Commons
Westminster Hall
26 January 2026
Animal Rescue Centres
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Alec—my first time, I think; I am sure there will be many more. I thank the Petitions Committee and everyone who signed the petition for raising this important issue, especially the 164 from my own constituency of Wallasey. I also thank my hon. Fr…
Commons
Proceedings
22 January 2026
Agricultural Sector: Import Standards
This debate goes to the heart of something that this Government care deeply about: the future of British farming and the food on British tables. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) for securing the debate, and I thank all Members for their contributions.
Le…
Commons
Debate
22 January 2026
3 contributions
Fishing Industry
It is a pleasure to respond to an extremely good debate, with many Members reflecting the issues that they have discovered in their own constituencies and bringing them to the Floor of the House, as we expect them to do. I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for his t…
I am a very generous person, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman’s representative bodies. He knows that fishing is devolved, but I understand that some issues are dealt with nationally, albeit not by my Department. Such issues are dealt with by my previous Department, the Home Office…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
21 January 2026
2 contributions
UK Wine Industry
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) on securing the debate and on his work in championing the UK’s growing wine industry. It is particularly good that he has managed to get it in dry January.
Yes, nearly over. The UK has always been a major trade hub for wine. We are the world’s second largest importer of wine by value and volume, bringing in an estimated 1.7 billion bottles every year. The UK is also the 11th largest exporter of wine, so it is very much a two-way trade.
The scale and c…
Commons
Westminster Hall
21 January 2026
2 contributions
Animal Welfare Strategy for England
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) for securing the debate. I am sure we can all agree—as virtually everyone has said—that we are a nation of animal lovers. We love our pets, we look a…
There are no current plans for that, but I am happy to consider it given my hon. Friend has raised it.
I now turn to how we protect our precious wildlife. As our understanding of animal welfare continues to evolve, the law must keep pace with the latest evidence to prevent wild animals from sufferi…
Commons
Westminster Hall
15 January 2026
3 contributions
Food Inflation
It is a pleasure to serve under your excellent chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I too enjoyed being a member of the Treasury Committee—as the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) still does—to which you always make a trenchant and relevant contribution. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member fo…
I was thinking, when I attended his funeral a few years ago, what an effect he had at a grassroots level with his vision for getting stuff done. There are many hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country who, even though they might not know it, owe him a debt of gratitude.
The actions w…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
7 January 2026
24 contributions
Rural Communities
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“welcomes the support that the Government is providing for rural people, communities and businesses; commends the continued support for farmers through investment in Environmental Land Management schemes which…
No, I will not give way.
The rural economy already contributes £259 billion to gross value added in England alone, and we know that rural areas offer significant potential for further growth. The Government are committed to harnessing this potential to ensure that we can fully realise the opportuni…
+22 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
6 January 2026
6 contributions
Future of Thames Water
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I do not know whether it is down to you, but it is now much warmer in this room than it was in the last Parliament when I was chairing such debates. I regularly left thinking that I had developed frostbite, so whoever has managed t…
I can confirm that, and it was one of the first things that this Labour Government, when we were incoming, put on to the statute book as a priority, in order to prevent that particular abuse. Thames Water is now under a cash lock-up arrangement; only Ofwat can approve any further dividend payments. …
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
18 November 2025
9 contributions
Land Use Change: Food Security
It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison—I hope you are warmer than I am, having sat in what is quite a cold room for the entire debate. It has been a good debate, so I would like to congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) …
I was coming to that. I am happy to get across my view of what this should be. The food strategy that we published in July makes clear that we will act to ensure that our food system can thrive and grow sustainably and continue to provide a resilient and secure supply of healthy, safe and affordable…
+7 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
13 November 2025
4 contributions
Topical Questions
We will publish the farming road map and the Batters review, and then talk about a strategy for making farming more productive, profitable and sustainable for the next generation. Upland farmers will play an important part in that review, and we will see what we can do to support them.
Again, we understand the pressures that farmers are under. We want to work on creating a productive, profitable and sustainable farming sector, and we will do so.
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
13 November 2025
3 contributions
Solar Farms: Food Security
Only 0.1% of land is used for solar, and half of the agricultural land used for generating solar power is still producing food. Solar farms are not a risk to food security. Instead, they play an important role in diversifying farm income and decarbonising our economy.
A very small area of land is used by solar farms—as I said before, it is 0.1% of the UK’s total land area. The clean power commitment 2030 will take that up to 0.4%. Our land use framework, which will deal with ensuring that solar farms do not go on prime agricultural land, is due to be published in…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
13 November 2025
3 contributions
Farrowing Crates and Cages
We remain firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare, and will work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards. The use of cages and other close confinement systems for farmed animals is an issue we are currently considering and, as was announced by the Prime Ministe…
It is important to remember that 50% of the national sow breeding herd live freely and are not kept in these kinds of cage systems at all, which I think shows the way forward. It is very important that we work with the industry to see how we can move away from the use of farrowing crates and create …
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
5 November 2025
4 contributions
Fresh and Nutritious Food: Inequality of Access
It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) on securing this debate, and I thank all those who have made relevant, if somewhat fast, contributions. It demonstrates how important these issues a…
Of course, but I have very little time to answer some of these points.
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
23 October 2025
18 contributions
Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund
We are working closely with our fishing and seafood sectors to ensure that they are vibrant, profitable and sustainable, and that we have a healthy and productive marine environment. That is why, on 19 May, the Government announced the fishing and coastal growth fund, a £360 million investment that …
I have been looking at the history of seafood support funds. The last one was a UK seafood fund, which was reserved by the then Government nationally, to be used in a strategic way. There were many vocal complaints that the fund should have been devolved. We have now devolved a fund in the way in wh…
+16 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
13 October 2025
4 contributions
Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling
It is a great pleasure to serve under your watchful eye in Westminster Hall, Mr Stuart, on this first evening back. I begin by acknowledging the strength of feeling in this debate, including from 170 of my constituents in Wallasey and the 102,000-odd members of the public who signed the petition. Fo…
Yes. It is to deal with a TB hotspot that appeared. By the end of this season there will be no cull licences in any high-intensity or edge area.
Everybody has said in their own particular way that we all agree that we have to reduce the incidence of and eradicate bovine TB, and we also want to stop…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
11 September 2025
2 contributions
Male Chick Culling
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for securing this debate. She raised this issue in a Westminster Hall debate on animal welfare standards in farming in June, and I am grateful to her for giving us the opportunity to focus on the subject in more detail t…
I agree that when a supply chain, however difficult, is established and we try to move away from it, there can be unintended consequences. We have to look at the whole series of issues along that chain, so that we do not end up in a situation that has lower welfare outcomes than the one we started w…
Commons
Oral Questions
7 July 2025
3 contributions
Topical Questions
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. While the clandestine entrant penalty scheme has to be rigorously enforced in order to be effective, it also provides a very fair process of appeal for hauliers against penalties that are not justified by the facts of a case. I am sure that my hon. Frie…
I assure the hon. Member that we take action against those who break the rules by working illegally. Raids and arrests for illegal working are up 50% in the last year; civil penalties in the last quarter were at their highest rate since 2016; and we are taking action to close the gig economy loophol…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
7 July 2025
7 contributions
Asylum Accommodation
At the peak under the previous Government, there were 400 hotels in use across the country, at a cost of £9 million a day. Thousands of asylum seekers were left in limbo in those hotels as decision making collapsed. That was the chaos that this Government inherited a year ago, but we have taken acti…
The Home Office is not buying hotels. As for the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, there are currently 61 service users housed in his area, which is less than 15% of the quota, and there are zero hotels.
+5 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
2 June 2025
5 contributions
Topical Questions
Immigration centres are not used for indefinite detention. We can only keep anyone in detention in an immigration centre if there is a reasonable prospect of their removal. If there is not, they have to be released.
When people arrive and claim to be children, there are tests at the border to check whether we think they are children. If they are accepted as children, they are put into local authority care, so they should not be in asylum accommodation at all. If they are seen to be adults and end up in asylum a…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
2 June 2025
5 contributions
Illegal Working
Clamping down on illegal working is a crucial element of our strategy to tackle immigration crime. Since coming to office, this Government have increased raids, arrests and civil penalties to their highest levels in years. Our Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will introduce tougher provi…
Enforcement of the law is the best way to deal with this issue, which is why there has been a 40% increase in visits to check whether illegal working is going on, and a 42% increase in arrests since this Government came to office.
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
21 May 2025
26 contributions
Immigration
Would the right hon. Member take a moment just to reflect on and remember the woman and small child who lost their lives today in an incident in French territorial waters?
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to en and insert
“notes that 127,896 people crossed the Channel while the previous Government was in office, as a criminal smuggling industry took hold on the French coast; further notes that 84,151 of those people arrived while the previous Gov…
+24 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
12 May 2025
21 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Before I speak about the key Government amendments tabled on Report, I would like to recall why the Government have brought forward the Bill. We are working to take the necessary actions to secure our borders, bring order to the chaotic immigration and asylum system we inherited, and go after the da…
+19 more contributions in this session