Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response

Debate between Matt Western and Darren Jones

Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Any cases that are clearly a real risk to national security should alarm everyone around this House. I think back to some of the questions that I put to then Prime Minister Johnson, as you will recall, Mr Speaker, about his relationship with Alexander Lebedev, for example. We have heard about the case of Oleg Deripaska with George Osborne and Peter Mandelson, as well as other characters, which is deeply concerning.

Let me land on a point about the non-corporate communication channels and IT systems. I am delighted to hear that the Government are reviewing those, but this is a matter of urgency, because it has become the norm for civil servants and those in Government, including in previous Governments, to use the likes of WhatsApp as the normal operating system. When will that review be published?

[Darren Jones]

The first part of my hon. Friend’s question goes to the point I made in my statement about the importance of allowing the developed vetting interviews to be fully confidential. We need to ensure that when people join the Government and undertake a DV interview, they are fully transparent with the Government about any relationships they have with individuals. Turning to the review of non-corporate communications channels, I hope to be able to announce its terms of reference very shortly.

Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address

Debate between Matt Western and Darren Jones

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My first concern is about the number of WhatsApp and other channels that have been used for very informal but important communications between officials and Ministers—a practice that seems to have started very actively under the Johnson Government and continued thereafter. My second concern is about the use of low-level IT systems for quite serious documents of record. Can the Minister update the House on what is being done to tighten up those important channels?

[Darren Jones]

I share those concerns as well as similar concerns that have been raised by the Intelligence and Security Committee, not only about the extensive use of what we call non-corporate communications channels but about information that should have been on a higher level of classification that was shared at “official sensitive”. I have already announced to the House the imminent start of a review of the use of non-corporate communications channels, and I shall be taking further action to ensure that sensitive information is shared at the appropriate classification.

Social Housing

Debate between Matt Western and Darren Jones

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that there is a housing crisis with too few genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy; further recognises that the number of new social rented homes built in recent years has been too low; notes that the Government has set a target to build 300,000 homes a year, which is unlikely to be achieved without building more social homes; further notes that Shelter’s recent report, A Vision for Social Housing, concluded that 3.1 million new social rented homes need to be built over the next 20 years; and calls on the Government to adopt a target of building 155,000 social rented homes, including at least 100,000 council homes, each year from 2022.

It is an honour to rise to discuss one of the most critical issues facing us, and I thank the Backbench Committee for affording me the opportunity to do this today. Sadly, looking round the Chamber, I see surprisingly few people here to share the debate. I thank those who are here, but I am surprised at how few there are, given the very real and pressing crisis that we face in this country. It is the foremost of all the crises that we face.

The housing market is fundamentally broken, and it is the social housing sector that has been the casualty. As a result, homelessness is up 50% and rough sleeping has risen 160% since 2010. Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of people are living in homes that are not fit for human habitation, yet this is the fifth wealthiest country on the planet. Despite that apparent national wealth, we are impoverished by crushing personal debt, large mortgages, high private sector rents, student loans, significant unsecured debt as great as it was in 2007 and stagnant wages that have failed to keep up with the cost of living. It is no wonder that the UN rapporteur has observed us as a country in crisis where the social fabric is not just frayed at the edges but badly torn.

This week marks the second anniversary of the terrible tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, and we are reminded of how recent and current policy on social housing has failed and continues to fail our society, so how is it that the market and the policies that govern that market are not delivering the much-needed housing? The social housing report commissioned by Shelter in January estimates that the UK needs to build 155,000 social homes a year for the next couple of decades. That is the scale of the crisis. If good housing is fundamental to the quality of our lives, why is it not the basis for everything in our society? Lord Porter put it succinctly when he said that, with a housing problem,

“you haven’t just got a housing problem, you’ve got an education problem, you’ve got a health problem, anti-social behaviour problem, whatever.”

It is clear that we need to reset the market and restore the principle that a decent home is a right owed to all, not a privilege for the few.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the market has failed in constituencies such as mine, where it is getting more and more expensive to either rent or buy, and that we therefore need to build council houses to provide security for people and their families, including accessible housing, given that more and more people with disabilities cannot find homes?