Local Government Finances: London

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered local government finances in London.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell.

This Government are committed to fixing the foundations and getting local government back on its feet after 14 years of neglect and decline. Vital uplifts in funding, alongside the move towards multi-year settlements and away from wasteful bidding wars, have been extremely welcome. This is a Government who stand for giving councils, like all our providers of public services, the certainty and stability that they need to go from costly crisis management to long-term prevention and root-and-branch reform of local public services. These agendas are vital for our national missions on growth, NHS waiting lists, and crime and antisocial behaviour, and are an opportunity for all our young people.

I want to lay out some of the main challenges facing local government, which need to be fully recognised and addressed by Government policy to prevent further councils from moving into crisis. The economic and social changes that have relentlessly driven council costs upwards were simply ignored by Conservative Governments. Rather than tackling these drivers and supporting our councils to adapt to the impact of social change, policy since 2010 has at best papered over the cracks. Financial support has been reduced to the point that our boroughs are receiving around 28% less funding per Londoner than under the last Labour Government.

[Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech. In my constituency, Brent council has had to cut its budget by £220 million since 2010. Under the Conservative Government, it suffered. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is nice that we now have this change of direction from the new Government?

[Mr Bailey]

My hon. Friend is right. It is important that we recognise the circumstances in which we found ourselves and that we point to the measures that this Government have taken to start to fix this endemic problem, which I will continue to explain.

Over and over again, the Tories passed the buck without passing the bucks. Our councils have had to deal with wider changes to legislation and other new duties and responsibilities, even as financial support has been repeatedly eroded. This challenge has been building and building. London’s population has grown by 900,000 in the last 15 years, with massive consequences for rising demand for services, particularly adult and children’s social care, special educational needs and disabilities, and temporary accommodation.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. One of the biggest issues for all councils—London councils and other councils across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—is housing. The Government have committed to 1.5 million houses, and that is a commendable strategy to address the issue. Does he agree that, whenever the houses come through, the Government have to look at rental accommodation and price, which many people are finding it hard to manage? It is not just the provision of houses, but ensuring that people can actually rent and live in social and rented housing.

[Mr Bailey]

The hon. Member is right, but we cannot adjust the market situation without adding more houses to the stock. Once we have increased the number of houses, we can start tackling the private rented sector. We are doing so, and I hope that the Minister will expand on some of the measures that this Government are taking to bring our landlords into line and improve the quality of the private rented sector.

As a result of the problems I have described, London’s boroughs are facing an unprecedented financial crisis, one that threatens the vital public services that millions of Londoners rely on, including my constituents in Leyton and Wanstead. Our communities are strong, but we also face significant challenges, ranging from crime and antisocial behaviour to a shortage of decent, affordable homes and the need for better opportunities for young people. All those issues can only be addressed effectively if our excellent councils can invest in our future.

Many councils are now teetering on the edge of issuing section 114 notices—meaning effective bankruptcy—and those risks are increasing, because the drivers of increased costs have simply not been accounted for. Seven London boroughs, nearly a quarter of the total, require exceptional financial support for 2025-26 amounting to over £400 million, and London accounts for almost a third of the total national EFS funding of £1.3 billion. We need to seriously engage with these challenges and chart a sustainable path forward. According to London Councils, London boroughs are forecast to overspend by £800 million this year; particular pressures include homelessness at £330 million, adult social care at £200 million and children’s social care at £160 million. The cost to the public purse will be so much greater in the long run if we do not deal with this crisis now.

By far the most acute financial pressure facing London boroughs is homelessness. The scale of the crisis is staggering: London Councils assesses that one in every 50 Londoners is currently homeless and living in temporary accommodation, including nearly 90,000 children. First and foremost, this is a human tragedy. Like many other colleagues, I have been engaging with individuals and families who are suffering as a result of the housing crisis, including a very powerful visit that I had this Christmas with Crisis in central London. In addition to this human suffering, homelessness represents the fastest-growing financial risk to London’s local authorities, with our councils spending £4 million per day on temporary accommodation—a figure that has surged by 68% in just one year.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for securing today’s important debate. I agree a lot with what he is saying about homelessness and the challenges it creates for London authorities, whether in inner London or outer London, but it prompts the question of why his Government have cut the housing targets for Labour councils in central London.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but it is difficult to accept that kind of challenge when his Government missed every one of their housing targets over the course of 14 years, and he has ignored the fact that the trajectory I have described was set under his Government. If that trajectory continues, homelessness alone will push London boroughs into bankruptcy, although the Government have been working hard to address the enormous challenges that we have inherited—which I have just highlighted to the hon. Member—after the abject failure of Conservative housing and homelessness policies. We welcome the recent uplift to the homelessness prevention grant and this week’s confirmation of £2 billion of grant funding for social and affordable homes across the country. However, there are further measures that could provide much-needed support to London boroughs.

One issue exacerbating the crisis is the cap on the amount of local housing allowance payable for temporary accommodation, which has been frozen at 2011 rates for nearly 14 years, even though such accommodation has become massively more expensive in recent years. The cost to London councils of acquiring temporary accommodation increased by 68% in the single year up to 2023, while the number of homeless Londoners increased by about 8% over the same period. This has created a significant funding gap for local authorities. Updating the cap would provide immediate financial relief for London boroughs, which could then spend more resources on preventing homelessness.

[Dawn Butler]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. London Councils has stated that one in 50 Londoners are currently homeless and living in temporary accommodation, and as my hon. Friend has said, spending is around £114 million per month, or approximately £4 million a day. Does he agree that this is unsustainable?

[Mr Bailey]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She refers to one of the three main stresses on our councils: addressing that would bring the greatest relief to all of them. Another step that the Government could take to tackle the homelessness crisis would be to ensure that the LHA rates reflect actual housing costs. London rents have risen so fast in recent years that just 5% of private rented properties are affordable on LHA, pushing more and more families into homelessness. I hope the Minister will set out the steps the Government are taking to review LHA rates, because that could make a huge difference to many families as well as to council finances.

Additionally, a longer-term social rent settlement would stabilise council housing revenue accounts and allow boroughs to increase the building of the new genuinely affordable homes that Londoners need, which we know is the only way to tackle the housing crisis.

When deprivation measures—rightly—have such a significant impact on funding formulas, it is vital to ensure that they effectively account for the impact of rents. Housing costs are one of the biggest drivers of deprivation in London, which is the third most deprived region in England once housing costs are considered. Beyond housing, the fundamental issue at the heart of London’s council funding crisis is a growing disparity between funding allocations and actual levels of need. The main local government funding formula has not been updated since 2013, meaning that allocations are based on outdated data that fails to account for population growth, demographic changes or London’s high housing costs.

Such difficulties can be illustrated by the councils that serve my constituents in Leyton and Wanstead. Redbridge has had population growth of 11.4% since 2011 and has huge pressures from homelessness, with a spend of £52 million a year on temporary accommodation. This is driven by the fact that Redbridge has an enormous private rented sector, comprising 75% of renters locally. The eviction rate in Redbridge is at 4.6% per 10,000 renters, almost triple the London average, with 86% of those evictions coming from the PRS. There is no escaping the reality that shocking numbers of people in constituencies like mine are now being evicted as the housing market changes, and identifying creative policies to tackle it is truly urgent.

Waltham Forest is facing massive pressures from increased homelessness, with a 55% increase in temporary accommodation in just one year up to last October. The requirement to spend under 51% of the homelessness prevention grant on temporary accommodation, although obviously a step in the right direction, will mean that still more of the bill for rising homelessness costs will have to come from the general budgets, including from reserves and other spending.

Costs from special educational needs and disabilities have also been surging, with a forecast overspend of £4.6 million, but the increase in the high needs block funding has not recognised that. Across London the upshot of the large gap between assessed need and actual funding, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies has identified as 17%, is the largest shortfall of any region in England. Many outer London boroughs are among the lowest funded per capita in the country, despite significant pressures.

We welcome the Government’s commitment to reviewing local government funding, because this is a huge opportunity to create a system that accurately reflects the current levels of need. In particular, we need to make sure population figures are robust, which requires serious attention to whether the figures for London reported in the last census are accurate, given that many people left the capital during the pandemic and have since returned.

[Mr French]

I echo the hon. Member’s comments about funding not keeping up with demographic changes. That is a cross-party criticism—not one aimed just at the Labour Government—because the problem is historical. Other price and funding challenges coming through include contract inflation, and the impact of the jobs tax on all local councils. The impact on Bexley council is expected to be around £5 million next year, but the Government are only providing £1.6 million of funding. Does the hon. Member agree that Ministers must address that issue, as well as the issue of fair funding, to ensure that councils can be financially sustainable?

[Mr Bailey]

No, and I will allow the Minister to explain why later.

The Tories’ legacies are a local government funding formula that does not recognise London-wide changes, pressure and needs, and a woefully outdated division between outer and inner London. Even 15 or 20 years ago, the traditional distinction between the core city and its outer areas made some sense: density and deprivation were more concentrated in the centre, as a legacy of slums and deindustrialisation. But the impacts of affordable housing and demographic changes have since consigned that situation to the past.

The population, especially people on lower incomes, have moved outwards, but the funding formula has not kept up. The places we live in have changed massively. Populations have grown as new people have come in, which has pushed up rents and house prices, contributing to real social exclusion and deprivation for many. I will quote just two of the many statistics that illustrate that. The borough of Redbridge has more than 80,000 children and young people; Islington has less than half that figure, but the figures for spending on children’s services are almost the inverse—Islington is able to spend £81 million and Redbridge just £44 million. That cannot be justified by deprivation rates, because Redbridge sits above the London average rate, and Islington below it. The situation is no different for public health, where outdated formulae mean that Waltham Forest receives 2.5 times less public health funding per person than Kensington and Chelsea, despite having higher levels of deprivation.

We must recognise that this is not just about the grant formula itself. Inner London weighting has impacts across many policy areas and therefore affects the quality of life of my constituents. Performance levels across education, health, crime and antisocial behaviour are becoming harder to sustain due to recruitment and retention issues, because teachers and police officers can earn up to £6,000 more just by travelling 15 minutes on the Tube. The disparity impacts both revenues and costs, because many inner London boroughs have a greater ability to raise funds from business rates and charges. That also needs to be further taken into account in the Government’s funding reforms.

Ultimately, we need significant change that recognises the impact of huge London-wide demographic shifts, but we also need specific, special consideration for outer London. I welcome the steps that the Government have taken so far to reform the local government financing system, including by giving councils multi-year settlements, which allow them to plan more effectively. That said, local government funding reform will not, on its own, guarantee the financial sustainability of local government, and we all know the challenging financial position that the Government inherited.

If greater resources cannot come from national Government, one alternative would be to empower local authorities to raise revenue through greater fiscal devolution. The fact that seven London boroughs now require exceptional financial support should be a wake-up call for us all—but EFS is not a solution; it is an emergency measure that does nothing to address the structural funding problem. The two London boroughs that required EFS in 2024-25 need even greater support in 2025-26. Relying on EFS would only kick the can down the road and allow financial instability to deepen. That presents a further concern for my constituents because our local councils have managed their budgets prudently and well. They have dealt with the inadequacies of the funding settlement and have often had to increase council tax as a result.

We cannot continue to see success punished, as happened under the previous Government, through policies that direct funding towards life support instead of tackling the underlying drivers of increased costs, which affect well-managed and poorly managed councils alike. I urge the Government to work with the local government sector to explore alternative support mechanisms, such as long-term debt restructuring, to give councils a genuine route to financial stability. We look forward to the funding reforms due in the next 12 months, but we must recognise that the pressure driving costs for our councils is linked to other policies across Government, from housing and planning to special educational needs and disabilities reform.

Strong and empowered local government in London is vital to support delivery of our national missions. Whether we are talking about raising living standards, delivering 1.5 million new homes, getting our NHS and social care system back on their feet, or creating good jobs and strong communities, it all comes back to local councils such as Waltham Forest and Redbridge delivering for local communities. Our Labour councils can do so much more if those challenges are tackled.

Despite the challenges, our hard-working local government staff and council leaders are already innovating and delivering change. In Waltham Forest, the council aims to deliver 27,000 new homes and 52,000 square feet of working space. Redbridge has taken forward a new empty property strategy to tackle that element of the housing crisis, alongside plans to deliver 19,000 new homes and 7,000 new jobs over the next decade. London MPs across the House, along with our hard-working councillors and council officers, are keen to work in partnership with the Government to address the huge challenge we face, and I look forward to playing my part in that.

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that if they wish to speak, they should bob in the usual way, as they would in the Chamber. We will need to impose a four-minute time limit to ensure all Members get to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. It will be interesting to see where I go with my first winding-up speech—I will take feedback later.

I thank the councils and councillors of London, who deliver the outputs that we need. I thank Councillor Williams and Councillor Rai and all the council leaders of London for showing leadership in a very challenging time. I thank the Mayor, and I also thank the Minister for the £11.3 billion—5.8%—core increase.

I will steal the words from my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales): London is special. It is different. Local government is the gateway; it is everyone’s front door. I secured this debate not to draw out ideological challenges and bring up some of the unpleasant aspects of the subject that we have discussed, but to tackle the structural problems that have been languishing untouched for so long. I come back to the point that I should be wary of what I wish for when I secure a debate, but I am not: I am wary of Conservative leadership. I welcome partnership and the Government’s approach, which allows us to have these debates knowing that we will bring better settlements—

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) and for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), who both spoke very movingly on behalf of the victims of this tragedy who want to see justice done. I venture to suggest that what they want above everything is to know that nothing like this will ever happen again—that whatever happened that night, there will be some glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel and that some good will come of it.

I praise the Secretary of State for recognising that it is the system itself that needs the most fundamental reform, and that the failures of individuals—whatever incentives existed and whatever conflicts were unresolved—were system failures. The cultural shift will come about as a result of a systemic review—a system change.

Hon. Members might well ask why I am taking an interest in this debate. I do not think I represent any community in a high-rise building with cladding problems in leafy Essex. The only interest I have to declare is that it turned out that my late mother was living in a block with unsafe cladding, so, to a very limited and minor extent, my family are suffering the loss of being unable to sell her flat. That is very small beer, but I put that down as an interest I should declare.

I have long taken an interest in safety management systems—ever since I was shadow Secretary of State for Transport at the time of the Ladbroke Grove disaster, when I took an interest in what was being submitted to the inquiry and made a submission of my own, recommending that there should be a systemic approach to the safety system. That resulted in the formation of the rail accident investigation branch of the Department for Transport, with the result that no inquiry into a rail accident has ever taken place again.

Similarly, as Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, I took a close interest in patient safety because we received the reports from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. We had Mid Staffordshire and all the maternity scandals, and we had public inquiry after public inquiry, until somebody suggested that there should be an investigation body accountable and answerable to the Secretary of State to look at why things go wrong in patient care and investigate the causes of incidents—without blame, incidentally—to find out what went wrong in order to make recommendations and put it right. Those are the lessons drawn from all the effective safety regimes in other industries, which should perhaps be applied in this case.

I co-authored a submission to the Grenfell inquiry with three others. The first was former Labour Housing and Fire Minister Nick Raynsford, who, at the time, was chairman of the Construction Industry Council approved inspector’s register—CICAIR—which relates to the private sector building control surveyors the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) spoke about. I will come on to that conflict, which the hon. Gentleman is very concerned about.

Another co-author was Kevin Savage, a leading figure in the building control profession; he happens to be a constituent of mine, but that was a coincidence. The third was Keith Conradi, the former chief investigator of the air accidents investigation branch of the Department for Transport—who, as it happens, became the first chief investigator for the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, which, as a result of the inquiry conducted by my Committee, is now a statutory body. He helped set that body up; he is now retired. He helped with the submission.

Keith Conradi in particular enabled us to understand building safety management as a safety management system. The events leading to the Grenfell disaster were not just the random failings or crimes of individuals. Where there is culpability, prosecutions must certainly follow, but that is not the main point. Grenfell and previous fires, such as Lakanal House, demonstrated that there was a comprehensive failure of the safety system that should exist to keep buildings as safe as possible.

We made our submission in September 2021. After seven years—a disadvantage of public inquiries is that they take a very long time—I was disappointed that the inquiry did not really find time to engage with our recommendations. It did publish our submission, but from the recommendations, I think it is fair to say that a number of issues have been handed back to the Department to be resolved. Paragraph 113.58, entitled “Implementing change”, simply suggests that the London Fire Brigade should

“establish effective standing arrangements for collecting, considering and effectively implementing lessons learned from previous incidents”.

That is an odd recommendation when we think about it, because the London Fire Brigade was itself very, very severely criticised in the report. That it should be left responsible for marking its own homework and making recommendations about itself underlines that the lacuna in the recommendations is the lack of an investigation body. There were two other paragraphs about building control that I shall come to: paragraphs 113.37 and 113.38. Those were our two urgent priorities to be addressed in our submission.

By the way, I am very grateful to the Minister for accepting our request for a meeting, which the Prime Minister promised on the Floor of the House when he announced the outcome of the inquiry. We had a very good meeting with the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention. I think she was taken with our recommendations but I think that they fall to the Minister’s Department, so I look forward to meeting him later this week.

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

The delays in addressing the fire safety issues that pertain to the Grenfell tragedy are having significant consequences for those who reside in buildings that are not being remediated in a timely fashion, particularly in my constituency. For example, the residents of Johnston Court have faced more than four years of uncertainty following a B2 rating, and the progress of remediation has stalled due to disputes between the developer and freeholder. The deadlock has left residents unable to sell, remortgage or feel safe in their homes, so we need faster action and accountability from all parties involved. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government’s actions and interventions will be critical to ensure that disputes do not keep delaying this urgently needed work, and that, as he is discussing, this is fundamentally about leadership?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am very happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman and to welcome the Secretary of State’s announcements today about accelerating all of this and ensuring that action is taken much more quickly. I hope that that will result in much quicker action for his constituents.

I was addressing the first major recommendation in our submission to the inquiry, which is that there should be established an independent building safety investigation branch of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, reporting directly to the Secretary of State. That removes any possible conflict that investigations have with any other part of the system. The idea that the Health and Safety Executive or the new Building Safety Regulator should be conducting investigations is absolutely fine, but we can never guarantee that they will not come across a failing of their own and be conflicted in that investigation. The public will not have confidence in any investigation that they conduct unless there is an independent investigation that looks at all the elements of the system. The Hackitt review rather overlooked this issue. It failed to underline how future fire incidents would be investigated. This is a gap that is still to be addressed.

The current system of resort to public inquiries, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green confirmed, takes far too long. I feel for those who were caught up in the tragedy directly. They have waited far too long. An air accident investigation rarely takes more than a few months because the capability exists. In the Grenfell case, the Housing Ombudsman still felt that

“residents’ complaints were dismissed and devalued.”

I think the inquiry was overwhelmed with so much material and so many different elements. In a way, its terms of reference were too wide to be able to capably come up with a comprehensive set of safety system recommendations.

It is also notable that although there was an inquiry into the Lakanal House fire, we had another inquiry into Grenfell. Public inquiries do not seem to resolve problems. A building safety investigation branch would transform that. It would operate independently, modelled on similar bodies for air, marine and rail. These bodies have proven their worth in both the rail and aviation. No public inquiry has taken place into an aviation accident since 1972 and there has not been a public inquiry into a rail accident since the Ladbroke Grove inquiry, because people have confidence in the new independent arrangements. They conduct rapid investigations. They focus not on blame, but on understanding failures and issuing binding recommendations for the future.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am sure that may be a very good suggestion, but the point I am making is that we need an apex to our safety system. Whatever else the Government do to remediate the safety system as it exists at the moment, they need an independent safety investigator as the apex of the system, which is like a guardian angel over the whole system. The hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater said there should be—I think I quote him correctly—an independent oversight body. Well, this is the body he seeks. It would be constantly looking for risks in the system, not just investigating accidents, and following up directly with the Secretary of State to say, “This has not been done.”

Crucially, the independence of the bodies is what commands public confidence. They also provide a very significant capability that no other regulator can do—a safety investigation body is not a regulator, of course. They provide a legal safe space where anybody can go and say anything without fear or favour. Witnesses have protection and, if necessary, anonymity, so they can openly speak without fear of retribution of being sued or the words they give in evidence being used against them in court. This creates a culture of openness that accelerates the learning process while maintaining accountability.

The introduction of a BSIB would not trespass on any other part of the safety system, such as the HSE or the Building Safety Regulator. It is an essential additional capability which needs to exist, otherwise we do not have that ultimate check over the whole system. Regulators, if necessary, can still run their investigations, as I was saying before. The safe space in the safety investigator does not protect anyone from legal culpability, as we saw when the air accidents investigation branch investigated the Shoreham air crash. It passed a file to the police, because it believed there had been negligence. The pilot was prosecuted. The safe space does not protect someone from wrongdoing.

[Mr Bailey]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I will give way once more, but I have rather a lot to say and I do not want to take up too much time.

[Mr Bailey]

The fundamental difference between an air accident investigation and a public inquiry is that as culpability is identified it is then passed on for action. This lies at the heart of the problem, which is the slow pace of bringing about justice. An extended period for a public inquiry has prevented and inhibited the delivery of justice for the people of Grenfell. Does the hon. Gentleman—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I remind Members that interventions need to be pithy and short.

Representation of the People

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome this statutory instrument, which puts right an inconsistency that should never have arisen in the first place. I am grateful to the Government for their rapid work to get us to this point, including that done by the Minister for the Armed Forces. I recognise wider concerns about voter ID rules, but the Government are right to prioritise this measure as a first step, and keep to our manifesto promise while the wider review continues. As we know, many veterans face particular challenges in proving their identity in many aspects of civilian life. We veterans are more likely to have moved around regularly, and may not have the records, or the experience of engagement with civilian authorities, such as councils. That creates barriers that we need to remove.

In my career, my home base moved around constantly for many years. My driving licence gave my parents’ address, because it was the only fixed abode I could refer back to. That is typical for many of our service personnel. We should recognise that service personnel have fewer fixed connections to rely on when they leave the forces. It can be confusing to go from having a MOD 90—a core part of life that shapes how service personnel engage with all the services and authorities that they encounter—to being out in the civilian world, with a blizzard of forms and applications that service personnel are simply not used to dealing with. The least we can do is to make sure that these processes are easier.

Obviously, the right first step was the veterans card, but it is of limited use unless it can make life easier and less hostile for people leaving our military after completing their service to us all. Society trusts our military IDs. In time, we must learn to continue valuing service, and must come to trust our veteran IDs in the same way.

We have to ask why it has taken action from this Government to correct this mistake and create parity between veterans cards and the MOD 90. It is shameful to read in leaked reports that the previous Prime Minister deliberately pushed to keep this barrier to veteran voting, based on nothing more than a vague fear that giving in on the veterans card would make it harder to say no to student ID cards. That says it all about the decision making on voter ID. It is welcome that the rules will be subject to continuing wider review.

I must also address the point made by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) about service personnel, because I was impacted by the issue he mentioned. While serving in the United States, upholding democracy, I lost the ability to vote. That is a terrible affront, and I urge the Government to give due consideration to the issue. Fairness and doing right by those who have served us is vital, and it is what our communities want. Securing a sense of fairness and integration between the forces and our communities is important because of the impact on recruitment and retention, which have been degraded over the past 14 years, with real cost to our national defence.

I finish with the recognition, which I know Ministers share fully, that this is just one step among many that will need to be taken if we are to remove the barriers that many veterans face when trying to access their rights and play a full role in our communities. We can now look forward to working together on a wider agenda, which is so important for keeping all our people safe.