Face-to-Face Banking: Rural Areas

Edward Morello Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Voaden]

I absolutely want to see that. When Link assesses rural locations, it considers whether alternative access to cash facilities are available within three miles or 30 minutes on public transport. For Totnes, it noted that alternative facilities were available within a 19-minute bus journey—that is on a really good day. But that is only relevant to those who live in the centre of Totnes. If someone starts from one of the many satellite villages that use the bank in Totnes, it is a completely different story. There may not even be a bus to get into Totnes to pick up the other bus to get to Paignton and the bank.

The impact on local residents and businesses will be familiar: queues at the post office, which become impossible in the run-up to Christmas; hundreds of extra customers for the post office, which has no extra space or staff to cope; and businesses less keen to accept cash, because the only place they can pay it in is the post office. If someone is running a shop on their own, as I did for six years, it is impossible to shut up shop and go down the road to queue at the post office, because they have to keep the shop open to make money.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

Bridport in my constituency is sometimes referred to as Totnes-lite. Like Totnes, it has a high concentration of independent retailers, tradespeople and small businesses who rely on cash deposits. On average, a small or medium-sized enterprise deposits cash about 25 times a year and withdraws cash about 15 times a year. Groves Nurseries highlights the exact issue that my hon. Friend mentions: how to keep the business open, run a successful operation and drive to the nearest town every time there is a need to deposit or withdraw cash.

Financial Inclusion: Young People

Edward Morello Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a honour to serve under your chairship, Sir John. My first job was on the deli counter of my local supermarket. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) on securing this important debate.

In the middle of a cost of living crisis, whether a young person knows how to manage their money, can afford to stay in education, can access affordable financial services and advice they can trust, can avoid problem debt and can build a secure future has never mattered more. Young people are facing challenges that previous generations did not. Money has changed. For previous generations, it was coins in a pocket or cash in a wallet. Today it is numbers on a screen—online banking, apps, digital wallets, “buy now, pay later” schemes, cryptocurrency and social media influencers offering financial advice that often benefits themselves rather than the young people following them.

We assume that because young people are comfortable with technology they are financially literate, but those are not the same things. The Milburn review laid out the importance of financial inclusion for young people. Between January and March of this year, 1.01 million people between the ages of 16 and 24 were not in education, employment or training. The number of young adults regularly relying on borrowing has increased by 45% in just one year. Many are using unsecured loans and buy now, pay later products to cover everyday essentials, while one in five were employed on zero-hours contracts, making it almost impossible to budget or save. This is not just about people on the lowest incomes; it is increasingly affecting younger people who are working hard but cannot get ahead.

The challenges are even greater in rural constituencies such as West Dorset. Financial inclusion depends on being able to access financial services, yet facilities that make this possible—bank branches, cash machines and post offices—are disappearing fastest from rural communities because they are considered commercially unviable. Meanwhile, our communities are expected to embrace digital banking despite persistent mobile phone and broadband blackspots in villages such as Drimpton, Burton Bradstock and Stoke Abbott. Across the country, 1 million people have cancelled internet packages because of the cost of living crisis. Digital banking cannot be the answer if people cannot get online.

True financial inclusion should be about giving people the confidence and knowledge to make informed decisions throughout their lives, yet less than half of children receive meaningful financial education either at home or in school. Nearly one quarter of young adults have low financial capability. Most children say that they would ask their parents’ financial advice, yet only about half of parents feel confident having those conversations. Financial education should become a core life skill, taught from primary school onwards.

Every young person should leave school with an understanding of budgeting, saving, borrowing, mortgages, pensions, taxation, credit scores, fraud and the long-term consequences of debt. Those are skills that will benefit them throughout their lives. Financial education should not stop when the school day ends. Family hubs, community hubs and banking hubs could and should become centres of financial guidance, not just financial services. Parents and carers should receive greater support because they remain the single biggest influence on their children’s financial behaviour.

We must also recognise the growing risk facing financially excluded households. An estimated 2 million people are now borrowing from illegal moneylenders—an increase of about half a million since 2022. More people are turning to payday loans simply to pay their rent or mortgage. That is not sustainable and we must do better. We must ensure that everyone has access to appropriate and affordable financial services, regardless of where they live, and can access affordable credit and independent debt advice before they reach crisis point.

For constituencies such as West Dorset, financial inclusion is also about opportunity. It determines whether a young person can take up an apprenticeship, manage their first wage, avoid exploitative lending and build financial independence. When we fail to equip young people with the skills and services they need to manage their money, we do not simply leave them financially excluded; we rob them of opportunity itself.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Morello Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and that is why I announced—on the basis of many representations from colleagues, including her—a comprehensive set of measures at the Budget to crack down on illegal high street activity. We want our high streets to thrive, but we must crack down on these illegal businesses selling counterfeit goods and often harbouring more dangerous criminal activity. That is why we put money into that area in the Budget.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

T8. Vast swathes of Bridport, Beaminster, Maiden Newton, Yetminster and Thornford—whole parts of West Dorset—are under water. Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service is doing an amazing job of rescuing residents who are trapped either at home or in cars, but unfortunately it will suffer a £1.2 million shortfall in the long-term funding settlement because the Treasury’s underlying assumptions are incorrect. Will the Chancellor meet me, so that we can show her why this is a problem for the service?

[James Murray]

Let me start by thanking the emergency services in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency for all their work to ensure that people are kept safe, and to respond to the challenges that people face as a result of flooding. We are determined to support public services across the board, and the decisions taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in past Budgets and in the spending review mean that we have sustainable funding for our public services in all parts of the country.

Railways Bill (First sitting)

Edward Morello Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Ranger]

Q I want to build on the points about mayors and the mayoral authorities, in the context of the devolved nations. There is a really complex picture there, particularly with cross-border travel and the different ownership of companies that may operate across the border. Do you think the Bill covers that adequately and can cope with the challenges?

Keith Williams: It is a great question. The issue, of course, is cross-border; for example, trains go from London into Wales, and similarly into Scotland. Giving total devolution was something that we looked at. There is so much cross-border traffic that you need to take that into account, so we left the devolved positions largely as they were.

Richard Brown: The Bill is pretty clear in setting out the roles and responsibilities of the Secretary of State and the devolved Administrations. In practice, these things will always need to be based on collaboration between the different organisations, which is the way you run a railway. There are inherent tensions between, for example, what the Welsh Government might want in terms of cross-border services and what might actually be affordable and in the interests of passengers, competition for capacity use, and so on. All of that will be within GBR to, not adjudicate, but work its way through, produce solutions and, where there are options, put those to the Secretary of State and the Welsh Government, for instance.

Out of that will possibly come a compromise, because not everybody will get what they want from the railway. There are too many competing people wanting different things from the railway. The great news is that all of that responsibility to co-ordinate and produce a plan for the most effective use of capacity for the different users is put on one body rather than being split between the Department for Transport, ORR and Network Rail, as it is now.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

Q On accountability, both this panel and the previous one have talked about the benefits of having a single business unit or chief executive responsible for both track and train. I accept the logic of that and the point that there are mechanisms for local communities and passenger groups to interact with that business unit and for it to have to take local plans into consideration. The step that I am missing is that I can convince the chief executive responsible for my area that we need a new passing loop at Tisbury—he is 100% convinced of that—but ultimately he is still delivering based on the broader business plan. For all of the mechanisms of interaction with my local business unit, how does that translate into delivering within a business plan, if the business plan continues to deprioritise the south-west, for example?

Keith Williams: I encourage you to work with your MD to put forward the best plan, which will then go into GBR’s overall plan and there will be a set of priorities. There are always going to be priorities. In a sense, in the past one of the failures was that that then went to the Secretary of State, who was making most of the decisions, because everyone else was avoiding making a decision, or absolving themselves of doing so, and sometimes the best decisions were not being made. I think there is a much greater likelihood that the priority list will be set by somebody who knows how to run track and train.

[Edward Morello]

Q The Secretary of State will still have to sign off that loop, though.

Keith Williams: They will still have to sign it off, but hopefully they will leave it to the people who know what needs doing to do it.

[The Chair]

With 60 seconds for question and answer, I call Baggy Shanker.

Horse and Rider Road Safety

Edward Morello Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon) on securing this debate.

Per mile travelled, rural roads account for over 60% of all UK road deaths. Last year, I met a group of constituents who keep their horses in stables in the Forston area. They are experienced riders, and they described repeated near-misses caused by drivers going too fast or passing too close. In fact, there have been 15 motor vehicle incidents recorded in that small area alone.

My hon. Friend has already outlined the changes to the highway code in 2022, but I wonder how many of us here today could say that we have read the highway code since we passed our test. The reality is that on tight, winding rural roads, the guidance is widely ignored.

Dorset police and Dorset Road Safe Partnership do excellent work through schemes such as Horse Safe and Operation Close Pass. Such operations can change attitudes, but they need to happen more often in the places where the risks are highest. My constituents are asking for increased signage, more enforcement and clearer information on how police work with the British Horse Society to track and respond to incidents.

In 2024, the British Horse Society recorded more than 3,000 road incidents involving horses: 58 horses were killed and 80 riders injured. Four in five of those incidents were caused by drivers passing too fast or too close. We cannot continue to accept that as an inevitable toll. That is why I strongly support the Road Traffic (Horse and Rider Safety) Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. I hope the Minister will also take this opportunity to support it.

Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief

Edward Morello Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

The Finance (No. 2) Bill will be making its way through the House in the coming weeks, and once the Bill is law that change will come forward. If the hon. Gentleman meets his farmers on 7 April this year, the change will already be in place.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to the farmers of West Dorset who have never stopped campaigning against the family farm tax, and especially those hardy ones who have repeatedly driven their tractors up to London to let their views be known. This is just the latest in numerous assaults by the Government against our farming communities. So will the Minister take this opportunity to put on the record that the Government will not agree to President Trump’s demands that we accept more food imports at lower food standards as part of a US trade deal?

[Dan Tomlinson]

We will always fight for the interests of British businesses and British farmers in the deals we strike with countries across the world.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Edward Morello Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I wholeheartedly agree that the Prime Minister should change direction. It is deeply disappointing that, having been grilled at the Liaison Committee yesterday, he clearly has no intention of doing so. The changes to the agricultural property relief and the business property relief will punish family farmers who put food on our tables and guarantee the food security of our nation, and they will not tackle the loophole of private equity companies and celebrity farmers buying land to reduce their tax liability.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

Labour Members have made much of the fact that, upon a family farm being inherited, the inheritance tax will be payable over 10 years. They completely ignore the fact that 30% of family farms made no profit at all last year. Invariably, those who inherit will have to sell land to pay the bill. That will feed exactly the kind of market that the investors that my hon. Friend mentions are looking for.

[Daisy Cooper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. This will have unintended consequences, and we can see what those will be. We have spent a year warning the Government; they can no longer say that they have not been warned. I hope so much that, at this late stage, they make changes to the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Morello Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I have huge respect for the Office for Budget Responsibility, and I reappointed Richard Hughes for a second term earlier this year. We deeply regret the publication of the Budget document ahead of the Budget. Richard Hughes has apologised for that and has resigned, but I thanked him for his leadership of the OBR. My hon. Friend is right to point to the longer-term risks that the OBR also points out. That is why at the Budget we took measures on electric vehicles and on high-value properties, because we need to reform the tax system so that it works for the future.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

T6. The cost of delivering public services in rural Britain is higher than in urban areas. The cost to access services is higher for communities in rural places like West Dorset than it is for those in urban Britain. Will the Treasury commit to reviewing the funding formula, so that local government, integrated care boards, fire services and all our vital community services get the funding that rural communities deserve?

[James Murray]

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government recently published “English indices of deprivation 2025”, which included the supplementary report on how deprivation manifests in rural areas. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government will further consider those assessments of deprivation, as well as other inputs, when deciding funding models for local areas.

Alcohol Duty: UK Wine Sector

Edward Morello Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Gregory Stafford]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and he pre-empts something I was going to say later about the inconsistencies and unfairness in the current system. Small producer relief is capped at 8.5% ABV, and the Government should look at what they can do for the smaller producers that he mentions.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has highlighted that the UK has the third highest wine duty in the world, now at £2.44 per bottle—an increase of 9p since 2023. By comparison, France charges the equivalent of just 2p per bottle and Romania 1p, and Spain applies no excise duty at all. In fact, half of the EU’s 27 member states do not charge duty on wine whatsoever. When neighbouring countries impose far lower rates, our competitiveness suffers. We pride ourselves on being a global trading nation, but we have priced ourselves out of the very markets we helped to create. Labour’s current approach is short-sighted and self-defeating: taxing ambition, throttling innovation and penalising productivity. The Treasury cannot build growth by breaking the back of the very industries that deliver it. As Winston Churchill put it in 1904, we cannot tax our way to prosperity any more than we can drink our way to sobriety.

I turn to the inconsistencies and unfairness in the system, which my hon. Friend just mentioned. Products with an ABV of between 8.5% and 22% are taxed at the same rate per litre of pure alcohol, and yet producers of beer with an ABV of between 3.5% and 8.4% pay more than twice as much duty as producers of cider of the same strength. Small producer relief, although it is welcome in principle, is capped at 8.5% ABV and therefore excludes virtually all winemakers and distillers. This policy fails to support small English wineries such as Chapel Down—in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam)—Nyetimber or Camel Valley, which I am sure Members are all familiar with, and which contribute to rural employment and agricultural production.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a fantastic speech, and I agree with everything that he is saying. West Dorset is blessed with 11 fantastic small vineyards. For most of them, the primary route to market is through local shops and rural pubs. Does he agree that unless we raise the threshold to create equality in the marketplace and a fairer system alongside small producers of beer, those vineyards will never have a chance to grow beyond their local area?

[Gregory Stafford]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. It makes very little sense to design a system that punishes small wineries for doing precisely what we want, namely innovating, employing and exporting. We need a tax framework that supports the makers, not merely those who take.

There is a revenue reality to this as well. Between April and September this year, receipts from alcohol duty were £300 million lower than during the same period in 2024. If that trend continues, the Treasury will collect around £1 billion less than was forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility. We have reached the wrong side of the Laffer curve, where higher duties result in lower total receipts. The Treasury cannot continue to draw from the same barrel and expect it to refill itself. That should give the Chancellor, the Minister and Treasury officials pause for serious reflection.

With the autumn Budget approaching, I would be grateful if the Minister could address three areas of concern. First, have the Government undertaken, or will they undertake, a full assessment of the impact of successive duty increases on consumer prices, business sustainability and overall tax receipts? Secondly, will the forthcoming three-year review of the duty system consider whether the current tax by ABV model is appropriate for wine, a product whose alcohol content varies naturally with climatic conditions? Thirdly, will the Government revisit the structure of small producer relief so that it more fairly supports genuinely small-scale producers, including English winemakers and craft distillers, in line with the original policy intent?

Finally, will the Treasury review the cumulative impact of wider regulatory costs, such as the extended producer responsibility packaging levy, business rate changes and other compliance burdens, to ensure that they do not disproportionately harm low-margin businesses within the sector? I thank the Wine and Spirit Trade Association and Treasury Wine Estates, whose compelling evidence shows a sector under extreme pressure, a tax system that is internationally uncompetitive and an approach that risks delivering diminished returns to the Exchequer. When consumers are price sensitive, hospitality is struggling, and revenues are falling despite higher rates, it is right to ask whether the system remains fit for purpose. The objective must be a framework that is fair between product categories, proportionate in its impact, and effective in raising the revenue on which our public services depend.

The UK’s wine and spirits sector is one of our quiet economic strengths. It deserves a regulatory environment that allows it to thrive, invest and continue contributing to communities and the Treasury alike. The Government should remember that a thriving economy fills the Exchequer, and a suffocated one drains it. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and in particular how the Government intend to support the stability, competitiveness and long-term sustainability of this vital industry.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Morello Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)]

At the spending review, we enabled better investment in temporary accommodation stock and strengthened local authorities’ financial position. Those changes will support local authorities to increase the supply of good-quality temporary accommodation and drive down day-to-day spend on such accommodation.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

T2. In her speech this morning, the Chancellor said that she must make necessary choices ahead of the Budget. Will those choices once again come at the expense of rural communities such as West Dorset, or will she commit to reviewing the funding model to ensure that rurality is a funding metric, alongside deprivation, so that rural communities finally get the support they deserve?

[James Murray]

At the spending review, as announced earlier this year by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), we set out record investment into the farming and rural communities right across this country. That is only possible because of the choices that we have made on taxation and to balance the public finances.