Commons
Westminster Hall
8 January 2026
2 contributions
Myanmar: Religious Minority Persecution
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. I have come along to learn more about the situation, which is, frankly, puzzling. Is the regime motivated by some form of extreme religion of its own? Is it just ultra-nationalism? Is it doing all this persecution…
The Minister mentioned the UN Security Council, and we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) about what he perceives to be a potential weakness in the regime, which is being propped up by outside forces. Is it true that Russia has been most supportive of the regime, h…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
7 January 2026
Ukraine and Wider Operational Update
Do the Government accept that if you will the ends, you must will the means? The end of the cold war has been mentioned a number of times. It is a fact that at the end of the cold war, we were spending 4.3% of GDP on defence—that was 3.5% under the old way of calculating it—and in the early years of…
Commons
Debate
7 January 2026
Jury Trials
I would like to say, in support of what the hon. Lady has been saying, that surely a distinction of which we need to be aware is that, whereas the judge is a specialist in deciding what the law says and how it should be applied, he or she is not a specialist in deciding whether someone is telling th…
Commons
Debate
6 January 2026
2 contributions
Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. On the point about regulators, the industry has issued a brief, which points out, quite sensibly, that these regulators are going to have a lot of extra duties to perform and they will therefore need extra resources to be able to perform those …
I do not think I heard the Minister mention anything about the risk of cyber-attacks on local government. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is another potentially juicy target for people who wish to cause major mischief?
Commons
Ministerial Statement
17 December 2025
UK-EU Common Understanding Negotiations
May I thank the Minister for the work he did in another capacity on behalf of the victims, and the relatives of the victims, of the infected blood scandal? He did a very good job, and he reached out to us in a much-appreciated, non-partisan way.
This statement is entitled “UK-EU Common Understandin…
Commons
Proceedings
17 December 2025
Puberty Suppressants Trial
The Secretary of State deserves our sympathy for having to negotiate such an ethical minefield. Will he tell us whether the data exists from all the people who had puberty blockers under the old regime? He mentioned having met one person for whom they had worked well and one person for whom they wer…
Commons
Proceedings
17 December 2025
Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation
May I ask the Secretary of State to clarify whether his earlier remarks mean what I think they do, which is that even if it had not been for the guidance of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Government would have wanted anyway to have repealed the legislation of the legacy Act? It is a politi…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
16 December 2025
Electoral Resilience
I hope that the Rycroft review will take account of the fact that the giving of money is by no means the worst aspect, or the main aspect, of treacherous behaviour, because very often these people do what they do out of a genuine belief in a potential enemy’s point of view. It would be interesting t…
Commons
Proceedings
16 December 2025
Africa: New Approach
Following on directly from that, what can the Minister tell us about any military advice or assistance that our experts in counter-insurgency are giving to the Governments of friendly Commonwealth countries like Nigeria that face vicious jihadist extremist attack from organisations such as Boko Hara…
Commons
Proceedings
16 December 2025
Chagossians: Trust Fund and Resettlement
Is, in the Government’s opinion, Mauritius a free society, and what is the Government’s assessment of the nature of its relationship with communist China?
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
Jimmy Lai Conviction
Like every other communist regime that has ever existed, the Chinese Government behave with ruthlessness, impunity and unmitigated mendacity. I therefore welcome the strong words in the statement from the Foreign Secretary, but what Members on both sides of the House wish to see is stronger actions.…
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
Violence against Women and Girls Strategy
Is the strategy going to emphasise in any way the role of parents in trying to protect their sons from a torrent of online violent abuse of women, which inevitably is going to distort their attitude to relationships? Schools can do some things, but some things, surely, have to be done within the fam…
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
NHS: Winter Preparedness
I hope that the Secretary of State will give a little more consideration to the rather important point raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) about 16 and 17-year-olds not being able to be vaccinated.
If any junior doctor—whether or not a member of the BMA, but particularly if a memb…
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
15 December 2025
Topical Questions
I welcome the Government’s commitment ultimately to spend 5% of GDP on defence—as we used to do in the cold war years of the 1980s—but not the target date of 2035. Do the Government really believe that there is no threat of attack from Russia on a NATO country for the next 10 years?
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
15 December 2025
NATO: European Security
Having sat through the debate on Ukraine on 4 December, has the Minister taken on board the important message for our NATO colleagues that if there is a forced division of Ukraine, just as there was of occupied Germany at the end of the war, it will be essential that unoccupied western Ukraine is fu…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
10 December 2025
Resident Doctors: Industrial Action
I find it rather shocking that when the Secretary of State for Health has offered the BMA leadership an opportunity to strike a few weeks later, they have turned it down, presumably because they prefer to strike at Christmas, when, frankly, lives will be lost as a result. Am I missing something here…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
9 December 2025
Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry
Few of us here today were present in 2003 when the then MP for Keighley, Mrs Ann Cryer—a courageous Labour Member on the left of her party—spoke out about the grooming gangs. For her troubles, she was smeared as a racist, she was shunned and she was threatened to the point at which she had to have s…
Commons
Proceedings
9 December 2025
Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Kenova
I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that running any double agent inside a murderous organisation is bound to be a moral nightmare. The justification for such action is always—as it should be—that many more lives will be saved as a result, even if the agent is implicated in illegal and, inde…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
8 December 2025
Ajax Armoured Vehicle
It is hard to think of a comparable disaster without going back to perhaps the early 1960s and the cancellation successively of Blue Streak and Skybolt. I worry that if and when the decision has to be taken that this platform is not fit to be issued to our armed forces, there will be a huge legal st…
Commons
Proceedings
8 December 2025
Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban
It is fairly clear that my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) is right that this was a predetermined decision, and that the evidence was something for which West Midlands police scrabbled about later, but whatever the outcome of the Minister’s inquiries, whether it turns out, hea…
Commons
Proceedings
8 December 2025
Restriction of Jury Trials
I am afraid that the Minister’s treatment of the 60% figure only tends to confirm my belief that one is better off with the common sense of 12 ordinary people than with one legal professional. [ Laughter. ] Even she is smiling—good for her. Can she look again at this point? Yes, it is disastrous if …
Commons
Debate
4 December 2025
3 contributions
War in Ukraine
One of the advantages of being called at a late stage of the debate is that I can put my hand on my heart and truthfully say that every single speech in this debate so far has been outstandingly good. I have agreed with virtually every word of every one of them, and looking at the calibre of the rem…
Has the hon. Gentleman noticed that point 26 of the 28-point Witkoff plan is a general amnesty for everyone? That would mean that whoever committed the most atrocious war crimes would never be held accountable at all.
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
4 December 2025
Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Past
I agree entirely with the Chairman of the Committee that reconciliation depends upon uncovering the truth. Does her Committee’s report go into the incompatibility of that aim with the reinstatement of trials that the previous legacy Act would have prevented, given that when people face the prospect …
Commons
Debate
4 December 2025
Dawn Sturgess Inquiry
Have the Government formed a view as to why President Putin—the killer in the Kremlin—chose to target Sergei Skripal after he had been pardoned and exchanged? Nothing that I am saying now derives from my time chairing the Intelligence and Security Committee, but I recall speculation in the press tha…
Commons
Debate
3 December 2025
4 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
The Minister has indeed been most accessible, and I am extremely grateful to him for the meeting he held with members of the ExxonMobil pensioners group. I am still being lobbied very hard by ExxonMobil pensioners who are concerned that whereas changes introduced in the Budget will benefit members o…
The problem, as the Minister knows from our meeting, is that the trustees are rather hemmed in by not having the leverage or the freedom to act if the company itself—particularly if it is headquartered abroad—is disinclined to pass on any surpluses that it might have available.
+2 more contributions in this session