Call for General Election

Anna Turley Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for moving the motion on behalf of the signatories of the e-petition across the country asking for a general election. I was very struck by how many Opposition Members prayed in aid the number of people who signed this petition. Of course, it was enough to bring us this debate, which we must take note of, but as was flagged by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), that number is down by two thirds on this time last year. I want hon. Members to think about that. If numbers are the driving force for how people feel and the strength of feeling about a general election, perhaps Conservative Members can reflect on that two-thirds decline and what it represents.

I thank all hon. Members who participated. So many of them have shown themselves to be true advocates of their communities and their constituents. We have seen some fantastic examples of passion and commitment to the issues that people care about in their communities and how hard some many Members of Parliament are working in the face of so much cynicism about politics today. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to respond to this debate on behalf of the Labour Government—a Government that I am extremely proud to be a part of, following 14 years of Conservative and Lib Dem chaos and decline. I have listened to the contributions of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk and others, and it is clear now, as it was at the last general election, that the Tories are not serious, cannot be trusted and have not learned from the failures they made in office. I did not hear any apologies or any humility about the chaos and ruin they left. The noise and the bluster of impotent opposition that we have heard in this debate is leaving us to get on with the job of fixing the mess that they left.

I am not often surprised these days, but I have to admit that I am today, because it is a surprise to see the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) in this debate. The problem with Reform is that it cannot deliver the change this country needs, because it is not fit to govern, and despite being paid to represent their constituents, too often their MPs withdraw questions in this House, miss votes, and sit as bystanders in the gallery, but they always turn up when there is a chance to get on telly or get a clip for social media. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, a former Tory himself, is happy to welcome the 23rd former Conservative MP to Reform. If that does not send a message that Reform are the same old failed Tories in a slightly different shade of blue, then I do not know what does. It is just another party that does not believe in the NHS or rights for working people and has nothing to offer people on issues such as the cost of living that we know matter to them.

This Labour Government were elected with the largest majority that any party has secured since the last Labour Government’s landslide victory in 1997. This Labour Government are committed to delivering the people’s priorities, and since coming into office, we have been busy delivering on our promise of change. As Labour Members have articulated so clearly, we know that we were elected with a clear mandate to deliver the change that people asked for. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) said that people voted to reject the previous Government’s record of 14 years of austerity, and he is absolutely right, because let us be honest about where we started when we won the election in 2024.

Decades of decline do not disappear in months; we know that. The financial crisis, Brexit, a pandemic and war in Europe all helped to drive the challenges that we have faced financially in this country. But on top of that, years of weak and irresponsible Government left living standards falling, public services stretched to breaking point, too many communities feeling forgotten and left behind, and, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) said, a steaming pile of rubbish. I could not agree more with her analysis.

That was our inheritance, but we know that life is still harder than it should be for so many people in this country, and I understanding that that is why so many people have signed this petition. People are absolutely right to be impatient. We know that the cost of living continues to bear down on people, but we are taking rapid action to ease that burden. I am proud that living standards are forecast to grow by 2.9% over this Parliament. Under the last failed Tory Government, disposable income fell for the first time since records began in the 1950s—hardly a record that Members here can begin to defend.

We are taking action to tackle the deficit and crisis that the previous Government created—the crashing of an economy, where they allowed Liz Truss to experiment with the country’s finances and sent mortgages, rents and bills soaring. Since coming into office, we are reversing that decline. Families are already £800 better off. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones) said, 200,000 workers in Scotland are getting a pay rise, mortgages are down £14,000 compared with where they were when we won the election, and wages are up more in 10 months than they were in 10 years with the Tories. That is a record to be proud of.

[Robbie Moore]

That is just not what people in Keighley and Ilkley and across the Worth valley are feeling. Why are the Labour Government increasing the amount of tax that a basic rate taxpayer is paying by another £220 this year? Why is it that Labour-run Bradford council has tried to increase council tax by 14.99% this year? On top of that, the Government are making decisions that were not in their manifesto, such as rolling out digital ID at a cost of £1.8 billon or the £47 billion Chagos deal. Those are things that the Government are doing beyond their manifesto promises, but which they are taxing hard-working people across Keighley for.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. That is a bit on the long side for an intervention.

[Anna Turley]

I appreciate the hon. Member’s attempt to reiterate the speech that he made, but I would have thought that he would be grateful that there are 3,250 children in Keighley who will benefit from the lifting of the two-child limit. Those are children who we are investing in and who are going to contribute to the future. We are breaking cycles of dependency. I would have thought that the hon. Member would welcome that. I am sure that people in his constituency whose mortgages have come down would also be very grateful for that.

In November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered a Budget that is bearing down on the cost of living and lifting millions of children out of poverty. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, children will benefit from the abolition of the two-child benefit cap thanks to action taken by this Labour Government.

[John Lamont]

The Minister is in danger of falling into the same trap that the Government did in their formal response to the petition, in that she is telling people that they should be grateful—“We’re doing all these things. You should be grateful.” People in my constituency do not feel grateful; they feel betrayed by a catalogue of broken promises.

[Anna Turley]

The hon. Member got up and talked about the glass being half-empty. If we are restoring trust in politics, it is important that we remind people about all the things that are happening. Of course, we know that it takes time for people to feel that in their pockets. We are confident that with every pay cheque this year, they will feel that more and more. However, the reality is that we should stand up and remind people about the changes that Governments make and that these changes have not happened by chance, but because of the choices made by this Labour Government, and I am proud to defend them.

In talking about the reasons for calling this debate, Opposition Members have talked about manifesto promises and so on. I want to run through some of the manifesto promises and commitments that this Government have made, to knock down their argument. This year we will take £150 off energy bills, the living wage is up £900 per year, we have extended the £3 bus fare, interest rates have been cut six times, we have frozen prescription fees to keep costs under £10 and we have taken 500,000 children out of poverty—that is an extra 3,000 in my constituency of Redcar. We are also protecting the triple lock for pensioners, which is worth over £1,900 over the course of this Parliament.

As the hon. Member has said, people in his constituency are still feeling the squeeze from the cost of living, but that is exactly why we have provided 30 hours of free childcare to help mums who are struggling to get into work and to get the support they need with childcare. That is £8,000 per year for parents. We have set up 750 primary school breakfast clubs to help those kids to get a healthy start in life. I have been to see them, and children not only get a healthy meal to start the day but dance classes and exercise to get their blood pumping and to get them ready for the day and ready to learn. They are breaking the cycle of poverty, which we have seen hold back too many children in our constituencies.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Does the Minister agree that we do not end dependency and bring children out of poverty by driving their parents out of work? Hundreds of thousands more people are unemployed because of the policies that the Minister’s party has pursued. Does she acknowledge that that is the case?

[Anna Turley]

The hon. Gentleman was in Parliament when 2,300 jobs in the steel industry were lost overnight in my constituency. We had to deal with the consequences of that. His party know all about putting people out of work. This is about breaking the cycle. Three quarters of the children growing up in poverty are in working households. The economy that we saw develop under the Conservative Government was one where work just did not pay. People were working all the hours and shifts they could, and they still were not able to feed their families. That is why we are supporting parents in getting back to work and getting their children happy, healthy and fed in school.

I also want to support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) about the veterans strategy. There are 9,000 veterans in Portsmouth who have benefited from the hard-working campaigning she has done in her constituency. We have seen a big uplift in defence spending, and that is something I am deeply proud of in this country. We face a deeply insecure world at the moment. We have a Prime Minister who is rebuilding Britain’s standing on the global stage and is putting defence spending at the heart of economic regeneration in constituencies like ours.

I could go on about manifesto pledges that have been met, such as banning trail hunting, ending hereditary peers, and the Football Governance Act 2025 giving fans a real voice in their football clubs. We promised 2 million more NHS appointments; we have delivered 5 million more already. We have halved the number of asylum hotels. There have been 1 million potholes fixed. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) has campaigned very hard about roads and potholes in his constituency.

We are supporting renters by abolishing no-fault evictions. We have established Great British Energy to drive our energy renewal in this country. We have delivered pension justice for mineworkers. In my constituency, thanks to Cleveland police, from May we are going to see a named police officer in every ward. That is 3,000 more police already. That is a lot done, but as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) described it, these are downpayments on progress. This is just the beginning. With every month, more and more people will start to feel the benefit of the Labour Government in their pockets, and I am proud to have delivered that.

The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) talked about the importance of stability for small business. He is absolutely right, and calling for another general election completely flies in the face of that. Conservative Members may have enjoyed the chaos and upheaval of the last Government, where we had four elections and a referendum in four years. I was here; I witnessed it all. That had a disastrous effect. The public voted to end the chaos, and they want us to get on with governing the country and fixing the mess that the last Government left behind. That takes time and patience, but this Labour Government are committed to delivering on the change that the country voted for in the last general election.

As I have set out, there are manifesto pledges that have been met, and there are manifesto pledges that are being delivered. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friends for highlighting so many of the positive impacts that this Government are having on the lives of their constituents. We will continue to take difficult and strong decisions in the national interest, after 14 years of failed Conservative Government. We saw a merry-go-round of failed Prime Ministers who slashed our public services, crashed our economy and frayed the social fabric of our country. Their Governments cut the NHS year after year and betrayed the promises they made to their country. As the Prime Minister said in his new year message, this is the year the country will “turn a corner” along the path of national renewal.

We will not shy away from making the big calls that are right for our country’s future. We are proud of the progress so far. We know that people will feel the change this year in their pay packets and on the streets. We are proud to stand on our record at the next general election and we look forward to it. In the meantime, we will get on with delivering the change that the public voted for—the change they expect from a Labour Government—and building a fairer, more hopeful and better Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Turley Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

19. What assessment the child poverty unit has made of the potential merits of auto-enrolling eligible children for free school meals.

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

This Labour Government are proud to be taking historic steps to end child poverty. We are extending eligibility for free school meals to all children and households receiving universal credit next September in an unprecedented boost for children. That is going to benefit over half a million more children and put around £500 back into parents’ pockets every year. We believe that every child can better fulfil their potential if they are well fed, nourished and ready to learn in their school day.

[Charlie Maynard]

As many as 11% of pupils are missing out on the free school meals to which they are entitled. In many cases, they are not registered for reasons such as a fear of stigma or language barriers. In my Witney constituency, that means that around 230 children from the most disadvantaged homes may be missing out on a hot, healthy meal to get them through the school day. Council pilots of auto-enrolment have been shown to be effective. If implemented nationwide, auto-enrolment would make a huge difference to struggling families and it has overwhelming support from parents, so my question to the Minister is: what is the hold-up?

[Anna Turley]

We want to ensure that all families can claim the support they are entitled to, and we recognise that there is some great best practice happening around the country, so we will continue to keep the matter under review. By broadening the criteria to everyone on universal credit, it will be a lot easier for people to know that they can access free school meals. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is as excited as Government Members are for the child poverty strategy that will be published later this week. We look forward to many more exciting opportunities in that strategy to lift our children out of poverty and give them the future they deserve.

[Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

Our great civil service serves citizens from across the UK, so it should look like them, sound like them, and come from the same towns, cities, regions and nations as the communities it serves. Through our places for growth programme, we are moving more roles from London to locations across the UK, including York, where 2,600 civil servants are already working across numerous Departments, including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

T6. The Information Commissioner’s Office revealed that Lord Alli’s pass to No. 10 was requested by a staff member of the Labour party. Was it the Prime Minister’s then chief of staff who made the request?

Public Bodies: Governance and Accountability

Anna Turley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I want to take a moment to pay huge tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz). She is the epitome of a first-class MP and a doughty champion for her constituents, picking up local issues that people care passionately about and bringing them to the heart of Government. If anyone can knock heads together and make things happen, I believe it will be her. I look forward to seeing over the next few years all those problems solved.

I wish I could stand here with the power to wave a wand and give my right hon. Friend all the things she has asked for, but she has put them on the record, which is the purpose of this place. Ministers and Secretaries of State will hear what she has said, and I will do anything I can to support her in taking these matters forward. I have every confidence that the people of Walsall and Bloxwich could not ask for a better representative, and I completely agree with everything she has said.

Public bodies should be accountable and responsive, with democratic oversight. That is the foundation of our democracy. I understand my right hon. Friend’s frustration, because it is one that I share as an elected representative—even as a member of the Government. It can sometimes feel that decisions are taken too far away from the people we are meant to serve. People expect their Member of Parliament to have power and their Government to be responsive to them. When they vote for change, they expect those they voted for to be able to deliver.

Too often we see layers of bureaucracy building up over many years. We see power handed to unelected officials and arm’s length bodies that no one has ever heard of. All too often democratically elected Ministers—who are accountable to the public—pull the levers, but arm’s length bodies do not respond, and control sits in the wrong place. Far too often, such bodies have been an easy solution when there has been a problem in government and no policy solution; it is a case of saying, “Create another body, create another commission,” but all that does is to take decisions further away from the people they are there to serve.

I am delighted to say that in April this year, the Government ordered a fundamental review of arm’s length bodies. I am really excited to be the Minister playing a part in delivering that review. We no longer live in a world where we can simply spend our way to better public services. We have to rewire the state through system-wide reform, which is what we are undertaking to do.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich for raising this issue. She is right to recognise that the existing landscape of public bodies is overly complex, needs streamlining, and needs to be accountable in order to deliver our plan for change. The Prime Minister himself said in his speech earlier this year:

“It is not about questioning the dedication or the effort of civil servants. It is about the system that we have in place. That system was created by politicians… But…over a number of years politicians chose to hide behind a vast array of quangos, arm’s length bodies and regulators”.

I am pleased to tell my right hon. Friend that we will hide no more. Through our programme of work to reform the state, of which arm’s length bodies are a part, we will ensure that Ministers have the right accountability where services are delivered, and that those public services are delivered in the simplest, most effective way, ensuring value for money for taxpayers.

We launched the review on 7 April. It is examining the Government’s more than 300 arm’s length bodies and asking Departments to assess them against four key principles. The first key principle is ministerial policy oversight. Nationally important policies must be steered and controlled by Ministers. The public expect that level of accountability. The second is duplication and efficiency. We have to root that out wherever possible, including overlaps between arm’s length bodies and Departments.

The third key principle is stakeholder management. The Government have to engage with partners and constituents—the people—at every stage, but that cannot in its own right justify an arm’s length body’s existence. The fourth is independent advice. The Government think that arm’s length decisions should be justified only where there is a clear case for it, such as the need for operationally independent regulatory decisions. There should not be any other reason for decisions to be taken at arm’s length. If those challenges are not met, arm’s length bodies should not exist—it is that simple.

Our aims are straightforward: we will drive out waste and inefficiency across Whitehall, save the taxpayer money and cut the cost of doing government. More importantly, we are bringing democratic scrutiny back to the major decisions that affect people’s lives through ministerial control.

The review is ongoing, but we have already announced a number of changes to arm’s length bodies, which my right hon. Friend may have heard about. For example, we are abolishing NHS England and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Doing so has returned nearly £250 billion of Government funding to direct ministerial oversight, ensuring that decisions about the NHS and the school system—a crucial issue mentioned by both my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—are taken by the Health and Education Secretaries, as they should be.

[Rachael Maskell]

I want to draw another two bodies to the Minister’s attention. Integrated care boards are completely unaccountable as they make clinical decisions about our constituents. They need to be evidence-based, but they are simply not working. Multi-academy trusts, too, are certainly not accountable—I have felt as though I was in the matrix, unable to escape or to nail the behaviours of some of the chief executives of those organisations, which have huge resources but are not delivering in the interests of students. It is so important that we get democratic accountability into those systems.

[Anna Turley]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. She articulates the struggle that so many of us find in picking up bits of casework and trying to champion our constituents’ needs and wishes; we can get lost in the matrix, and it can be deeply frustrating. I know that Secretaries of State, including the Health and Education Secretaries, see that. They want to know that their decisions are having a real impact, and that there are not unaccountable people making decisions against the grain of what we are trying to achieve on behalf of our constituents. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point.

We are also repatriating the Valuation Office Agency into His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to speed up tax administration. We are abolishing Ofwat and creating a single regulator to cut water pollution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich will be delighted that we are folding LocatED into the Department for Education to accelerate school building, combining property knowledge with schools’ needs for better value—I urge her to focus her campaign about the free school she referred to on the Secretary of State. We are also repatriating the UK Space Agency into the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. We are taking action on a number of fronts, but that is just the start. We want the body of the state to be accountable to those elected to bring about change and deliver for their constituents.

I will briefly set out some of our existing processes that ensure effective arm’s length body accountability. Where possible, robust but fair departmental sponsorship is the key way to ensure clear lines of accountability between the arm’s length bodies and the Department. Those sponsorship arrangements promote regular interaction between bodies and sponsoring Departments to ensure that bodies are held to account for their use of public money and operate in line with the priorities of the Government of the day. I urge right hon. and hon. Friends with concerns about particular bodies to write to the sponsoring Secretary of State about those issues, because ultimately, those arm’s length bodies do have accountability arrangements in place.

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

My concern is about interim officers in local government, and CEOs who pop up in one place and then pop up somewhere else a couple of months after they have resigned. What safeguards are in place to ensure that negative behaviours or actions in one organisation do not appear in another where the same individual is involved?

[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting and important issue. Far too often there have been departmental silos, and silos within other public bodies, and they are not talking to each other. As she says, people can bounce around, failing upwards, and far too often there have not been channels of accountability and scrutiny to enable us to look at and manage performance. As part of our broader approach to public service reform, we are keen to look not just at how we manage recruitment, retention, training, accountability and performance within the civil service, but at how we ensure that people in the broader public sector are not failing upwards and are accountable to those they should be accountable to. I thank her for raising that.

To further raise the bar on accountability, we are committed to the continuous improvement of day-to-day checks and balances. A sponsorship code has been available since 2022, but we will look at it in the light of the arm’s length body review. Arm’s length bodies are also consistently reviewed through long-established lines of accountability, and through their boards and sponsoring Departments. Those boards scrutinise the arm’s length body’s executive decision making and oversee compliance with statutory and non-statutory guidance issued by the Government. Again, though, we will look at all those levels of compliance and accountability to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, the public are impatient to see the change they voted for. They want it to become a reality. For them, it is not an abstract question of public service reform; it is about whether their local station has a lift to make it accessible, or where a school is built.

The Leather Museum that my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich mentioned sounds fantastic—a significant local and national asset that deserves to be recognised and supported. I urge her to continue her doughty campaign, along with Linda, Adam and Lauren, who sound as though they are doing a fantastic job. That museum deserves to have a bright future and I know she will do all she can to make that happen. I hope the Government will support her in that.

At a time when people are impatient to see change, I want to assure everybody that the Government are committed to transforming accountability across our arm’s length bodies.

[Rachael Maskell]

Could the Minister quickly say how we can participate in the review the Government are undertaking?

[Anna Turley]

That is a great question. I will take it on myself, as an outcome of this discussion, to write to colleagues to invite them to submit the kind of examples and evidence that we have heard here to the relevant Departments, and to me, as the Minister responsible for arm’s length bodies, to identify areas where public scrutiny and accountability have fallen short. There may be some more formal mechanisms that we can also undertake in the review but, in the meantime, I ask all them to write to Secretaries of State and to me with those examples; we would be happy to incorporate them into the review.

I will take this opportunity to repeat my sincere thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich for securing this debate, which is important for her constituents as well as all our constituents across the country. We put ourselves forward to serve because we want to bring about change and make things better for people in our communities, on our doorsteps and in our local areas. Only by reforming the way that accountability, transparency and power are delegated in this country can we have that effect.

It is right that the public expect public bodies to be accountable, to run effectively and to be aligned with our Government’s priorities. We only want them where they offer best value for the public, ensure that money is spent efficiently and effectively and, crucially, are democratically accountable. That is exactly what we are seeking to achieve through our programme of ALB reform. I thank my right hon. Friend and all hon. Members present for adding more grist to the mill on this issue.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Turley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Welcome, Minister.

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

This Government’s aim is to recruit the brightest and best talent into the civil service—brilliant people from across the UK with the skills to deliver the priorities of the British people. We have already taken steps to improve recruitment, with the first ever cross-Government standardised recruitment processes and benchmarks, to strengthen accountability and bring faster, higher-quality and more inclusive recruitment. Fast, fair, inclusive: that is our recruitment vision.

[Joe Robertson]

The Government are restricting applications to the civil service fast stream summer internship programme in favour of those kids who they deem to be from working-class backgrounds. What does the Minister have to say to the children of hard-working nurses, police officers and teachers who will now not get the same opportunities because of decisions made by this Government?

[Anna Turley]

The fast stream programme, of which I am proud to be a graduate, is the No. 1 graduate employee scheme in the country. We are proud that we have had over 70,000 applicants for just 754 appointments. We know that we have done very well in increasing diversity, with applications from ethnic minority candidates, women and people with disabilities, but we are falling short in applications from those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I make no apologies about taking proactive decisions to ensure that people who do not necessarily have the same social capital or relationship strength as those from other higher social backgrounds can take internships. The number of working-class people in the civil service is three times smaller than the broader UK workforce, and we are taking action on that.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

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

Last year, the Government promised us that they were going to slash the size of the civil service, but instead the latest figures showed that the size of the civil service has increased by 7,000 compared with last year. It is not only other Departments that have failed to get a grip: the headcount of the Minister’s own Department is up by 7%. Will the Minister guarantee that when the next set of figures is published, it will show a reduction in the size of the civil service and the size of the Cabinet Office?

[Anna Turley]

Under the last Tory Government, Boris Johnson said that he would cut the number of people employed by the civil service by 91,000, but that figure went up. Jeremy Hunt said that he would cap numbers in the civil service, but they went up. The Conservatives lost control of the civil service, just as they lost control of our borders, our streets and our prisons, but we are taking action to bring those numbers down.

[Mike Wood]

I think that the Minister is missing the fact that she is in Government now and has been for well over a year, but the numbers are going up not down, as they promised. The Minister is correct when she says that the civil service must be able to recruit the brightest and the best, but surely she can see that that is not helped when the most senior civil servant, hand-picked by the Prime Minister barely months ago, faces a barrage of media briefings from within Government. Will the Minister and her Department commission an inquiry into the breach of the code of conduct for special advisers following the personal attacks on the Cabinet Secretary, and will she condemn the vicious media briefings that have clearly come from within No.10?

[Anna Turley]

We have full confidence in the Cabinet Secretary and we condemn all leaks and breaches. We undertake to look into how any leaks from Government take place.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

8. What steps he is taking to increase employment opportunities through public procurement.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

Our great civil service serves all the people across the UK, so it should look like them, sound like them and come from the same towns, cities, regions and nations as the communities it serves. By 2030, half of the senior civil service will be located outside London, with half of the fast stream placements also in the regions and nations. This Government are absolutely committed to radical reform to ensure that people from all parts of the UK can have a full and rewarding career in His Majesty’s civil service.

[Mr Alaba]

The Government’s plan to relocate civil service jobs outside London will bring high-quality jobs across the United Kingdom and ensure that policy is delivered closer to the communities it serves. However, none of the areas identified for that relocation is in the east of England, and notably, none is in Essex. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that these opportunities exist in every region, including my constituency of Southend East and Rochford, and will the Minister meet me to discuss the opportunities that are available?

[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend is a real champion for his constituency. We greatly value the contribution of the 23,000 civil service staff who are based in the east of England, and are determined that the people of Southend East and Rochford should have the same opportunities as those in Redcar, or anywhere else in the country. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this matter further.

[Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)]

12. What recent progress his Department has made on strengthening national security.

Correction to Parliamentary Question HL8160: Anti-money Laundering Supervision Reform

Anna Turley Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

It has been brought to my attention by officials that the Cabinet Office’s written answer to Lord Booth’s parliamentary question [HL6032] was inaccurate. Through this statement, I would like to apologise for the inaccuracy on behalf of the Department. The Department takes its responsibility to provide accurate information in response to parliamentary questions seriously.

On 5 June 2025, Lord Booth asked His Majesty’s Government the following question: “further to the written answer by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent on 10 April [HL6032]: what estimate they have made of the annual cost of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision Reform Body.”

On 19 June 2025, the Lords spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Baroness Anderson, answered: “HM Treasury is responsible for assessing the potential cost of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision Reform Body as part of their business case development. The Cabinet Office does not centrally estimate costs for departments’ proposals. The Government has conducted a full line-by-line Spending Review which covered the proposed costs of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision Reform Body to ensure value for money is being delivered for the taxpayer.”

I now wish to correct the record by providing the following response:

“HM Treasury ran a public consultation on potential reforms to the UK’s anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing supervision system in 2023, which included the potential establishment of a new public Supervision Reform Body. A decision on the policy to pursue has not yet been made, meaning that no such new anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing Supervision Reform Body was included in the recent spending review. The Government remain committed to anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing supervision reform and will announce a policy in due course.”

[HCWS947]

Correction to PQ HL8160

Anna Turley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

We will issue this statement at a later date.

[HCWS932]

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Anna Turley Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

If hon. Members hang on a second, I will deal with this. No economic impact assessment whatsoever has been made or presented to this House. At the very least, this House should have that assessment and that expert advice in order to scrutinise the Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer does not seem to think it is relevant that this Bill and their deal need that kind of scrutiny—even more so in the light of today’s dire public finance figures.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that there has been no economic impact assessment of the Bill, so many of us have to rely on the impact assessment of the previous Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement, which showed a detrimental impact on the north-east to the degree of 7% of our GDP. How can that be justified to our industry and manufacturing in the north-east, which are already so far behind the rest of the country?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed. My hon. Friend represents a constituency that has suffered grievously from the Tory Government’s industrial non-strategy. SSI Redcar was closed down, and there are huge issues for manufacturing investment across her region and across her constituency. This House knows full well—and if Conservative Members cared to listen, they would know full well—that this proposal will damage manufacturing industry and therefore jobs, particularly in the north-east, which is the only part of the country with a manufacturing surplus on trade with Europe and the rest of the world.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Anna Turley Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), and I want to put on the record how impressed I have been with the calibre and quality of the speeches this afternoon and evening. It has been quite overwhelming and they have done this place some credit. At a time when the House is being vilified—even being disrespected and undermined by the Prime Minister—I have heard Members speak with passion and commitment. There have been different views and perspectives, but everyone has tried to navigate their way through things and to do what is best for their constituents and the country.

I rise to support amendments (d), (f) and, in particular, (a). Finally, Parliament is taking control of the process; the Government should have set that in train two years ago. We are finally about to decide what Brexit actually is. The fundamental dilemma of the 2016 referendum was that it allowed everybody to project all their fears, anger, hopes and fantasies on to a simply binary question, and the result has been interpreted by many different people to mean many different things. As a consequence —we will have to get used to this—whatever option the House supports will be met with cries of “Betrayal” from those who do not get the version of Brexit that was in their mind when they voted, or even the version that they have developed over the past two and a half years.

The narrative of betrayal, which the Prime Minister stoked up last week, is toxic and needs to be confronted with honesty and courage. Whatever version of Brexit comes out the other side of the parliamentary mangle, MPs need to acknowledge that people will be disappointed, upset and even angered. Whatever we do risks losing votes, and possibly even seats, for all parties. That is why we need to be brave and vote in the country’s best interests.

Those who bandy around the word “betrayal” must be honest that the betrayal of the British people has already happened. The betrayal was to ask people to make a vague and over-simplistic decision, with insufficient information that was not honest about the real choices facing our country or the complexity of our economic integration with the European Union. The betrayal was rooted in the lies and fantasy promises that were told without any intention of being kept—like those on the side of the bus. The betrayal was the exploitation for personal and political ends of the justifiable and understandable grievances of left-behind areas and working-class communities such as mine. The betrayal was the legitimatisation of prejudice, hatred and division that we saw during that debate and have seen since. The betrayal was not to be honest that major constitutional changes should not be put forward to the public unless the work had been done to prepare for them. All that comes even before we have a proper inquiry into the potential law breaking.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I am impressed with the hon. Lady’s points. Does she agree that the way to overcome the sense of betrayal that the vote was misleading, or that the work had not been done and the people did not get what they bargained for is to go back to the people once we have decided on something and ask, “Is this what you wanted?”

[Anna Turley]

I concur completely. I was building up to a crescendo, but I agree that being honest and having a conversation with the people about the reality of Brexit is the way forward. This place owes the public an apology for the referendum—not just David Cameron, but all of us—but instead of an apology the betrayal has continued. Rather than being honest with the public, confronting the mistakes and admitting that the referendum was flawed, we have sought to continue it rather than face up to our historic error. The public are wiser than many in this place give them credit for. They can see that the process over the past two and a half years has been an absolute shambles. They can see that Brexit is nothing like what was promised to them. We should all have the humility to say we know much more now than we did then.

Why is the Prime Minister continuing to drive people to a destination that is not where they were told they were going? We do not even know whether many of them still want to go. She continues to talk about the will of the people, but she ignores not just the 48% but those who did not vote because they did not feel strongly enough to want to change the situation. Some 29 million people either voted to remain or did not feel they wanted to change things. None of them asked to get where we are.

No wonder the public call it betrayal when they are not getting the things they were promised, or when responsible politicians step up to try to stop this carnage. This is the ultimate Brexit paradox. The further we are from Europe and the more abrupt our break, the worse it is for our economy, particularly for areas like mine that voted most strongly to leave. Yet the closer we remain to the EU, with Norway-plus or a soft Brexit option, the more we concede British sovereignty and dilute the so-called will of the people, which is now hardening among many leavers for a no deal.

No one will be getting what they were promised and I believe it is a deceit to vote for Brexit in name only in the hope that people will not notice or to try to get them off our backs. All we would be doing is continuing to reinforce the lie to the public and failing to be honest with them about the reality of our situation. Worse, I hear the Prime Minister patronising them and telling them there is nothing that can be done to prevent it because this is what they wanted two and a half years ago. Denying them the right to change their mind or to have their say on the outcome now that the evidence is clearer is a real betrayal, both of them and of future generations.

Record numbers have marched and signed petitions in the past few days. They, too, are the people, and they, too, deserve to have their voice heard. A new referendum or a vote to ratify a deal that comes through our range of options must be put to the people in the cold light of day. We must be brave enough to ignore the calls of betrayal and do the right thing, and not continue the deceit that we will be able to please everyone with our Brexit outcome. We must do what is in the best interest of our constituents’ jobs and livelihoods and in the national interest of our country. Parliament needs to come clean that we have made a catastrophic mess. We must give the public the chance to help us clean it up.

Overseas Electors Bill

Anna Turley Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is making thorough and thought-through points. He said he wanted to see a balance between the opportunities to vote given to those overseas and to those back here at home. Will he then explain why his Government are making it much harder for people to vote here by seeking a greater degree of identification from people going into a polling station, given that there is potentially more opportunity for fraud in the postal voting system overseas, as he is explaining?

[Philip Davies]

I do not want to get sidetracked from the Bill, but the point I make to the hon. Lady is that many of the new clauses I have proposed and will go on to propose are about making the system robust, so that we have an honest result and we do not have any problem with the result being disputed in any way. Given the problems we have faced, certainly in my Bradford district, at polling stations and in postal votes, I support the Government in believing that we need identification at polling stations. In many cases, presiding officers in polling stations have faced a nightmare in terms of being able to identify people properly. That has been an issue for some time. I believe the same happened in Northern Ireland and they dealt with it there, but unfortunately some of those problems persist in the rest of the UK. It is right that the Government do something to make sure that the results of elections are robust. I am getting sidetracked, Mr Speaker, because this is not really relevant. The point I am trying to make is that I do not see a conflict.

For the benefit of the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, new clause 11 is on a subject raised in Committee by the hon. Member for Nottingham North. I hope that is clear enough for the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton to understand. The new clause is about the offence of registering to vote as an overseas elector in more than one constituency. When he suggested this change in a new clause in Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North said that it was his

“last stab at allaying the concerns that electoral administrators have expressed following the publication of the ‘votes for life’ document and the Bill.”

He was talking about their concerns relating to double registration. He went on:

“The principle is that when electoral registration officers use address data to verify someone’s eligibility to register, they will establish whether someone has lived in that place. However, they will not try to establish whether that is the last place where the person lived, or whether they have lived in multiple places and are having the same conversation with multiple electoral registration officers around the country, and possibly voting in two or more places.”

He rightly pointed out that there was therefore a

“live danger that might merit an individual sanction”.––[Official Report, Overseas Electors Public Bill Committee, 14 November 2018; c. 115.]

That is what new clause 11 provides. It says that somebody commits an offence by registering to vote in two separate parliamentary constituencies as an overseas elector. That is absolutely right. It comes back to the point I made before about making sure that the results are robust and without question and all the rest of it. Currently, there is something lacking in our system in respect of people voting in more than one constituency at parliamentary elections, and there have been complaints about that. I genuinely do not know how widespread the issue is, and I am not sure that there is any great evidence one way or the other, but, anecdotally, people are concerned that the system is not as robust as it should be. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to highlight this potential issue, and we should do what we can to stop it.

UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Anna Turley Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady must understand that once you have agreed to have a referendum, which is what this House did by an overwhelming majority, and once you have stood on a manifesto that pledged—as both Labour Members and she did, by the way—to honour the result of that referendum, if you then choose to delay, defer, obfuscate or dilute that commitment, you will be seen to have breached the trust in which people deserve to hold those they choose to speak for them in this mother of Parliaments.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I am not going to give way again, because I am conscious that others want to speak, I have a short time limit, and it is interrupting my lovely flow.

The truth is that there are people here who campaigned for remain—many Opposition Members and many Government Members—who respect the result of the referendum, who want to honour the pledge that we made, who want to do the right thing by the people and who want to leave the European Union, but there is a minority who are unreconciled to the result of the referendum and who are using every means at their disposal, fair and foul, to frustrate its result. They are hiding behind all kinds of improbable and incredible excuses for so doing, and frankly, the people’s vote campaign is among them.

You need to know, Mr Speaker, and I am sure the House needs to know too, that some of us stand resolute in opposition to this further reference to the people—as if we’ve not had a people’s vote. If we were to agree to it, what if, on a lower turnout, people voted to remain? What if it was a marginal decision once again, by a smaller margin than last time? Would we have a third referendum to settle the matter? Is it going to be the best of three, the best of five, or perhaps the best of seven? How many referendums must we have before the settled will of the people is established?

I stand for the people, of the people and by the people. I am proud to have got to this place from where I began, but unlike some hon. Members, I have not forgotten my origins and will stick by the people, and the people want to leave the European Union on time, lock, stock and barrel.