Engagements

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 2 September.

It was good to be back at this Dispatch Box yesterday for the first time in 16 years, and I understand that I broke records on my first day back for the longest statement in modern history. Thanks for your help with that, Mr Speaker. On my engagements, this evening I will join Their Majesties the King and Queen and President Macron at the British Museum to celebrate the arrival of the Bayeux tapestry. The loaning of the tapestry is a great example of French-British co-operation—the same co-operation that has helped us reduce summer small boat crossings to a seven-year low. This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I will have further such meetings later today.

May I first welcome the Prime Minister to his place? I also welcome his exemption of offences including death by dangerous driving from early prison release, but this comes after months of anguish for bereaved families, including my constituent Lisa Jones, whose husband Aaron was killed on 23 December 2024. Will the Prime Minister now apologise to victims and their families who have been put through significant distress throughout this process? Can he also assure them that, unlike the Labour precedent, there will be no Government U-turn on this?

Can I start by paying tribute to the hon. Lady for the way in which she has represented the Jones family? I understand their anguish, and that of the many other families who found themselves in their position. I listened to what they were saying, and I came in and asked for changes to the early release scheme. We excluded rape, grooming and child sex offences, but on hearing those voices, I was not satisfied and I pushed the system to go further. As a result of that, we are going further and excluding death by dangerous driving and other manslaughter offences, so I hope she can now give that certainty to the family and that she will also give them my best wishes. I believe we are coming to the right position, and I can assure her that the Justice Secretary will be on top of this situation so that we ensure we are never in this position again.

Q3. My Cardiff East constituents are pleased that the Government are funding extra neighbourhood policing for us, but Cardiff is the only capital city in the UK that does not have specific capital city police funding. That means that, as a matter of course, neighbourhood police are pulled away from the job that they should be doing, and need to do, for my constituents. The Prime Minister knows Cardiff well. This historic anomaly is unfair and indefensible, so will he ensure that this problem is resolved once and for all by delivering capital city police funding for Cardiff?

May I start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend for everything she has done to stand up for her constituents, but more so for Wales, particularly in her role as Secretary of State for Wales? I understand the point she is making: big cities outside London, particularly a capital city, face extra pressure that is not faced by other police forces. We are reviewing the funding formula as part of a wider programme of police reform. I would be happy to engage with her on that very issue as part of the review. We have ensured that forces, including South Wales police, are receiving a boost in their funding, but I understand the position of cities that are, if you like, the focal point that many people travel towards and the extra pressure that that results in. I know that from my previous job, and that is why I will pay very close attention to what she is saying.

I call the Leader of the Opposition.

May I congratulate the Prime Minister on his stamina? Three hours! [Laughter.] Yesterday, he faced 125 questions from MPs across the House. Of course, Labour and the Lib Dems just wanted more Government spending—that is, taxpayers’ money—but can he name a single spending request to which he answered no?

What I can say to the right hon. Lady is that I was quite clear in my statement about the need to get the welfare bill down. I do not want to be a Prime Minister who sees a situation where we have so many people in their 20s not in education, employment or training. I cannot defend that, and I want to change it by giving more support to young people, so that we start investing in their success rather than paying for failure, as we have done for many years under successive Governments. This seems to me to be one area where both of us can engage in problem solving rather than point scoring, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will take up my offer on that.

The Prime Minister avoided the question. He did not say no to a single spending request. Personally, I think it is delightful that he wants to make everyone happy, but a Prime Minister needs to be a leader, not a people pleaser. He is talking about working together on welfare. I already made that offer, but it does mean cuts—he wants to bring the welfare bill down by spending more money. Yesterday, the Prime Minister told the House that his summer of promises would be paid for by “reprioritising within Government”, so what exactly has he cut?

In terms of “what has he cut?”, tax is the simple answer to that question. Within days of taking office, I indicated that we would remove VAT from electricity bills. That will help people with the cost of living. Then, days later, with the support of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, we said that there would be a cut in business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues. This Government are lowering the cost of living and lowering the cost of business, and that is what we will continue to do. I say to the right hon. Lady that that has to be fully funded, and those commitments are fully funded. We made an early decision to be clear about our priorities. Digital ID is not a priority for me or for this Government. We reallocated the funding, and we made those commitments as a result.

I asked what the Prime Minister cut. He says tax cuts. He has not said where the money is coming from. He talks about digital ID—[Interruption.] Yes, I know he said digital ID, but the Chief Secretary to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), said that there was no money allocated to digital ID. You cannot cut something that never existed in the first place. Lord O’Neill, a close friend of the Prime Minister, said yesterday’s statement in the Commons was “the last thing investors wanted to hear”. Lord O’Neill is a serious economist. He knows what he is talking about. Sure enough, yesterday the cost of Government borrowing rose to its highest in 18 years. How does the Prime Minister plan to tackle the Government’s rising debt costs?

I say to the right hon. Lady that I have worked with Jim O’Neill for 10 years. Jim O’Neill always gives me candid advice. We do not always agree, but he and I worked together to turn Greater Manchester from a former industrial heartland to the fastest-growing city region in the country. [Interruption.] Conservative Members complain, but where are their ideas about growth? When they were in government, we saw 14 years of stagnant growth. We saw 14 years of debt rising as a percentage of GDP. I say to the right hon. Lady that the turbulence on global markets is because of that exposure that they left behind. We are turning the corner. In the first half of this year, we have had the fastest growth in the G7. Borrowing fell to its lowest level in six years. We are cutting the deficit faster than any other G7 country. I say to the Conservative party and particularly to the right hon. Lady: that is problem solving rather than point scoring.

I do not know what any of that has to do with tackling the cost of increasing debt. Collaborating with Jim O’Neill is not how we are going to get debt costs down, and he said yesterday that the markets would be worried. The markets are clearly worried that we now have a spendthrift Prime Minister who wants to say yes to everyone but cannot tell us where the money is coming from. He needs to pay for all his new promises, and he has a choice: higher taxes, more borrowing or spending cuts. Yesterday he said, “Change begins with honesty”, so will he be honest and tell us: is he preparing to raise taxes again—yes or no?

I say to the right hon. Lady that I have already indicated that my first moves were to cut tax, but like any Prime Minister, I am not going to write the Budget here. That will be a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I also say to her that he and I took a deliberate decision to set an early date for the Budget, so that we reduced the period for prolonged speculation of the kind that she wants us to indulge in today. I also say this to the right hon. Lady and, indeed, the whole of her new shadow Cabinet, the majority of whom were part of a Government that lasted for 49 days—a short-lived Government that crashed confidence in the economy and hammered people’s mortgages. She took a decision at the weekend: she removed a shadow Chancellor who said that the Truss mini-Budget was a mistake and replaced him with one who helped to write the Truss mini-Budget. Dare I remind the House that the Leader of the Opposition herself is on record as saying that Liz Truss was “100% right”? What else can I say in response to all that, other than, “God help us!”?

The whole House will have heard that the Prime Minister did not rule out tax rises. Instead, what he did was lots of point scoring. He says he wants a new politics; he says he wants honestly, so why is he pretending that a junior Minister wrote that Budget? The fact is that gilt yields now, the cost of borrowing now—[Interruption.] Labour Members are laughing; I do not know why they are laughing. The cost of borrowing now is far more than it ever was under Liz Truss. The reason why that Budget failed is that spending was announced before the money to pay for it, which is exactly what the Prime Minister is doing right now. He says it is the new politics; it is the same old Labour politics—tax and spend. He did not rule out tax rises, and what markets see is a Government that cannot control their spending, so the markets will charge us more to borrow. That means higher mortgage rates for families. It makes life more difficult for businesses, and that pushes up the cost of living for everyone. Higher borrowing costs are the biggest threat to family finances, so will he rule out any more borrowing that will make people poorer?

May I say to the right hon. Lady something I said earlier? Debt was rising as a percentage of GDP under the Government that she, and her new shadow Chancellor, served in. He was hardly some PPS to the DEFRA Secretary, with all respect to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; he was a senior Minister in the Treasury on the day of the Truss Budget. The right hon. Lady mentions mortgage rates, and that was the day they spiked; that was the day the British public were hammered by the previous Government. We are taking the action needed to get debt down. This will be a Government grounded in fiscal responsibility. We will stick to the fiscal rules, but at the same time we will help to reduce cost of living pressure on our constituents. That is the approach we will take, and that is the approach that I suggest the Conservative party should follow, too.

The right hon. Gentleman is the Prime Minister now and he needs to answer the questions, instead of spending time attacking someone who has more private sector experience than his entire Cabinet. I asked him whether he would rule out more borrowing. He did not do so. We spend more servicing our debt than we do on defence—almost double. There is war in Europe. Yesterday, Germany confirmed that Russia was behind the attack on Leipzig airport. Tensions are so high that the director of the CIA flew to Moscow. We need the plan to hit 3% of GDP on defence now, but the armed forces will not know what they will be getting until next July’s spending review. There is a simple answer to this: cut welfare spending and invest that money in our defence now. Mr Speaker, the honeymoon is over. Isn’t it time for the Prime Minister to ditch the vibes and get serious about defending our nation?

I will start with the serious point made by the right hon. Lady, which is the announcement by the German Government yesterday in relation to the attack in Leipzig. That should unite the House in sending complete condemnation of that attack by Russia, and complete solidarity to support both Germany and Ukraine, and that position will not change. That takes me to defence. The very reason I appointed this Chancellor to his position is because of his strong commitment to the defence of our country and to defence spending. We will fully fund the defence investment plan. At the spending review we will set out a plan to meet our NATO commitments by 2035. There is no problem with our commitment to defence. More broadly, the right hon. Lady has made a lot of accusations about what went wrong, but I go back to the position that she left. The country was not heading in the right direction. Now, we are heading in the right direction. Yesterday, I laid out a clear, coherent, credible plan for growth, based on 10 years of delivering it myself. This is grounded in reality. I want to take it to all parts of the country. It is all about bringing back a sense of positivity, a sense of possibility, with growth in every postcode. Let this country believe in itself again; let people have some hope. That is what this Government will do.

Q4. There is promising and exciting evidence about the successful use of psychedelic therapy treatment for trauma, mental health, post-traumatic stress disorder and end-of-life distress. Unfortunately, as many psychedelics are schedule 1 controlled drugs, access for clinical research is bureaucratic and difficult. Will the Prime Minister, and Members across the House, consider supporting my amendments to the Health Bill that would keep safeguards in place but remove some of the barriers to some of that important research and treatment?

I thank my hon. Friend and pay tribute to his campaign on this issue. I was talking about getting an innovation-led economy going in all parts of the country, and that applies to research, including into life sciences. I strongly believe that we must address all barriers to high-quality research in the life sciences. I am happy to look at my hon. Friend’s amendments, and I will ask a Health Minister to meet him to discuss them. Of course, any changes must be evidence-based and proportionate and must maintain our safeguards.

I call the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that Brexit ushered in “a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.” —[Official Report, 1 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 27.] He is right. Our economy is stuck in this mess thanks to the Conservatives—and the leader of Reform UK—and their terrible Brexit deal. Unless we grow the economy, there is no way that we can end the cost of living crisis or cut the cost of borrowing for the Government. The answer is staring the Prime Minister in the face: join the single market, get a new deal with Europe, and cut costs for families, businesses and Government. It is the bold step our country desperately needs. Will the Prime Minister take it?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right to share the analysis that I laid out yesterday. It is clear that the decade of low growth that we have had has been partly a result of Brexit. The sooner the Conservative party accepts that, the more we can start to face up to Britain’s future and where we go from here. I do want a closer relationship. I will build on the work of my predecessor. There are issues facing British farming right now. There are issues facing British steel right now. The “Made in Europe” agenda could pose significant problems for British steel. As he will know, we are approaching a UK-EU summit in the next couple of months. It is imperative, I believe, that we work hard to get a good deal for British steel and for British farming as part of that new deal that he talks about.

I hope at that summit the Prime Minister will negotiate a good deal for our country, our economy and our defence, and that means rejoining the single market. North Devon’s maternity unit has been closed for three weeks due to staff shortages, so women now have to travel for up to two hours to give birth. I cannot imagine the extra stress and anxiety that would have caused us when my kids were born. Women are even being taught how to give birth in their cars—that should be unthinkable in our country. Will the Prime Minister commit to reopening North Devon’s maternity unit in days, not weeks? Will he stop maternity closures across the country so that expectant mums never have to face travelling such terrifying distances?

I will certainly give a direct answer: I will commit to reopening it but not within days; I am not in a position to make that commitment today. But I am again in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman that it is not acceptable for his constituents—[Interruption.] Apologies—I realise his constituency is somewhere else. It is not acceptable for people living in the North Devon area to have to travel that far. Let me take that away. I also say to the right hon. Gentleman with honesty that there are structural issues affecting maternity services across the UK. This is not the only hospital where there have been difficulties. As a former Secretary of State for Health, I am aware that there have been long-standing shortages of midwives across the country. It is right that we look at all those issues. I can give him a guarantee that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is looking at those issues following the recent maternity reviews.

Q7. A wise man recently called for“good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart.”In Croydon, these cannot come soon enough. Gatwick’s expansion could provide Croydon’s young people with world-class employment and training opportunities close to their homes, but the previous Conservative Government’s cuts to rail infrastructure investment around East Croydon station could still put them out of their reach as they cannot physically get to them. Will the Prime Minister look again at the Croydon area modelling scheme, back my campaign to unblock the Croydon bottleneck and outline what this Government are doing to give young people in Croydon East access to the opportunities they deserve?

We certainly will do that. I am in no doubt over the importance of good transport connectivity to young people’s life chances, and I will ask No. 10 North to make contact with my hon. Friend so that we can get that scheme back on track. More broadly, we do need to change the way we support young people, and I have already announced a change to education so that we have a technical path for young people from 14—so that we give young people a path towards good T-levels, BTECs, work placements and degree apprenticeships and we support them with travel costs, which is something that I did in Greater Manchester. Bringing back hope very much starts with our young people—give them a clear path from school towards a good job. That is something that the current education system that was put in place by Michael Gove has sadly failed to do.

May I say to the Prime Minister that I admire his answering questions in detail, but my problem is I am not going to get through the list, and then we will both be in trouble with Back Benchers?

The people of Northern Ireland are absolutely scundered. At the moment, we have poisonous parading disputes and border poll spats; meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Assembly has no budget. Prime Minister, whenever we met last week, I think there was an acknowledgment that we can either have an unreformed Stormont or we can have sound public finances in Northern Ireland, but we cannot have both. Alliance has led the way on calls for changing our broken system of government in Northern Ireland. This is the Prime Minister’s chance to leave a legacy of functioning government in Northern Ireland; will he act?

I will work with the hon. Lady and her colleagues on precisely that. I was in Northern Ireland with the Northern Ireland Secretary last week. Our first responsibility is to get Stormont government up and running and functioning properly with a budget. I have empowered the Northern Ireland Secretary to go into talks to resolve that issue, and we can continue the conversation on the broader issues about reform once we have got that in place.

Q8. I am delighted that North Somerset is finally getting two fantastic new stations at Pill and Portishead with the reopening of the railway line, but—and I hate to sound greedy—with Bristol airport’s potential expansion on the horizon, it risks becoming one of the worst-connected major airports in the country. Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister agree that now we need a proper mass transit system for North Somerset and the west of England combined authority, linking Felton, the new Woodspring development, Long Ashton and the wider economic area?

I know that my hon. Friend worked hard on getting those new stations. People in Portishead and Pill have waited far too long for those new stations, but they are now on the way. It does reflect what I was saying to the House yesterday: the big cities of England—I am talking about Leeds and about Bristol—should have mass transit systems. I will work with the wonderful Mayor of the West of England, Helen Godwin, to make progress on that—to connect Bristol, its new arena, the station and the development of Temple Meads into a mass transit system that takes Bristol forward.

Q2. I welcome the Prime Minister to his place. He knows the importance of protecting local green belt; indeed, he made it a key part of his by-election campaign in Makerfield. It is incredibly important in my constituency too, where there has been an 85% increase in the housing target and we are 89% green belt. The Prime Minister says that he wants to do things differently and share the burden across the country, so will he meet me to discuss a new path forwards?

It is about getting a balance, isn’t it? Yes, we need to protect green belt where we can, but we also need to build the homes that people need, and it is about striking a balance. In Greater Manchester, I always took a brownfield-first approach, and that is what I will do. I have asked the Chancellor to work with my Cabinet colleagues to release more public land so that we can build more homes on brownfield land, but I understand the concerns that the hon. Member is raising. I will ask the Housing Minister to meet him, to see if we can further build some common cause, but there is a balance to be struck. I say to Conservative Members that it is important that they do not turn their face away from building the new homes this country needs.

I call Kim Leadbeater.

Q9. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and welcome back. I also welcome the Prime Minister to his role. We have many shared passions—sport, music, and a deep sense of community. I know we both have a strong desire to ensure that everyone in our country has a sense of pride, identity and belonging—that everyone feels safe and no one feels lonely—but sadly, that is not always the case. What steps is the Prime Minister taking to support people in communities such as Spen Valley who may feel isolated or are dealing with antisocial behaviour such as speeding and dangerous driving, inappropriate use of e-scooters and offroad bikes, and fireworks, to give residents confidence that their concerns are being taken seriously?