Commons
Westminster Hall
2 July 2026
4 contributions
Air Pollution
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government plans to tackle air pollution.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. There is no safe level of air pollution. I will say that again: there is no safe level of air pollution. Of course, life is not risk-free. Every year, …
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he is absolutely right. The heat dome that we have been experiencing interacts with pollution and gives us extra ozone and causes huge health problems. I do not know—perhaps the Minister can tell us, if his officials are on the ball on this—just when the …
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
24 June 2026
Taxation (Energy and Vehicles)
Could the Minister just remind us to which party the Chief Secretary to the Treasury between 2010 and 2015 belonged?
Commons
Westminster Hall
23 June 2026
6 contributions
Environmental Sustainability: UK-Indonesia Collaboration
My hon. Friend is talking about peatlands; she will know that Indonesia had a huge, deep burn of its peatlands in 2019, with 31,000 sq km of land burned. In the UK, when we had a terrible peatland fire on Saddleworth moor in 2018, just the year before, an estimated 4.5 million people suffered from t…
This is an essential point. My hon. Friend will remember the words of Pak Ja Martin, who was in charge of the project that we went to see. He said, “You can’t talk conservation to people who are hungry.” Therefore, local indigenous people, who for centuries have protected and conserved their environ…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
16 June 2026
Thames Water
Will the Secretary of State confirm that, in the event of a special administration regime, any compensation would be based on appropriate value as set out in the case of Lithgow v. the UK, not on regulated capital value, as suggested by the shadow Secretary of State. For Thames Water, appropriate va…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
20 April 2026
2 contributions
Antisemitic Attacks
The hate-filled attack on the Kenton synagogue in my constituency is the latest in the series of disgusting attacks on Jewish buildings that the Minister outlined. But these are more than attacks on buildings; they are calculated attacks on the whole Jewish community, designed to destabilise and ins…
I ask the Minister to reinforce the fact that those good community relations are built not simply on the toleration of the views of others but on—
Commons
Debate
20 April 2026
Security Vetting
The Prime Minister has the right to expect that his senior civil servants will always tell him the truth and the whole truth. He will recall that Mrs Thatcher used to say of Lord Young that she liked David because he always brought her solutions and not problems, while her other Ministers brought he…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
13 April 2026
Middle East
Japan, Turkey, China and India have already been in negotiation with Iran to try to secure safe passage for their vessels through the strait of Hormuz. The Prime Minister was absolutely right to visit the Gulf states and their leaders. He knows the importance of the strait to those economies. Did he…
Commons
Westminster Hall
3 March 2026
3 contributions
Environmental Protection and Biodiversity
The speech by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) was one of the finest on the environment that I have heard in this House for a long time. One day, the Government will see sense and he will become Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
I wi…
Will the Minister give way?
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
2 March 2026
Middle East
We should all welcome the end of the Iranian regime—if it is the end of the regime. Those of us who were in this House for the decision on Iraq needed no convincing that Saddam’s was an evil regime. What we needed convincing on was that the attack was permissible in international law and that there …
Commons
Proceedings
12 February 2026
Business of the House
May I begin by thanking my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for his remarks about Kingsbury school, which for 27 years was in my constituency before it passed over to that of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)?
I want to raise with the Leader of the House schedule 17 to the Env…
Commons
Westminster Hall
2 February 2026
5 contributions
Indefinite Leave to Remain
I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on securing the debate.
Legislation should be clear, and the people to whom it applies should know where they stand. Retrospectivity and arbitrary or subjective criteria make for bad law, precisely because …
Does the hon. Gentleman recall that between 2022 and 2024, even though the number of spaces in the care sector was deemed to be between 6,000 and 40,000, his Government made available 616,000 visas for that?
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
29 January 2026
Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report
I am sure my right hon. Friend appreciates the enormous disappointment on this side of the House. Only two years before the general election, our now Prime Minister spoke in favour of a just settlement for WASPI women. I acknowledge that my right hon. Friend says that this was not in the manifesto o…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
29 January 2026
Business of the House
When will the Government publish the full national security assessment of global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse? No. 10 is said to have pulled the full report last autumn because it was too alarming. Given that the truncated version, published last week, says that
“every critical ecosyste…
Commons
Westminster Hall
29 January 2026
3 contributions
River Habitats: Protection and Restoration
Nothing shapes a landscape more than a river. Nothing brings a landscape to life more than a river. If we ask ChatGPT, “What is a river?”, it will tell us:
“it is a natural stream of flowing water that moves downhill across land”—
and that tells us precisely why Members of Parliament should never …
I would be very grateful to my hon. Friend if he intervened.
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Proceedings
8 January 2026
2 contributions
Business of the House
Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker. Delays in the court system mean that one of my constituents has been in prison on remand awaiting trial for over a year. She is in New Hall Prison, 200 miles away from her mother, who is disabled and cannot make that journey. She has requested a transfer to Bronzef…
I respect your ruling, Mr Speaker. I will leave it at that.
Commons
Westminster Hall
10 December 2025
3 contributions
Kashmir: Self-determination
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) spoke with great passion, but it is a passion that I fear clouded his recollection of some of the history. Under the Indian Independence Act 1947, the rulers of each of the princely states had the responsibility to choose between the two em…
I am very grateful to the Minister for taking all these interventions. Does he agree that the cross-border terrorism—most of the terrorist camps are based in Azad Kashmir—is specifically designed to engender a crackdown on human rights in Jammu and Kashmir and to foment tension? Therefore, one of th…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Proceedings
2 December 2025
5 contributions
Government Procurement
On 1 October, it became mandatory for Government contracting authorities to include social issues like jobs and skills in their procurement processes. That in itself is a good thing, but the social value model they have prepared is flawed.
I welcome the consultation on further reforms to public pro…
The hon. Gentleman is right, of course: cheapest is not always best. That is partly what the social value model is all about; it is designed to ensure that there is genuine social value, not simply the cheapest model.
The 2025 version of the social value model extends the scope to all contracts of …
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
1 December 2025
3 contributions
Budget Resolutions
I joined the Labour party because I believe in equality and justice, and those are two of the values that I use to judge any Budget. Does it create a more equal society, and is the society that it creates more just? Therefore, there are aspects of the Budget that I welcome, such as the removal of po…
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He is absolutely right, and that money gets recycled throughout our economy.
I think it is a scandal that more than 60% of people in receipt of universal credit are actually in work—often working two jobs to make ends meet. That is a scandal be…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 December 2025
Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts
The Chief Secretary quoted the OBR review, which said:
“The ultimate responsibility for the circumstances in which this vulnerability occurred”
was
“with the leadership of the OBR.”
Has anyone in the OBR leadership offered their resignation, or has that gone out of fashion?
Commons
Ministerial Statement
25 November 2025
COP30
I thank my right hon. Friend for the leadership he has shown internationally and nationally over the past 20 years—it has been quite remarkable. I thank him for his statement today. He will have seen over the time that has elapsed since COP26 in Glasgow the change in the language that is used. In Gl…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
20 November 2025
Migration: Settlement Pathway
I welcome the assurance the Home Secretary has given to those who have achieved indefinite leave to remain and have settled status in this country. That certainty is really important. She will know that in my constituency I have many families from Syria and Afghanistan, who came under the Syrian pro…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
20 November 2025
Business of the House
The speedy passage of environmental legislation through this House is not often a feature, so I thank the Leader of the House for the speedy way in which the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty was dealt with by the Government. In contrast, I remind him that in 2023 our party said that …
Commons
Debate
17 November 2025
Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most important things the Government can do at COP1 when it meets next year is to establish a regime with the other members of the conference of the parties on how enforcement of the new treaty will take place?
Commons
Westminster Hall
12 November 2025
2 contributions
Carbon Budget Delivery Plan
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing the debate and introducing it in the way she did.
To misquote Bill Clinton, “It’s a limit, not a target, stupid!” The carbon budgets we set represent a threshold we should not breach, not a target we should…
Does the Minister recognise that the policy costs mentioned by the shadow Minister are a regressive tax, and that it may be better to put those on to general taxation? Of course, the energy company obligations and other policy costs were introduced by the Conservative Government. Will the Minister g…