Commons
Oral Questions
24 June 2025
Topical Questions
What practical steps can the Government take to support women and girls in Afghanistan who, after a period of being encouraged to liberate themselves, are now cast back into domestic servitude?
Commons
Westminster Hall
24 June 2025
2 contributions
War Memorials
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that something that makes the erection and maintenance of war memorials so much more poignant is that they are often paid for by the local communities themselves? They raise the money, and they continue to do so many years later. Only last weekend, I was at Marchwood vi…
Does the Minister agree that there is a particular importance of memorials to people who have no known grave but the sea? I believe I am right in saying that the three great Royal Naval memorials at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth commemorate more than 66,000 Royal Naval personnel who lost their li…
Commons
Debate
23 June 2025
UK Military Base Protection
I must say that I am very surprised that the Home Secretary chose to put out a written statement, rather than making an oral statement, when we could have put to her some of these points about what exactly qualifies a group to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
I entirely agree with the sen…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
23 June 2025
Middle East
As usual, I agree with much of what the Foreign Secretary has to say, but I have to ask him this: how many times must a terrorist-funding, fanatical regime threaten to wipe another country from the face of the earth before a Government advised by Lord Hermer of Chagos acknowledge that military actio…
Commons
Oral Questions
Work and Pensions
23 June 2025
Topical Questions
Do Ministers agree with the Trussell Trust’s recent estimate that the weekly cost of basic essentials is £120 for a single person and £205 for a couple?
Commons
Ministerial Statement
19 June 2025
Warm Home Discount
Yesterday, as the Minister probably knows, food bank groups associated with the Trussell Trust lobbied—very effectively —Members on both sides of the House. My local group, the Waterside food bank, impressed on me the gap between the £92, which the Government believe a single person is estimated to …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
16 June 2025
Iran-Israel Conflict
Until the people of Iran rise up and overthrow the dreadful mullahs’ regime, it is obviously true what the Foreign Secretary says when he says that no military action can put an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, because even if its capacity was entirely destroyed, Iran could start rebuilding it. Havi…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
16 June 2025
Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report
I hope something else we can all agree on is our admiration for the former Labour MP Ann Cryer, who exposed what was going on back in 2003, which was only five years into a 13-year-long Labour Government, and was disgracefully smeared as a racist for doing so. Let us belatedly make an apology to her…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
12 June 2025
Industrial Strategy
It seems quite radical to suggest, as the report does, devolving responsibility for post-16 technical education and training to local leaders and transferring responsibility for skills to the Department for Business and Trade. Will the right hon. Gentleman briefly expand on that, and explain how it …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
12 June 2025
Spending Review: Health and Social Care
The Minister will be well aware of Sir Andrew Dilnot’s ambitious plan to put a cap of £86,000 on the cost of the social care that any family would ever have to pay. It was never going to be easy to implement that. Previous Governments postponed the plan, and the Chancellor effectively scrapped it co…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
12 June 2025
Gibraltar
It is encouraging that the Gibraltarians are receiving more consideration than the exiled Chagossians did. When the Foreign Secretary says that a sovereignty clause was inserted, does that mean that Spain absolutely and explicitly recognises the sovereign relationship between Britain and Gibraltar? …
Commons
Debate
11 June 2025
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
I am sure that we wish the Government well in what they are trying to do. I gather that the International Air Transport Association highlighted only last week that, at the moment, sustainable aviation fuels cost approximately five times as much as conventional jet fuel. Will she explain how the meas…
Commons
Debate
10 June 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Emeritus Professor Sarah Nield, the chairman of the New Forest Association, writes:
“The current planning and environmental frameworks have played a crucial role in protecting the New Forest’s special qualities. However, the proposed changes in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, particularly tho…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
10 June 2025
Nuclear Power: Investment
Assuming that the large nuclear power station at Sizewell C and the small modular reactors both prove to be successful, as we trust they will be, what is the Government’s thinking about the respective roles of each of those two very different types? Which does the Secretary of State think will be th…
Commons
Debate
5 June 2025
2 contributions
Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy
In the spirit of that remark, I do not wish to ambush the Minister when he speaks with a quote from the Defence Secretary when he was the shadow Defence Secretary, so may I put it on the record now? After a major inquiry by The Independent , Lighthouse Reports and Sky News in November 2023, he was q…
I know that the Minister sincerely cares about all of this, and I am sure that he really wants to do his best, however the key point being made by my hon. and right hon. and gallant Friends is that, if the criteria do not cater for a situation in which senior British military personnel give first-pe…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
4 June 2025
Regional Growth
I know that the Minister is drawing his parameters rather tightly today, but can he give us at least a hint of what impact the Treasury’s consideration anticipates for the defence investments in the regions resulting from the recent strategic defence review, given the closeness with which his Depart…
Commons
Debate
3 June 2025
Armed Forces Commissioner Bill
It has often been said that the courts rejected the legacy Act, at least in part. I am not aware of which part specifically they rejected, but I would like to remind the ministerial team that in 2017 the then Defence Committee examined in great detail whether it would be legal to have a statute of l…
Commons
Proceedings
3 June 2025
Thames Water
Does the Secretary of State think that the situation might improve if Thames Water executives were obliged to sign up to performance-related pay?
Commons
Debate
2 June 2025
Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
The Secretary of State referred earlier to placing certain statutory duties on county councils. When she considers that, will she consider including in those duties the maintenance of companion bus passes for people with learning difficulties who cannot travel on their own? It is not much good for t…
Commons
Debate
2 June 2025
Strategic Defence Review
It is tempting to remind the Secretary of State about the 4.5% to 5% of GDP that was spent on defence by Conservative Governments throughout the cold war years of the 1980s, but instead may I ask whether, like me, he would endorse what Admiral Lord West wrote in the national press last week, when he…
Commons
Debate
2 June 2025
UK Nuclear Deterrent
As it was this issue that brought me into politics many decades ago, it is an absolute pleasure to hear the full-throated commitment of both the Government and the Liberal Democrats to the strategic nuclear deterrent. If the future of the American commitment to NATO were not in doubt, we would not n…
Commons
Proceedings
2 June 2025
2 contributions
Government Announcements
Knowing the Leader of the House to be a decent person, I suspect that behind the scenes, when events of this sort happen, she probably argues quite strongly that announcements should be made to this House first and to the press afterwards. Does she think the reason that is not happening is that the …
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. You may have noticed that I briefly exited the Chamber to see whether copies of the SDR were available in the Vote Office, and I was told, quite rightly, that no, they would be made available immediately after the Secretary of State had made his statement.…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
2 June 2025
Topical Questions
The Home Secretary was asked a question about Lord Hermer of Chagos, as he perhaps ought to be known. Why did she not answer it, and will she do so now?
Commons
Ministerial Statement
22 May 2025
Diego Garcia Military Base
When a former Foreign Secretary asks a sitting Defence Secretary for a direct answer as to which court would be able to make a binding judgment against us on this matter, he is entitled to a direct answer, so will the Secretary of State now give that direct answer?
Commons
Debate
22 May 2025
Access to NHS Dentistry
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for that no-pressure introduction. I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) on her speech and I agree with every part of it. I was hoping to quote from individual cases raised by constituents and from the local Women’s Institute,…