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1. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Munira Wilson

   Child-like Sexual Abuse Dolls (Offences) Bill

   It is an absolute pleasure to have you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I start by thanking all the hon. Members who have given up their time today to discuss and scrutinise this Bill on a horrific yet important issue. I am going to provide a trigger warning to everyone here today—hon. Members, and also those in the Public Gallery and listening online—because of the disturbing nature of some of the material I will share. It has certainly been a difficult issue for me and my parliamentary assistant, Max, to explore in detail in recent months. He is in the Public Gallery, and I am very grateful for all his work. Given the quirks of the private Member’s Bill process, this is the first time I have had the opportunity to speak about my Bill in Parliament, so I hope, Ms Vaz, that you will forgive and indulge me if I spend a few moments speaking about the Bill in broad terms and setting the context before I address its specific clauses. Child-like sexual abuse dolls are life-like, anatomically correct dolls, or any other object, designed to resemble a child and to be used for sexual activity. I was shocked to discover that these things even existed, let alone that they are legal to possess or sell in our country, but they are, and I have seen them in person. I have even felt one, and it is impossible to make it clear in words just how vile they are and how they are produced to be as life-like as possible. Increasingly, they are custom-made to order, and with the advance of technology, I shudder to think how closely these dolls will be made to resemble an actual child. These dolls are dangerous. They sexualise children. They normalise sexual abuse and form part of a pattern of behaviour that can and does end in real children being harmed. I have heard this at first hand from the police and the National Crime Agency, as well as from leading child protection charities such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. For example, in 2017, an ex-school governor here in the UK was found to have imported a child-like sexual abuse doll. He was also found to be in possession of 34,000 images of child sexual abuse. His case is one of many that demonstrate the horror of the issue and the real consequences of these dolls being legal. As the law stands, the dolls expose a gaping hole in our child protection laws. It is not an offence to own, use or make them. Existing laws can sometimes be used where these items are imported, sold or distributed, and Border Force plays an important role in stopping them entering the country. However, those offences were not designed specifically for child-like sexual abuse dolls, and they do not provide a clear or comprehensive legal framework. The result is a patchwork approach that can leave gaps in protection. Since 2017, when the NCA and Border Force ran Operation Shiraz, law enforcement authorities have been using this dated customs legislation that prohibits the importation of “indecent or obscene articles”. There have been some prosecutions, but too many are falling through the cracks, as is demonstrated by the following case study. A registered sex offender had his home searched following a prompt relating to child sexual abuse imagery. A child-like sexual abuse doll was found, resembling a child of approximately four to five years of age. It came with a child’s underwear and pink, fluffy slippers, as well as accessories, including a removable penis. He was able to be charged only with the indecent images of children offence, not the possession and use of a child-like sexual abuse doll. Furthermore, under current legislation, the police did not have the legal powers to remove and destroy the doll. The Bill we are considering will close that gap in the law by amending the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It will make it an offence to make, possess, import, supply or offer to supply—that is, advertise—a child-like sex doll. How we define a child-like sex doll in legislation is important, and for that, I draw Members’ attention to clause 1 and proposed new subsections 46D(2) and (9) of the 2003 Act. A child-like sex doll will be defined as “a doll or other object…which resembles a child or any part of a child’s body, and…which a reasonable person would consider has been made for, or is intended to be used for, engaging in a sexual activity, taking account of all the circumstances of the case.” That definition is drafted to make the legislation as effective as possible without being overly prescriptive. For example, manufacturers of the dolls sometimes ensure that the dolls have large breasts, because that is what their customers want. They then try to claim that the dolls are not child-like due to their breast size, regardless of the fact that these dolls are, in every other sense, clearly designed and intended to resemble a child. This definition will also close another loophole that has been increasingly exploited to evade the existing customs legislation that I referred to, whereby parts of a doll are ordered separately rather than a whole doll and are subsequently assembled at home. A number of countries around the world have already put similar legislation in place. The reference to whether a “reasonable person” would consider it likely that dolls have been made for sexual activity is modelled on the Australian legislation. It is an objective test and allows consideration to be given to the characteristics of the doll in its entirety rather than insisting that it has set features. As with similar judgments involving child sexual abuse material and other offences where age, appearance and context are relevant, it will be up to the court to weigh up the circumstance of each case. I would also like to bring proposed new subsection 46D(9) in clause 1 into this part of the discussion. The offence of making a child-like sexual abuse doll includes adaptation. For example, an offender found to have made their own doll through adapting a child’s toy doll—a real scenario presented to me by the NCA—would also fall under this legislation. The subsection also defines a child as “a person aged under 18.” The Bill makes exception for relevant defences in clause 1 through proposed new subsections 46D(3) to (5) of the 2003 Act, including the protection of law enforcement officers working on detecting or investigating a crime relating to such dolls, as well as unsolicited or unintentional possession. I reassure Members that these defences are tightly drafted; vitally, the burden will be on the accused to prove that they are eligible for the defences. Offenders will be penalised, as detailed in clause 1, through proposed new subsection 46D(6), in line with offences involving indecent images of children: on summary conviction, up to 12 months’ imprisonment and/or a fine, and on indictment, up to 5 years’ imprisonment and/or a fine. Crucially, under clause 1(2), offenders will be placed on the sex offenders register if they are imprisoned for a term of at least 12 months and eligible for notification requirements, so that their risk can be managed by the police and the Probation Service. Proposed new subsection 46D(7) ensures that UK nationals committing an offence abroad will be able to be prosecuted here, and it extends the same provision to relevant UK bodies and unincorporated associations. That aligns with other child sexual abuse offences. Proposed new subsection 46D(8) sets out the powers for the police in terms of entry, search, seizure and forfeiture of child-like sexual abuse dolls, again in line with legislation relating to possession of indecent images of children. Proposed new section 46E is relevant to organisations or companies’ involvement with CSA doll offences. When a body commits an offence and that offence is committed with the consent or complicity of senior figures, they will be held liable.

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2. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Munira Wilson

   Child-like Sexual Abuse Dolls (Offences) Bill

   I thank the hon. Member for that intervention; I confess that I had not thought about that angle. The examples I have seen, presented to me by the NCA and the police, were literally like Annabell dolls that had had orifices made in the appropriate places. Presumably, tools that we would utilise in everyday life were used, such as screwdrivers and knives. I am not aware of tools specifically made to adapt these dolls, but the Minister is indicating that she may be able to pick that up with a prompt from the officials. Clause 2 details the territorial extent, commencement and title of the Bill. As would be expected, the commencement of clause 1 would allow time for operational guidance and training, as well as assessments on the impact of the justice system. Finally, on the territorial extent, the Bill will apply to England and Wales, given that criminal law and policing are devolved matters in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Although I would have liked the Bill to have a UK-wide remit, it was challenging to do that in the time available, given the constraints of the private Member’s Bill process. I very much hope, however, that Holyrood and Stormont will bring forward equivalent measures as soon as they can. I am grateful to Home Office officials for already sharing their expertise in this area with their counterparts. The Bill is a very small part of the work that we need to do to protect children from harm, but it is a vital step. I am grateful to have the support of a significant number of leading charities, including the NSPCC and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, and I am grateful to have the support of the NCA. I also want to give particular credit to Detective Sergeant Kat Knock from Lancashire constabulary and Hazel Stewart from the NCA—two amazing women who have worked incredibly hard to tackle this issue on the ground for several years. Without their dedication, we would not be here discussing this Bill. I thank the group-based child sexual exploitation response team in the Home Office, as well as the Government Office of the Parliamentary Counsel for its work in advising my staff and me, as well as for drafting this legislation. I am grateful to the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls and her predecessors for getting behind the Bill. I am also grateful to my cross-party co-sponsors. I very much hope that we can collectively get the Bill on to the statute book as soon as is humanly possible.

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3. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Munira Wilson

   Child-like Sexual Abuse Dolls (Offences) Bill

   I thank the Members who spoke for their very kind and generous words to me. I thank the hon. Member for Lowestoft for her campaigning on this issue. She has come under a lot of significant personal abuse for her work on protecting women and girls from violence. I thank her for that work and strongly support her comments. Although the amendment she would have liked to make—on digital child-like sexual abuse dolls and chatbots, as she laid out so clearly—was out of scope, I very much hope that the Minister will find ways of taking that forward. As the hon. Member said, the ban on sexualising chatbots that the Government announced was targeted specifically at what children access; here, we are talking about adults accessing physical dolls. But we know that the online world is developing at pace so, as the Government are looking to introduce all sorts of legislation in this area, I ask the Minister to look to capture, as broadly as possible, all the horrendous activities that are going on. I thank the official Opposition for their strong support for the Bill. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford, the argument sometimes made against criminalising these dolls is that they stop people abusing real children. What a misconception that is. I spoke to an amazing organisation in Australia called Collective Shout, which was involved in bringing forward the legislation there. They gave me a horrendous example in Australia of a man who was picked up importing a child-like sex doll. They went to his home, and they found not only a second child-like sex doll and all sorts of child sexual abuse imagery on his devices, but also a lockable sound-proof room that he had created in his house, and some maps. He had based himself close to a nursery and quite clearly had the intention of kidnapping children and doing I dread to think what to them, in a lockable room that could not be accessed by anyone, from which children’s cries could not be heard. That gives us an idea of the intentions of the sorts of people who use these things. I know that UK police enforcement authorities are working on other examples, but I am not able to share them because they are live cases.

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4. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Munira Wilson

   Child-like Sexual Abuse Dolls (Offences) Bill

   Absolutely; I completely agree. The hon. Member also made the point about resources. When DS Kat Knock, who I mentioned in my speech, came to London from Cheshire with a couple of these vile objects for me to look at, a couple of officers from the Met police joined that meeting. I talked to them about the fact that the number of police officers who track and monitor those on sex offender registers has not gone up in recent years, while the number of offenders on the register has gone up—particularly with the early release scheme. That workload is increasing all the time, so we have to resource it properly. I hope that the Government will consider that. I know that everyone is demanding more money and we are fiscally constrained, but this is a really important area, especially when we are talking about protecting children and adding these offences to the statute book. This needs to be resourced properly. To respond to the hon. Member for South West Devon, line 24 of the Bill says that a defence for a person who might be charged with an offence is that they “did not keep it for an unreasonable time.” I am confident that, if a member of the public finds one of these dolls in a public place and reports it, there would be a strong case for defence in that they were not in possession of it for use themselves. On the points about files for 3D printing and tools to adapt dolls, I know that the Minister is committed to following that up. I am also very happy to work with officials to follow up with colleagues and address those issues, and to make amendments on Report if necessary. I close by thanking everybody again. I think we are looking at the first Friday in February for Report and Third Reading, and we will hopefully get the Bill to the other place as soon possible in order then to get it in statute. I am very grateful for everybody’s strong support. Question put and agreed to. Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Question put, That the Bill be reported without amendment. Bill to be reported, without amendment.

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5. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Munira Wilson

   Antisemitism in Schools and Colleges

   I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her very welcome statement, and Sir David Bell for all his work on the review. Importantly, I thank all those who bravely shared their experiences with Sir David. Antisemitism has no place in our society, and we Liberal Democrats reaffirm our commitment to rooting out this evil in all its forms. We welcome and accept all the recommendations in the Bell review, some of which we have been calling for, and we are committed to working with the Government to support its implementation. As set out in the report, the scale of the challenge is alarming. Just last month, a teenage boy was attacked at Belsize Park tube station on his way home from Hasmonean high school, a Jewish school in north London. It is being treated as a hate crime. When I met children and young people who attend Richmond synagogue, they told me about their horrendous experiences of bullying, both physical and verbal, at school and university. Most of them are having to hide their faith. No one in this country should have to hide their faith. Our schools and colleges should be safe and welcoming places to learn where every child feels they belong, not places of fear. I thank the Community Security Trust for its tireless work protecting the Jewish community. Although extra support for security at Jewish schools is welcome, my Jewish constituents tell me that they do not want ever higher walls built around them. I particularly welcome recommendation 17, on support for discussion of sensitive topics. Some of my young constituents have told me that they were not allowed to discuss events in the middle east at school. We know that shutting down debate in what should be a safe space only pushes it into darker spaces. My main question for the Secretary of State today is whether she will provide any extra funding to help schools, colleges and local authorities in implementing the recommendations, or whether they will have to rely on existing budgets. As she said, this generational challenge belongs to all of us, Jewish or not. All the individual recommendations are important but, crucially, we need a culture change across our society, and that starts with education.

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6. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Paul Kohler

   Draft Voter Identification (Amendment of List of Specified Documents) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026 Draft Voter Identification (Amendment of List of Specified Documents) (Local Elections) (Northern Ireland) Order 2026 Draft Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Uprating Election Expenses) Order 2026

   Is the list now identical in Northern Ireland? I just looked it up, and in England someone can have a blind person’s badge issued in Northern Ireland, but that does not appear to be on the Northern Ireland list. Are the lists identical—and if not, why not?

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7. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Paul Kohler

   Northern Ireland Troubles Bill: Access to Justice

   As the Secretary of State said, the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill has now passed to the other place, notwithstanding the continuing concerns of senior generals and veterans associations; more still needs to be done. I than him for his sustained engagement and openness with veterans organisations, including the SAS Regimental Association, with whom I have been working closely. We must avoid any adversarial framing of the relationship between veterans and victims, as I remain convinced that a compromise to ensure proper protections for veterans can be achieved while delivering justice for victims. Will he commit to continuing to work with the SAS Regimental Association and its lawyers to ensure that the Bill delivers the vital safeguards that our veterans need?

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8. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Lee Dillon

   Support for Farmers

   Since my election, I have stood up for my farmers. We have been in fields together, we have marched together and we have lobbied together. Today, they stand with me. I am proud that my party has used this Opposition day debate to hold the Government to account for the latest shambles, which follow on from last year’s shambles. It really does seem that lessons have not been learned. My farmers cannot speak in the Chamber, but I can, and I want to make their voices heard. Their verdict is blunt. Tim Hayward, who has managed a 3,000 acre farm in South Fawley for over a decade, described the SFI as “flawed” and “not fit for purpose”, popular only because the sector is in such a dire circumstance that many farms have to embrace it to survive. His countryside stewardship agreement expires at the end of the year and, despite trying to secure a new SFI agreement, he has received no support. He faces the prospect of putting precious pockets of land—habitats that have taken years to establish—back into production. James, another experienced West Berkshire farmer, had an expiring SFI agreement and costed alternative business plans. As he put it, “I now regard the government as an unreliable trading partner.” George Brown, a farmer who farms Priors farm and is the chairman of the British Farming Union, told me that the six-hour window was simply impossible for a family farm to prepare for, let alone submit the precise land mapping, rotational forecasting and multi-layered action planning that an application needs. With the introduction of the family farm tax and the sudden closure of the SFI in 2025, farmers feel that the rural communities they represent are not understood. Farmers play a crucial role in rural life. From environmental stewardship to hosting community events that reduce isolation, clearing roads of snow in the dark winter months or lifting a villager’s car from a country ditch, they are the backbone of rural communities. If we do not back our farmers, we are not backing rural life. The farming road map rightly attempts to provide clarity, but, after September’s mess, distrust is as strong as ever. Nor can we look to the Conservative party for inspiration—Conservative Members may turn up in my seat for photo ops with farmers, but they have never apologised to them. I recognise that the Government inherited serious problems, but chaotic windows and abrupt closures have compounded those. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to work with the NFU and move away from a first come, first served basis. To conclude, may I ask the Minister three things? First, will he publish a clear timescale? As George Brown put it: “The Government created a funding race that left us all wondering when the starting gun would actually fire.” If the next window is to be different, the Department should open SFI27 early, with a phased arrangement starting on 1 April so that those who diligently prepared but were shut out get a fair second chance. Secondly, will the Minister ensure that the budget matches the number of agreements that are ending? More than 21,000 farm businesses have environmental agreements ending by March and only about 8,800 applied for SFI26. What transitional support will the Government provide to close that gap? Thirdly, the Government should use next week’s Budget for a clear injection of support and back the Liberal Democrats’ call for an extra £1 billion a year for farming. The Government have said that they are determined to rebuild trust across rural communities. If they take those steps, that could mark a turning point and give the custodians of our countryside the confidence and clarity they desperately need.

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9. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Lee Dillon

   Support for Farmers

   Can the Minister explain how a farm in my constituency will still have a potential inheritance tax bill of £650,000, yet only generates £18,000 a year of profit?

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10. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Alistair Carmichael

    Support for Farmers

    rose—

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11. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Alistair Carmichael

    Support for Farmers

    I am grateful to my former colleague on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee—these links are important. Can she tell the House how many applications the Department expected? It was modelled by some that there would be somewhere in the region of 40,000. In fact, there was money available for 12,000. Did it come as a total surprise to the Department that it got as many applications as it did?

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12. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Alistair Carmichael

    Support for Farmers

    The hon. Member will be aware that the carbon border adjustment mechanism was started under the last Government. The consultation was launched in 2023. With the benefit of hindsight, does he think it might have been a good idea at that stage to take fertiliser out of it?

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13. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Alistair Carmichael

    Support for Farmers

    I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy). I can endorse his asks to the Chancellor and I could probably add a few of my own. Like him, I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter), to her place. She has maybe had a slightly rocky start at some moments, but I know from her time on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that she has knowledge about and a concern for the industry. It is in everybody’s interests that the Government should be successful, so we wish her and her colleagues well. I am not going to say a great deal about the sustainable farming incentive. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), is coming to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee next week and we will doubtless spend some time on it then. It would be worth him and others reflecting on the full extent of the damage and the nature of the damage that has been done by that particular episode, because we are already seeing an unpicking of land that has been managed in a way that was beneficial for nature, sometimes for decades. Farmers have found themselves overnight with massive holes in their budgets. When they ask, “Well, what is going to happen next?”, it is simply not tenable for any of us to turn around and say, “Well, it is okay—just trust DEFRA. They will come up with something in the next financial year.” I am pretty sure what most farmers would say if we turned around to them and said that. The real impact is another nail in the coffin of financial investor confidence in the industry, at a time when there is a perfect storm for British farming. We have seen a price spike in input costs from earlier in the year, as a consequence of what happened in the strait of Hormuz, particularly in relation to urea for the production of fertiliser and diesel. The Food and Drink Federation told the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in May that that would take another 10 months to feed through into price inflation, so we still have the worst of that to come in the new year. Since then, we have had a long, hot summer, in which many arable farmers have been through the third bad harvest in succession, with yields down. Let us not forget that many of them chose not to plant in the spring in the first place, because it made more economic sense just to sell the fertiliser and not plant the seed. The usual sources of replacements, at the time of a bad harvest in continental Europe, are going through exactly the same things that we are going through. Our livestock farms are already feeding winter forage, because they have not had the grass available for their cattle and sheep. Parenthetically, let me say that that is not the case in Orkney, where the problem we have with our winter forage is getting it off the fields after a long, wet summer. In the red meat sector, our livestock numbers continue to decline in a way that risks threatening the critical mass of the industry. If that were to fall over, it would have a massive ripple effect through the rural economy—through the marts, hauliers, abattoirs, vets and merchants of all sorts. The chicken and pork sectors are under serious pressure. I had a conversation just last week with Cranswick, one of the biggest operators, which told me that between it and 2 Sisters, something in the region of £1.5 billion of planned investment is held up in the planning system. In many ways, that sums up the frustration of the situation in which we find ourselves. Despite this perfect storm, there are people in every sector of this brilliant industry who continue to want to farm and invest. We have spoken about all the different agricultural policies that have an impact on the sector, but there are policies across nearly every Department of Government, especially in relation to the planning system, that could free up investment opportunities that would generate growth. The Prime Minister speaks about growth in every postcode, and a lot of postcodes are in farming communities. The rural economy presents a real opportunity to generate the economic growth that we all know we need. For all the downsides that there are in the industry at the moment, I remain optimistic for one reason only, which has nothing to do with anybody in this Chamber or in government: despite everything that happens to our farmers, they continue to want to produce food to feed our nation, and they are better than almost anybody else in the world at doing that.

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14. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Alistair Carmichael

    Support for Farmers

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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15. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Mr Alistair Carmichael

    Support for Farmers

    I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman is saying, but we neglect at our peril the sheer extra cost of administration for SFI, as compared with the basic payment scheme. Baroness Batters has remarkable figures on that in her report. Does he agree, to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), that one of the advantages of a more universal system is that it would be hardwired in for food production, and would be much cheaper to administer?

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16. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Monica Harding

    Community Policing: Government Support

    My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that when fully warranted neighbourhood police officers are put into civilian jobs to relieve pressure in places such as call centres, they are doing jobs that civilians should do? I support many of the Government’s priorities on policing, but if the police—whose job is to go on the beat—are pulled into different priorities, whatever they may be, that core policing is not available.

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17. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Manuela Perteghella

    Engagements

    Q3. My constituent Matilda Davis was a wonderful and devoted mum, and a full-time carer for her disabled seven-year-old child. Despite providing round-the-clock care, she received almost no support, leaving her physically and emotionally exhausted. Last October social workers visited Matilda, and she took her own life 15 minutes after they left. She was 36. Research from the University of Birmingham shows that 41% of parent carers have contemplated suicide. Will the Prime Minister meet with me and Matilda’s family to discuss mandatory suicide prevention training for local authorities and other measures, so that no more families suffer such a devastating loss?

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18. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Manuela Perteghella

    Support for Farmers

    Farmers in my constituency and across the country have been left totally bewildered and deeply anxious by this Government’s handling of the SFI. The scheme, although flawed, was meant to reward good farming and environmental stewardship. Instead, farmers who had spent time preparing applications logged on, ready to apply, only to discover that the available budget had been exhausted almost immediately. This is no way to treat the people who produce our food and who are doing what they can to care for our countryside. The Government’s approach has reduced what should be a strategic, long-term partnership with farmers into a lottery. Farmers need certainty and the confidence to invest. They need to know that when the Government ask them to change how they farm, the support will be there. One of my constituent farmers summed up the mood when they contacted me, writing: “Morale is rock bottom within the industry. Many farm businesses are on the brink… We need a sensible payment system to give us confidence”. We should also not ignore what this prolonged uncertainty means for farmers’ mental wellbeing. When we know that mental health challenges are widespread within the farming community, Ministers should be doing everything possible to provide stability and reassurance, rather than creating uncertainty. To wait until 2027 is deeply unfair to farming and to nature. Will Ministers make additional funding available for eligible farmers who were excluded through no fault of their own, including my constituents? How will farmers continue to deliver the environmental outcomes that the Government expect if access to the very schemes designed to support the work can disappear in a matter of hours? These failures come on top of cuts to DEFRA’s budget and ongoing uncertainty over the future of environmental land management schemes. Farmers are being asked to do more with less, while receiving fewer guarantees about the support available to them. Instead, farmers should be rewarded properly for delivering food security, restoring nature, capturing carbon and tackling climate change, but they need support. They need a Government who have got their back. Ministers must work with the sector, learn from this shambles and ensure that never again are farmers forced into a first come, first served scramble for support. Our farmers deserve a Government who see them as partners and treat them with the respect they deserve.

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19. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Luke Taylor

    E-scooters and E-bikes: Regulation

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for bringing this important debate to the House. It is worth making it clear that I am a huge fan of e-bikes. I rode my e-cargo bike to the station this morning, and in term time I would have dropped my two boys off at school using the bike. I have covered more than 18,000 km in the last six years. Our discussion today should focus on illegal e-bikes and e-scooters, but we need to be clear that we support the contribution that e-bikes make to active travel, taking cars off our roads, and reducing emissions, congestion and road danger. I differ slightly from my hon. Friend, however, as I believe that e-scooters are far too dangerous to be considered for regulation and legislation. They do not in any way qualify as active travel. They should be banned or removed from our streets entirely. I have spoken repeatedly about the need for tougher regulation of illegally modified e-bikes. These vehicles plague the high street in Sutton, and sadly deter many local residents from visiting the shops that my town centre has to offer. Delivery drivers on e-bikes treat the stretch of Sutton high street like a racetrack. They rampage along pavements at speed, with no consideration for pedestrians around them. The nights are getting darker, but many ride without lights, endangering pedestrians and the riders themselves. My constituents should not have to spend their weekly shop looking over their shoulder, worried they might be mown down by a vehicle that should never have been on the road or the pavement in the first place. The dangers do not end when the bikes stop moving. E-bikes are causing fires across the capital. We saw that recently in Mitcham, where a fire ripped through homes, as the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned. The increase in illegal e-bike conversions, fires and accidents on our streets is driven by two main causes: the sale of high-powered e-bikes like Sur-Rons, and the multimillion-pound delivery companies that incentivise riders to use faster vehicles but take no responsibility for ensuring that they are legal and being ridden legally. We Liberal Democrats want delivery platforms to be required to verify that bikes being used by riders are road legal. Regular checks should be made to ensure that illegally modified vehicles are not being used to complete food orders for pay. There must be clear consequences for companies that repeatedly fail to act to protect the public. Corporate giants of the gig economy world cannot continue to hide behind the self-employed status of their riders to seek impunity from responsibility. They already have the technology to track their drivers, identify them and verify that they are using the right accounts. They must be required to take reasonable steps to ensure that vehicles being used to make deliveries are legal.

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20. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Luke Taylor

    E-scooters and E-bikes: Regulation

    rose—

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21. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Lisa Smart

    Antisemitism in Schools and Colleges

    I really welcome Sir David’s review and the Secretary of State’s response. Antisemitism is an ancient poison. It is why my nan had to flee Germany to come to this country in the late 1930s and it is, as the Secretary of State said, the responsibility of all of us to tackle it. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I am in my 20th year of being a primary school governor. The review and the recommendations talk about the role of school leadership, but I noted that the Secretary of State did not mention school governors. I wonder if she could say how she sees the role of governors in tackling this issue? I welcome her earlier assurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) that money will be made available. Will she confirm if that is new, new money, or if it is money that has already been allocated to our schools, or already allocated to tackling antisemitism?

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22. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Lisa Smart

    Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill

    Liberal Democrats have long advocated for modernisation and improvement across the Houses of Parliament. We continue to support legislation that modernises, and hope to see many more moves towards ensuring that Westminster is representative of the country as a whole. For almost 200 years, the law has said that a Roman Catholic Minister, or later a Jewish Minister, may not advise the monarch on appointments in the Church of England or the Church of Scotland. Those restrictions never applied to people of other faiths or no faith at all. They were aimed squarely at two communities and are rooted in the anti-Catholicism and antisemitism of the age in which they were written. The Prime Minister has called this an “antiquated and archaic anomaly”, and of course he is right to do so. It cannot be acceptable in 2026 that someone who holds the confidence of this House should be barred from part of their job because of their faith. We are told that Church House is content with the change, and the National Secular Society has said that the ban is “increasingly difficult to justify in a modern liberal democracy”. It is rare to find that much agreement on a question involving Church and state, and the Government are right to make this change in the law. Liberal Democrats believe in freedom of belief. Everyone should be able to practise their faith, or none, without fear of discrimination or state interference. That principle should apply at the very top of public life as much as anywhere else. Removing this bar sends a message that the highest offices in our country are open to people of every background. But I note that this is the very first Bill brought under this Prime Minister. It is a sensible fix to a problem he faces personally, but there are more widespread problems with how our democracy works—problems that affect every one of our constituents—and they still await action. Take the other place. Liberal Democrats have long called for a House of Lords with a democratic mandate—

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23. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Lisa Smart

    Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill

    I am always grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for guidance on what is in and out of scope, and I am always pleased when we are able to talk about modernisation, as this Bill does. I encourage the Government to go further, faster—an encouragement that the Liberal Democrats always give when they are on their feet talking about political and constitutional reform. On prime ministerial advice and appointments, which I hope you will agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, is very much in scope, these appointments often ingrain patronage and reinforce elitism, which causes many people to lose faith in politics. We would encourage the Government to get to considering proposals such as the Burns report, which looked at cutting the House of Lords to 600 peers. We think the Government could do far more, but that is perhaps for another debate on another day. None of the changes that we Liberal Democrats would encourage, whether it is putting the ministerial code into law or ensuring a fairer voting system, are terribly complicated. All they do is restore trust in politics. We support the Bill. Discrimination on grounds of faith has no place in our law, and I am glad to see the change come in today, but I hope the Minister will very much treat this as a starting point, rather than the limit of his ambitions for political and constitutional reform. If the Government are serious about modernising our institutions, they should go further, faster, and the Lib Dems will keep pressing them to do exactly that.

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24. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Josh Babarinde

    E-scooters and E-bikes: Regulation

    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire); she is a legend for securing this debate and giving us all the opportunity to speak about this issue, which blights our communities. One hundred and fifty years ago, the fastest vehicle on Eastbourne seafront was a horse-drawn bathing machine taking people down to the sea. Today, it is an illegal e-bike or e-scooter, jockeyed by a balaclava-wearing rider. The same is true of places such as Terminus Road—our high street—and Kings Drive, where the pavement is ruled no longer by the Eastbourne mobility scooter but by the vehicles we are discussing. Sussex police recorded a 53.7% rise in reports of illegal e-bike and e-scooter use in the year to June, and seized 321 vehicles between January and July. Many, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), have rightly said that we are fans of active travel and encouraging people to use more environmentally friendly means to get from A to B, but a dangerous minority of riders and vehicles are putting pedestrians at risk and giving responsible users of active travel a bad name. More than that, failed e-bike and e-scooter batteries have been responsible for devastating fires, such as that in Whitley Road in Eastbourne. The fire service has said: “We have seen people forced into jumping from windows as they can’t get out of their front doors as the bike or scooter which has caught fire is in front of it.” There are enormous safety risks. Other jurisdictions are showing the way and leading on the issue. New York City, which banned the sale of uncertified e-bikes, saw deaths from battery fires fall in two years from 18 to just one. In New South Wales, Australia, police now test bikes at the roadside and crush illegal ones on the spot. I hope that the Minister will consider granting our police and law enforcement the same kinds of tools and regulating this sector adequately.

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25. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Josh Babarinde

    E-scooters and E-bikes: Regulation

    Of course, there are financial costs, but there are costs to human life and livelihood as well. I hope the Minister will recognise that and commit to meeting representatives of Sussex police, which holds the national brief for road crime, to look at how we can best tackle the issue in Sussex and Eastbourne.

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26. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·John Milne

    Support for Farmers

    As has been brought home to us in the most powerful terms since world war two, food security is once again a matter of national security, and the Prime Minister has said as much. Just like our defence capability, farming requires long-term funding and a lasting framework to operate in. The last SFI window opened at 10 o’clock on Tuesday 22 September and closed at 3.48 later that afternoon. If you popped out to the shops, you would have missed it. DEFRA has made the excuse that demand was unprecedented compared with previous ELMS, but setting a benchmark based on a previous flawed Tory scheme that nobody really wanted is not exactly a great metric. The Minister argues that the £100,000 cap makes the scheme fairer because a quarter of the funding used to go to 4% of claimants. Yes, that is true, but a fairer way of rationing a budget that is too small is still a budget that is too small. For decades, farmers did what Governments asked of them. After the war, food production rightly came first, but the cost was paid in soil, hedgerows, wildlife and our rivers, with policymakers recommending the use of harmful chemicals. The SFI exists because that was not sustainable in the long term. We can see this as a repair bill now come due for the policy that farmers were told to follow for many years. Farmers are now weighing up whether to step back from wildflower meadows, field margins and buffer strips. Peter Hatley, who farms in Cambridgeshire, was quoted in the Financial Times yesterday as saying: “I will literally take a plough to everything…We will have to go back to farming more intensively than the 1950s.” Proper farm funding has other benefits too. Ministers told the House of Lords in April that SFI actions that keep soil covered and build organic matter improve its ability to hold water, and that 35 of the 71 actions in this year’s SFI would target flood and drought resilience, including through the use of cover crops. Those 35 recommendations on flood and drought resilience are welcome, but £200 million less in the budget is not. There are practical changes with very modest price tags that would help now. Farmers want to store their own water, but the Country Land and Business Association says that only 34 on-farm reservoirs have been built in the last five years. When we realise that it costs an average of £45,000 just to achieve planning permission, we can understand why there are so few. I hope that the review of permitted development rights will report swiftly. I am sadly out of time. If food security is national security, fund it like it is. Give farmers the certainty to plan and let them get on with feeding the country.

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27. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Royal Mail: Performance

    The right hon. Lady makes a really important point. Royal Mail recently wrote to me after I complained about the lack of service in Selsey, a coastal area where there seems to be absolutely no mail being delivered. It said that it prioritised medical letters and had a rotation system, yet that is not evidenced on the ground in Selsey. People are being asked to collect their own mail from the sorting office, which is only open for two hours a day. Does she agree that Royal Mail needs to turn its words to MPs into actions, so that our residents can see the changes we are asking for?

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28. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for community policing. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am a trustee of Chichester Festival Theatre, which I will be talking about in my contribution. Today’s debate could not be timelier for my Chichester constituents. Last week, a cast member in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which was on at Chichester Festival Theatre, was followed through the city by a group in balaclavas, riding bikes, shouting abuse and harassing them. Police subsequently arrested a 16-year-old male for a homophobic hate crime. Earlier this week, the prominent comedian and actor Munya Chawawa spoke out about the experiences of the whole cast he had been performing with at CFT, including the racist, homophobic and xenophobic abuse that they had encountered during their six-week stay in my city. It was heartbreaking to hear his and others’ accounts. The hate that they experienced in no way represents the majority view, and is not the Chichester that I know and love. The fact that that happened in a city that I am constantly told has very low levels of crime should be a cause of concern for all. I have no doubt that the pipeline of hatred fed into our algorithms and screens is feeding this beast. Antisocial behaviour more generally is a growing theme in my work as the Member of Parliament for Chichester.

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29. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    My hon. Friend pre-empts one of the things that I will call for later in my speech. Antisocial behaviour is happening in all corners of the country. In Chichester, I am seeing it in the balaclava-clad young men riding e-bikes at terrifying speeds along pedestrian streets or pavements, the people feeling intimidated and threatened when they are out in the evening, the growing use of catapults to harm wildlife or the shoplifting epidemic that plagues our local businesses. It is seen across my constituency, whether in the city centre, the town of Selsey, Westhampnett or the Witterings. Charity venues have told me about young men forcing entry and threatening their volunteers or elderly members of the public who have gone along to watch a film. Another constituent told me that the local bowls club is struggling to retain members after some were hit with ball bearings that were being shot at pigeons. Today’s debate is on community policing. Much of that antisocial behaviour is driven by a lack of visible policing in areas like mine.

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30. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I thank my hon. Friend for his important intervention. I agree that we need more access to things like PSPOs, but there is an acute challenge in actually policing the PSPOs that we manage to get in place. That was a suggestion that we had to cull the wildlife crime that we were seeing locally, but the police rightly said that a PSPO is effective only if there are police to manage it. This is not the fault of local police officers—they are diligent, well trained and dedicated to keeping our communities safe, but they are also asked to achieve the impossible. The Government’s neighbourhood policing guarantee makes all the right noises about ensuring that policing is local, but in coastal and rural areas such as mine, it is near impossible to have a meaningful presence in the huge areas they are asked to cover. Selsey has nearly 11,000 residents, and the number nearly doubles in the summer months thanks to tourism, but the area does not magically get any additional policing during that time.

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31. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    The hon. Member is absolutely right to highlight that the funding formula does not reflect the seasonal pressures I see in my coastal constituency. To describe Selsey to those who have never been there—I look forward to welcoming colleagues in the summer—there is one road in and one road out. Selsey means “seal island”, and it is a very isolated community. There is one police constable and two PCSOs to cover not only Selsey but Sidlesham, Hunston, North Mundham and some harbour villages. On a summer’s day, it would take an officer at least an hour to travel from one end of the patch they are meant to cover to the other, yet they are meant to have an acute understanding of the area and its problems. I went out last summer with a PC who had responsibility for Selsey. Local residents turned and stared at us as though they had never seen a police officer walking the streets of Selsey. When I asked the PC the last time he had done a walkabout, he had to admit that he had never done one before because of the administrative pressures in managing his workload. At the other end of my constituency, towards the South Downs national park, farmers are creating WhatsApp chats to support each other in monitoring illegal activity on their land, whether that is equipment and tool theft or hare coursing, because of their isolation and the lack of provision in the Sussex police rural crime team. Why are we in this position? For starters, it is because police forces were recklessly hollowed out, and the number of PCSOs was decimated, by the previous Government.

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32. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I appreciate the hon. Member’s remarks. She is right that this is not a new issue; it has been going on for many years. We are now seeing the effect in every constituency.

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33. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I thank the hon. Member for getting on the record how important it is to have visible community policing. That needs to happen as quickly as possible so that the example she gave of her constituent and the fear she must have felt in that moment are addressed or alleviated by knowing that there is a police officer they can contact who understands the local area. I also recognise that crimes are becoming more complicated. Evidence can come in many forms, with the rise of things such as Ring doorbells, CCTV and the use of WhatsApp chats being part of an evidence base. Models for dealing with the administrative burden differ from police force to police force. We also have a real challenge with reporting. My local police force makes operational day-to-day decisions entirely predicated on the reporting data, yet I have called a number of times to speak to the police about an incident that is being widely discussed online only to be told that they have no such record of any incident ever occurring. I recognise the frustration that constituents voice to me that if they report, nothing happens anyway—but police forces are now so reliant on data that I cannot impress enough on people how important it is to report crime or antisocial behaviour when they witness it so that the police have an accurate record of where the hotspots are.

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34. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I do agree with the hon. Gentleman. I would also reflect that when I was growing up as a teenager, I knew the name of my local police officer. That certainly deterred me from hanging around at the duck pond late at night, because I knew that if he spotted me, my mum would probably hear about it. That kind of community policing, and the understanding of where the issues are, where people are congregating and where the problems are occurring is so important for police officers. I will come on to that later. Those are vital points of visibility, but they also provide people with a direct route to access support and to report crimes, especially for those who do not want to navigate complex online forms. A constituent recently told me that they called to report a crime and were told that it was over an hour’s waiting time to speak to somebody and to please go online. They were then asked to provide the exact postcode of where they had seen the incident. They could not move forward because they could not provide the postcode and they just gave up reporting it. Something else that exacerbates the situation in my constituency is poor decision making at a local level, as in the case of the closure of Chichester custody centre. That contributes to staffing pressures because it keeps police officers off the streets and away from the communities they serve. Since its closure in 2018, officers making an arrest have had to undertake a round trip to Worthing, and in some cases, when that custody centre is full, all the way to Crawley. A recent freedom of information request revealed that just last year there were 1,100 such trips. Even without the traffic on the A27, each journey would take police officers away from Chichester for hours at a time. It is a monumental waste of time and effort, particularly when there is a purpose-built, workable facility in Chichester. I know the police and crime commissioner would like me to stop talking about that, but I will not, because to me it would be a win-win if it put more police back on the streets. It would increase the time that officers spend out on our streets and provide the credible deterrent that we need. That is why I ask the Minister to outline in her response today the Government’s view on mothballed infrastructure, such as our custody centre, which could be brought back into use to improve community policing. Beyond that, we need a clear commitment from the Government today to a return to what community policing actually means. When the Government made their health hubs announcement, about a health hub in every community, the definition used was somewhere with a population of 50,000. If something like that were to be used in policing, it would be no comfort to communities such as those in Selsey that I spoke of earlier, or in the Witterings or Pagham, who already see resources spread too thinly. Will the Minister please define “neighbourhood” and how that is adjusted for my rural and coastal communities?

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35. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    It is right to say that no police officer signed up to be a frontline service person and spend all their time at a desk; they signed up because they wanted to make a real, tangible difference in their communities. We do not need them to be glued to their desks doing burdensome paperwork, because that is not what they were trained for. We can free up officers’ time by, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) mentioned, establishing an online crime agency, for example. That would relieve local officers of the burden of complex and time-consuming work around highly sophisticated online crime. Finally, I want to turn to the wider issue of resourcing, which I am sure many Members will discuss. It has been raised with me through various channels, including by the police and crime commissioner in Sussex. We know how we got here, but decisions made by this Government have contributed to the problem. The consolidation of funding pots has left my residents short-changed, for example. The funding model fails to take proper account of the genuinely rural nature of my constituency, which leaves our residents worse off in funding terms than the national average. The Government have announced new policies aimed at addressing some of the issues we have discussed, but have not provided the resources needed to implement them. The newly introduced respect orders are an example: breaching them constitutes a criminal offence, which will once again draw on police resource. That requires additional funding to support it, but it is yet to be seen. The issues facing community policing are not primarily about a lack of powers. Any police officer will say that the most powerful tool in their armoury is not the one given to them through the law, but the ability to build relationships, understand the uniqueness of the community they serve and have a presence that serves in itself as a deterrent.

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36. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I am not confident that the hon. Member’s constituents would appreciate her using her time in this place to talk about things that happened 15 years ago, when Labour has the power of government and the opportunity to do all the things she rightly raises. There are things that need to change, and she now has the opportunity, the keys in her hand and the power to make those changes for her constituents. The police tell me that the issue is about a lack of resource and always being asked to do more with less. I therefore hope that the Minister will grab the bull by the horns and get on top of community policing. We want real community policing for the better.

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37. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    In my community in Selsey, which I spoke of earlier, Amazon was recommending cut-price balaclavas recently, which I think speaks to the problem. The Minister mentioned the seizing of e-bikes. It is brilliant that the police now have the power to seize; what they do not have is the power to catch the people on the e-bikes, especially the souped-up ones. A spray is being trialled that the police could use from a far distance, and it creates almost a fingerprint on an e-bike that is being used for antisocial behaviour. It is not being used in Sussex, but I know it is being used in police forces around Sussex. Would the Minister look at whether that is working well for those police forces and then encourage its roll-out in other areas?

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38. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Community Policing: Government Support

    I thank Members for contributing to this really important debate. I want to put on the record that we have a local community warden who is employed by Chichester district council. His name is Jimmy Upton. He used to be a police officer; he spent many years being a community police officer. When he retired, he decided that he could still make a fundamental difference to his community, and now he is a community warden doing exactly the thing that he actually went into policing to do: supporting communities. They really are the best of us, and I am very grateful to all of those who work in our police forces to keep us safe. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for community policing.

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39. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Jamie Stone

    Jackdaw Gasfield

    I do not know how many people in this place know this, but I used to work in the oil and gas industry—not for a holiday job, but for years on end. I worked at Kishorn, at Nigg, at Sullom Voe and in Aberdeen. I married, my wife and I brought up our three children in my hometown and my children went to my old school in Tain, so I suggest to the Minister that I am a living example of the good that oil and gas have brought to the highlands. My plea to the Minister and to His Majesty’s Government is that they do as much as they can to spread the benefits from today’s decision as far as they can into the highlands and all those communities that have gained so much from North sea oil.

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40. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lib Dem·Ian Roome

    Support for Farmers

    Does the Minister agree that it is simply unacceptable for farmers to be expected to deliver the Government’s environmental ambitions when they have less than six hours to secure the funding to do so? Will she commit to a fairer system for the SFI scheme, with sufficient funding and guaranteed opportunity to apply—for North Devon farmers especially—instead of leaving farmers’ livelihoods subject to a scheme operated on a first come, first served basis?

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