Commons
Westminster Hall
17 March 2026
4 contributions
Rural Roads
I cannot possibly do justice to the frustration of my residents about their local roads in one minute, but I will try my best. They contact me all the time to say how appalled they are at the quality of their local roads. The Labour Government fail to understand the challenges in rural communities, …
Will the Minister give way?
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
16 March 2026
Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address
The problem with these sorts of scandals is that as time moves on, more and more people are tarnished by them. Last week, when the papers revealed that Mandelson received £75,000, I asked the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister whether the Government were worried about what he might say at an empl…
Commons
Westminster Hall
12 March 2026
Marriage Regulations
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell)—who I consider a friend—on securing the debate. I could characterise him as a romantic perhaps, given his decision to …
Commons
Debate
11 March 2026
Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address Motion
The Minister will know that the Government have a Bill about the duty of accountability and candour going through the House; one of his colleagues on the Front Bench will confirm that that requires Ministers to answer questions with candour. Several weeks ago, three Members of this House asked him w…
Commons
Debate
10 March 2026
3 contributions
Courts and Tribunals Bill
It has been a positive debate in terms of the exchange of ideas, and there have been some fantastic contributions. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Members for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for the very personal way in which they made their cases. There is…
Not yet.
We must have a serious discussion about why that is. It was disappointing for those who sought to put forward a credible analysis of what has happened that the Justice Secretary and most Labour Members did not mention the word “covid” once. In reality, the backlogs in the Crown court under…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
9 March 2026
Immigration Policy
The only country that has successfully tackled illegal boat crossings similar to ours is Australia, and it did so not by paying people £40,000 per family to leave, but by sending them to a safe third country. I noticed that the Minister completely failed to answer the question from my right hon. Fri…
Commons
Westminster Hall
5 March 2026
3 contributions
Local Museums
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this debate, which I think may become a battle royale of whose constituency has the best museums. I will begin with Bexhill and Battle, which has a remarkable number of b…
The right hon. Member helpfully reminds me that I forgot to mention that Bexhill is also putting itself forward for town of culture. I am happy to bribe him any time.
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
4 March 2026
Points of Order
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not wish to put the Chair in the position of having to give an immediate answer, but as others have said, there are rumours online that the individuals arrested for spying include the partner of a Labour MP. I do not know any suggestion that that Labou…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
4 March 2026
China: Foreign Interference Arrests
As the Minister said, at the heart of this is the question of whether our enemies and malign actors fear the consequences of hostile acts against us. That question is why many of us say that the embassy should be paused. Why would the Chinese be worried about consequences of spying, when this week, …
Commons
Proceedings
25 February 2026
Bayeux Tapestry Exhibition
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) on securing the debate. For those—perhaps our constituents—who do not know the etiquette of the House, an Adjournment debate is typically a debate for a single Member, so it is gracious of her to make time for me to speak briefly…
Commons
Oral Questions
Transport
12 February 2026
Topical Questions
On a recent visit to St Richard’s Catholic college in my constituency, students told me that they face paying an astonishing extra £400 a year in bus fares. How can the Minister justify to those students and others in my constituency the cutting of our bus service funding by £2.5 million?
Commons
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
3 contributions
Court Reporting Data
(Urgent Question) : To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the implications for open justice of the impending deletion of the Courtsdesk court reporting data archive.
Here we are again. Not even one week after this Government had to be forced to release the Mandelson files—looking out for themselves and not for victims—we are back with a Government who preach transparency and practise the opposite. The pattern is clear. They will not release migrant crime data. T…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
9 February 2026
Standards in Public Life
The problem with the list of measures that the Chief Secretary read out is that, unfortunately, not one will protect us from the Prime Minister’s poor judgment. Before asking my question, I point out the fact that—as the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) knows, and as the Chief Sec…
Commons
Oral Questions
9 February 2026
Jimmy Lai: Prison Sentence
The Prime Minister was happy to trot back from China heralding the successes of the visit without having secured the release of Jimmy Lai, and now we see Jimmy facing a 20-year prison sentence—in effect, a life sentence. Does the Minister think that was a price worth paying?
Commons
Debate
4 February 2026
17 contributions
Lord Mandelson
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister just said that the deadline has passed to table an amendment. Can you confirm, Mr Speaker, that you just told the House that you would be sympathetic to a manuscript amendment, which would not be subject to that deadline?
Does the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee regret describing the appointment of Peter Mandelson as “inspired”, and did she know of his ongoing relationship with Epstein prior to his appointment?
+15 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
3 February 2026
2 contributions
Topical Questions
In a world where so many people walk on by or look the other way, I believe it is vital to the rule of law that our whole society gets behind people who are willing to stand up and be counted. We are joined in the Gallery today by one such person—Mark Hehir, a bus driver. Mark leapt to the aid of a …
I welcome those remarks, and I am sure the public will want us to work across the parties on these issues, but this is not an isolated case. I have heard from employers themselves, shop workers and bus drivers that they want to do the right thing, but the law inhibits them from doing so. The Conserv…
Commons
Debate
2 February 2026
China and Japan
The whole House can see with its own eyes what is happening here. The Prime Minister, on paper, has the support of more than 400 MPs. If they want to show their support, they can fill every single seat on the Government Benches, as far as the double doors, but they are all drifting away as these exc…
Commons
Debate
28 January 2026
9 contributions
British Indian Ocean Territory
The mistake the hon. Member makes is in buying into China’s narrative that there is a grey zone in the South China sea. There is no grey zone. China should not be there, but it could not care less. It goes there anyway. The idea that some agreement we make with Mauritius is going to stop China actin…
I welcome the opportunity to make clear my opposition to any proposal to give away this strategically important sovereign British territory. This is not merely a territorial concession; it is an act of strategic self-sabotage, a dereliction of duty and an unforgivable betrayal of our national securi…
+7 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
20 January 2026
5 contributions
Sentencing Bill
There is no doubt that our justice system faces significant challenges. I have always acknowledged that, and during recent debates on a wide range of issues, from sentencing to prison capacity to probation to jury trials, there has been cross-party acknowledgement that for decades, under a number of…
Does the hon. Lady accept that, as a result of the Bill, the vast majority of those offenders will only have to serve a third of their sentence, instead of half?
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
20 January 2026
Chinese Embassy
Will the Minister explain how, by giving China the embassy it wants, the Government are demonstrating that they are holding China responsible for—in his words—“unacceptable behaviour” that they will not stand for?
Commons
Proceedings
14 January 2026
Points of Order
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The House has already seen the chaotic, last-minute pulling of today’s consideration of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which has been moved to next week. The House will know that the convention is that the Government lay their own amendments ahead…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
13 January 2026
Iran
We sometimes talk about political courage in this country, but that pales in comparison with the courage shown by young people in Iran, such as 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, who reports suggests is to be hanged today, alongside other protesters. I know that these situations are complex and carry politi…
Commons
Debate
7 January 2026
5 contributions
Jury Trials
Were backlogs higher or lower in 2010 than they were in 2019, before the pandemic?
I am pleased to wind up this Opposition day debate on the Prime Minister and Justice Secretary’s ill-considered, poorly evidenced and rash plan to curtail one of our cornerstone rights—the right to a trial by jury—which the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) colourfully describe…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
5 January 2026
Topical Questions
T10. Before Christmas, we had a cross-party retail crime summit in Bexhill, with the police and local council in attendance, to help shopkeepers to have their voice heard. At the same time, Katy Bourne, the Sussex police and crime commissioner, is using criminal behaviour orders in a pilot to tag pr…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
5 January 2026
Asylum Hotels
Happy new year, Mr Speaker. I am not surprised that the Home Office thought that Wealden, a Green and Lib Dem-run council, would be a soft target to move asylum seekers to, considering that the co-leaders previously seemed more concerned with Calais than they did about Crowborough, but moving asylum…