the UK in all parts of the UK, including as the hon. Gentleman from Strangford rightly always challenges me in the in Northern Ireland as well. Now that
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