Reoffending Reduction Programmes
20. What steps he is taking to improve programmes that reduce reoffending.
12,832 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
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Reoffending Reduction Programmes
The problems with early release that we saw over the summer are partly an issue with reoffending, as a quarter of prisoners released go on to reoffend. I have a constituent whose sibling has moved into her small house after spending time in prison, to prevent him becoming homeless. I understand that community accommodation service tier 3 is a good scheme for supporting prisoners when they are first released, but what housing schemes support rehabilitation later, to stop that revolving door for some offenders?
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
Businesses in Devon have told me of their concern about this proposed visitor levy, including Littlecourt Cottages in Sidmouth. They point out that the tourist footfall might decrease, not just for the cottages, but for the restaurants, the attractions and the shops in the local area. This tax has been dreamed up on the basis of what it will do for cities that see a higher proportion of wealthy overseas visitors, has it not?
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Saudi East-West Oil Pipeline
The National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, has said that Europe will experience real hardship this winter. We have repeatedly seen the UK exposed to energy shocks linked to volatile fossil fuel prices set on international markets: Russia and Ukraine, the strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb and now the Saudi east-west oil pipeline. Will the UK step up investment in clean, domestic renewable energy production, as well as in the grid to distribute it?
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Fracking Ban
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) for securing this vital debate with the backing of the Backbench Business Committee. I am very far from being an elder of this House, but I am among the minority of Members who saw the end of the Liz Truss premiership during the last Parliament. That period is most associated with the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget, but as the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) pointed out, it should really go down in history for its association with fracking. What few people recall is that the Truss era fractured, gave out volatile gases and combusted on 19 October 2022 with a Conservative party rebellion over the Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill. Forty Conservative MPs did not vote with their Government against an Opposition motion to ban fracking. Some Conservative MPs abstained because they were not in the House, but others abstained as a matter of principle, and I commend them. They included the former Minister Chris Skidmore, who was one of those principled MPs who would never vote in support of such a proposal. I want to set out why the rebels were right. It is fair to say that the moratorium is insufficient on two grounds: first because it is inadequate, and secondly because of climate change more broadly. The moratorium came into effect in 2019 after serious concerns were raised about how fracking could cause damage to nature and our communities. However, a ban might not cover all forms of fracking and could potentially leave significant loopholes if that is not addressed. The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) made an excellent speech, and I completely agree with her that at the moment we see the exclusion of small-scale fracking, often referred to as proppant squeeze. The guidelines in the Petroleum Act 1998 are outdated, defining the fracturing of rock for shale gas as involving “the injection of…more than 1,000 cubic metres of fluid at each stage…of the hydraulic fracturing”. We need that loophole to be closed and a proper ban to be introduced. In 2019 the Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire recorded more than 120 seismic events. The British Geological Survey typically detects between 200 and 300 earthquakes across the country across the whole year. Before the fracking moratorium came into effect, drilling licences over shale gas reserves were issued across 127 constituencies in England and Wales, and there is a risk that communities will suffer from not just the seismic activity, but the polluted groundwater and the damage to natural habitats that flows from it. A full ban on fracking would provide certainty to our communities. The Minister for Energy has previously argued that the Government would need “objective evidence” in order to close those loopholes and include low-volume fracking in the ban. What additional evidence do the Government need? There is large support in this country for a full ban on fracking—almost half the country believes we should not be fracking, and less than 30% of the British population support it. It can lead to water scarcity and risks polluting our air, our soil, our health and our biodiversity. Green space and nature are an intrinsic part of life in the UK, and we should be protecting our wildlife with everything we have. Ministers have previously suggested that all forms of fracking would be considered within the scope of a ban, and the former Energy Secretary, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband), told the 2025 Labour party conference: “Let’s ban fracking and send the frackers packing.” I welcome the point made by the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), who reminded us of some of the traditional Labour arguments about social justice, but also that they could apply to creating new jobs in new industries. What the public do support is action to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. Eight in 10 people say that they are concerned about climate change—they want a transition to clean energy. In mid and east Devon, protecting our natural environment is a priority for thousands of people who have corresponded with me on the subject. Reports of nature in decline, and of the loss of our precious wildlife and biodiversity, are very concerning to them. I hope that this debate will not only protect communities from the damage of fracking now but, in a small way, help to protect future generations from the worst impacts of climate change. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns) talked about the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We have just seen the hottest average summer temperatures on record, which are around 130 times more likely because of human-induced climate change. Last year, 47% of all the electricity generated in the UK was generated from renewable sources. That represents a fourfold increase in renewables since 2012, far in advance of the pace of progress that was forecast. Yes, we will continue to need some oil and gas in the years to come, but why would anyone want us to hitch ourselves to the slow wagons—of which fracking is one—as other countries gallop away behind the technologies of the future?
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Fracking Ban
I know that this is a local matter for the hon. Member, so he will be interested in my response. The Liberal Democrats are concerned about emissions resulting from the greater extraction of fossil fuels, both in UK waters and around the world. For oil in particular, the extraction exercise is pointless, given that we are exporting it so that other countries can refine it and take profits from it. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) referred to a similar point, and he made repeated references to treasure. For those who know the story “Treasure Island”, he is the Squire John Trelawney of this House: a rich landowner who pays for the ship, but talks too much and trusts the wrong people. There is a real danger that investment in fracking will be a catastrophic mistake, as the fuels, facilities and resources become stranded assets. There is a real risk that they will lose their value prematurely as the tide of renewable technology advances around them. To finish where I started, I am concerned about the Conservative party’s journey towards political extinction. Polling suggests that support for any fracking is a complete misreading of where our constituents are. We Liberal Democrats could quietly gloat that the Conservative party has misread the room and enjoy the electoral dividends that that brings, but we would much rather that it returned to the consensus. Climate change is one of the gravest issues that our generation of politicians has been sent to this House to tackle. Let us not make a catastrophic mistake.
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Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), for securing this debate. In my Woking constituency, residents have been the direct victims of construction failures. The Victoria Square development, a new shopping centre with two residential towers and another tower containing a hotel, is a glaring example. It was all built by Sir Robert McAlpine. This development was meant to help my town grow and ensure that we can build new homes and grow our economy. Instead, it has put Woking on the map for all the wrong reasons. The original opening date was meant to be October 2020. However, after cladding failures, it opened at Halloween 2024, and it has continued to be a horror ever since. Cladding panels fell off after the hotel opened, leading to road closures that disrupted local businesses and massively inconvenienced residents in their day-to-day lives. This was next to the town’s main road, an A road. One time the road was closed after being open for just 11 days, because another panel had fallen off. The road was closed during Christmas, and we all know how important that time of year is for businesses. I asked town centre residents and businesses to tell me how this impacted them. One family-owned restaurant told me its bookings had dropped, and unfortunately it had to cut staff hours. A carers agency said its staff were constantly being delayed in delivering necessary care to vulnerable people, all because Sir Robert McAlpine did not build the building properly in the first place. Thankfully, the road has now reopened and the cladding panels have now, only recently, been properly secured. Under the common law of negligence, according to the Chartered Institute of Building, purely economic losses are just not recoverable. However, this could be included under contract law. Why is that not standard practice for building projects? Will the Minister and her Department look at making it standard practice as part of forthcoming legislation? Just a stone’s throw from Victoria Square is another building safety issue in Woking. The Eastgate building has sat abandoned since late 2023, when over 100 residents were evacuated after a report identified significant structural defects. It has been years since then, and the developer says the building is safe. The owner says otherwise. After I got involved last year, independent testing was carried out. Although the testing was completed many months ago, the results still have not been released. There is no way that both sides can be right in this situation. I do not know what they are hiding, but this needs to be resolved immediately. Residents deserve to know what is going on. Does the Minister agree with me that the results of the testing need to be released immediately and that one of the parties must admit it is wrong, whether that means residents being allowed back in and an explanation of why the original structural testing was wrong or the developer needing to rebuild Eastgate and pay compensation? These two examples from my Woking constituency show the pressing need for stricter oversight, stronger retrospective enforcement and clear accountability for those that are responsible. We live in a country where a university degree is needed to become a lawyer or a teacher, and maybe two to be accredited, so it is shocking that I could go to B&Q, buy some materials and become a cowboy builder tomorrow, without a licence. The construction industry is an unregulated wild west. I know the Federation of Master Builders has been calling on the Government to introduce mandatory licensing and testing for UK construction firms. Does the Minister agree, and will the Government include it in forthcoming legislation? I urge the Government to listen.
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Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation
I had better not, given the timings. I urge the Government to listen to Members present and take the necessary steps to deliver the building safety and accountability that people back home in Woking, and across the country, deserve.
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for introducing the debate. As the Member of Parliament for Woking, housing is the top issue in my inbox due to issues such as overcrowding, evictions, problems with bedbugs or mould, and problems with leasehold. We need more and better quality homes in Woking and across the country. There is planning permission for more than 2,000 homes in Woking town centre and the surrounding area, including 1,000 in the EcoWorld site on Goldsworth Road and the 100 in the former Greenfield school site on Brooklyn Road. All those 2,000 homes got planning permission before the pandemic, and none are under construction—absolutely none. None of them are financially viable for the developers, so they are sitting on that land. Recently, the Secretary of State stated that there is a “slim chance” that the Government will hit their target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has raised its concerns about that with the Government before. Instead of tackling the high construction costs that leave sites for new homes abandoned in Woking and across the country, the Government have adopted the concept of “grey belt” to encourage development to meet their housing targets. In one Surrey borough it is believed that 80% of its green belt would be reclassified as grey belt. Woking borough council is doing the same assessment to find out how the reclassification will impact my constituency. I agree with the right hon. and learned Member that the definition of grey belt is too broad. It has been described in a very specific way—with which even the average nimby would have no problem—but it has also been defined in a very broad manner that would, I worry, fundamentally damage our local environments. Last year, I held a public meeting in Mayford to hear from residents about how a large proposed development would impact them. They do not want to see the fields north of Saunders Lane, which are used for recreation and agriculture, turned into a housing estate. People in Maybourne Rise in Mayford do not want to lose their fields either. Residents in Sutton Green are concerned about the green belt being lost there. Rather than unlock sustainable development in Woking and other brownfield locations, the Government have chosen to encourage development in less sustainable locations, where there is no or limited infrastructure. That will damage the local environment; that is what grey belt does. Rather than building in the places that we should be, we are targeting places for housing growth that should be protected for future generations. I ask the Minister, will the Government seek action in the Budget to unlock the brownfield development sites that are stalled, to relieve pressure on nature and on our grey and green belt and build the homes we need? Are the Minister and his colleagues urging the Chancellor to go big in the forthcoming Budget to ensure that it unlocks those development sites? Are the Government looking at reducing tax on development on brownfield sites? Have they ruled out changing the community infrastructure or development contributions? Is everything on the table to try to unlock development, or have they not got that far and are happy to sit on empty construction sites while people on housing waiting lists wait for evermore? If they have not thought about financial measures, will the Minister and the Government consider the Liberal Democrat proposal to introduce “use it or lose it” powers for long-term empty sites? My constituents do not want a town full of empty sites and people sitting on a housing waiting list, while the Government introduce grey belt and damage our environment. I am afraid that, without a change of course—remember that this Government have been happy to U-turn—that is what is going to happen.
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Probation Service: Recruitment and Retention
After releasing a man with a history of domestic violence from prison, the Probation Service told his former partner that he had made threats against both her and her child as he was being released. Unsurprisingly, she now lives in fear. The Probation Service even told my local authority, Woking borough council, that it needs to rehouse her for her own safety. Will the Minister urgently look at this case and agree to increase the probation workforce to ensure that this incident never happens again?
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Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)
Q Would you reject the view that the referral system is exploited? Eleanor Lyons: I would say that, from the evidence that we have seen—this has been looked at across the years by different Select Committees and academics—there is no evidence of widespread misuse of the system. Of the flights that did not go ahead in 2025 after 3 pm, that is less than 1% of the number of potential victims of modern slavery whom we identified in the UK last year. As I mentioned, if you make these sweeping changes in the legislation, you will also have a negative impact on all victims of modern slavery, in particular cases where we have taken too long to identify them. For example, the survivors of al-Fayed have reached out to me, and they have serious concerns, because we failed them; we did not identify them when we should have done. The Bill would have a negative impact on them, too.
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Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)
Q I sit on the Home Affairs Committee and have spoken to your colleagues about smashing the gangs. The NCA has been trying to smash the drug gangs for half a century. Is there anything missing from the Bill that would help you to smash the gangs? What is your view on how far the NCA has progressed in smashing the gangs? Helen Rance: If “smashing the gangs” means reducing small boat crossings, crossings are down this year compared with last year, and the number—
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Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)
Q Do you think that is because the gangs have been smashed? Do you think that is why the reduction has happened? Helen Rance: There is a combination of factors. The law enforcement approach to reducing small boat equipment, to working closely with international partners and to using our international intelligence reach has certainly contributed to that. We would not claim that the work is complete or that we have fixed this, but our efforts have certainly contributed to the reduction in crossings.
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Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)
Q I would like to turn to the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority. I was in Denmark last week—hardly a slouch when it comes to asylum claims. People there were astounded that we were moving from a judicial to an administrative process for judging these matters. What is your view on the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority? Dr Casey: I think that if you want to help bring down the quite large backlog in the tribunal system, you will need more first-instance appellate decision makers. Numbers are hard to come by, but I think there are 90 salaried judges in the first tier tribunal and then an indeterminate number of part-time judges. I think the full number might not be more than 200 or 250—so not a lot when it comes to processing tens of thousands of appeals. If you were to expand the pool of decision makers by requiring less onerous legal qualifications, it would stand to reason that you could recruit more people to process the backlog. That is the positive picture that I imagine the Home Secretary would articulate, and there is a lot to be said for it. But as I see it the risk is that on the current design you just risk moving the backlog. If you have a large pool of people without legal training applying a complicated body of law—extraordinarily complicated: ECHR law, UK domestic law, immigration rules, statutes—they will be more likely to make mistakes and errors of law. Then there would be a right of appeal to the upper tribunal, where there will still be judges. They may then grant more leave to appeal. So you might just relocate the backlog from the first-instance appeal level up to the upper tribunal. That is the risk. I am loath to say things on the hoof about complicated points of designing institutions, but it might not be a choice between having no legal qualifications and being fit for judicial office with over 12 years’ experience. You could simply require some level of legal qualification, and that would still keep the pool of possible decision makers much broader than it is with the first-tier tribunal. Those are just some initial thoughts on that part of the Bill. Professor Ekins: For my part, I think it is too strong to say this is a move from a judicial process to an administrative process. It is certainly a change and, if enacted and put in practice, it moves us closer to a model of departmental adjudication. However, that is still not departmental adjudication, as the relevant adjudicators will be at some distance from the Home Secretary, and they will be adjudicating claims appeals and so on. I think there could be some advantages in the proposed change, namely trying to integrate the process of reviewing particular cases more closely to the immigration and asylum system, and making the public interest in the enforcement of migration law a more pressing consideration. However, there certainly are considerable risks—not least of which, as my colleague has pointed out, is the sheer complexity of this body of law. To my mind, part of the problem with the body of law is the fact that sometimes, in some critical respects, its application turns on the relevant adjudicator’s individuated assessment of the relevant harshness, proportionality, fairness or otherwise of removing this person who is in violation of migration law. That makes things unpredictable, and it makes the disposition of the relevant adjudicators awfully important, which I think will result in more litigation and appeals. Changing the persons who are doing that kind of individuated assessment might well result in a different set of outcomes. I do not know who will be recruited for this, but it is conceivable, for example, that former police officers would constitute persons for appointment. They might well—I do not know—take a different view on the fairness or otherwise of removing some persons whose claims come before them from the view taken by the existing cadre of first-tier tribunal judges. However, the same body of law is being applied, and it is complex—that is certainly true—so I think one can expect a lot of appeals. In addition to that—this a crucial point for the Committee to bear in mind—I think there could be considerable collateral litigation to challenge decisions of the new adjudicative body, and those challenges might be at a high level. If the Bill proceeds into law, when the Home Secretary comes to promulgating secondary legislation and making critical decisions about the structure and operation of the adjudicative body, many of those decisions will be challenged by judicial review. When the adjudicative body is under way, particular decisions will be challenged by way of judicial review, as well as by appeal to the upper tribunal. Clause 1(8) looks like an attempt to limit the judicial involvement in decisions of the adjudicative body to appeals to the upper tribunal only. If that is the intention, with respect, I think it is going to fail. That is not an effective ouster clause. You can certainly expect—and I do—much litigation and ordinary judicial review proceedings challenging particular decisions of the adjudicative body. Although more adjudicative capacity is certainly welcome, and you need that if you are going to deal with the existing and growing backlog, you have to reckon with the risk that it is not quite as straightforward as is hoped.
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Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)
Q Are there examples of other jurisdictions that have tried this? I am thinking of Australia. Professor Ekins: I cannot answer that question offhand, I am afraid. It is certainly the case that different common law and civil law countries take different views, especially those outside the ECHR, of the relevant role of the Department in deciding cases, and the role of courts in reviewing claims about the nature of decision making. Certainly, if you go back not that long ago in our history, you would have had the Home Office making decisions about the application of the relevant migration law. Those decisions would have been subject to judicial supervision, but that would have been supervision with the court thinking, “Has something gone fundamentally wrong here? Is this a misconstrual of the legislation or a perverse decision, which sometimes happens?” What we have now, and have had, effectively, since a pivotal judgment in 2007, is the relevant judicial body thinking that it is its job to decide on the proportionality, fairness or justice of removal, not the Home Secretary’s. The Home Secretary takes her view, but the judge and the court take their view, and it is the court’s view that prevails. That is a different model, and it does not have to be that way.
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Reoffending Reduction Programmes
Restorative justice has a vital role to play in cutting reoffending and supporting victims. I would not be here today, after a violent attack in my home, were it not for a subsequent RJ session. I am consequently very concerned that the Prison and Probation Service has recently issued a protocol that would have denied access to RJ to my family, as well as the family of James Hodgkinson, on whom the play “Punch” is based. As I understand it, no Minister has yet been formally assigned the RJ role in the Ministry of Justice, but when they are, will they meet me and Jacob Dunne, the RJ campaigner and the perpetrator in “Punch”, to help reverse this retrograde step?
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English Whisky: Single Malt Definition
I am really struggling to see what the Government are seeking to achieve by removing the requirement for the whole process to be carried out on a single site. It seems to me that they risk confusing the definition for the Scotch, Welsh and Irish industries, and they undermine the investments that have already been made in the conventional model by other English distilleries. Are the Government trying to create a new market for a different product, and if that is what they are doing, should that not be reflected in its name?
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Reoffending Reduction Programmes
11. What steps he is taking to improve programmes that reduce reoffending.
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Reoffending Reduction Programmes
My local police force is working hard to get youth crime down, as I witnessed when I went out on an op, but reoffending is a real problem. Probation officers and youth justice workers play an essential role in the rehabilitation of young offenders, but in my area, the service was operating with under two thirds of its roles staffed last year. That is mostly due to the high cost of areas like Esher and Walton. A constituent who came to my surgery had been offered a position as a youth justice worker but had waited over six months for employment checks to be made. The Department’s data shows that almost 15,000 candidates are stuck in the vetting pipeline. What is the Minister doing about that?
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Fracking Ban
Perhaps my hon. Friend, like me, saw several screenings of “The People’s Emergency Briefing” over the summer recess. It paints a devastating picture of what will happen if we continue down this route, and that includes fracking. Does she agree that we need a national briefing to educate people on the issue?
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Fracking Ban
I understand that the hon. Gentleman thought the summer, while being the hottest on record, was more of a millionaire’s paradise than the awful situation it was for many in our country. Does he not understand the science of climate change that he is encouraging us to continue to aggravate, or is he simply a flat-earther entirely?
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Fracking Ban
Does the Minister agree that not only did the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) exaggerate the amount of available gas that might be in the UK—less than 10% of such gas is usually recovered, and that normally trails off after a year—but that such gas is not actually pulled out of the ground by nodding donkeys? Typically, a structure called a Christmas tree is used, not the nodding donkeys described by the hon. Gentleman.
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
Stratford-upon-Avon is one of the country’s most important visitor destinations. It attracts millions of visitors each year, supporting local businesses, theatres, heritage attractions and jobs across my constituency. The all-party parliamentary group for hospitality and tourism, of which I am a member, heard evidence that a 5% visitor levy could reduce tourism spending and employment. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that any future levy is subject to meaningful consultation with the sector and local residents, and to the transparent ringfencing of revenues for investment in our local area?
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Croydon Crown Court: Backlogs
16. What steps he is taking to help tackle backlogs at Croydon Crown court.
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Croydon Crown Court: Backlogs
I visited Croydon Crown court recently and saw at first hand the impact that the delays are having on victims. Backlogs across London have increased by 122% over the last decade, which is having a particular impact on domestic abuse and sexual offence victims. Given that, will the Minister consider listening to Liberal Democrat calls to abandon plans to restrict trial by jury and instead create specialist sexual offence and domestic abuse courts so that those sensitive cases can be dealt with as quickly as possible?
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Youth Offending
Social media is being flooded by videos, often shared by young people, glorifying dangerous driving on roads like Beachy Head Road in Eastbourne, where dangerous driving claimed the life of 17-year-old Oakley Meer. While dangerous driving is a crime, its glorification is not necessarily. What steps is the Ministry of Justice taking to crack down on that, working with Ofcom, to achieve justice for Oakley and his family, who are campaigning to make that road safer?
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Trial by Jury
The Lord Chancellor mentioned working with experts in his previous answer. Amnesty International has recently questioned the Government’s human rights assessment of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, describing the proposals as a “dilution of the quality of justice”, particularly in relation to “efforts to combat racial discrimination”. These issues were raised at earlier stages of the Bill, but the Government batted away our concerns. The time is right to change course, prior to the return of the Bill in October. Can the Secretary of State confirm that those concerns are being heard by the Prime Minister while he considers the future of the Bill, and can he guarantee that hon. Members from across the House and experts in the sector will have adequate time to scrutinise the Government’s amendments before we are asked to debate it on the second day back after recess?
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Topical Questions
The Liberal Democrats in the other place have secured an amendment to address the injustice of locked child trust funds for disabled children. The leader of the Liberal Democrats has experience of this issue with his own disabled son, and he has been a passionate campaigner for a change in the law for many years, working with other campaigners such as Andrew Turner. When the amendment comes back to this House, will the Labour Government support it?
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Thirlwall Inquiry: Final Report and Recommendations
I send my heartfelt sympathies and those of my party to all the families who have been so cruelly harmed. I thank Lady Justice Thirlwall for her inquiry and the Secretary of State for early sight of the report. Lady Justice Thirlwall’s final report is a dispiriting and, at times, shocking account of repeated mistakes and failures by organisations and individuals. The conviction of Lucy Letby for these murders and attempted murders sets this investigation apart from others, but while the situation is incredibly distressing, it is also distressingly familiar—a failure to investigate abnormal levels of death or harm; a failure to act on concerns raised and whistleblowing; a failure to follow established protocols for investigating deaths; and a management instinct to cover up failure, and to put the reputation of the hospital above the safety of the babies in it. The importance of stronger whistleblowing mechanisms could not be clearer. There should be a duty of candour for management, as well as medical staff. Will the Government accept my amendments to the Health Bill, requiring boards to call in investigators when they receive reports of malpractice, and giving coroners and medical examiners stronger powers to whistleblow? The review makes it explicit that there must be an external body, such as HSSIB, to investigate trusts. Will the Government now drop the measures in the Health Bill that risk patient safety? Surely the Secretary of State will accept the amendments that we and others have put forward to prevent the abolition of HSSIB, protect Healthwatch and put patient safety first, including through the restoration of the National Guardian’s Office. I am beyond angry that once again we are discussing the recommendations for action following an NHS scandal. It is like groundhog day—we are stuck in an endless cycle of expressing horror and doing nothing, with the reports and recommendations from multiple scandals gathering dust on a shelf in the Department of Health and Social Care. The Thirlwall inquiry cites a “lack of political will” as one of the causes of this cycle. We have a new Secretary of State. Will she promise us that she will be the one to find the will to end this? The families who have suffered such unimaginable loss deserve nothing less.
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Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) on securing today’s important debate and setting out the issue so clearly. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) on all the hard work he is doing to deal with the Halloween horror of panels falling in the town centre. I pay tribute to the 72 victims of the Grenfell disaster. No debate should pass without recognising how grotesquely they were failed by the systems that were meant to protect them. Let us not forget what the public inquiry panel, chaired by the judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, said in its epic report on the disaster. On building inspectors, it said: “We have concluded that the conflict between the regulatory function of building control and the pressures of commercial interests prevents a system of that kind from effectively serving the public interest.” Similarly, it said that the Building Research Establishment “sacrificed rigorous application of principle to its commercial interests.” I will return to commercial interests shortly. The remediation Bill announced in the King’s Speech is expected to make it a legal requirement that every fire risk appraisal of external walls be carried out according to the publicly available specification, or PAS 9980, standard produced by the British Standards Institution. That document decides whether, by law, a leaseholder’s building requires remediation or is considered safe. The final version of that document has only just been published, but the draft that went out to consultation should worry us and every leaseholder in the country, and we need to know whether its deficiencies have been fixed. First, it says: “Failure of a building to meet the benchmarks given in building regulations...at the time when the building was built, should not be used as the sole basis for determining the outcome of the FRAEW.” That means that a building can still pass the PAS 9980 test even if it is proven not to have complied with the building regulations in force when it was built. The fire safety order manages fire safety in occupied buildings on the assumption that they met the building regulations when they were built. The remediation regime should require the same standard that developers should have met when constructing the building, and that others were, and continue to be, required to meet when constructing buildings. What is remediation for if not to make buildings meet the standards they should always have met? Frankly, what is the point of having building regulations for leaseholders in this position if they are not enforced in such clear circumstances? Can the Minister reassure leaseholders that the newly published standard requires the remediation of failures to comply with the building regulations that were in force at the time of construction? Such questions also point to worrying failures to enforce building regulations more generally, far beyond fire safety, which could lead to an unfolding tide of undiscovered construction failings. After what we have heard from Sir Martin Moore-Bick and the panel in the Grenfell public inquiry report, any notion that the profit motive has a continuing role in building inspection following those tragic events is unacceptable and cannot be sustained. I am disappointed that the building control independent panel has recommended the continuation of private sector, and therefore profit-seeking, roles in building inspection. That is what got us into this mess; it will not get us out of it. The Liberal Democrats are calling for building control services to be in-house in local or regional authorities, or otherwise not for profit. As we have heard, the second deficiency in PAS 9980 is the gap between “tolerable” and “low”. Where an appraisal finds a tolerable risk, the draft allows for the work that is needed to bring that risk down to low to be delayed. The commentary on clause 7 suggests “recommending upgrading the performance of external wall components if/when there is any refurbishment of the external walls in future.” If and when is not good enough for families who have to live in unsafe homes and with the knowledge that their external walls contain flammable material, sometimes including materials that are more flammable than that used on Grenfell Tower. The leaseholder pays for that wait in insurance premiums, mortgage difficulties and living in a building that is only partially safe. For too many, it also renders useless the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act, as they apply to unsafe cladding, and this cladding is not considered unsafe. If components are found to pose a tolerable risk, are they unsafe? Why should they not be removed to reduce the risk to low? We have heard about the challenge of getting insurance; if buildings were remediated to the standard to which they should have been built in the first place and all flammable materials were removed, residents would not have any problem in getting insurance. Developers cannot be asked to come back to finish the job under those circumstances, because the developer remediation contract only requires a building to be brought up to the “tolerable” standard. Can the Minister confirm whether the newly published standard requires all the work needed to reach a low-risk outcome to be undertaken at the same time? These are not technical quibbles. The Department’s own figures, published in August, show that of the 4,600 buildings being monitored, only 1,800 have completed remediation, and over 2,000 of the 4,600 required remediations have not even been started, meaning. That means that in 46% of buildings with unsafe cladding no work has begun—nine years on from Grenfell, as other Members have pointed out—and the Department estimates that somewhere between 1,100 and 2,600 more buildings are in scope but have not yet been identified. Meanwhile, leaseholders continue to struggle under the cladding crisis, buying properties that they believed met safety standards but that they now realise do not, and are suffering huge increases in premiums and so on. Many developers and building owners have passed on the cost of remediation work to tenants and leaseholders, putting many of them, quite unfairly, in serious financial peril. The Liberal Democrats, following the policy passed by our conference last year on the great property rip-off, are therefore calling for the removal of all such flammable cladding, whether above or below 11 metres, as soon as possible and without tenants or leaseholders, including non-qualifying leaseholders, having to pay. After all, those who bought leases placed their trust in the private companies and regulatory bodies that let them down. The fault was not theirs. Solicitors’ searches would have shown that buildings had not met building regulations. Homeowners were misled, and it was not their fault. They should not have to pay a penny towards that work. That is why my noble Friend Baroness Pinnock’s Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill, which had its Second Reading in the other place on Friday, would protect leaseholders in buildings of any height and would put developers, contractors and manufacturers on the hook for the cost. In conclusion, I ask the Minister six things. Will she set out the changes between the consultation draft and the recent version of PAS 9980, which was published the other day? Will she make it clear that a building that has been found to fail the building regulations that were in force when it was built must be remediated back to the building regulations standard, and that the work needed to reach a low-risk outcome should be done once, not deferred to some future refurbishment? Will leaseholder protections be extended to every leaseholder in every defective building, including the hundreds of thousands excluded from the building safety regime? Will the Government commit to driving profit-making commercial interest out of every part of building control inspections and official product testing certifications, and to making physical inspections the norm once again in every development? What more will the Government do to end delays at the Building Safety Regulator? Finally, will the Government confirm that the remediation Bill will provide for cladding manufacturers to be pursued for their share of the costs of remediation, which they have at least partly caused? We welcomed the legally enforceable duty to remediate on pain of criminal sanction, and we still do, but a duty to remediate is only as good as the standard against which it is measured. Commercial interest should have no place in policing commercial projects for safety and building regulations. Residents in Taunton and Wellington, in London and across the country deserve nothing less. Above all, the victims of the terrible and avoidable disaster at Grenfell deserve justice.
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for bringing to the House an important debate on an issue that affects a lot of our constituencies. I also thank all the Members who contributed today, including my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster)—indeed, I thank him for contributing in this Chamber for the second time today. The Liberal Democrats want to see more homes built, principally the 150,000 council and social rent homes that the country needs, but the right way to deliver those homes is by working with communities and trusting them, and prioritising brownfield sites, the 700,000 empty homes in the country, and the 500,000 homes that could be provided in empty commercial buildings, according to the London School of Economics. When it comes to the green belt, few of us, and certainly not the Liberal Democrats, would object to a community deciding, through its democratic local plan, to release formerly green-belt land for its own reasons, and particularly for social homes. But the Government’s grey-belt policy is not that. It is being abused, giving carte blanche to development pretty much anywhere and, as it is currently set out in the national planning policy framework, it has to go. We were told that “grey belt” meant disused car parks and old petrol stations, but the CPRE has found that, in the first year, 88% of homes approved on the grey belt at appeal were on land that had never been built on, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam also pointed out. In this Chamber in July, the Minister told us: “The definition of grey belt is set out in the glossary of the NPPF.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 466WH.] There is a definition there, but for me it has more holes than a Swiss cheese. It omits to protect two of the green belt’s five purposes—safeguarding the countryside from encroachment and recycling derelict land. Because the purposes that are left do not apply to villages, it has also removed villages from the green-belt protections that they have had for more than a century, so a field on the edge of a green-belt village is very likely to be grey belt. Developers know it and are trying their luck. On 7 September, the Secretary of State told the House that she is “strengthening and clarifying the rules around the release of grey belt”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 643.] If there is no confusion, what is being clarified? The answer so far has been to take the test for protected landscapes out of the definition altogether. That widens the grey belt rather than tightening it. On the same day, the Minister confirmed that the Government do not collect data on how much land councils have identified as grey belt. Will the Minister commit to collecting that? My hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) asked for that last October. The new national planning policy framework requires every green-belt council to plan for grey-belt releases, allocated in its local plan. But since the Government’s grey-belt rules allow any developer to apply for grey-belt development on any site, whether or not it has been allocated as grey belt in the local plan, there can be little point in pretending that the local plan approach is the only one, or that grey-belt development is, in any sense, being plan led. Developers do not need a grey-belt policy to redevelop an old petrol station in any event. Redeveloping previously developed land in the green belt has been allowed since 2012, if not longer, as long as it does not harm openness more than the development previously there. What grey belt adds is the field next to it, and it is decided at appeal, rather than through the local plan—that is, rather than by the local community. That is another instance where community powers have been stripped away in what the Town and Country Planning Association has called an “unprecedently permissive” planning regime. This policy comes into play where there is unmet need—in practice, where a council cannot show a five-year land supply. In Somerset, the Government are mandating that another 75,000 homes—a 41% increase—should be found in the next local plan. I have not met anyone who believes that is realistic or achievable. The targets are derived from the Government’s new standard method, which has in one fell swoop thrown much of England under the threat of development, as the majority of councils cannot meet such impossible targets under the new standard method. It would take them the two-year local plan process to escape that threat, and millions of pounds to boot. This could be called a developer’s charter but, unfortunately, many of these sites are not being developed, so it is more of a land speculator’s charter. Developers, not the community, end up selecting which part of the green belt is up for grabs. Villages are hit hardest, not just because they have lost their green-belt protection but because for many, if not all, the new targets have undermined the one thing that has reliably delivered affordable homes for local people in rural areas: rural exception sites. Last week, I brought to the House an example from an inspector’s decision in Gweek, Cornwall. The Minister told us in July that the framework makes exception sites easier. In reality, exception sites work where agricultural land that is worth, say, £12,000 an acre cannot be sold for a higher price for commercial housing due to strict planning rules, so it might as well be allowed to be sold for agricultural value, or a little more, for social housing that helps the village. The Government, however, have now told every landowner around villages and elsewhere that their acre could be worth not just £12,000 but anything from £150,000 to £3 million—the price of land with residential permission—because those strict planning policy preventions no longer apply, and because anyone can apply for it to be developed as grey belt anywhere in the green belt. If a landowner is told that their field might be grey belt, why would they sell it for £12,000 for social housing, when they could get £150,000 or more? It would definitely be more in the home counties and near London. Hope value has always been the enemy of exception sites, and the way that the grey belt has been implemented has created hope value around every village and green belt—so goodbye to social housing on such exception sites. Building the kind of homes that villages lack just got harder. We do agree on the golden rules, which rightly require more affordable and social housing where green-belt land is released. That is absolutely right, but it does not mean that valuable green spaces should be up for grabs. Ironically, an area with no green belt can be better protected from some of these policies, but that does not mean that our green spaces in Taunton and Wellington are safe. In Taunton, we have green wedges—countryside running right into the town and doing the job that the green belt does elsewhere—but those spaces have only local policy protection. Earlier this year, consultants recommended releasing Trull green wedge from its green wedge status, ironically because it was the last bit of green remaining in a built-up area. That is something that, in my opinion, made it more valuable not less. An application for 125 homes quickly followed, because the council, like most in England, cannot meet its new five-year land supply. Our councillors rightly refused the application. Fortunately, it was under the 150 homes limit, above which councillors must now ask Whitehall’s permission to refuse a development. The appeals public inquiry has just begun showing how thin green wedge protection is. The green belt, green wedges and local green spaces can all be weakened by the next rewriting of the framework, without this House having a vote. In the Liberal Democrats’ view, all communities—not just those in the green belt—should have a stronger and longer-lasting way to protect their most precious green spaces. What should we do instead? First, we should scrap the grey belt and instead release green-belt land through community-led local plans, with the golden rules applying in full and with social homes at their heart. Secondly, we should keep the long-standing exception for previously developed land, and make brownfield-first a legal requirement. Thirdly, we should give communities who review their green belt 20 years’ statutory protection for the green wedges and green belt that they prioritise. That would give them confidence that, instead of a free-for-all, their most precious green spaces will be protected in law for the long term. If people are to accept the homes that we need—and we do need them—they must have confidence in the protection for the bits of green space that are most precious to them and most dear to those communities, as our amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 set out. We were promised that the grey belt would turn old petrol stations into homes, but what it is actually delivering is the loss of green field after green field, as decided by the Government’s policy issued in Whitehall. It is time to scrap it and put communities back in charge of their green belt and their green spaces.
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
The Minister is always generous with his time and in responding to interventions, which is appreciated by all of us. If the intention is that this should be a plan-led approach, will he remove the provisions in the NPPF that allow developers to claim that their land is grey belt through an application by reference to the policies that have been put in the NPPF for such grey belt decisions to be made outside of the local plan process through individual planning applications?
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Rapid Deployment Cells Programme
The Ministry of Justice will be able to deliver its rapid deployment cells building programme more quickly if it completes other programmes. Taunton Crown court has been closed since 2023, and the closure has just been extended. In March, I received a letter saying that the long-promised opening date in July was now cancelled, and that in due course I would receive an update. I have not received any update. Victims and jurors are having to travel extra tens of miles—30 or 40 miles—without public transport, which is a real burden on them. An exacerbating issue is the fact that jury recompense has not been updated since 2010. Will the Minister look into this issue, and also address jury recompense?
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
Several times, the Minister has referenced other European countries having a tourist tax, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) highlighted, those countries have much lower tax rates for hospitality overall. Will the Minister commit to reducing VAT on hospitality? Secondly, on the tourist tax, will he clarify whether the levy will be listed separately to the price of the room, so that those who use those facilities have clarity and transparency?
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Ocean Conservation and Stewardship
I had the pleasure of going out with some non-governmental organisations and marine conservation groups into the Lyme bay marine protected area, which has been protected from bottom trawling for over a decade. We had an opportunity to take a drone down to the seabed to see exactly how quickly nature can recover when we remove artificial barriers such as bottom trawling. There are now reefs and fish, but more than anything, the marine protected area now provides a sustainable business for local fishermen because the fish population has improved. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need more of these conservation areas in order to allow British fisheries to recover?
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Civil Service Pension Scheme
Since Capita took over the administration of the civil service pension scheme, about 8,500 retired civil servants have experienced delays or failures in their pension payments. There are many in my constituency of West Dorset—many of them widows or ex-servicepeople—and many of them are having to take out hardship loans. We have seen delays, inaccurate calculations, enormous backlogs and, more recently, a data breach affecting 138 members in which some received other members’ annual benefit statements. The Public Accounts Committee warned in 2025 that Capita was not ready to take on this contract. I recognise that the Government have introduced a recovery plan, including interest-free hardship loans and additional surge teams, but a hardship loan is not a pension, not compensation and not a substitute for people receiving the money that they are owed after decades of public service. I hope that the Minister will tell us today what the Government intend to do to rectify this.
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Topical Questions
T8. Citizens Advice offices in Bridport and Dorchester are reporting huge demand for their services as a result of cuts to legal aid, especially in housing, welfare and immigration law. What steps is the Minister taking to restore sustainable legal aid provision and ensure that rural advice services are properly funded?
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Topical Questions
There has long been a proven link between people deliberately harming animals and then committing domestic abuse. The Links Group has researched and highlighted that link for 25 years and is having a special conference later this year to mark this. Will the Minister agree to meet me and the Links Group so that we can draw on its 25 years of expertise to help prevent avoidable harm to women, children and even animals?
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Sepsis Awareness Month
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) for so vividly highlighting his personal experience of sepsis. He gave a very emotional speech and it is good to see him in the Chamber looking so healthy. Around one in five deaths worldwide are associated with sepsis—that is 11 million deaths a year. I recently met Ron Daniels, founder and chief medical officer of the UK Sepsis Trust, to discuss the new sepsis modern service framework. I very much welcome its ambition to reduce deaths, life-threatening complications and the long-term impact of sepsis by at least 25% over the next decade, but if we are serious about achieving that, we need to get much better at detecting infection early. Sepsis is the body’s extreme response to infection, whether viral, bacterial or fungal. It can cause organ failure, permanent disability and death. Crucially, patients can deteriorate incredibly quickly. There is no single diagnostic test for sepsis; its symptoms overlap with many other conditions and clinicians are often having to make decisions with incomplete information. That is why rapid diagnostic tests are so important. I recently held a meeting at Winchester hospital for local GPs, the local authority, laboratories and manufacturers of various rapid diagnostic tests to look at the barriers to implementing rapid diagnostic tests, and at how people can have them in the community for earlier diagnosis and the prevention of hospital admissions. Better diagnostics mean earlier treatment. They mean being able to use the right antibiotic for the right infection; they mean preventing patients deteriorating into sepsis; and they mean using fewer unnecessary antibiotics, which ultimately can result in antimicrobial resistance developing and is another huge growing public health concern. Prevention matters too. We must reverse the falling vaccination rates that we have seen in recent years to prevent infections occurring in the first place, as well as ensuring that hospitals have the facilities to isolate and care properly for infectious patients. Crucially, it also means tackling corridor care and long waits in A&E, because when somebody is deteriorating in those conditions, every hour matters, as we know. In the case of corridor care and long waits, that means that diagnosis and treatment is more likely to be delayed. I wish to talk specifically about one group of patients—cancer patients. We rightly focus on treating the cancer itself, but infection, often sepsis, is the second-biggest cause of death for people with cancer. That may seem surprising, but cancer can cause a reduction in people’s immunity. Chemotherapy and various treatments cause people to become immunocompromised, weakening their immune system and making them more prone to getting infections. That also means repeat infections, which means that they are more likely to have repeat uses of antibiotics and to have antibiotic-resistant infections. The consequences of infection for people with cancer can be even more serious. That is why I find one omission from the Government’s national cancer plan quite striking. It is an 86-page strategy setting out how we are going to transform cancer care by 2035, yet infection is mentioned only once, and that is just in the foreword. That is not a minor oversight; it is a glaring omission that risks undermining the entire cancer strategy. We would never produce a cancer strategy that treated radiotherapy, chemotherapy or surgery as peripheral to cancer care, so we need to ensure that we are treating infection, which is the second-biggest killer of cancer patients, as integral to cancer care. Infection prevention, rapid diagnostics, antimicrobial stewardship and surveillance need to be absolutely central to cancer care, not an afterthought. If we fail to address infection properly, we are setting the entire new cancer strategy up to fail. Sepsis contributes to tens of thousands of deaths in the UK each year, as well as leaving many survivors with life-changing physical and psychological consequences. I have one specific request of the Government. Will the Minister commit to updating the national cancer strategy to incorporate infection control, sepsis and rapid diagnostic tests as being absolutely integral to cancer management? We welcome the new sepsis modern service framework; we just need to deliver it.
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Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation
I beg to move, That this House has considered the building safety remediation of residential buildings. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and all right hon. and hon. Members for their participation. More than nine years after Grenfell claimed all those lives, we must ask whether the system that is intended to protect residents and deliver the safety and security they deserve is truly working. There has been progress. The Building Safety Act 2022, the Building Safety Regulator and remediation funding have strengthened our collective national response, but legislation must lead to safer homes, funding must lead to completed works and residents must be able to move forward with their lives. Today, I will address three interconnected issues: the protection of residents during remediation, the operation of PAS 9980 and the competence of those making critical safety decisions, and the position of non-qualifying leaseholders. I will begin by drawing on an experience directly connected to my constituency. Surrey Heath is, by any definition, a semi-rural consistency, where one would not necessarily have expected this issue to rear its head, yet the correspondence reaching my office from Camberley, our principal market town, shows how deeply the problem affects ordinary households across the UK. We must judge the system by the experience of the residents who depend on it. At Dorchester Court, one of my constituents has lived in their shared ownership home for 20 years. They are unwell, unemployed and at risk of losing that home. They need to sell, but unresolved building safety and EWS1 issues have taken that choice away. Another resident has lost two prospective buyers because lenders would not offer mortgages on that property. Cala Homes, the original developer, has accepted full responsibility for life-critical remediation, but residents say that they still have no clear timetable for those works to be delivered or completed. Accepting responsibility is only the beginning. Until the required work is completed, residents remain trapped. It is a repeat pattern across the country. People need to move because of illness, unemployment, caring responsibilities or just simple changes in family circumstances. Their lives cannot be placed on hold indefinitely while developers, building owners and managing agents decide what happens next.