Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Second Deputy Chairman]

I call the shadow Minister.

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

I rise briefly on behalf of His Majesty’s official Opposition to confirm our support for clause 1 standing part of the Bill. Clause 1 is the operative heart of this legislation and repeals the remaining provisions to which the Minister referred. In some ways, it feels rather fitting that the Committee is considering this clause on 21 October, Trafalgar Day, because although the nation rightly remembers Lord Nelson today, another great hero of the Napoleonic wars, the Duke of Wellington, who was Prime Minister, together with Sir Robert Peel in this House, drove Catholic emancipation on to the statute book through the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.

At the time, the Act was seen as a radically progressive measure. Indeed, such was the strength of feeling that Wellington was only able to overcome the fierce opposition of King George IV and peers in the House of Lords by threatening that his Tory Government would resign and warning the King and their lordships that the incoming Whig Administration would be immeasurably worse. As students of parliamentary history will know, the resulting split in Wellington’s party ushered in a decade and a half of Whig dominance. I am bound to say that I am rather pleased that there is considerably more cross-party consensus on today’s reform.

There is, however, an important historical lesson in how we view the statutes that clause 1 amends. Both the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 and the subsequent Jews Relief Act 1858 were seen in their own day as wildly progressive steps forward that tore down centuries-old barriers to public life. The restrictions they left behind on advising the sovereign on Church appointments were the political compromises of the 19th century, but nearly 200 years on, what was introduced as a 19th-century compromise is now an archaic anomaly and unacceptable discrimination.

Over the decades, Parliament has rightly repealed or amended many of the other restrictive measures originally contained in both the 1829 and 1858 Acts, and clause 1 simply finishes that long historical journey. By removing these final statutory prohibitions and their draconian penalties, it ensures that the legal bar on a Roman Catholic or Jewish Prime Minister fulfilling their constitutional duties by advising the monarch on Church appointments is similarly consigned to history. His Majesty’s Opposition therefore support clauses 1 and 2 standing part of this Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Third Reading

King’s consent signified.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood]

As we reach Third Reading, I am pleased to again reaffirm our support for this measure, as we work to ensure that this particular anachronism will soon be consigned to history. Our constitutional arrangements are the product of centuries of history, and we on these Benches believe we should always approach changes to them with appropriate care. Our constitution has evolved considerably since the 19th century, reflecting the changing character of our country and the diversity of the people who serve it, and it is entirely reasonable that our laws should evolve with it.

Respect for our history does not require us to preserve every historical anomaly. There is a clear distinction between respecting our constitutional traditions and allowing outdated 19th-century restrictions to remain on the statute book simply because they have always been there. At the same time, the established Church occupies a distinctive place in our constitutional settlement, and the relationship between Church and state is one that has developed over centuries. In correcting the historical injustice, it is vital that we preserve both our established constitutional arrangement, and the independence and integrity of the Church appointments process.

In practical terms, when appointing bishops and archbishops, the Church of England presents a candidate to the Prime Minister, who then advises the monarch on who to install in that role. For nearly 20 years, the Prime Minister has not had much of a role in the selection of Church of England bishops, and Downing Street’s involvement in the process has become largely a formality. That is why, alongside supporting this Bill with the repeal of these discriminatory criminal provisions, His Majesty’s Opposition has suggested that the clear and respectful convention for the future, following recent precedent, should be that Prime Ministers who are not members of the Church of England should retain their formal constitutional role in advising the sovereign while continuing to delegate any active involvement in the decision-making process to others.

The ability to serve as Prime Minister and to exercise the full responsibilities of that office should depend on the confidence of this House and the ability of the individual concerned, not their religious belief. On that fundamental principle, the whole House can unite today, so we support the Third Reading of this Bill and wish it well as it proceeds to the other place.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

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

Let me be clear from the outset that His Majesty’s official Opposition welcome the Government’s recognition that this anomaly needs correcting, and we will not oppose the Bill. We fully support the principle that no Prime Minister should be legally prevented from discharging all their constitutional duties because of their faith.

The restrictions in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 and the Jews Relief Act 1858 are, as the Minister said, plainly outdated and have no place in a modern democratic society. The idea that someone should be prevented from exercising the full responsibilities of the office of Prime Minister simply because of their religious belief is clearly not fit for the 21st century. Indeed, it is remarkable that almost two centuries after those Acts were passed, provisions remain on our statute book that distinguish between those who are permitted to advise the sovereign on Church appointments and those who are not, purely on the grounds of their faith.

When one looks at the provisions that the Bill repeals, both their severity and their inconsistency are striking. The law as it stands prevents persons of the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths from being involved, directly or indirectly, in advising the Crown on appointments in the Church of England or the Church of Scotland. Moreover, the punishments written into those laws are severe. Under the Roman Catholic Relief Act, a Catholic advising the sovereign on a Church appointment is

“deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and disabled for ever from holding any office, civil or military, under the Crown.”

The Jews Relief Act contains a similar threat.

As the existing laws discriminate against Jewish people and Roman Catholics only, they have created the glaring inconsistency that the Minister referred to: my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), the former Prime Minister, a practising Hindu, and his successor Keir Starmer, an atheist, were not legally prevented from advising on Church of England appointments, as the current Prime Minister, who is a Catholic, has been. At a time when we rightly celebrate religious freedom, tolerance and equality before the law, it cannot be right that the holder of the highest political office in our country should face a legislative bar if they are Roman Catholic or Jewish.

Though we agree with the Prime Minister that these laws are an “archaic anomaly”, as shadow Minister I cannot let the occasion pass without a gentle reminder of the Government’s rather sudden conversion to treating the Bill as an urgent priority. On 5 March last year, the Lord Privy Seal wrote to Members of the other House, stating that the Government were considering how to address historical restrictions on Roman Catholics and Jews advising the Crown on appointments in the Anglican Church, but when asked about progress in parliamentary questions last autumn, the then Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), said that though the Government would keep the matter under review,

“given other pressing issues, this is not a current priority.”

It is hard not to notice that removing this statutory bar remained “not a current priority” for the Cabinet Office right up until a Roman Catholic Prime Minister took office.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) observed last week, some people looking at the challenges facing the country today may well feel that there are more important things for the Government to do, although when he rose to make his point of order at the start of this debate, I wondered whether he was going to declare an interest—an ambition for No. 10 that might be affected by this legislation. However, the Bill is rightly before us today, and on this issue, as on any issue of constitutional change, it is important that the Government proceed with clarity and care.

In the interests of scrutinising the legislation constructively, could the Minister clarify three points for the House? First, can he confirm that the Bill is strictly and narrowly focused on removing these discriminatory restrictions, and that there are no unintended knock-on effects elsewhere in statute? Secondly, after becoming Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) transferred responsibility for Church appointments to the Lord Chancellor to ensure that such appointments could continue. Can the Minister confirm that this arrangement is temporary, and will remain in place only until this legislation has received Royal Assent and come into force? Thirdly, can the Minister reassure the House that this legislation will not alter the wider constitutional relationship between the Crown, the Government and the established Church?

Finally, while we support removing the statutory bar, we also believe that it is important to maintain sensible constitutional practice, so it is the Opposition’s clear recommendation that it would be sensible for Prime Ministers who do not consider themselves to be part of the congregation of the Church of England to delegate the active decision-making on appointments to others, as recent prime Ministers have done, while retaining their formal constitutional role in advising the monarch. His Majesty’s official Opposition look forward to scrutinising the Bill in Committee and in its later stages, but we will support its Second Reading.

House of Lords Reform

Mike Wood Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab) [R]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered House of Lords reform.

It is a pleasure to bring this debate to Parliament as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on House of Lords reform. A few weeks ago, I showed a group of United States doctors around Parliament, which involved sitting in the Public Gallery of the House of Lords, looking at the King Charles throne, the Woolsack and a scattering of some quite elderly peers. One doctor said, “How do these guys get in here?”. When I answered that they were appointed by their mates, they all laughed—surely I was joking. Sadly, I was not joking.

Reform of the House of Lords has been on the cards for centuries. The House was actually abolished in 1649, but was reinstated a few years later, and it has been the subject of intense debate ever since. The idea of unelected peers having inherited access to Parliament alongside crony appointees controlling the laws that Parliament produces is clearly ridiculous. It is no wonder that the crisis of confidence in our political system is at an all-time high.

This Government have actually taken quite big strides—probably more than others—on the long overdue removal of hereditary peers. I also welcome proposals to impose a retirement age and a minimum participation requirement, but we cannot afford to push this constitutional necessity further down the road. I will take this opportunity to set out the case for reform of the House of Lords and how we can go about implementing it.

The function of our second Chamber is to scrutinise and amend legislation passed by the elected Commons. There are many exceptional Lords who do a really good job at that, but their contribution is undermined by their complete lack of legitimacy. It is simply not right that our Parliament has more unelected lawmakers than lawmakers with a mandate from the people. During the Makerfield by-election, the Prime Minister called it “scandalous” and expressed support for an early change to the Lords.

One of the things that has most surprised me is learning that the House of Lords remains a self-governing institution. In the last session, we saw a handful of unelected peers, many of whom were rejected by the voters at the last election, abuse that fact to stall the progression of legislation passed by the elected Commons.

The other place is also deeply unrepresentative of our country. Over 55% of peers live in London and the south-east. I know that our Prime Minister is very concerned with that, and that he has called for a senate of nations and regions to replace the Lords, so that every corner of our country is properly represented in both of our Chambers.

The public also want change. Only 16% support the current status quo; 70% have little or no confidence in the institution, and a majority want an entirely elected upper Chamber. The voters gave a very clear mandate for a Labour manifesto that included a commitment to replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second Chamber, more representative of the regions and nations.

What could a second Chamber look like? That is a complex issue; we should convene a commission of citizens and experts to decide on its role and make-up. It should still absolutely be possible to retain the expertise that we have there, and that is exactly what our manifesto has committed us to.

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

The hon. Gentleman has made a good start on setting out his case. However, does he not see the irony in calling for an appointed committee of the public and experts to look at how democratic the House of Lords is?

[Dr Opher]

I would say that we need experts to look at how our democracy works and to devise a better way of doing it.

--- Later in debate ---

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

The question of House of Lords reform is obviously not new; successive Administrations of all political colours have grappled with it for decades—indeed, for more than a century. They have discovered that constitutional upheaval tends to be far easier to promise in opposition than to deliver successfully in government.

The history reminds us of a fundamental truth: constitutional reform must always be approached with care, caution, balance and a clear understanding of the consequences. We would all agree that the House of Lords is far from perfect—certainly, no one from the official Opposition would suggest otherwise—but it performs a vital constitutional function. It provides thorough legislative scrutiny, brings into Parliament unmatched expertise from the law, science, business and public service, and holds Ministers to account.

Crucially, the House of Lords serves as a vital check on the Executive, ensuring that legislation is properly stress tested and challenging Governments when they get things wrong. Having been a member of the Government Whips Office before the last election, I can say that that is not always convenient for Governments, but it is a core constitutional function. Any sensible reform must preserve and enhance that scrutiny, and never dismantle it purely for political convenience or advantage. That is where we have serious concerns about the Government’s approach.

As has been said, in its 2024 manifesto Labour declared that the House of Lords was too large and promised to reduce its numbers; since then, the Government’s actions have told a rather different story. Even after expelling the hereditary peers, the House of Lords has about 800 Members—more than when the Government first declared that it was bloated. Apparently, the second Chamber is too big unless Downing Street happens to be the one packing the red Benches. I hope the Minister can explain that contradiction. Appointments must reflect the expertise that Parliament requires, not serve as a patronage machine to manufacture a compliant legislature.

There is then the Government’s more radical proposition: abolishing the Lords entirely in favour of an elected senate of the nations and regions. But ambition is no substitute for detail. What powers would such a body possess? How would it be elected? Critically, how would it relate to the democratically elected House of Commons? Those are not minor procedural queries. The fact that the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), the mover of the motion, seems to answer the question by saying that an unelected panel should decide highlights the fact that Labour had no idea what the radical Lords reform in its manifesto meant and had no plan to deliver it.

If an elected second Chamber can claim equal democratic legitimacy, we invite constitutional gridlock, competing mandates and perpetual legislative paralysis. Our parliamentary system works precisely because it respects the primacy of this elected House, and has done for a century and more, while giving the revising Chamber the freedom to scrutinise. We should not discard that balance for an untested experiment. When will the Minister launch the proposed public consultation? Or are the Government expecting Parliament to sign a blank cheque on Lords reform?

Let me turn to immediate measures. The Opposition engaged constructively with the House of Lords Retirement and Participation Committee. We agree that peers must actively contribute; however, we hold grave reservations about an arbitrary retirement age of 80. The distinct value of the other place lies in wisdom, institutional memory and lifetime service, so we should assess peers on the quality of their contribution, not the date on their birth certificate. Sensible reform is possible, just as previous Conservative Governments enabled voluntary retirement and expulsions for misconduct. We are ready to discuss appointments, size and standards, but the constitution belongs not to the Government of the day but to our nation.

[Andrew Rosindell]

On the question of appointments, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is only right that the third largest party in this country should have some representation in the House of Lords today?

[Mike Wood]

It is beyond me to decide who should and should not be in the House of Lords any time soon, but I note that last month the hon. Gentleman’s party leader was talking about flooding the House of Lords with hundreds of new Reform peers, and he said that if that did not work to get Reform’s legislative agenda through, he would have a referendum on abolishing the House of Lords. Reform’s position seems a little confused.

The second Chamber exists not to make life comfortable for Ministers but to hold power to account. The test of any reform is not whether it delivers a pliant Parliament, but whether it serves the British people. That is the test against which His Majesty’s Opposition will hold the Government to account.

Draft Withdrawal Agreement (Windsor Framework and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2026 General Committees

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I want to make it clear from the outset that while His Majesty’s Opposition do not object to every provision within these draft regulations, we cannot support them today.

We have no quarrel with the purely technical updates to statutory terminology, nor do we oppose implementing the practical recommendations of Lord Murphy’s review to strengthen the hand of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Democratic Scrutiny Committee. Giving the committee 10 working days rather than five to decide whether to hold an inquiry and clarifying that Northern Ireland Departments must comply with reasonable requests for information are sensible steps. However, statutory instruments are unamendable and the Government have chosen to package these modest Stormont reforms alongside regulation 2(6), a measure that points in the exact opposite constitutional direction by deleting section 15C of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

We oppose that approach for three fundamental reasons. First, we resist the use of Henry VIII powers to weaken governance and strip away primary legislation safeguards in this area. Section 15C was not a drafting oversight. When Parliament inserted it via section 35 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act, paragraph 325 of the explanatory notes stated explicitly that its purpose was to preclude a Minister of the Crown from using the written procedure to adopt Joint Committee decisions or recommendations. That lock was enacted by primary legislation to ensure that decisions are taken by a Minister in person, and that there is full ministerial accountability, including to Parliament, for all decisions made in the Joint Committee. Using delegated powers in secondary legislation to reach back into an Act of Parliament and delete a deliberate accountability safeguard placed upon the Executive is a misuse of Henry VIII powers, and it is a particularly concerning precedent ahead of the Government’s EU reset Bill.

Secondly, we strongly oppose removing the prohibition on the Joint Committee making decisions between meetings. We have great sympathy for the submission made by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. As he rightly exposed, paragraph 5.7 of the Government’s explanatory memorandum merely states the mechanical effect of deleting section 15C, without offering a single word of explanation as to why a safeguard that was once deemed essential is no longer required.

Worse still, there has been no meaningful consultation on removing that safeguard. Section 7 of the explanatory memorandum relies on the Murphy review as its consultation basis, yet Lord Murphy never recommended repealing section 15C. In fact, Lord Murphy noted that the Joint Committee meets at ministerial level alongside the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, and he specifically recommended broadening the inclusion of stakeholders into these meetings to bring greater transparency and openness, not less.

Under section 15C, formal Joint Committee meeting dates are announced well in advance, giving Parliament and the public a clear focal point to track decisions. By repealing section 15C, decisions and recommendations can be signed off on paper between meetings and slipped through at any time without notice. Only when pressed by the Scrutiny Committee in July did the Cabinet Office finally admit that the real driver behind this change is facilitating decision making between meetings for the point when future UK-EU agreements are in force.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Does he agree that his points are compounded by the fact that the Minister has refused, or expressed himself unable, to respond to any of these issues?

[Mike Wood]

My hon. Friend obviously has a long and strong record of promoting accountability in Government. That was not always to the pleasure of the Whips Office when we were in government, but it is particularly important that he continues that function when measures like this are being implemented through secondary legislation. If the Government want new governance mechanisms for future EU reset deals, they should make that case openly in primary legislation rather than stripping away statutory locks by stealth today.

Thirdly, we need better oversight of the Windsor framework regulation-making process, not weaker scrutiny. As the House of Lords Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee highlighted, we are currently in the extraordinary position of not even having a complete public list of all the EU laws to which Northern Ireland is subject under dynamic alignment. That Committee rightly called on the Cabinet Office to establish a dedicated regulatory divergence unit to maintain an up-to-date public database on the National Archives website, alongside more detailed statements after joint meetings.

Yet in its July responses to the Scrutiny Committee, the Cabinet Office admitted that section 15C provides no statutory notification mechanism and that Westminster scrutiny relies on explanatory memorandums triggered by EU Council decisions establishing the EU’s position, not the UK’s position, which are then followed by publication on the gov.uk website after the fact. Relying on Brussels paperwork to alert the UK Parliament to decisions our own Ministers are taking by written correspondence, and publishing those decisions on gov.uk only after they have been signed, is no substitute for proper parliamentary oversight.

Until the Government bring forward proper transparency and scrutiny over the Windsor framework regulation-making process and stop using inappropriate Henry VIII powers to dismantle primary legislation safeguards on Joint Committee decision making between meetings, His Majesty’s Opposition cannot support these regulations.

Rejoining the EU

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker, and to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s official Opposition. I warmly congratulate the petitioner and the people who added their names to the e-petition. In our parliamentary democracy, petitioning the Crown and Parliament is a cherished right, whether campaigning to save a beloved community hospital, to crack down on illegal fly-tipping or, as in this case, to casually ask the House of Commons to overturn the largest democratic vote in British history on a Monday afternoon. It is entirely right that those arguments are heard and debated in Parliament.

Listening to the contributions today from the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National party and, indeed, some on the Government Benches, one might easily get the impression that rejoining the European Union is treated a bit like renewing an expired gym membership: we simply pop back down to reception, set up the direct debit and immediately pick up where we left off. Some hon. Members genuinely appear to believe that our European neighbours have spent the past decade sitting by the phone in the Berlaymont, tearfully gazing at an empty chair, desperate for the United Kingdom to saunter back in and instantly reclaim our rebate, opt-outs and front row seat at the summit table. I must gently break it to those hon. Members: Brussels does not accept refunds.

I may have disagreed with almost everything that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said, but she was right that the process of rejoining the European Union would not be simple, short or straightforward. We have to be brutally honest about what applying to rejoin under article 49 actually involves in the cold light of day. The petitioners do not merely ask for warm words or polite co-operation; they ask this Parliament to formally trigger accession negotiations. That does not mean stepping into a time machine back to 2015; it means starting the accession process as a brand-new candidate country alongside countries such as Albania and North Macedonia. The European Commission has made the house rules for new joiners crystal clear. Under chapter 17 of the accession acquis, there is no bespoke menu where we can pick the bits we like and leave the rest.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I am listening to the shadow Minister’s speech with incredulity and watching the faces of the wonderful people in the Gallery who have come but are not able to speak. I wonder whether he has actually had those discussions. I think we are the only country to have ever left, and there have been significant comments from Ursula von der Leyen and others that we are not going to be treated exactly the same. Unless the shadow Minister has actually had those meetings, it would be very unwise to say that is fact.

[Mike Wood]

Yes I have, as a member of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly and as someone who spent seven very happy years working in the European Parliament and still has many friends who work there and in the institutions. There is no question of there being a speed line route back to full membership reserved for the United Kingdom; we would have to go through the full accession process. Joining means a binding treaty obligation to scrap pound sterling and adopt the euro, and to abolish our national border controls and join the Schengen area.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

Could the shadow Minister clarify what he said to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade)? Is he saying that he has exclusive access to the terms on which we would be allowed to re-enter the EU? That is what he appears to be saying.

[Mike Wood]

The question was whether I had had the conversations, and I certainly have had them with MEPs and people in the European institutions. We can see what anyone who reads the publicly available opinion polls can see: if asked, “Would you be in favour of the United Kingdom rejoining the European Union?”, a majority in France and Germany may say that they would support it, but if asked, “Would you support the United Kingdom joining the European Union with the opt-outs that it previously enjoyed?”. support goes from about 50% to just over 30%. It is not politically viable in those countries.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the polls. When people are asked about whether particular areas of policy in the United Kingdom should be controlled by the EU, the result is always a negative. Farming, trade policy or financial services—whatever the question, it is a negative. When it comes to the money, if we rejoined, we would probably have to join without any of the rebates that Margaret Thatcher negotiated, so our gross contribution would be something like £30 billion a year—about 0.5% of GDP. The British people would never vote to rejoin the European Union if they thought they would have to prop up the EU budget and subsidise other EU countries.

[Mike Wood]

My hon. Friend is right. The same polls that show that citizens in France and Germany would support British membership only if it came without those previous opt-outs show that, among British voters, support for rejoining collapses if we do not have those previous opt-outs. If those previous opt-outs and derogations are removed, support again dips to barely 30%.

I wonder how many of the people who signed this petition did so in the eager anticipation of trading His Majesty the King on our banknotes for a fistful of euro cents. Did they sign up to surrender our borders or did they imagine that, if we asked very politely, the European Union would grant us all the privileges of membership while demanding none of the obligations? As the independent economist Julian Jessop recently pointed out, public enthusiasm for rejoining has a funny habit of evaporating the precise moment that voters are confronted with the small print. That is why I am confident that, if the Government were to take up the petitioners’ proposal, and if they had the courage to put that question to the British people, it would be comprehensively rejected.

[Dr Arthur]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mike Wood]

I have given way three times. I will for a fourth, but this may be the last.

[Dr Arthur]

Some of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will have signed this petition. Just to be clear, is he doubting the intelligence and commitment of the people who signed it? He seems to be saying that they have not done their homework.

[Mike Wood]

No, not at all. I am not somebody who questions people’s motives or intelligence just because of the way they have approached the question of Europe; I very much leave that to others. I will say that approaching 70% of my constituents voted to leave in 2016, and if there was a referendum on rejoining, I would expect a larger proportion than that to vote no.

When people realise that an accession bid means ditching our currency, tearing down our independent border controls and signing an annual membership cheque that independent analysts estimate would comfortably clear £25 billion a year, the rosy glow fades fast. We would be asking British taxpayers already feeling the squeeze from this Government’s domestic tax hikes to subsidise regional infrastructure funds across the continent while our own local roads are crying out for repair.

[Ms Creasy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

I will continue for a bit. I have given way four times; I think I have been more than generous.

[Ms Creasy]

You quoted me!

[Mike Wood]

I quoted you an awfully long time ago on something fairly sympathetic, I think. [Interruption.]

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman does not wish to give way, then the hon. Gentleman does not wish to give way.

[Mike Wood]

Is that parliamentary language, Mrs Barker? I do not know how long it takes for the cogs to turn, but it has been a while.

What sort of economic club are the petitioners urging us to re-enter? Thirty years ago, the European Union accounted for more than a quarter of the global economy; today, that share has fallen to around 18%; within a generation, it is projected to drop below 10%. Applying to rejoin would mean surrendering our independent seat at the global top table. It would also mean being legally forced to tear up our membership of the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership dynamic trading pact—

[Ms Creasy]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

Go on—just this once.

[Ms Creasy]

I am pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman talk about the CPTPP, because that is the first time he has deigned to defend anything that has happened since we took this country out of the European Union, and I notice he has not defended the status quo. The Conservative Government’s own impact assessment found that the CPTPP added 0.08% to GDP. That is 50 times smaller than the impact of Brexit. What does he want to say to the 20,000 businesses that have given up trading with Europe altogether because of the Brexit that his Government negotiated? Does he really think that the CPTPP makes up for that?

[Mike Wood]

I think that having control of an independent trade policy where we can get those deals in the interests of the British economy—whether the CPTPP or the trade agreements with India or the Gulf Co-operation Council—is an advantage of being outside the customs union and having taken back that control. Tying ourselves to an economic bloc that is fast declining as a proportion of world trade and locking ourselves back behind the common tariff walls of the most sluggish economic continent on earth would come with a cost. Why on earth would a proud global maritime trading nation choose to jump off the international express train just to squeeze on to a continental stopping service that is running at least 40 minutes late? [Interruption.]

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

Order. I want to hear the Opposition spokesperson.

[Mike Wood]

We are constantly told by the doom-mongers that Brexit is somehow the sole author of our national economic woes, but the empirical evidence tells a vastly different story. Recent analysis by the Centre for Policy Studies shows that, while the initial realignment did involve transition friction, our private sector has shown remarkable dynamism, with productivity increasing by roughly 30% over the past decade. The real drag anchoring British growth is inside our own state apparatus. Public sector productivity has flatlined, an affliction that is manufactured right here in Westminster and Whitehall that has nothing at all to do with whether we sit within the European Union.

While the petitioners are at least refreshingly transparent about wanting full membership, the Government’s approach seems to depend on the audience. Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box with hands on hearts repeating their mantra that they respect the referendum, but that is not the message that we have heard from Labour Back Benchers today. Ministers promise us that there will be no membership of the single market and no freedom of movement, yet watch what they actually do. They tiptoe around European capitals, hoping that if they quietly sign us up to dynamic alignment across agriculture, energy and carbon standards, nobody on the street will notice that they have signed away our national autonomy. That is not a coherent foreign policy. It is surrender on an instalment plan.

Alongside the burdens and restrictions, being a full member of the EU did give us a vote, a voice and a veto. Being an independent sovereign state gives speed, regulatory agility and democratic accountability. But the Government’s strategy delivers the worst of all worlds: total regulatory submission with none of the say. It flips William Hague’s famous slogan; it is to be not in Europe but still run by Europe. It is the political equivalent of paying full price for an all-inclusive hotel and choosing to sleep on a bench in the car park.

[Ben Coleman]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mike Wood]

No, I am finishing.

The British people did not vote in 2016 for half measures, or to put their democracy into reverse gear. The fundamental principle at stake was entirely straightforward: the laws governing the people of this country should be made and unmade by representatives who the British public can elect—and, crucially, fire—at the ballot box. The duty of this House is not to resurrect the bitter constitutional gridlock of the past, or to indulge the fantasy of a cost-free return to Brussels. Our duty is to use our hard-won independence to cut unnecessary bureaucracy, to back British innovation and to trade freely with all corners of the globe. His Majesty’s official Opposition will not support the petition and will fiercely resist any attempt to pull this country back into the European Union, whether through the front door or the back.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend is totally right that the objective of No. 10 North is to drive good growth in every postcode across the whole country. Too many places and too many communities have been left behind for too long because power and decision making was hoarded in Westminster. Members on the Labour Benches know that the route to growth everywhere is getting it out across the country. Members on the Opposition Benches, it seems, want to keep hoarding power and decision making here in Westminster.

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

We have heard again what we have had in response to a number of written questions. The Minister either does not know or will not tell us how much No. 10 North will cost, how many people work there and how many of them actually turn up to work—it is almost as though this has not been properly thought through. Does the Minister understand why, with so little information and so little transparency, so many people feel that this is a gimmick rather than a strategy?

[Dan Tomlinson]

When it comes to the efficient use of taxpayer money, I would like to point out to the House that the hon. Member—he is, of course, welcome to submit as many questions as he likes—sent 371 questions, at a cost to the taxpayer of potentially around £80,000. Of course, we are willing to have debates in this place and on the Floor of the House, and my hon. Friends in the Cabinet Office will continue to answer questions, but in the end we need to make sure that the Government are driving good growth across the whole country. No. 10 North, bringing together businesses, leaders and senior politicians from across Government, is the right route for doing just that.

[Mike Wood]

We would not have had to table so many written questions if Ministers had actually answered our first question, instead of expecting us to come up with precisely the right form of words to leave them with no way of getting out. Surely it cannot be right that it requires a freedom of information request to discover how much it costs for a replica door at No. 10 North, but the Minister refuses to answer legitimate parliamentary scrutiny. Will the Minister at least—if he does have this information, which the Department surely does—finally commit to publishing the total budget for No. 10 North, the number of staff and special advisers who are going to work there, and attendance statistics?

[Dan Tomlinson]

I think it would be best for hon. Members, rather than getting in a flap about No. 10 North, to back what we are trying to do to drive good growth, opportunity and devolution across the whole country. It is the right thing to do. The previous Government passed on to us a country that was the most geographically unequal advanced economy in the whole world. We are setting out to turn that around for the people of this country. Of course, the details on employment and the costs of No. 10 North will be published in the usual way, along with the accounts for the Cabinet Office.

EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler, and to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s official Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing this debate, but I am sure it will come as no surprise to him or other hon. Members that we see the legacy of the 2016 referendum, and indeed the path forward for our country, through a very different lens.

Listening to the hon. Gentleman, one might almost assume that the United Kingdom was a sunlit, frictionless economic Shangri-La until a single ballot paper cast us into eternal ruin. He told us, echoed by other hon. Members, that leaving the European Union uniquely crippled our economy and that our only salvation lies in surrendering sovereignty through the Government’s grandly titled EU reset, or perhaps going further.

That entire narrative collapses under the weight of hard economic reality. First, let us examine the great myth of the EU single market as an automatic engine of export growth. Ministers speak of the single market as if it were a place where magic happens, but if there was magic, the UK was firmly in the audience wondering when the rabbit would emerge from the hat. As former Trade and Industry Secretary Lord Lilley demonstrated in his Policy Exchange paper earlier this year, during our entire 28-year membership of the single market, from 1992, UK goods exports to our EU partners grew by less than 1% per year, but over that exact same period our goods exports to the 111 countries with which we traded on standard World Trade Organisation terms grew by 87%. In fact, according to the European Commission’s own single market scoreboard, the UK was the member state that benefited least from the goods single market. Rejoining that regulatory straitjacket in pursuit of export growth is the pure triumph of hope over experience.

Secondly, we must address the sheer statistical alchemy deployed by advocates of rejoining. Several speakers have brandished a non-peer-reviewed National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that claims that Brexit cost the UK up to 8% of GDP, but let us look at how the model has constructed that parallel universe. It created a statistical doppelganger proxy that was dominated by the United States and Estonia, which between them provide almost three quarters of the entire weighting for the alternative proxies—apparently—for where the UK could have been without Brexit. It assumed that, had we remained in the EU, the UK would have miraculously mirrored the American economic performance.

To attribute that divergence to Brexit requires an extraordinary leap of imagination. It requires one to pretend that there was no US artificial intelligence boom, no massive American fiscal stimulus—which was possible because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency—no transatlantic shale gas price advantage, no differing pandemic shock, and no North sea oil rundown. In fact, Germany fell 8% behind the same arbitrary index under that model, so unless German departure from the EU has passed us by unnoticed, blaming that divergence on Brexit is simply economic nonsense.

When we examine the actual data, rather than econometric fairy tales, the evidence is clear. Between 2016 and 2025, the UK economy grew by 12.2%, and by 5.3% since we formally left, outpacing the European G7 average. Since Brexit, British economic growth has averaged 1.1% per annum, compared with just 0.1% for Germany. As hon. Members have mentioned, the Office for Budget Responsibility previously assumed an implausible 15% collapse in total UK global trade openness, but as its own November 2025 briefing conceded, UK trade intensity has remained stable at around 65% of GDP and has continued to track peer economies such as France.

The single market was overwhelmingly designed for goods, but more than 80% of the UK economy is based on services. Our services exports continue to boom globally. Even the dire predictions of a mass exodus from the City of London proved dramatically overblown. Institutions such as JP Morgan, which had threatened to move thousands of jobs abroad, have instead been transferring staff back from Paris to London.

Although business investment was undeniably delayed during the post-2016 political paralysis, dragged out by those trying to overturn the referendum, fixed investment to GDP rebounded, reaching 19.6% by the end of last year.

[Pete Wishart]

I have been listening very carefully and patiently to the hon. Gentleman, and he refuses to accept the reality. The House of Commons Library did us a great favour by bringing together all the evidence, which clearly suggests that there has been a fall in GDP and in the performance of the UK economy since we left the European Union. Is he credibly standing there and telling this House that there have been no impacts whatsoever of our leaving the EU?

[Mike Wood]

If we chart it over the last two decades, particularly against German performance, on almost any economic chart we look at, it would be almost impossible to pick out the point at which the UK left the European Union. It is impossible to say from looking at those charts that our economy has grown more slowly than Germany’s, because it has not; it has grown more quickly. Our trade has not been disrupted more than Germany’s—[Interruption.] It really has not; they track almost identically across that chart.

Thirdly, where Britain is succeeding, we are doing so precisely because of our post-Brexit freedoms. The UK digital and tech flat white economy now represents about 15% of GDP—larger than the entire domestic goods sector. As the Growth Commission highlighted, our tech sector is flourishing and leading Europe in artificial intelligence, precisely because it is unburdened by Brussels’ heavy-handed Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act and restrictive AI Act.

Instead of backing British enterprise, the Government are proposing to pursue unilateral dynamic alignment, shackling the 92% of British firms that do not trade with the EU to Brussels’s rulebook, surrendering our precision breeding advantages and hiking domestic carbon costs by linking our emissions trading scheme, which threaten to add up to £100 per tonne to fertiliser prices at a time when they are already crippling British farmers, while paying administrative fees to Brussels for the privilege.

That is an astonishingly one-sided bargain, a masterclass in the art of the bad deal. The lesson of the past 10 years is that national prosperity is built by businesses working across the UK, not subcontracted to the EU. The economic catastrophe prophesied in 2016 simply did not occur.

[Andrew Rosindell]

rose—

[Mike Wood]

I will give way briefly, as I am drawing to a close.

[Andrew Rosindell]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful and correct speech, offering the facts. Does he not regret that, in all those years of Conservative Government after we had left the EU, we did not seize the opportunities to be more radical, to ensure that the benefits of Brexit were properly realised? Does he also repudiate John Major’s Government for bringing in the Maastricht treaty, which created political union in the first place?

[Mike Wood]

It is one thing to look back over the past 10 years, but I hope the hon. Gentleman will excuse me if I plead that I was taking GCSEs in 1992 rather than paying attention to what John Major was doing. The next Conservative Government should certainly look at how to take better advantage of the freedoms available outside the European Union, because there are many opportunities. His Majesty’s Opposition will continue to champion our regulatory freedom, to back British innovation and resist any attempt to drag this country back into the EU’s regulatory orbit.

Payment Scheme

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

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

I would like to start by thanking the Paymaster General for bringing forward these important regulations and also to say thank you to the former Minister for Public Health, the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), for her valuable work when she was in office.

This debate takes place in the shadow of one of the gravest injustices in modern British history. The infected blood scandal caused unimaginable harm, with lives lost, families devastated, careers destroyed, potential never realised, children robbed of parents and many victims forced to fight for decades just for recognition and to be heard. Compensation is not a gift from the state; it is a duty owed to those who were failed by the state. That duty must be delivered with urgency, compassion and fairness.

The regulations make a number of amendments to the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2025. Many of the changes appear to address concerns raised by victims, families and campaigners about the structure and adequacy of the scheme and, obviously, those contained in the additional report. His Majesty’s Opposition welcome the Government bringing forward these amendments to address the lessons learned from the early stages of the compensation scheme, to fill in some of the gaps and to implement the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff’s additional report.

However, the existence of this instrument also underlines the importance of getting the scheme right. Victims and their families have already waited far too long. They must not be required to navigate repeated technical changes, uncertainty or delays before receiving the compensation and recognition they deserve.

The regulations also amend the method for calculating past and future amounts for certain awards, including financial loss awards. I would be grateful if the Minister sets out clearly how the Government will ensure that those changes are properly communicated to victims and to families so that people understand how their entitlement will be calculated and whether they may be better off as a result. The changes are sensible but, by necessity, regulations can appear rather daunting. My degree was in economics and law, and I am reasonably comfortable with legal texts and with algebra, but at first glance we can wonder what language some of it is written in, so it is obviously important that they are communicated in a way that can be properly understood.

His Majesty’s Opposition also welcome the changes to the autonomy award for those infected as children. The fact that some people were infected at such a young age, with consequences that shaped their entire childhood and adult life, must be properly reflected in the scheme. This is not simply a question of medical impact; it is about lost childhoods, lost opportunities and the lifelong trauma experienced by those who infected when they were at their most vulnerable.

There are also changes in relation to unethical research practices, which we have discussed many times in the Chamber. We greatly welcome the increase in the relevant award amounts and the extension in provision to those who received treatment for bleeding disorders before 1986. Given the seriousness of the issue, will the Minister confirm how the Government will identify those who fall into that category and what evidence he expects they will have to provide so that the process does not become another source of distress for victims and their families?

We also note the creation of a new “severe health condition” category for qualifying chronic hepatitis-associated conditions based on support scheme categories. Again, we would welcome clarity from the Minister on how he expects that to work in practice and in particular how the Government will ensure consistency across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The amendments to affected injury awards are also significant. Families were not bystanders to this scandal; partners, parents, children and siblings lived with the consequences every day. Many provided care, endured bereavement, suffered stigma and experienced profound emotional and financial harm. The scheme must continue to recognise that the damage caused by this scandal extended far beyond those directly infected. Therefore, while these technical changes matter greatly, the central question remains delivery. Victims and families need to know when they will receive compensation, including as a result of the new regulations. They need to know how quickly claims will be processed, what support will be available to them to navigate the scheme, and how the Government will ensure that truly no one is left behind.

I therefore ask the Minister to address the following points. First, what is his intended timetable for payments under the regulations, and how many people do the Government expect to receive compensation in the coming months? Secondly, how confident is he that that the Infected Blood Compensation Authority has the staffing, expertise and resources it needs to process claims under the regulations quickly and sensitively?

[Chris Vince]

This is a friendly intervention, because the hon. Gentleman’s response has been very supportive, and we all recognise the cross-party consensus on getting this right. As he will be aware, last week the Prime Minister made a formal apology to the women impacted by the forced adoption scandal; some of the evidence that we got on the Education Committee was about the way that they were treated when they tried to get the records. Does he recognise the importance of the front-facing organisations that support victims of these scandals being sympathetic and supportive?

[Mike Wood]

I could not agree more. It is particularly important that infected and affected victims and their families, who for many, many years were not listened to, heard or believed, and who faced officials who denied what all the evidence later proved to be the case, now feel that they are being treated with respect and sensitivity.

Thirdly, will the Minister clarify further, as I asked earlier, how the Government will communicate the broader changes to victims and their families in plain English, rather than simply relying on the legal and technical language in the draft regulations? Finally, what appeal or review mechanisms will be available if individuals believe that their reward has been calculated incorrectly or does not reflect their full circumstances?

The Opposition strongly support the regulations, which build on work that has proceeded through this House with support from across the Chamber, and continue work that began before the last election. We recognise that they contain changes that many victims and families will welcome.

I am sure that the Minister will agree that our responsibility as Parliament, and his as a Minister, does not end with the passing of statutory instruments. It ends only when victims and their families have received the recognition, justice and compensation that they have waited decades to secure. This scandal was defined by delay, denial and institutional failure, and the compensation scheme must not be defined by the same failings. The regulations are a strong and positive step towards ensuring that that is not the case, but the Government must now deliver them with urgency, transparency and humanity. That is the very least that victims and their families deserve after all this time.

Civil Service Pensions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. Nobody in this House should be in any doubt about the anxiety and hardship being felt by retired public servants and the grieving families left stranded by this operational collapse. We are talking about more than 6,700 outstanding pension quotations and more than 4,100 unresolved bereavement cases. These are not mere statistics; they represent vulnerable individuals who have been left facing severe financial distress.

Let us be completely clear about where responsibility for this ongoing execution failure lies. The Minister can look backwards to November 2023 all he likes, but the critical transition phase, the data quality integration and the system go-live occurred on this Government’s watch and, more specifically, on his watch. The timeline of unheeded warnings is damning. Throughout 2025, both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee explicitly flagged that Capita was missing critical transition milestones and IT delivery targets, yet despite these clear red flags, the Cabinet Office chose to override the warnings, accepted flawed assurances and pressed ahead with the December go-live. The contract management failure belongs entirely to those on the Government Front Bench.

Alarmingly, despite the establishment of the Minister’s flagship pensions recovery taskforce, the situation is deteriorating in key areas. The Minister has just admitted that the backlog of MP complaints has grown significantly under his watch, going from 1,500 to more than 1,900 outstanding constituent cases since the end of April—barely nine weeks ago—and it is getting worse. Worse still, instead of focusing purely on immediate operational rectification, the Minister is using this crisis as an ideological springboard to flip to default insourcing. I am agnostic on whether the scheme is provided in-house or externally, but there is little in the Government’s record to suggest that they are capable of running this scheme any less incompetently than the current operators. Retired civil servants do not need a lecture on procurement ideology; they need their pensions sorted today.

The Minister must answer four specific questions. First, given that the Public Accounts Committee explicitly warned of the Capita IT system’s unreadiness last October, what independent technical verification did the Cabinet Office conduct before Ministers allowed the December go-live to proceed?

Secondly, the Minister noted that the 140-strong Government surge team are costing significant resource. Although he intends to recover the costs from the £9.9 million withheld from Capita, will he guarantee that any remaining funds will be legally diverted into an immediate compensation scheme for those affected and for grieving families who have suffered real financial detriment?

Thirdly, the Minister expressed deep frustration at Capita’s wider public sector footprint. The Procurement Act 2023 is fully active, and it established a centralised debarment list specifically to stop failing legacy suppliers winning further public work. Will the Minister commit at the Dispatch Box to formally referring Capita to the Debarment Review Service for investigation, or will he allow it to continue bidding for other contracts while he waits until 2027 to implement his insourcing reviews? If the threshold is not met in this case, where will the Minister consider it appropriate to use the powers that he has?

Finally, given the Minister’s conclusion that Capita has always been an unsuitable operator of the scheme, can he tell the House why the current Government chose to award Capita the new Department for Work and Pensions contract—not in 2023, but this February?

Public servants who have dedicated their working lives to this country deserve financial security and dignity. They have been let down by corporate failure, as the Minister says, but they are also being let down by this Government’s failure to manage the contract when it matters the most. It is time for the Minister to stop blaming the past, stop pitching future ideological tests, and finally fix the operational reality on the ground.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am quite astonished by the shadow Minister’s contribution. The House should be in no doubt that the previous Government signed a 10-year contract in November 2023. That is the situation we were left with, and I have been grappling with it throughout my time in office. The idea that I have put ideology above operational urgency is utter and total nonsense. I have intervened strongly at every single opportunity, and I have held Capita to account on its milestones time and again, to the tune of £9.9 million, in a way that the previous Government never did.

I have a lot more sympathy with the shadow Minister on his point about compensation. We have introduced a process to pay interest in respect of pensions paid by Capita from 1 December 2025, whereby full benefits are paid more than one month after retirement. The interest rate applied will be based on the Bank of England base rate plus 1% for the period of the delay between retirement and payment. That information has formally been published on a civil service pension website, and members will have the opportunity to ask for other losses to be covered as part of the complaints process. As for the rest of the shadow Minister’s comments, I think he will struggle to find anyone who has been as robust as I have been in holding Capita to account.

MPs’ Second Jobs: Prohibition

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) on securing this debate. This is a vital discussion that goes to the very heart of how our democracy functions, how our legislature connects with the public and how we maintain institutional integrity. Although we disagree with the prescription of a blanket ban, I certainly respect the sincerity with which the argument has been put forward. We all share the fundamental goal of protecting and restoring public trust in this House.

There is no question that public support for MPs having second jobs has reduced drastically over recent years. The public rightly expect us to be working for them, rather than prioritising our own interests, and we must make sure that that is what we are doing. If we are considering a ban on second jobs, however, we ought to be clear as to why. Some have argued in this debate that the issue is the time spent on outside jobs, and that the time ought to be directed entirely to MPs’ parliamentary constituency work.

I do not have an outside job, but before the general election I served as a Government Whip. It was a paid position, and it almost certainly took up more of the time that I was in Westminster each week than any outside job would. While those in Government posts—or for that matter House roles, such as Chairs of Select Committees—do necessary work for the proper functioning of Government and Parliament, I would struggle to argue that my constituents benefited directly from me having that additional job.

The same would be even more true for many ministerial positions, but most Ministers of all parties are able to fulfil those demanding roles without their responsibilities as constituency MPs suffering. If we accept that a Minister can balance the immense, exhausting weight of working in a Government Department with their duty to the electorate, it is logically inconsistent to argue that a Back Bencher cannot do the same with a few hours a week of external professional practice.

If the primary problem is not the time diverted from representing constituents, perhaps it is the money. But if we go down that route, there is a danger of us getting drawn into an argument over good jobs versus bad jobs. Few people would complain about the shadow Minister for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), continuing to work as a consultant paediatrician; I informed her in advance that I would mention her.

It is necessary for my hon. Friend to continue to work so that she can maintain her professional qualification, and it adds immense real-world value to her shadow ministerial role. She also properly declares her interests during relevant debates. Similarly, Members across the House have often been rightly congratulated on their ongoing work as surgeons, GPs and nurses, but these medical jobs are no less time consuming and, in some cases, may be better remunerated than some of the other interests that are more often the focus.

[Cat Eccles]

Does the shadow Minister recognise that this is not necessarily about the amount of remuneration, but the risk of corruption and the types of employment that have been mentioned by many Members in this debate?

[Mike Wood]

I thank the hon. Member for making the point that I was about to move on to.

Some of the jobs that I have mentioned are better remunerated, so it is incredibly difficult to know where a formal line should be drawn in explicit rules. If medical jobs are acceptable, why not the legal work that some Members have legally and properly been paid to do as Back-Bench MPs? If paid newspaper columns are allowed, which the Government’s current plans notably exempt, it becomes much harder to explain to the public why work advising a manufacturing business on global supply chains is completely unacceptable.

The point that the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) rightly made was that we must differentiate between work and influence. The real threat to public confidence has never been an MP spending a few hours a week doing genuine practical work in business, law or the media. The threat is and always has been paid advocacy and lobbying, which is why the rules were fundamentally overhauled. We have an absolute ban on paid advocacy and an explicit prohibition on MPs acting as paid parliamentary strategists, consultants or advisers. In July 2024, the new Opposition gladly supported the removal of exemptions regarding public policy advice.

[Phil Brickell]

The shadow Minister is making an important point about the distinction between outside employment and paid advocacy. Could he expand on what seems to be his view that Members of this House should be treated differently from serving members of the armed forces, members of the judiciary, civil servants and other public servants for whom there are restrictions on taking outside commercial jobs in addition to their core role? What does he think is different about Members of Parliament?

[Mike Wood]

Fundamentally, I think it comes down to the employment relationship. Obviously, as Members of Parliament, we are elected to represent constituents. It is then a question of judgment as to what activities conflict with that and prevent us doing that role as well as we need to. I think most people would agree that some of the cases highlighted today cross that line, but the question is whether a blanket ban is the most effective and proportionate way of dealing with what is clearly a genuine problem.

The independent Committee on Standards launched a comprehensive inquiry on the issue in January 2025 to look at the exact benefits, risks and regulatory effectiveness of outside employment. That inquiry is still under way, so it would seem the height of legislative impatience if we were to go down the road of threatening blanket bans while that independent review is still gathering evidence on how a more balanced approach could operate.

Trying to put together a rigid set of formal rules that allows the activities we happen to approve of while preventing those that we find unpalatable is a recipe for hypocrisy and administrative chaos. It risks leaving Parliament poorer rather than our constituents better served. Ultimately, the best people to judge whether an MP’s outside work prevents them from being an effective Member of Parliament are the voters in that MP’s constituency—if they have the full and proper information available.

Let us ensure absolute transparency. Let us publish every hour and every pound in the register for the world to see. Then let us trust the British public to look at that record, weigh it against the service they receive and render their unappealable verdict at the ballot box.