Defence Readiness

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I start by acknowledging the dedication to public service of all who serve and have served or who support those in our armed forces and our wider defence industry.

There are opportunities, as well as glaring omissions, in what the Government have put forward for this Session. I am certainly glad to see new legislation coming forward on two of the biggest issues facing us in North Norfolk: getting our NHS back on its feet, and getting sewage out of our rivers and seas. I hope the forthcoming Health Bill will be another step towards rebuilding our NHS after the appalling damage done by successive Conservative Governments. I am keen to see how the Bill can tackle some of the rural inequalities we face in North Norfolk, however, which are about not only health access, but health outcomes, and that is one reason why we will not back down over Benjamin Court, a vital rehabilitation resource for people leaving hospital that was closed down by Norfolk county council under the Conservatives.

Elsewhere, I am pleased that the clean water Bill will be coming forward, but I do have serious worries that it will be yet another piece of weak, watered-down legislation that does not place proper pain on water companies when they behave badly. I am delighted that our years of campaigning have helped secure £83 million of investment from Anglian Water, which has already brought down sewage spills by 95% in some parts of North Norfolk, but there is still much to do and I will not rest until sewage spills are a thing of the past. The Government must also take steps to make our chalk streams UNESCO natural heritage sites and recognise and protect the unique character of chalk streams, such as the Glaven, the Stiffkey and the Bure in North Norfolk.

The forthcoming education for all Bill will be cautiously welcomed by parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities in our area. It recognises that the system is broken and is failing schools, local authorities, parents and, most significantly, children. But many parents have told me they are worried about how the rights of their children will be affected and how access to adequate support will be guaranteed for them. The Bill also needs to ensure that reform of the SEND system includes equal access for the whole country and ends the continuing postcode lottery. I have heard concerns from constituents about how underserved some of our coastal communities are and how far young people have to travel just to get to a setting that suits their needs. I have also spoken to parents with primary schoolchildren who are worried about what is happening right now in our overstretched schools. They worry that these reforms will be too late for hundreds of SEND children who need help now.

I am also awaiting the digital access to services bill with interest. The Government missed a lot of opportunities with last year’s Data (Use and Access) Bill to legislate for a more data-driven Government who are better at doing things digitally. Part of this is about ensuring people who do not do things digitally can still access those services, yet just weeks after assuring me in Committee that existing legislation would cover this, the Government announced their ill-fated digital ID pet project. So despite believing that digital transformation is a key ingredient in fixing what is broken in our country, I will be pushing them again, as I did last year, to enshrine in law a right to non-digital ID to protect the elderly and vulnerable people in North Norfolk or those who simply do not want to use it.

Frustratingly, there are still some important omissions from the 35 Bills put before us. On defence readiness, I am disappointed to see no concrete action on financial transparency in the overseas territories. Offshore tax havens are simply hiding places for dirty money, oligarch wealth, rogue states and corporations dodging their responsibilities while ordinary people pick up the bill. We know these gaps can be closed, so why are the Government not prepared to bring forward legislation to close them once and for all?

Meanwhile, many young people are worried about how their careers will be impacted by AI and older, vulnerable people are worried about how criminals can misuse AI to defraud and scam them. We have to keep up with the times. We have to ensure that AI is providing benefits to all, not just concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few select tech barons and foreign states. The economy used to be powered mainly by people, but it is increasingly powered by software. It is therefore regrettable that the King’s Speech did not make provision to adapt the tax base to accommodate the hyper-concentration of ownership of tech firms, starting with a digital services tax.

It is clear to me from speaking to people at the thousands of doors I knocked on during the local elections and the many emails I receive every day that change is not coming fast enough. People feel the Government are dragging their feet, and that the machinery of the state has little interest in delivering the radical change this country needs. There are green shoots in this Government’s programme, but little more. My hon. Friends and I look forward to scrutinising, pushing and challenging the Government to do more over this Session.