Commons
Debate
4 March 2026
Ministry of Defence
I note that the House rose three hours early yesterday, yet we each get three minutes to speak about the defence estimate. Radically, I want to talk about the estimate itself; much as I would love to do some soaring Churchillian rhetoric, I will instead limit myself to the MOD’s supplementary estima…
Commons
Debate
4 March 2026
2 contributions
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Does the hon. Lady remember who led on the international response on Ukraine?
I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for giving way on that point. Would she like to give us a couple of examples where overseas development aid has prevented crises in the way that she describes?
Commons
Ministerial Statement
2 March 2026
Middle East
I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. I agreed with parts of it. I agreed with him when he said that the regime was an abhorrent one, that British civilians, British service personnel and British sovereign bases had been attacked, and that, “You cannot shoot all the drones out of the air; yo…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
26 February 2026
Gibraltar Treaty
I thank the Minister for his statement. Will he reassure the House that the team who have negotiated the draft treaty that he has brought before us today have had nothing to do with the team that negotiated the disastrous Chagos deal? That deal is, I believe, as of yesterday, on pause, although No. …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
26 February 2026
Business of the House
At 3 o’clock on Saturday, Windsor & Eton football club will play the Ashford Town (Middlesex) team in the north of my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) is coming over with 100 of his closest friends. Will the Leader of the House join me in encouraging as many memb…
Commons
Oral Questions
Church Commissioners
26 February 2026
Deprived Communities
St Nicholas church in Shepperton in my constituency made an application under the listed places of worship scheme to get £16,000 of VAT back on essential repairs that it has made. It got an auto-reply saying that the scheme has been used up and that there is no money left. On behalf of the Church Co…
Commons
Oral Questions
26 February 2026
2 contributions
Grassroots Sport
2. What steps her Department is taking to support grassroots sport.
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. In Spelthorne, we love our sport. I was playing walking cricket last week with the cricket club. I have been in the ring at the boxing academy and I have been to the dance academy. We also have Spelthorne FC, Staines & Lammas FC and Ashford Town (M…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
23 February 2026
Local Government Reorganisation
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He mentioned Surrey, and he will know that my constituency is going to be in a unitary authority called West Surrey. I have received a huge number of representations from constituents who would like the Secretary of State to consider calling that uni…
Commons
Oral Questions
Housing, Communities and Local Government
23 February 2026
Topical Questions
Last year, 88,000 new homes were meant to be started in London, but instead, 5,891 were started. That shortfall has a direct impact on rents in my Spelthorne constituency. Will the Secretary of State say why he is allowing Sadiq Khan to run circles around him?
Commons
Oral Questions
12 February 2026
Pharmacy First: Withholding Payments
The Trio Pharmacy in Shepperton told me that there are two problems with Pharmacy First. The first is that pharmacies are simply not getting the referrals that they should from GPs. The second is that remuneration for their services does not take into account the amount of time needed for examinatio…
Commons
Oral Questions
12 February 2026
Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address Motion
In September last year, we had an emergency debate at the request of my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) on the sacking of Peter Mandelson. I said at the time that the Government should be turning Lord Mandelson inside out, because someone had politically fatal co…
Commons
Debate
11 February 2026
5 contributions
Local Government Finance
Has the Secretary of State made an analysis of the division of Pride in Place funding between Labour and Reform seats versus Liberal Democrat and Conservative seats?
rose—
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
Court Reporting Data
The Minister complains that it is currently the wild west out there, and hopes that we can somehow regulate it. Well, we do actually have a regulator for incidents such as these. Pursuant to the answer that she gave to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-H…
Commons
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
2 contributions
Businesses: Cost of Energy
2. What steps his Department is taking to help reduce industrial electricity prices.
Ametek and SSS Gears are two quite rare breeds—they are manufacturing companies in my Spelthorne constituency, inside the M25. One employs 200 people, while the other employs 43, and they seek to export around the world. How does the Minister expect those companies to be competitive in a global mark…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
9 February 2026
Police Efficiency: Technology
I recently visited a major retailer in my Spelthorne constituency, and it reported that corporate systems for getting information to the police are so clunky that to transfer evidence of shoplifting, the police have to resort to sending round an officer to film the retailer’s footage on their body c…
Commons
Westminster Hall
9 February 2026
6 contributions
Russian Influence on UK Politics and Democracy
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough), who, on behalf of the Petitions Committee, has brought us to Westminster Hall today. I particularly thank the 114,000 petitioners, who would like a public inquiry into Russian inv…
Of course.
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
5 February 2026
Business of the House
Pride in Place funding is about £5 billion directed at our most deprived areas. I think it is worked out on a constituency basis, and that constituencies have to hit a point on two indices of deprivation to qualify, and must therefore be what the Government call “double deprived”. I have significant…
Commons
Oral Questions
5 February 2026
Water Infrastructure: Inspections
It is lovely to see the Secretary of State; the last time I saw her was in the Strangers Bar, when she was pulling a pint of Rebellion Overthrow—I can’t imagine why that stuck in my mind!
The River Thames scheme has been in abeyance, essentially—in mid-project review—since May last year. Will the S…
Commons
Committee Stage
5 February 2026
10 contributions
Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. Small and medium-sized enterprises are defined by the headcount of full-time employees, yet in the world of IT, particularly for managed service providers, data centres and digital service providers, that is not a helpful metric to understan…
Having read the Bill, does my hon. Friend understand that if a managed service provider provides services to, say, a hospital—so it would be covered by the regulations—and a reportable event happens to the managed service provider, there is any obligation for the hospital trust to report it as well,…
+8 more contributions in this session
Commons
Committee Stage
5 February 2026
2 contributions
Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Third sitting)
Members on both sides of the Committee have referred frequently to the fact that the incident that took Jaguar Land Rover down would not have been covered by the Bill. JLR employs a digital service provider, in the form of Tata Consultancy Services. Would that provider not be covered, meaning that J…
Given the scenario we just discussed, it is possible that a digital service provider would have an obligation to report under the Bill, but the parent company employing its services would not. Given the requirements for confidentiality that a client company may put upon a digital managed service pro…
Commons
Debate
4 February 2026
Lord Mandelson
As I am sure my right hon. Friend remembers, once the Bloomberg leak had happened, many of us said to the Government that now that those things had turned out to be true, we should turn Lord Peter Mandelson inside out as if he had been outed as a spy; surely, had the Government done so, the things t…
Commons
Committee Stage
3 February 2026
10 contributions
Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting)
Q One of my favourite aphorisms is, “Institutions get the behaviours they reward.” We had a cry from Amazon Web Services this morning about how, when a regulator deals with a company in the event of a cyber-security attack, please remember you are dealing with a victim.
I have dealt with the ICO be…
Q To come back to Dr Spencer’s original question about the scope of the legislation, the current situation, as I understand it, is that there is a carve-out for small and medium-sized enterprises because we do not want to put too much regulatory burden on them, but, under the new proposed legislatio…
+8 more contributions in this session
Commons
Committee Stage
3 February 2026
3 contributions
Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (First sitting)
Q On the question of closer alignment, can you give us a sense from the international picture of whether certain regulatory regimes raise the barrier to terrorists or criminals so high that they are left alone? Is that a national thing or a company-based thing? Where are the flow lines of attack and…
Q I appreciate that. My question was about where that leads them to attack, on the basis that they will take the route of least resistance. Where is that? Is that an international thing, a national thing or a corporate thing?
Stuart McKean: It is probably across all three, to be quite honest with y…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
2 February 2026
US Department of Justice Release of Files
When the Prime Minister sacked Lord Mandelson as the American ambassador, Ministers came to the Dispatch Box and I pointed out to them that for the whole time he was our ambassador he had been subject to politically fatal kompromat, which left him open to leverage—as it finally played out. I said th…