Getting Britain Working Again

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

It is a real pleasure to speak in this King’s Speech debate, which is my first in this Chamber. Last time around, I was sat on my own in a hotel room on the south bank with covid, warmly shared as a welcome gift by a lovely new colleague just after I entered this place.

After the local election results last week, it is clear that the country has spoken. People right across this great nation are deeply, viscerally disappointed in the performance of this Government since the general election two years ago. This Government came in with such promise and such a huge majority that they could have done anything they wanted. They could have swung into action on day one, giving people real hope, with a real commitment to turbocharge the economy, to clean up our dying and degraded natural environment and to provide truly affordable and social homes, rather than more million-pound new builds like those we see carpeting South Devon. Instead, two years on, people are struggling to pay their bills, young people are failing to find their first job, parents are still fighting with local authorities to secure a decent education for their child, and thousands upon thousands of people simply cannot afford a secure roof over their head.

[Peter Swallow]

The hon. Member knows how fond I am of her, but how can she possibly in one voice condemn building new homes and in the next sentence suggest that we do not have enough homes for young people to live in? She simply cannot have her cake and eat it.

[Caroline Voaden]

What I said is absolutely correct. In my constituency of South Devon, new build homes in developer-led housing estates are selling for £950,000. We are not providing the homes we need—the social homes and the truly affordable homes that young people, young couples, young families and people who want to move out from their parents’ home need. We are providing the wrong sort of homes. Having a system led by housing developers that are driven by profit will never provide the homes that we need.

Is it any wonder that voters across the country have turned to the extreme ends of our political spectrum to stick two fingers up at what they see as an ineffective political class that has completely ignored them? “Blame the immigrants” or “blame the billionaires” seem to be the two easy answers thrown out by these parties to the difficult, thorny, complicated questions that this country faces. The sad truth is that neither of those two propositions will be enough to make the changes we need to see to reform the structures of our economy and public services and to improve the lives of those who need it most.

Ten years ago, we saw a referendum that cut our country in two, like a chainsaw through the trunk of a mighty oak tree, and that division has not healed. The arguments still rage, the communities still feel left behind, and the false promise offered in that awful referendum has turned out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors. People are still angry on both sides of that debate. The House will not be surprised to hear that as a Liberal Democrat, I welcome the Government’s promise to strengthen ties with our nearest neighbours in Europe. The House will probably not be surprised to hear me also say that that promise does not go far enough, especially if we are to get Britain working again.

The upcoming EU reset Bill is just the latest example of the Government’s lack of ambition when it comes to rebuilding our trading links with Europe. When we talk of Brexit red tape, nowhere is that more limiting than in the red lines that Labour tied around itself in its 2024 manifesto. It said on coming into office that the previous Conservative Government had left a £22 billion black hole in the UK’s public finances, yet the botched Brexit deal has left a £90 billion hole, similar in scale to the damage wreaked by the 2008 financial crash.

Businesses in South Devon regularly talk to me about the nightmare of trying to do business with Europe. Many have just given up on it altogether. Others are hanging on, desperately hoping that trading restrictions will be eased and customers will come back. I welcome the promise of a sanitary and phytosanitary deal, which cannot come fast enough for my food and farming businesses. We want to hear the Government talk about a customs union with the EU to slash the red tape that is holding us back, because economic growth has stagnated in this country for far too long. We also want to see the UK at the heart of European defence co-operation, not only for the benefits it would bring to national security, but for the investment opportunities it would provide for the supply chain. We must be front and centre of those negotiations. Europe would welcome our involvement, and we must be confident about shaping and leading that discussion.

There is so much to cover in the King’s Speech, but I will just touch on a couple of other areas. I have talked about people feeling ignored and forgotten. Nowhere is the visible representation of that starker than in our high streets, with boarded-up shops, endless vape shops, cafés and pubs struggling to survive, and exorbitant rents making it impossible to get a new business off the ground. The Government have pledged to nationalise British Steel to protect fewer than 3,000 jobs. I have no doubt that the wider economy in and around Scunthorpe will truly benefit from that decision, but why is there nothing in this speech to protect our once vibrant and precious hospitality industry, which has lost nearly 100,000 jobs in the past year? Those jobs are less visible than the closure of a steelworks or a car plant, because it is 10 jobs here and 20 jobs there, but the effect of the national insurance rise has been devastating up and down the country. Businesses have been calling last orders once and for all or simply shrinking their offer.

In my constituency, Rockfish, the California Inn, the Maltsters Arms and the Berry Head hotel—I could go on and on, because hospitality is the backbone of our economy—are cutting staff hours, choosing not to employ extra staff or closing two days a week so that they can manage on one exhausted chef, rather than employing a second, with the owner of the pub having to step into the kitchen when the chef has a few precious days off. This death by a thousand cuts is having a devastating impact on youth employment and part-time jobs. Those are the jobs that so many people rely on to combine with parenting, caring or studying. Let us not forget that every teenager who gets a job washing pots or waiting tables is learning valuable skills that will take them forward in the job market for years to come.

As the Secretary of State said earlier today, this is about the story of their lives, and I was pleased to hear his passion for supporting young people into work, but youth unemployment now stands at around 20%. That is utterly shameful. One in five of our young people is unable to even get a start in the workforce. The new small business protections Bill is laudable, but it falls far short of a proper plan to protect small businesses. We are disappointed that the Government have not listened to our plan to scrap the national insurance rise, reform business rates and prioritise a high street revival.

As a south-west MP, there is a list of Bills that I would have loved to see in the King’s Speech but are sadly missing. Yet again, the rural south-west seems to have been ignored. We have £45 billion for Northern Powerhouse Rail, but not a word about boosting vital bus services across the villages of the south-west. If we are to get people working again, we have to get them to work. If there are no buses, they cannot get there. There was nothing on boosting digital connectivity for hard-to-reach areas.

[Sam Rushworth]

I hear what the hon. Lady is saying—we have exactly the same challenges in my rural community, where people cannot get to job interviews or to jobs—but we passed the Bus Services Act 2025 in the last Session.

[Caroline Voaden]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. We do not have a mayor in Devon, so we miss out on a lot of that legislation’s benefits. I have loads of villages that do not even have a bus, so talk of bus fares is completely irrelevant when there is literally no service. How are young people supposed to get to college or work or seek opportunities if they cannot get out of their village?

There was no legislation to require banks to offer a minimum service guarantee to their customers. Lloyds bank made nearly £7 billion in profit in 2025, yet it closed branches with impunity, and the Government’s promises to address the lack of banking services have led to nothing so far.

There are some things in the King’s Speech that I would like to welcome. I am pleased to see the Government pledge finally to break the link between gas and electricity prices, which is vital in a country that depends more heavily on gas than many of our neighbours. Investment in home-grown renewable power is also welcome, but we want to see the focus of solar on warehouses and car parks, not on prime farmland. We also want to see stronger community benefits from new renewable infrastructure, empowering communities with the right to buy and sell community energy locally.

Talk of farmland leads me to a devastating omission from the King’s Speech: not once was the word “nature” mentioned. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) so beautifully laid out in her speech last night, that was probably something that the King himself was disappointed to see. Where is the desire to protect our green spaces, to prompt a revival in nature, to restore our ancient forests and our peatlands, and to clean up our dirty rivers and waterways once and for all? We live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, yet nature is not a priority for the Government, despite all the benefits that it brings to people’s health and wellbeing. If we truly want to cut the NHS bill, that would be a really good place to start.

The new water Bill is welcome. The Liberal Democrats have long called for Ofwat to be replaced by a regulator that actually has some teeth, but until the Government address the elephant in the room and look at the ownership of the water industry, nothing will really change. No one should be making a profit from water: something that is so vital not only to us as humans, but to the health of all our planet’s ecosystems. The Liberal Democrats have long led the campaign in Parliament against the sewage scandal, tabling 44 amendments to the Water (Special Measures) Bill, none of which the Government or the Conservatives accepted. They must do more.

Lastly, I will mention the education for all Bill. We all know that support for children with special educational needs is broken, so I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling it; we urgently need this reform. As my party’s schools spokesperson, I will scrutinise every line of the legislation when it comes before the House, so I will no doubt have time to say far more about it, but let me say this. We must build a system designed around the potential that every child has and that works to their strengths, noticing their gifts and talents and what they can achieve given the right support. We must stop judging them by their limitations, ostracising them, separating them from their peers and causing lifelong damage to their mental health and confidence.

Reform to SEND must be done with children and parents at its heart, with open, honest consultation with families, and with a serious commitment to invest the money needed in our educators and our schools so that they can rise to the challenge and truly build a more inclusive system that works for every child, from those facing the hardest of challenges to the lucky and blessed high achievers among them.

It is a strange thing to deliver this speech opposite Government Benches that are so clearly riven by intrigue, and not knowing who will be leading this legislation through Parliament. It is my hope that whatever path our Government colleagues decide to go down today—or over the next few days and weeks—they will commit to going further in the areas that I have set out, remember the challenges and higher costs faced by rural areas in service delivery and communications, and prioritise nature in every single major decision they make about infrastructure and new building programmes. Think bigger, think bolder, think greener for the benefit of everyone.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I please gently remind Members that we must not make reference to the monarch having particular views?