Getting Britain Working Again

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I respect the Secretary of State. He has talked at some length about what is wrong with the welfare system, but the fact is that there is no welfare Bill in the King’s Speech. I reckon he is stuck between a rock and a hard place: he knows the benefits bill is out of control; he knows that the public are sick of seeing their taxes go on ever higher welfare handouts; he even knows how the savings could be made because I have told him [Laughter.] They are laughing, but they are the problem. The Secretary of State also knows that the MPs behind him will have none of it. With the Prime Minister clinging on by a thread, no wonder there was no welfare Bill in the King’s Speech.

Here is the problem: failure to grip welfare puts the Government dangerously out of touch with people out there—the people he, I and all of us are here to serve. Let me read from an email that I received recently from a constituent; I will call her Sandra. She says:

“I am writing to you with utter frustration. We work so hard and for what? What is the point of working please tell me. To watch everyone else do nothing and get paid more than you! I’ve done the benefit calculation online and I’d be better off quitting my job…I’d be better off getting universal credit…how is that normal or fair?”

My constituent is far from alone. I have heard that feeling expressed time and again since I have been shadow Secretary of State—on the doorsteps, in the pub, in the supermarket, on the train and all over social media. Beyond Westminster, people are despairing. Family breadwinners are losing their jobs, homes are being sold to pay the bills and young people are losing hope. Millions have drifted out of work, and for many, claiming benefits simply makes more sense.

For those who are working, each month they are seeing their earnings disappearing in higher taxes and higher bills, with nothing left over. No wonder they are fed up. People who are doing the right thing are paying for people who have opted out. And what is Labour doing about it? Absolutely nothing. The Government are making a big mistake because the bald fact is that alarm- clock Britain is sick of paying out for “Benefits Street”.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful case, but her party was the future once, so why were all the challenges that she identifies not fixed when the Conservatives were in government? They were the ones who set up and built this welfare system.

[Helen Whately]

I hate to tell the hon. Gentleman, but Labour is in charge now. It has had nearly two years and nothing is changing.

You do not have to take my word for it, Madam Deputy Speaker; here are the numbers. Over 8 million people are claiming universal credit, almost 4 million people are claiming sickness benefits and over 600,000 households are getting over £32,000 a year in benefits. That is more than the take-home pay of the average British worker. Ninety-one thousand households are getting over £50,000, which is enough to put them in the top 10% of our nation’s earners, and 16,000 are getting over £60,000 in benefits every single year. A person who works would have to earn over £70,000 to have that. All that is costing the country £140 billion a year. People know when they are being taken for a ride.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister had a chance—one last chance—to hit reset, reverse those trends, get people off benefits and bring down the welfare bill. But with his back against the wall, it is no surprise that the Prime Minister’s King’s Speech contained none of that. While hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find work, the Prime Minister is only interested in protecting one job: his own. Yes, the Secretary of State can claim that he is doing something—his work experience programmes, his youth schemes, the savings-free Timms review and all that—but we all know that that is just tinkering at the edges.

The Government tried welfare reform last summer and failed. Now, they have given up altogether. They had no plan when they got into office and they still have no plan now, and that matters. For every day of inaction, hard-working taxpayers pay the price. Doing nothing costs money. The welfare bill will reach £170 billion by the end of the decade and that money could be so much better spent on things such as defence or making our streets safer or—think of this—it could be left in people’s pockets for them to spend.

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[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

I rise to address the issue of getting Britain working again, but also to make some observations on this Government’s chaotic performance since July 2024. The focus of today’s debate is on employment, and I will come to that, but so many Labour Members seem utterly preoccupied with the employment of one person: the Prime Minister. No vacancy exists, apparently, but at least one, maybe two, possibly three candidates may apply for said position. I am happy to provide a reference, but it will not be a good one.

This shambolic and unstable Government are in stark contrast to the political stability that we have enjoyed in Scotland since 2007. We will continue to enjoy that stability for another five years following our landslide victory in the Scottish parliamentary election on 8 June —a landslide victory bigger than Labour’s in July 2024, with 58 of our successful applicants being sworn in today in Edinburgh.

Prior to the election and over the last six months in particular, so many Labour MPs from Scotland used their valuable question time in this Chamber to attack the SNP. So many of them told us that the people of Scotland would reject the SNP, but last Thursday, the people of Scotland rejected the Labour party, rejected the Reform party and, indeed, rejected the notion that this is a United Kingdom.

[Peter Swallow]

The hon. Member said that the victory secured by the SNP at the elections earlier this month was bigger than the victory secured by this Government in 2024. Could he clarify whether the SNP won more or less seats at that election than it previously held? Has the SNP’s majority increased or decreased?

[Seamus Logan]

The plain fact of the matter, if we look at the percentages, is that it was a bigger landslide. Labour Members would also do well to take consideration of the now 73 MSPs in favour of independence for Scotland.

This Union has now been served with its redundancy notice, like so many workers in Scotland these last two years—like the workers in Grangemouth, who should have been treated in the same way as the steelworkers in Scunthorpe, the 1,500 jobs that could have been created at Ardersier, or the derisory coastal growth fund allocation to our precious fishing industry. Now this chaotic Government have turned on their leader, scapegoating him for their collective failures. The wonder of it all is that the branch manager of the Labour party in Scotland has not resigned, for he carries responsibility for this abject failure of the Labour party in Scotland.

We have not abandoned our pensioners, the vulnerable, the disabled, our young people, our students, our apprentices or our children. Unemployment is lower in Scotland than in the rest of these islands. Most of all, we have not demonised the many thousands of people who come from abroad to work in our essential services, or those who seek sanctuary from war, famine or persecution. They are not taking away our jobs, houses or GP appointments, as some populist politicians would have us believe. Years of austerity managed that and, sadly, Labour is continuing in that vein with its planned assault on the welfare system.

Is the former Health Secretary now ensuring that the King’s Speech included a relentless focus on the health service, on labour shortages in social care, on an end to the privatisation of our health service, on the availability of lifesaving drugs, and on reassuring this House about the hidden costs of the US-UK pharma deal by publishing his Department’s impact assessment? No. He focuses on his own personal ambitions to enter No. 10 Downing Street. He should not have been allowed to resign; he should have been sacked.

Finally, I wish to highlight the Palantir contract, which was discussed recently in Westminster Hall. Many Members from across the House spoke about it, and only yesterday I learned that NHS England has allowed staff from the US tech firm and other contractors to access patient data before it has been pseudonymised, despite internal fears of a

“risk of loss of public confidence”.

An internal NHS briefing has said that it would allow

“unlimited access to non-NHS staff”

to part of the NHS’s federated data platform, which holds identifiable patient information. That should concern everyone in the House, no matter their political persuasion. Indeed, it should concern everybody in the country. Members across the House have called for the Palantir project to be reviewed next year, and I urge whoever replaces the erstwhile Minister for Health Innovation and Safety to act on that misuse of our NHS data.

In conclusion, the Scottish National party will continue to have a relentless focus on matters relating to health and social care that are reserved to this Parliament during this Session, and on matters that adversely affect our small businesses. But the real solution to these issues is to give the people who live in Scotland the democratic right to bring this Union to an end, and allow Scotland to become an independent nation if it so chooses. The concept of Britain just is not working any more.

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[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I start by declaring that I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for schools, learning and assessment, of the all-party parliamentary group on social mobility, and of the all- party parliamentary group for classics.

I welcome the ambitious agenda set out yesterday in a King’s Speech that places working people at its heart—an agenda that builds on our promises to deliver a safer, stronger and more prosperous country. It is an agenda that will get Britain working and break down the barriers to opportunity, both for our country on the global stage and for every young person in it.

Opening up new opportunities for growth and trade is a vital part of this Government’s commitment to working families, because it is crucial that my constituents not only hear about the change we are delivering, but feel it in their pockets. As such, the Prime Minister is right when he says that a stronger relationship with Europe is in all of our best interests. Our European neighbours are our closest friends and allies, and greater opportunities on the continent for our businesses and our young people can only mean a more prosperous country with more opportunities for all. [Interruption.] It does not make sense to be so fixated on an ideology that we act against the interests of our nation and reject the opportunities that are on our doorstep—we are hearing some of that in the chuntering from Conservative Front Benchers. I remind those lining up to cry “Brexit betrayal” that the Leave campaign never promised that we would be completely isolated from our closest economic and defensive allies. In fact, it promised quite the opposite. A closer relationship with Europe means a safer, stronger, more prosperous Britain at a time when that has never been more important, and youth mobility offers brighter futures for our young people. I am proud to support the Government’s clear leadership in this area.

I also welcome the Government’s commitment to supporting British businesses and jobs through tackling unnecessary regulation and supporting businesses to introduce 50,000 more apprenticeships. I was delighted to see this in action in my constituency with the recent opening of a new youth employment hub in Bracknell, which will support hundreds of young people to enter the workplace and develop their skills and futures. I extend a huge thank you to the local businesses across Bracknell Forest that are supporting this initiative, because I and this Government recognise that youth unemployment is not just a problem that lies with individuals. It will take a whole-of-society approach to reach the one in eight young people who are not in education, work or training, and give them hope again.

We also know that for many young people the barriers to opportunity begin far before they even think of entering the workplace. Of all the issues that constituents have raised with me since I became Bracknell’s MP, none has been as complex, pervasive, emotional or deeply personal as those I have heard from parents and children experiencing our broken SEND system. As such, I could not welcome more strongly the commitment this Government have made to face the problem head-on and reform our broken system.

This Government’s determination to deliver for SEND young people is already making a big difference in my constituency, where funding has been confirmed for a new SEND school at Buckler’s Park in Crowthorne. Under the previous Conservative Government, that school was promised, but never funded. This Government are ending the years of empty promises, and are not only investing in the services that families so badly need, but getting on with the work we were elected to do and rebuilding those services so that they actually function. My only ask—the SEND Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould), who is in her place and always listens very attentively on this issue, knows what I am going to say—is that we build that school as quickly as possible. Having visited my constituency, she knows all too well that in Bracknell, and across the country, there are very many young people who need us to act as quickly as we can to get them the places in mainstream education and specialist provision that they so badly need.

On that note, it is also hugely welcome to see the Government delivering an initial £1 million in funding to Bracknell Forest council to establish our new Experts at Hand service, which will improve the availability of occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and educational psychologists to our local schools. I was delighted to get an update on that new programme earlier this week. Many parent carers are concerned about the need to train more practitioners. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister also recognises those challenges, so I hope we can set out an ambitious but deliverable workforce plan as soon as possible, to make sure that the new service can make the difference it is intended to make.

Recently, I hosted a meeting with parents in my constituency to discuss the SEND proposals. There was no doubt among those who attended that the system is badly in need of change, but parent carers raised concerns about individual support plans containing the right safeguards to ensure that every young person gets the support they need. I know that Ministers take that task extremely seriously, and I welcome their resolve to listen to families and educators and to make sustained, meaningful change. Accountability is important, so I simply ask Ministers to focus on that issue as they respond to the consultation. I look forward to the Government setting out all of their proposals in the education for all Bill, to rebuild a system that will give every child the education and opportunities they deserve.

Reform to our education system is about high standards for all, but it is also about preparing our young people to be active, informed and ambitious for their futures. As a former teacher, I know that young people have much to contribute to our political and civic life, and I wholeheartedly welcome the plans set out by this Government to extend the right to vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. As chair of the APPG for schools, learning and assessment, I have been leading an inquiry into votes at 16 and how we can ensure schools are supporting young people to engage in our democracy. I thank the democracy Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), for attending one of our evidence sessions.

We have heard from a wide range of young people, educators and civic organisations, and the message has been clear. This is the moment for a wider reflection on our education system and how it serves all of us in areas of civic life—not just in the classroom, but across society. The success of votes at 16 will be reflected, not just in how many young people vote, but in how they feel about their experience of voting and the tools that are available to support them to exercise their right to vote. I welcome the work that is already being undertaken in this area, including the curriculum and assessment review and the schools White Paper. I urge Ministers to grasp the opportunity to embrace a fully cross-departmental approach to delivering this policy, so that our young people develop the skills that employers are crying out for, the skills that will empower them in every area of their life, and have a sense of belonging. It is so important for everyone to feel that they belong to, contribute to, and are part of this United Kingdom.

This Government are fixing the foundations of this country. A quality education and secure employment are the gateways to opportunity, but so too is having a safe and decent home to live in. Too many people are denied that—stuck in insecure, impermanent accommodation and on long waiting lists for social housing simply to find somewhere suitable to live. We have already done a huge amount to tackle those injustices through our Renters’ Rights Act 2025. I am proud that Bracknell’s history as a post-war new town shows what ambition a Labour Government can have when staring a housing crisis in the face, a point that was made eloquently yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) when seconding the Humble Address. Let me quickly put on record that I am as proud of Bracknell as he is of Harlow. As everyone in this House will know, that is quite a big boast, given how supportive he is of Harlow.

I welcome the announcement of a social housing renewal Bill, including measures to protect our vital social housing stock and to introduce greater protections for tenants in instances of domestic abuse. I am pleased that the Government are proposing reforms to tackle disposals, but I would like us to go even further in this area so that local authorities are not just informed of any disposal of valuable housing stock, but must approve of it. Given that we have so many families on our waiting lists, I think that is very important. The social housing renewal Bill will ensure the investment and reform needed so that the great legacy that made Bracknell and other new towns what they are today can belong not just to Labour Governments past, but equally to this Government.

Finally, I will touch on something a bit more personal, but no less important. There is no place in the Britain I know and love for abusive conversion practices to continue. The promise we made to ban them is one we must keep, and I offer my full support to the Government’s plans to bring forward draft legislation to do so in this Session. It is right that that ban will be fully trans-inclusive.

The British people elected this Labour Government to deliver change. In my maiden speech, I emphasised that that would not be easy and would not necessarily always happen as quickly as we would like. Transparently, this week has demonstrated the truth of those words far more than I would have liked, so let me simply finish with this promise to the constituents who put their faith in me and sent me to this place to represent them. Whatever the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune care to throw at me, I will remain focused on the one and only thing I was sent here to do: delivering change for my constituents.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

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

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

[Peter Swallow]

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

[Caroline Voaden]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

It is an honour to close today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. I thank everyone from all parts of the Chamber for their thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions. I will come to some of their comments in detail, but I start by saying that it is a shame the shadow Minister did not ask for the help of the work experience student who supported the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) in developing his statistics today. The shadow Minister might have been a bit more accurate if he had. As we have already heard, under his Government, apprenticeship starts for young people went down by 40%. Under this Government they have gone up. This year, we have seen more than 300,000 people get into work. Just this morning, we saw the UK have the fastest growth of the six G7 countries that have declared. We are taking action on employment, on apprenticeships and on growth, but I will come to those detailed questions later.

First, I will talk about some of the issues that have been raised in the Chamber today. Members have shown the importance of growth and opportunity in every single community. We heard a powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), who talked about the importance of investment in towns. We heard from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) about the importance of coastal communities, and from the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) about the importance of rural communities. It has been so powerful to hear MPs bringing the voices of those different communities into this Chamber.

I also thank those who raised the critical issue of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I assure the shadow Minister that that is the purpose that the Secretary of State and I are focused on every day. I spent this morning speaking to special schools. Yesterday, I was speaking to families. We are listening to the voices of children and young people. We have a generational opportunity to get this right, and we will continue that work, led by the Prime Minister. It is a critical issue; we heard from a number of hon. Members how important it is for their constituents.

I agree with the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne) that we must ensure that we really hear families’ voices. The Secretary of State and I and other Ministers have been travelling around the country talking to families. We have heard that too often they have to fight for the support their children need. The system that we have—a system that we inherited—is failing too many families; it needs to change. Support needs to go in earlier, and we need to ensure that we are supporting every child to develop their opportunities to the best of their ability.

I thank my hon. Friend for sharing her diagnosis. Everyone across the House will agree that she is an important role model for people with neurodivergence. She shows how important it is that people with autism take up roles across our society and provide that leadership. I will commit to meeting her to discuss the issues she raised.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) for her contribution on early intervention, the importance of Best Start hubs, support for breakfast clubs, and how critical it is to support families with children with special educational needs and disabilities at the earliest possible point. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) made important points about accountability. Again, we are talking about those issues with families.

I welcome the promise of partnership and scrutiny from the hon. Member for South Devon. This is such an important issue, and our commitment is to work cross-party to ensure that we are getting it right.

[Peter Swallow]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I tried to intervene on the shadow Minister but was not successful. On that cross-party consensus, was she as surprised as I was to see no commitment at all on special educational needs in the Conservative party’s so-called alternative King’s speech? Does she share my concern that that demonstrates its complete lack of seriousness on that really important issue?