Commons
Ministerial Statement
21 July 2025
Independent Water Commission
I am genuinely all ears for any practical steps that can be taken to build on the Environment Act 2021 to clean up our waterways, but may I pick up the Secretary of State’s comments on the role, as he put it, of citizen scientists and local communities? In my constituency, water heroes like Doug Ken…
Commons
Oral Questions
21 July 2025
Topical Questions
The superb John Hampden school in Wendover reports that it is running a £109,000 deficit supporting students with significant SEND while they await assessments. However, it is an infant-only school, and the money often does not come through until the pupils have moved up to a junior school. Will the…
Commons
Oral Questions
Business and Trade
17 July 2025
2 contributions
High Street Businesses
At the heart of every high street are wonderful hospitality SMEs—pubs, cafés, restaurants, bars and coffee shops—yet the 2024 Budget was a hammer blow to them. With £3.4 billion of extra costs, one in 10 restaurants faces closure this year. Indeed, Labour’s Budget has already cost hospitality 69,000…
That answer is simply not good enough for the 63% of employees in the hospitality sector whose jobs are on the line. Yet we now read in the press that the Government appear set on forcing restaurateurs to monitor customers’ calorie consumption—another crippling blow of red tape on top of national in…
Commons
Westminster Hall
16 July 2025
Blue Badge Eligibility
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant) on not just securing the debate and championing her constituents so well in her speech, but bravely telling her own story as part of it, just as the ho…
Commons
Statutory Instrument
14 July 2025
2 contributions
Financial Assistance to Industry
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I begin by drawing the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have spoken at length on this subject, in the last Parliament as a member of the Transport Committee and from the then Governmen…
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we look at the marketplace out there for both private and commercial vehicles—particularly vans, heavy goods vehicles and larger vehicles—those who have to take a personal financial risk on them are not choosing to do so. Particularly in the HGV sector, t…
Commons
Proceedings
10 July 2025
UK-France Nuclear Partnership
The two bedrocks of our national defence are our own sovereign capability and our membership of NATO. The United Kingdom and France are both members of NATO, but, as the shadow Secretary of State pointed out, the paradox is that we and every other NATO member bar one are members of the NATO nuclear …
Commons
Westminster Hall
9 July 2025
Neighbourhood Plans: Planning Decisions
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) on securing this debate, which is incredibly important to our whole country, and certainly to my constituency.
Neighbourhood plans are a vital compone…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
3 July 2025
NHS 10-Year Plan
I look forward to studying the detail of this plan, but I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to neighbourhood health centres and likewise his commitment in a previous answer to rural communities. May I therefore offer him a golden opportunity? He will have heard me over many years in this H…
Commons
Westminster Hall
2 July 2025
3 contributions
Whistleblowers
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on securing this important debate. We have had a short but good debate with well-informed contributions from all right hon. and hon. Members. I am pleased to speak about the c…
The hon. Lady clearly has a great deal of experience as a solicitor before her election to this place. I am not trying to make the case that everything is as it should be—in fact, I just said that the system clearly needs reform—but I think the last Conservative Government should be proud of concret…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 July 2025
Parental Leave Review
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.
From personal experience—as a father of three—I understand the importance of fathers being able to spend time at home with their newborns and supporting mothers in those early days. Having experienced paternity leave both as a Member of Parli…
Commons
Oral Questions
Treasury
1 July 2025
Topical Questions
A recent freedom of information request has revealed that, for a number of schemes, HMRC has settled with large corporations for just 15% of what was owed. With the loan charge review ongoing, does the Chancellor agree with me that individuals should be treated no differently from the large corporat…
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
30 June 2025
2 contributions
UK-Mauritius Chagos Agreement
11. What estimate he has made of the cost to his Department of the UK-Mauritius agreement concerning the Chagos archipelago, including Diego Garcia.
I do not know that I agree with the Minister that this is a good deal, although I am curious about the £30 billion. Does it count towards the new NATO target of 3.5%, or the additional 1.5% on top of that? As we have to inform the Mauritian Government before we do anything particularly useful from t…
Commons
Westminster Hall
30 June 2025
3 contributions
Driven Grouse Shooting
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. Like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I, like many hundreds of my constituents, am a member of both the Countryside Alliance and the British Association for Shooting and Conserva…
The evidence is very clear that populations are up. I think all those who oppose grouse shooting, and who wish to see this petition as the gold standard, really should look at the evidence of the overall numbers in this country, which are up.
To return to the point about raptor persecution, this cr…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
26 June 2025
G7 and NATO Summits
When it comes to the evils of terrorism and aggression across the middle east, all paths lead back to the Iranian regime—be that the sponsorship of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or, indeed, at the heart of the regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Although I fully appreciate that the Prime …
Commons
Oral Questions
Transport
26 June 2025
2 contributions
Transport: Economic Growth
To achieve growth, businesses rely on our world-class logistics and haulage sector. Given that Logistics UK said that it was “disappointed” that the logistics sector had not been identified as one of the foundational industries in the industrial strategy this week, what happened? Did the Department …
The Secretary of State clearly has not listened to Logistics UK—I hope that at least she knows where the lower Thames crossing starts and ends. Let us turn to another foundational industry to transport and growth: fuel. Elizabeth de Jong, chief executive of Fuels Industry UK said about this week’s i…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
23 June 2025
Middle East
It seems that we have been going around in circles for an hour and a quarter. In answering questions, the Foreign Secretary has rightly pointed out that diplomacy has failed to stop Iran reaching 60% enriched uranium. Likewise, he has rightly acknowledged that diplomacy has failed to stop Iran sprea…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
18 June 2025
HS2 Reset
My constituency has been devastated by roughly 26 miles of HS2, and I have consistently warned this House—during the previous Parliament and this—through the lens of the miserable experience on the ground in Buckinghamshire, about the reasons for the cost overruns, poor governance and everything els…
Commons
Westminster Hall
18 June 2025
2 contributions
Businesses in Rural Areas
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone). We have had many great contributions from across the Chamber. Given the number, I will not seek to name all the Members who spoke; I will just pick three at random who I …
I remember my right hon. Friend visiting the farm. It was in my constituency at the time, but the boundary changes actually took it away from me. Preventing the theft of machinery from not just farms but all rural businesses, which suffer so badly when equipment theft takes place, is a critical meas…
Commons
Westminster Hall
17 June 2025
Hydrogen-powered Aviation
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) not only on securing the debate but on setting out the case for hydrogen aviation so clearly in his opening remarks. The Second Reading of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel…
Commons
Oral Questions
Education
16 June 2025
2 contributions
Level 7 Apprenticeships: Funding
9. What assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of changes to funding for level 7 apprenticeships on people aged 22 and over.
Over 95,000 apprenticeships are being undertaken in the health, public services and care sector, and NHS Employers and many others have raised concerns about the impact of the Government policy to cease funding for level 7 apprenticeships for those over the age of 22. Can the Minister tell us what p…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
12 June 2025
Industrial Strategy
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his statement and his Committee’s report, which is welcome. The summary clearly says:
“Britain’s economic institutions and markets—especially in public procurement, energy, skills”
and, critically,
“the diffusion of innovation and finance—must be moderni…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
12 June 2025
Spending Review: Health and Social Care
We have been here before with Governments of all different political persuasions. Ministers come to the Dispatch Box and trumpet what seem like very attractive amounts of money for the NHS, but the reality on the ground is that that money just about covers pay rises and inflationary pressures. On ca…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
12 June 2025
Gibraltar
Notwithstanding the Foreign Secretary’s commitment to the sovereignty clause, the question of sovereignty can only really be answered once we have the full detail of the treaty. That scrutiny is made poorer by the Government’s decision when they took office to abolish the European Scrutiny Committee…
Commons
Proceedings
12 June 2025
Business of the House
The Government’s own projections showed that their vindictive education tax would drive 3,000 children out of private education. The latest data shows that the exodus is already 11,000, with projections saying it will get worse. May we have a debate in Government time to find out why the Government’…
Commons
Oral Questions
Business and Trade
12 June 2025
2 contributions
High Street Businesses
The Retail Jobs Alliance is very clear in its warning that the Government’s changes to business rates will
“accelerate the decline of high streets, reducing footfall…and creating a cycle of economic downturn.”
That letter was also signed by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—a Labo…
We support business rates reform, but when Labour’s own trade union says that its plan is not going to work, Ministers should really sit up and listen.
Let me turn to another issue affecting our high streets: shoplifting—which continues to devastate many high street retailers. I see that in my own …