Energy Security and Net Zero: Scotland

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I will call Susan Murray to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of Susan Murray and the Minister. Because this is a 30-minute debate, there will not be an opportunity for Susan Murray to make a winding-up speech at the end.

[Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Scotland’s contribution to energy security and net zero.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and a privilege to lead this debate on a matter that will have such an impact on Scotland’s economy, our cost of living and our national security. Let me be clear at the outset that Scotland plays a disproportionate role in keeping the lights on across Great Britain, and it is leading the way in the shift to clean power.

The evidence is clear: the House of Commons Library noted that in 2024, clean power made up 90% of the generation in Scotland. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has published figures showing that Scotland produces significantly more energy than it consumes, and that it transferred 17 TWh of excess energy to England in 2024. In terms that we can all understand, that is enough energy to power every home in London for two years.

That production benefits us all—it supports energy security, making us resilient to international events, and helps to decarbonise the grid for everyone—but there is a problem that we cannot ignore: despite that enormous contribution, too often Scots do not see a fair share of the benefits in good jobs, local investment or lower bills. The case that I want to make today is simple: Scotland is delivering, so the UK’s policy and delivery machine must now match that pace with fairness, infrastructure and security. The North sea is the place to start.

The Scottish Affairs Committee set out the stark reality: in 2024, oil and gas production reached a 21st-century low—about 75% below the 1999 peak. Decline is not an abstract theory; it is measurable across Scotland. The workforce impact is already significant. The Library notes that there were 121,000 direct and indirect jobs supported by the oil and gas industry in 2023—a 51% fall compared with 2014. If workers leave before the clean energy pipeline reaches its potential, we will lose the skilled labour that is vital to a successful transition.

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[Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)]

Do you agree that £9 million in total community benefit for the highlands, and £30 million for Scotland as a whole, is a paltry amount for a multibillion-pound industry?

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. Can I just remind the hon. Member about use of the word “you”? I always get told off by the Deputy Speaker for it. “You” means me, because I am in the Chair. It should be, “Does the hon. Member agree?” But I think we get the point.

[Susan Murray]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which I absolutely agree with. As I have just said, this is something that needs to be looked at, and there is an opportunity to make sure that communities all across the UK benefit from the power generation that they have to live with locally every day. Will Ministers commit to introducing a consistent community benefit and community energy framework for major low-carbon infrastructure, so that host communities—especially in rural and off-gas-grid areas—share in any long-term benefits?

Beyond the initial generation of power, we forget about the grid. None of our ambitions on net zero or energy security will be met if we cannot move the power that we generate around the UK. We must fix the grid; we must stop paying to waste clean energy. We have built the infrastructure to generate power faster than we have built the network to connect and transport it. The result is that bill payers are burdened with the cost of electricity that they cannot use and that cannot be brought to them.

The National Energy System Operator’s annual balancing costs report sets out the scale of the problem. It reports that grid constraint costs increased by 64% in 2024-25, totalling £1.7 billion. The total energy lost to that failure was 13.5 TWh, which is nearly as much as Scotland sent to England. This is not a theoretical cost; it is money that households and businesses pay because the network cannot always carry the clean power that is available. Will Ministers pledge to accelerate grid development and to drive connections reform at pace and with clear milestones, so that we stop paying for unused electricity and improve resilience, particularly for rural and remote communities?

The grid is not just an infrastructure issue; it is an opportunity to redevelop our industrial heartlands. If Scotland is powering the transition, Scotland should also help to build it. Scotland has a proven history in heavy engineering and industrial delivery, with ports, fabrication, and a supply chain shaped by decades of offshore work. The transition should not become a story of “import the kit, export the jobs”.

[Susan Murray]

I absolutely agree: the vision is there, but we take too long to make decisions. When that happens, our workforce make their own decisions, and businesses do not come that might have considered coming. We have to support the opportunity that is available to us.

We must look seriously at how we encourage companies to build the components of the green revolution here. We have the skills and a history of great steelworks and dockyards. Those can be revitalised, and our communities alongside them.

However, building at home extends further than just good practice: it reduces risk to supply and security. The National Cyber Security Centre publishes dedicated supply chain security principles to help organisations manage supply chain risk. That is the mindset we need for critical national infrastructure, and we have seen why it matters. UK authorities have been looking into reported cyber-security concerns linked to remote-access features in some electric buses imported from China—the same place that much of our green technology comes from. This is not about sensationalising or point scoring: if supplier risks matter for buses, they certainly matter for the systems that keep the lights on and our countries running. Will the Minister use the industrial strategy to set out clear UK content and supply chain commitments, to ensure that demand for grid and energy production components is not only met in a timely manner but protected from foreign interference?

I finish by returning to the household reality, because net zero will not be delivered by megawatts alone; it will be delivered in homes and communities, and it must be made simple, safe and scalable. The Climate Change Committee’s progress report found a 56% increase in heat pump installations in 2024, driven by increased support from Government schemes, but it is clear that scaling remains the challenge. Households respond to a simple proposition: reliable installers, clear standards, stable support and aftercare. That too should be treated as part of the mission to build a UK production base. A national retrofit and heat pump supply chain would create skilled work in every community. Will Ministers treat heat pumps and retrofits as part of the same mission, supporting an installer pipeline, quality assurance, consumer protection and an end-to-end journey from advice, to finance, to installation, to aftercare?

Scotland is delivering Britain’s energy security and clean power. Now the Government must deliver for Scotland, with fairness, jobs and infrastructure that turn Scotland’s contribution into lower bills and better energy security for everyone.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I call Minister—and birthday boy—Michael Shanks to respond for the Government.

Fairtrade Certification

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse.

Picture the scene: Downing Street in December and jolly Christmas trees sparkling away. No, it is not “Love Actually”, but the moment—exactly 24 hours ago, I think —that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), other officers of the all-party parliamentary group and I handed in the petition of 22,000 constituents. Such was the volume of names, the petition was in a blue cardboard box, carrying the logo that my hon. Friend described, with the distinctive swirly light-green and blue with a dot connoting a person. It was the Fairtrade logo, which people trust. It is like a kitemark.

When we buy stuff with the Fairtrade logo—bananas or whatever it is—we know what it means. As people have described, there is a minimum price guarantee for the farmer, and there is the Fairtrade premium—the financial bonus for community projects. Certification is a two-way bargain. On their side, the person being supplied has to provide transparent contracts. There are lots of things that these smallholders—they are often tiny farmers—find difficult, like getting finance up front, before the harvest season. Under the Fairtrade scheme, they can get money up front.

The scheme is about people, sustainability and community first, before naked transactional profit. Smallholding farmers can club together and get a lot more access to international markets than they would be able to get on their own. The scheme increases their bargaining capacity. It is also democratic and run on co-operative—I am a member of the Co-operative party—principles. The premium could go to football pitches, tuition fees or classrooms; that is decided by the community.

I do not know whether I am the only one in the room old enough to remember the 1980s and the advert with the man from Del Monte. Do you remember him, Mrs Hobhouse? He was a little bit neocolonialist in his hat and linen suit, and he swooped into a paradise-like community. Well, it was not all paradise, was it? He was on a plantation somewhere or other—it was an unnamed location—stroking his beard and inspecting fruit produce. It was some far-off location—somewhere in sunny climes. He was this western impresario and the community were all there, with their great expectations. In the end, the cliffhanger was resolved with a thumb up—“The man from Del Monte, he say yes!”, as one of the urchin children said. I like to think that in this day and age, it would be a certified, kitemark-able, Fairtrade business and the little urchin would be going to a school provided by this system and enjoying kicking a ball about on a pitch built with these community funds. That is what we would like to think, but it is an uneven playing field, as people have described.

The Minister is wearing a jolly waistcoat himself for this debate. It is very festive—I like it.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)]

It is British.

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[Dr Huq]

It is made in Britain, but not everything can be. Bananas, coffee, chocolate—that is what we are talking about. The man from Del Monte said yes. In the time that has elapsed since the mid-’80s, when that advert was first shown, British consumers have become more demanding and sought more reassurance. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) referred to palm oil. In 2018, there was the advert for Iceland—not the country; the frozen food giant—that showed the orangutan who was sad that his habitat was disappearing because of palm oil. People are becoming more and more discerning. There is a worry, though, because we are in a cost of living crisis and people are looking for cheaper alternatives, which are not necessarily the ethical things, if the prices of those things are too many multiples of the cost of the standard-price item.

The petition that we handed in says that manufacturers should not be penalised for doing the right thing. We should not always be rushing to a lowest common denominator situation. This campaign for fair trade, which all our constituents are behind, links to concerns about deforestation and about fast fashion. Is it worth getting something for £4 from Primark if it comes with a real cost of many litres of water and hardship?

The petition looks particularly at tea, the national drink—we all enjoy a cuppa. At a time when the UK is seeing the biggest uplift to workers’ rights ever, in one go, this debate is about those things we cannot get at home: bananas, coffee, chocolate, flowers, tea, cotton and gold. They are all implicated when we hear of a dark side of undesirable practices in businesses’ supply chains: human rights abuses, environmental damage, child labour—all sorts of things. We are now outside the EU—something that I regret—and we are looking for free trade agreements. In that pursuit, let us not forget fair trade. We do not want farmers to be subject to naked exploitation—modern slavery.

The indicators are good. Quarter 3 of this year spanned Fairtrade fortnight, which was the end of September to the beginning of October, and figures from the Fairtrade Foundation show that Fairtrade tea sales were up by 40%—it was a record quarter—confectionary up 20% and coffee up 15%. All the polls show that 95% of shoppers believe that businesses should take responsibility for upholding human rights throughout their supply chains. What we were all trying to say with the petition is that those who already invest in ethical sourcing should not be penalised. Introducing mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence would level the playing field so that those operating responsibility are not undercut by those cutting corners and exploiting loopholes. Such legislation would be the single most cost-effective way to enhance the UK’s reputation as a champion of net zero, too.

At the moment, we have a fragmented system, with different logos, such as the swirly one I mentioned and those of the Rainforest Alliance, Red Tractor and so on. It is a little inconsistent. We should have one system for all, with an enforceable and consistent framework to protect people and planet. We should protect small-scale farmers and workers worldwide against a race to the bottom with fair prices. When we delivered the petition yesterday, I found out that Sainsbury’s has a human rights department—that I did not know. Other supermarkets are available, of course—Waitrose, the good old Co-op and so on.

We also want to continue our transition to net zero. The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has gone—that’s Lib Dems for you—but he mentioned the aid budget cut. It was in our manifesto that we will work towards restoring that budget, so I hope that we will be able to do that when time allows. The main asks of the petition are a UK law on human rights and environmental due diligence; encouragement of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the tea sector, progressing towards living incomes and living wages for tea growers; and honouring of our climate finance obligations and, when time allows, restoration of our aid budget.

This is not just something for far-off places and the man from Del Monte. In 2003, Ealing council passed its first fair-trade measure and the Ealing Co-op was very active in Fairtrade fortnight, garnering some of those 22,000 signatures. My alma mater, Notting Hill girls’ school, is apparently now a Fairtrade school. St Stephen’s church and many other faith communities locally have also campaigned for fair trade.

If you want any more persuading of the good souls behind this cause, Mrs Hobhouse, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North can attest, yesterday our cardboard box attracted a lot of attention from, if not Downing Street’s most famous inhabitant, certainly the most consistent one in my time in this place, which has spanned six different Prime Ministers: the contented purring that we heard proved to us that Larry the cat is on side as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

As of tomorrow, the Lending Standards Board will be no more, because its funders—the banks—have pulled out. Will Minister meet me urgently to take forward the good work that the board was doing, particularly on the ethnicity code? That work exposed the fact that only 19% of minority businesses achieve loans, whereas 58% of standard applications do.

[Blair McDougall]

Businesses led by entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds make a huge contribution to all our constituencies. Indeed, I met two such remarkable business people in Acton a couple of days ago. My hon. Friend is right to mention that finance is a barrier for under-represented groups, including ethnic minorities. Dealing with that is a key part of the small business strategy, and it is why we have put billions more into the British Business Bank. She has led on these issues, and I am of course happy to meet her to discuss the future of the programme that she mentions.

UK Internal Market

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sammy Wilson]

The right hon. Member is absolutely correct. I will talk about some of that bureaucracy later in my speech.

Fifty-eight per cent of businesses have faced significant or moderate difficulties, including rising transport costs, significant disruption to supplies, stock shortfalls, shortages, loss of sales and increased bureaucracy and costs, as well as the drain on their finances because of the payment of taxes and duties that take a long time to be repaid.

Of the companies surveyed, 61% said that they had experienced negative consequences as a result of the Windsor framework. Significantly, despite what the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland would try to tell the House, only 2% said there were any positive benefits. More worryingly, 56% either said that they are “not confident” or only “slightly confident” about what will happen with their trading relations with Northern Ireland, and 29% said that they are likely to have to stop supplying to Northern Ireland in the future. That is on top of those companies that have already stopped.

In fact, one company said that it was now more difficult to trade with Northern Ireland—that is, bring goods from GB into Northern Ireland—than it is to trade with Australia and the USA, which is why it would stop trading with Northern Ireland.

What has been the Government’s response to all this, as it is well known? I am pleased that the FSB has now independently verified what we have all known anecdotally, as constituency representatives. I suspect that the Minister will say, “Oh, but we are doing our best. We have put in support mechanisms. We have the trader support service, we have HMRC guidance.” I hate to tell the Minister that the survey shows that 78% of businesses say the support is either “poor” or “very poor”—in other words, useless. The report says,

“a similarly high proportion found access to the support difficult. Businesses frequently cited confusing or inconsistent guidance. As one NI manufacturer put it, navigating new customs paperwork via the Trader Support Service often feels like a ‘guessing game’.”

It is a joke of a system. The defence is, “We have put in support mechanisms.” Well, they are not working.

The second argument—and we have heard the Secretary of State make it repeatedly—is, “Oh, but you have other benefits. You have access to the dual market. You have the benefits of being able to sell into the EU, which companies in GB cannot do as freely, and to sell into the GB market.” We know now that the GB market is not accessible, and that supplies are not coming through.

As far as the dual market system is concerned, when businesses were surveyed, 88% said that the opportunities were not explained—they did not know what the opportunities were—and 64% said that they did not even understand what the opportunities were. They said that it seemed like the Government were making no effort to promote the great benefit that was meant to be the result of the Windsor framework. I suspect that the reason why the benefit has not been promoted is because, as many of the companies said, it is more in theory than in reality. There is no real benefit.

Of course, the latest argument is, “Well, the new sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU will smooth it all out.” Every time I hear that argument, if I am at home, I look down into Larne harbour from my study window and see that, despite the promises that the SPS agreement will do away with a lot of these checks, there is a border post being built—I can see it clearly from my study window. £140 million is being spent on it, and only last night, the local council was asked to sign a memorandum of association to ensure that it supplies staff for that border post until March 2029.

Even if the SPS agreement were to do that, it covers only a very small part of the trade. All of the customs requirements, duty payments, checks, delays and parcel post will still be affected. EU regulations, affecting many businesses because the EU has different standards, will still apply.

The one thing I hope I do not get from the Minister today is the same complacency, disdain and “I couldn’t care less” attitude that Northern Ireland experiences from our Secretary of State, whose attitude has been little short of disgraceful. Pontius Pilate-like, he has washed his hands of it all. If anything, he acts more like an EU emissary to Northern Ireland than a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I can see that you are getting a bit uneasy, Dr Huq, but I notified the Secretary of State that I am angry at the way in which he has treated Northern Ireland, and he knew I was going to make these remarks this afternoon. In fact, I think I spelled them out to him.

Let us look at some of the Secretary of State’s comments. When my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) recently raised a statistic from the FSB survey in the House, his attitude was, “Well, if some of the businesses can trade with Northern Ireland, why can’t the rest of them? It is up to them to decide where they want to trade and where they don’t.” When someone who is meant to be standing up and fighting for Northern Ireland takes that kind of attitude, I despair about whether this issue is being taken seriously.

In a recent letter to me, the Secretary of State indicated that, as far as he is concerned, the main thing is to ensure that we “faithfully” pursue the Windsor framework because the EU is getting angry that some of the regulations may not be fully implemented. Here we have damaging regulations for Northern Ireland, and the Secretary of State’s response is, “Well, I have to stand up for the EU. Northern Ireland businesses? Let them paddle their own canoe.”

I know that others wish to speak, and I am pleased that so many have stayed on the last day. I do not want them to miss out, so this is the last thing. What do we need? I could go through many of the options that we have proposed and that the Government have dismissed, but I ask the Minister for one simple thing. All the paperwork, all the regulations, all the delays and all the checks are founded on one thing: that goods entering Northern Ireland from GB are regarded as at risk of going into the Irish Republic, contaminating its economy in some way and breaking EU rules.

Custard, the stuff we heat and pour over apple tarts or put into trifles, was deemed to be a dairy product, but it was not required to be labelled until phase 3 of the labelling requirements. However, the EU decided that perhaps custard should have been regarded as a product at risk, so it changed the labelling requirements. One of the big supermarkets had custard in its supply chain, and the EU bureaucrats decided that this custard must be hunted down—“We cannot have it coming into Northern Ireland and finding its way into the Irish Republic.” Lorries with mixed loads were stopped and searched. The offending custard was hunted down, discovered and exposed. That delayed the lorries, which did not reach the depot in time, so their goods could not be broken down and distributed to the various shops. It affected the supply chain and the supply of shops in Northern Ireland.

Here is the irony: the supermarket did not have any shops in the Irish Republic. The offending custard was okay one day, but not the next, because it did not have a label that it did not require the previous day. There was no evidence that anybody was dying from eating this custard in Northern Ireland or anywhere else, but the supply chains for a major supermarket in Northern Ireland were disrupted.

I am sure many Members could tell story after story about how the regulations are having an effect. What is it all down to? It is down to goods presenting a “risk”. What risk? We do not know. A simple change could be made so that goods are deemed at risk only once they leave Northern Ireland and go into the Irish Republic or elsewhere. The Road Haulage Association and Federation of Small Businesses have asked for that. It is not beyond the wit of man to ensure that happens. After all, all the companies that are selling these goods have VAT returns. HMRC trusts those companies at the end of the year to declare how much VAT they owe. If the goods have gone out of Northern Ireland, they do not have to pay VAT. Why can that VAT return not be used to follow the goods to where they eventually go? There is much disruption to trade, though not to all of it.

I am sure Members will talk about the inequity and constitutional implications of EU law applying to Northern Ireland, but one simple change can be made. Rather than kowtow to the EU, or be afraid that the reset with the EU might be disturbed if we ask for something simple, I ask the Minister to consider that one simple change, which many businesses have said would restore their ability to trade freely within our own market, selling goods that are not at risk. It would be of immense help to the small businesses that are the backbone of our economy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We will now divide up the time left. If Members keep their speeches to within four minutes, everyone will get in. I call Jim Allister.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. We will move on to the first Front Bencher, Liberal Democrat spokesperson Clive Jones, at 5.8 pm, so the time limit is now three and a half minutes.

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[Clive Jones]

I only have a few minutes, so I will not. Recent findings from the Federation of Small Businesses have highlighted severe challenges: despite Tory promises of “no more red tape”, many small businesses are finding trading between Great Britain and Northern Ireland laborious and costly. The Chartered Institute of Export and International Trade found that, between 2021 and 2023, since the Brexit deal, 2 billion additional pieces of paperwork had to be completed by exporters. That is nearly enough paperwork to wrap around the Earth 14.7 times.

The FSB report also makes it clear that businesses are not aware of the benefits of the dual market access. It is the Government’s job to add some clarity here. According to the FSB, only 14% of Northern Ireland-based businesses responding to its survey said that they understand and are benefiting from dual market access. The rest either lack sufficient understanding to benefit from it or have not been able to leverage it. Some 51% of respondents believe this opportunity is not being adequately explained or promoted by Government authorities. We have to ask why.

Does the Minister not agree that further clarity, communication and support from the Government would benefit businesses across the whole of the UK, and trade with Northern Ireland? We are right to ask why the Northern Irish Government is not doing more to help local businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses. It is clear that Labour must take a more pragmatic approach with the EU and foster a closer relationship for the benefit of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England.

A closer relationship with the EU will also help solve the UK’s skills shortages, especially in Northern Ireland. According to a report by Ulster University’s economic policy centre, Northern Ireland needs more than 5,000 additional workers to grow its economy. Does the Minister not agree that a closer relationship with the EU and introducing a youth mobility scheme would be the perfect way to help solve that issue?

Not only would a closer relationship with the EU benefit Northern Irish jobs and its economy, but a new trade deal would boost the entire UK economy and provide revenue for our public services. A customs union with the EU would add up to £25 billion to the Government coffers. Labour say it wants growth, yet the Government shy away from a new deal with the EU that would cut the costly red tape that is holding so many small businesses back.

I am running out of time, so I will move to the end of my speech. Growth is possible for the UK, and, whether that is through a new deal with the EU or a fairer deal for our SMEs and industries, Northern Ireland deserves economic prosperity after years of economic neglect. The Good Friday agreement brought peace, but it did not bring prosperity, and the Conservatives’ Brexit deal has clearly not brought prosperity either.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I call the shadow Minister in His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, Andrew Griffith.

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[Andrew Griffith]

As ever, drawing on his extensive experience in this place, my right hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. We do not have time to revisit all the imperfections of the Brexit deal imposed upon us by a recalcitrant European Union, which turned out to be a very false friend.

We should hear from the Minister, and I want to afford him as much time as possible. But my party will of course support anything that removes frictions and reunites the territorial integrity of the whole United Kingdom. We want every small business to benefit from that frictionless relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom. Our Union depends on that single indivisible approach and the sort of practical solutions that we heard about, such as trusted trader schemes and utilising HMRC’s already extensive data collection and reporting framework to improve the operation of our internal market. That should be something that every Member of this House seeks to do. The Government have given up things like British fishing for 12 years; I hope that we continue to see in return some real progress on this issue.

I thank all hon. Members, and congratulate the right hon. Member for East Antrim on highlighting the issue. With your permission, Dr Huq, I will give the rest of the available time to the Minister.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We are going to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the Member in charge to conclude.

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[Sammy Wilson]

I appreciate that the Minister has stepped in at short notice and is probably reading from the Government brief, but I am really disappointed. He talked about the review of the internal market and how the legislation was designed to uphold Northern Ireland’s position and ensure the free movement of goods.

I do not know whether the Minister has listened to what Members have said here today, but the free movement of goods is not happening. The internal market is being disrupted. He talks about ensuring that no more unnecessary barriers arise, but we have the labelling coming through now and the EU export control system coming through in September. We also have all the new EU legislation, which will impact on businesses and create different standards in Northern Ireland.

The Minister then put the cream in the cake by saying that the Government are committed to the Windsor framework, but the Windsor framework has been the cause of the issues raised in this report. All I can say is that this Government are going down the road of making sure they do not upset the EU—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. We now adjourn until September.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

That is an important question. The Minister with responsibility for emissions trading, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), is in charge of that matter, and it is one of the discussions we are having as part of the EU reset.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

4. What steps he is taking to support high street businesses.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

16. What steps he is taking to support high street businesses.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)]

Working across Government, we are determined to revitalise our high streets and support the businesses on them. We are working with industry to create a fairer business rates system that protects the high street and supports investment. We have introduced the Crime and Policing Bill, which will give better protection for businesses and retail workers against assault and theft. Our forthcoming small business strategy will set out our plan for further support for small businesses on the high street and beyond.

[Dr Huq]

From 5 am to 10 pm daily, the Patels’ newsagent, off licence and post office was an Acton staple—until Horizon slapped it with a £123,000 demand, and Mrs Patel had a series of mini-strokes. Will Ministers look into the fact that their compensation was rejected because Mr Patel was the postmaster, and show their love for high-street heroes everywhere by attending a tea organised by the all-party parliamentary group for ethnic minority business owners on 3 April? You are welcome too, Mr Speaker.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend for raising the case of the Patels. I am keen that any sub-postmaster who was a victim of the Horizon scandal gets access to the compensation they rightly deserve as quickly as possible. She will understand that I cannot comment on individual cases, but if she wants to write to me about the specific case, I would be happy to look into it further and to discuss it with her.

Future of the Post Office

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to bring the House’s attention back to the issue of sub-postmaster pay: there has been no material improvement in sub-postmaster pay for over a decade. If we are to see sub-postmasters genuinely treated better in the future, addressing the issue of pay is fundamental. I welcome the focus on that by the chair of the Post Office, Nigel Railton, in his speech today. I gently re-emphasise to the right hon. Gentleman that we remain committed to the Government requirement to deliver 11,500 branches, to ensure that every community has easy access to the post office branch network. Communities will absolutely need to be involved in any decisions about individual branches.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Acton lost its well used and still much missed post office in 2018, but it is home to the first ever urban Post Office-run banking hub. The trend is to co-locate services, but that seems to have drawn a blank—there are too many onerous parts to it, and businesses do not want it. So could the Minister help me investigate ways to merge the two services? The banking hub is the natural home for post office services, as it is owned by the Post Office, and, as a neighbouring MP, he could visit to cut the ribbon when we finally get postal services back to Acton, where they belong.

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend has always been a great champion of her constituency. I have visited the banking hub in Acton in a previous life, before the general election. I would be very happy to revisit the post office. I hear her message about co-location and I assure her I will look at that. I am sure she will continue to press me on the future of banking hubs in Acton.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Industry and Economic Security (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Obviously it is important to secure investment in mining in Cornwall, particularly the mining of lithium, which will be critical for our car batteries. I certainly agree to be interrogated by the APPG, of which my hon. Friend is a powerful leader, and I congratulate her on securing that investment in Cornwall.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

T6. Could Ministers fix the illogical loophole faced by Pixipixel, a lighting and camera hire firm in Acton? It supplied the equipment for the first two series of a popular ITV drama called “Grace”, which is set in Brighton, but because of Ofcom rules about the imposing of regional spending on public service broadcasters, it has now been banned and gazumped by a company in Manchester. Can this be sorted out, because—

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Secretary of State.

[Dr Huq]

It is having a punitive effect on businesses within the M25.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her work on behalf of Nichola Arch, whose case is one of the most prominent in this scandal. She is right to say that assessing loss is complicated, which is exactly why I work with officials. I agree with her description of them as excellent; they are just as passionate about delivering compensation as Members of this House. We are working on a daily basis.

My hon. Friend is also right to say that the fixed-sum award for overturned convictions simplified things significantly. A significant number of people have full and final settlements on an overturned conviction—30 people have chosen that route so far. But I hear what my hon. Friend is saying about a simplified process in other areas of compensation. That is certainly something we are working on and looking at wherever we can.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

ITV and the power of drama deserve our praise for galvanising Government action far faster than the questions I have been asking here since 2020. As well as Mr Bates there was Mr Patel, who was forced to give a false confession to avoid prison. He had the humiliation of attending the graduation of his son, my constituent Varchas, while electronically tagged. Despite Mr Patel’s conviction having been quashed in 2020, he has had zilch compensation and suffered huge ill health. Can the Minister sort that, make sure that heads roll and make good on Paula Vennells’s promise to me in 2018, when she pulled the plug on Acton crown post office, that we will get a post office again? We are still waiting.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and work on behalf of Mr Patel. If Mr Patel’s conviction was overturned in 2020, he should have received £163,000 in interim compensation, which was made available to anybody with an overturned conviction. He can also access two routes: either a fixed-sum award of £600,000 or the full assessment route. He can make a decision based on whatever level of compensation he and his advisers think he is due. One route is undoubtedly quicker than the other due to the complex nature of assessing claims. I agree with the hon. Lady about people being held accountable, as I said in my statement and in response to other Members. Picking up her point about Acton post office, Paula Vennells does not have much influence over that any more, but we can ask questions about that on the hon. Lady’s behalf.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

4. What steps she is taking to encourage businesses to open outlets on high streets.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

7. What steps she is taking to encourage businesses to open outlets on high streets.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

In addition to small business rate relief, under which businesses with a rateable value of less than £12,000 pay no business rates whatsoever, in his autumn statement the Chancellor announced a further business rate support package, worth £4.3 billion over the next five years, to support small businesses and the high street.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and welcome him to his place in the House.

Of course, we are very concerned about the high street. The pressures on the high street are largely caused by changing consumer habits, but the Government have stepped in to ease pressures, such as through the £20 billion energy bill support scheme and the £17 billion business rate package.

The hon. Gentleman talks about completely scrapping the current business rate system, which Labour has committed to do, but it is incumbent on Labour to set out how it will replace the £25 billion that business rates currently add to the Exchequer. What is the solution? It is not right for him or others simply to say they will scrap that £25 billion without setting out how they will replace it.

[Dr Huq]

The vanishing of Debenhams, Wilko and Paperchase has left huge holes in our town centres— I have lost a Wilko in both Ealing and Acton. Analysis shows that the incentivisation of out-of-town retail is the culprit. Labour has a five-point plan to revive our high streets, putting communities first. What are the Government doing about all this?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do not accept that, although out- of-town shopping can put pressure on the high street. Local authorities have to be very careful when they give planning consent for out-of-town shopping centres that could put pressure on the high street. That is clearly an important part of the planning process, but it is not the responsibility of central Government, of course. I would be interested to see that five-point plan, but if it includes the scrapping of business rates, which raise £25 billion, I ask the Labour Front Bench team once again—I have yet to receive an answer—where is that money coming from?

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries (Sir John Whittingdale)]

The Government have made it clear that the licence fee will remain in place for the remainder of this charter period, but my hon. Friend is right that there are challenges going forward. He may be aware that the number of people paying the licence fee has fallen by 1.9 million in the past five years, and it is therefore right that we look at possible alternative sources of funding for the BBC in the longer term. That will be the focus of the funding review.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

T3. We all wish our women’s team all the best down under in the World cup that starts today—we are all a bit envious of the Minister—but at the same time, our national team is still doing battle with the Football Association over pay. How soon do the Government expect to implement the recommendations of Karen Carney’s review so that the beautiful game raises up standards for women, including Chloe Kelly from Acton, my favourite Lioness?

[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this important area. I am extremely grateful, as we all are in the Department, to Karen Carney for such an in-depth review of women’s football. We are obviously looking at the recommendations she made in that report, and that will be a continuous agenda item in my regular discussions with the FA.