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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Mr Alistair Carmichael
Rewiring the State
The transition to clean energy could be an opportunity to build a different model that would, to use the First Secretary of State’s own words, end “overly centralised decision making and over-privatisation”. Development thus far has simply concentrated power in the hands of the big corporates and left communities feeling left behind and disempowered. In Shetland, we host one of the largest onshore wind farms in the country, but we have the highest levels of fuel poverty, and last year the developer SSE was paid £9 million in constraint payments not to generate electricity—that is regulatory madness. In this rewired state, will the communities that host renewable energy developments have control and get direct financial benefit from them?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Max Wilkinson
Rewiring the State
The First Secretary mentioned the heroics of firefighters during the summer. Gloucestershire fire and rescue service was involved in fighting the wildfires, even though we did not have any within our county boundaries, but the funding pressures on the fire service in Gloucestershire are now so acute that Cheltenham West fire station will be closed overnight if the consultation proposals are accepted. That cannot be right when we know we are going to be having more wildfires, perhaps even in Gloucestershire. Will the First Secretary have a chat with her colleagues in MHCLG to work out how we can get the support that the county fire service and the county council need to keep Cheltenham West fire station open overnight?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Manuela Perteghella
Rewiring the State
I, too, warmly welcome the First Secretary of State to her place. Last month, my constituents experienced wildfires, including the major incident in the parish of Salford Priors where Warwickshire fire and rescue service worked through extremely challenging conditions to protect homes and save lives. I pay tribute to all the firefighters, ambulance crew and those from the local community who assisted. Given the increasing frequency of heatwaves and drought and the severity of wildfires, particularly in rural areas where access to water is challenging and gaining access to burning fields is difficult, will she tell the House what urgent actions are being taken to better protect rural communities, farmland and natural habitats from future wildfire risk?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Manuela Perteghella
Representation of the People Bill
The Bill gives us a real chance to defend and strengthen our democracy, and although it is not in the scope of the Bill, I hope that the Government will look in future legislation at electoral reform and proportional representation. I have tabled new clauses 20 and 21 and supported many amendments because the Bill as it stands does not go far enough. New clause 21 enshrines in the Bill the principle of a cap on political donations. It is time to kick big money, foreign or domestic, out of British politics, and restore public trust in our political system. As I have said previously, the people of this country, not the deep pockets of billionaires—foreign or otherwise—or corporate interests, should decide our country’s future in elections and referendums. I welcome the Government amendment on donations from overseas electors, but at present there is no limit at all on how much a single individual in the UK can give to a political party. New clause 21 would require the Secretary of State to set an annual cap on political donations, informed by an independent review, so we can ensure that the cap is sustainable. The Bill’s title is “Representation of the People”. New clause 20 would extend the parliamentary franchise—that representation—to qualifying EU citizens and to foreign nationals with a right to enter or remain in the UK, and would extend the local government franchise in England on that same basis. Having leave to remain does not automatically give someone the right to vote, no matter how long they have been in the UK, and we now have different franchises in relation to EU citizens living in the UK following Brexit. That means that millions of residents have no right to vote at all. Like many of us, I represent a constituency where people who have lived here for years, who pay their taxes, work in our hospitals and run our businesses, still have no vote in the elections that decide who represents them. Residents pay council tax but some of them cannot vote on who is going to be in charge of their refuse collection. As the old American revolution slogan goes, “taxation without representation is tyranny.” Voting based on residency rights means that democratic participation is extended fully to people across the whole of British society. I want to set out where else I think the Bill needs to go further, because the argument runs the same way throughout: open up participation and representation, close down improper or malign influence, restore trust in our politics, and raise the standards for the campaigns we run. On widening participation and making voting genuinely accessible, I want to see a proper feasibility study into overseas voting, because British citizens abroad still face real, practical barriers to casting a ballot. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on citizens’ rights, I have heard from British electors living abroad about the challenges and barriers they face just to exercise their right. I support the Government extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. That is really brilliant news for our young people and for representation. I welcome the case for automatic registration, so that the right to vote does not depend on people navigating forms. On the integrity of political money, which is where I believe the Bill still has the most to tackle, the same logic that applies to new clause 21 applies with even more costs. The loopholes that currently let donations flow from foreign Administrations, from those linked to political violence and from undeclared foreign income and corporate interests, like those fossil fuel companies, have no place in our politics and I want them closed. I fully support closing the loophole currently exploited by non-permissible donors giving in small amounts, and I support tightening the rules on cryptoasset donations, which are far too easy to hide. Parties should be required to carry out proper due diligence on where donations actually come from, and I support a proper independent look at spending limits. Finally, on standards and the world in which we now campaign, candidates deserve proper safety guidance. AI-generated campaign material must be honestly labelled, and I want the Electoral Commission to have strong powers over online harms and disinformation, along with proper measures against foreign interference. Our democracy should be open to everyone who lives under its laws, and closed to the money, undue influence and manipulation that nobody voted for.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Luke Taylor
Representation of the People Bill
Will the hon. Lady give way for a constructive question?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Luke Taylor
Representation of the People Bill
I thank the hon. Lady for her patience. Does she see the conflict between addressing problems with family voting, which may well be caused by members of a family not having English as their first language, or as a language at all, and therefore needing to be informed in a language that they are comfortable with, and taking steps to restrict information being produced in a language that enables a family member to understand the arguments that are being made in an election? We can all agree that understanding the English language, which the vast majority of us speak, learning it and having access to it is important for integration, but does she not agree that these measures will have two conflicting outcomes? One is to restrict communication with all members of a family; the other is to ban their influence.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Luke Taylor
Representation of the People Bill
I will speak in favour of new clause 88, tabled by the Liberal Democrats, which would require the Government to establish a royal commission on political donations and campaign expenditure. It would examine the case for a donations cap review and whether existing campaign spending limits remain effective, and would report back within 12 months. Crucially, it would take account of the modern flavours of old challenges, because money can now shape political debate through social media platforms, algorithmic amplification, third-party campaigning and political advertising that can reach millions of voters almost immediately. When we knock on doors in our constituencies, or even when they are only our prospective constituencies, we are taking part in the most important act of our democratic system. We are listening to the concerns of citizens. We are empowering them to test us on our politics and to push us to champion their causes, and through taking forward the electorate’s concerns, we are giving them a voice. The principle is simple: one citizen, one vote. It is the basis of a democratic system. If a voter is particularly taken by our arguments, they may choose to donate to us to cover the cost of those snappy little pamphlets we leave behind in our wake, which some on the Liberal Democrat Benches are particularly passionate about. At this point, I will explain something that we did in Sutton to welcome the huge number of Hongkongers who moved to our borough and to my constituency over the last few years. We produced leaflets in their local language, so that those who did not have particularly strong English skills could read the information about our political party. They had travelled here, escaping the Communist regime to take part in a democratic process, and escaping the crackdown on democratic rights in Hong Kong. I invite an intervention from the Conservative Benches to explain why that communication, in a language that was understood by those who had not long been in our country and did not have the language skills to understand the English leaflets, is such a bad thing. There are none. When our election laws were written, donations to political parties would have probably have been covered by the existing laws. Maybe a big local donor would pay for an advertising board, or for posters and a loudspeaker on the roof rack of a clapped-out old Volvo of the kind that my dad used to go around his prospective constituency in the ’90s. However, our citizens still held the levers of power relatively directly. Today, the spending in our politics, and therefore the influence and power of money and donors, has shifted so dramatically that the question is how we rise to the challenge of constantly having to patch the cracks and the potholes in our outdated election law. If we fail to answer that question, we condemn the voting public to powerlessness, as those with the deepest pockets and strongest influence rip our hands off the wheel of the ship of state. We cannot fail to address the modern challenges first posed by those who bankrolled the Brexit campaign, who promised to give back control to the public and then handed it straight to their oligarch friends. For those reasons, I was disappointed the Government did not use this Bill to introduce a meaningful cap on political donations. Wealthy individuals are increasingly able to spend sums that would be completely beyond the reach of ordinary voters, while public confidence in the way politics is funded remains extremely weak. We can see how members of two parties in this Chamber have received more than £56,000 through X, a company owned by the very model of a modern fascist oligarch. It has an algorithm that he designs and the payments are therefore decided and funnelled directly to those political actors. There will always be those with bigger pockets who can make a larger contribution to political parties and projects than others. The vast majority do so for the right, philanthropic or ideological, reasons. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) has given a passionate explanation of why political donation through unions, with proper controls, is absolutely an appropriate way to deliver political support and political power to those groups of people who need that representation the most. However, when money has been flowing in from those who would do our country harm and who want to rip control of the state away from the voting public and turn our nation into a Russian-style oligarchy, and when democratic institutions are just shopfronts for a nefarious state captured by the rich and powerful, we cannot stand idly by. That is why new clause 88 is so important.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Luke Taylor
Representation of the People Bill
On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing the debate and on the vim and vigour with which he introduced it. Ten years on, we can now see the devastating impact that the referendum had on this country—not just on our economy, but on the integrity of our democracy and political debate. Since June 2016, we have had seven Prime Ministers in a decade. We have had a Parliament that could not resolve the question in front of it, a Government who prorogued this House unlawfully to get round it and a public who have watched the whole spectacle and drawn the obvious conclusion that our political system is broken. The Conservatives put a question to the country that they had not thought through. They lost control of the answer and then spent years arguing among themselves about what it meant while the rest of the country paid for it. Into that vacuum walked the people who benefit from it. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) has built an entire career on a promise he never had to deliver and now takes no responsibility for. He and others like him told the public that leaving would let us take back control of our borders. Since then, over 200,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats. Before the referendum, there were no small boat crossings. They created the conditions, and they now travel to Dover to be photographed pointing at the result.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
I will willingly give way on whether 2016 was before 2018.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
My point is that there were no small boat crossings before the 2016 referendum. I think the hon. Gentleman is agreeing with me on that. British GDP is between 6% and 8% smaller than it would otherwise have been. Investment has been reduced by between 12% and 18%. Employment and productivity are each down by 3% to 4%. Estimates from the House of Commons Library, those well-known doughty remain campaigners, put the cost to the Exchequer somewhere in the region of £90 billion a year in tax revenue that is simply not there. Every Minister who stands at the Dispatch Box and says that money is not available is describing a hole that has been enlarged as a result of Brexit. That is £90 billion a year that could be used for projects across the country to support our constituents. It could be used to fund renovations to my Stepping Hill hospital, the rail services my constituents wait for every morning or cleaning up our waterways so that sewage stops being pumped into the Goyt or the Mersey. My hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) mentioned the nearly 2 billion extra pieces of paperwork that now sit on British firms—enough to wrap around the world 15 times. Tighter border restrictions with our European neighbours devastated our hauliers, with more than double the number of insolvencies seen between 2021 and 2025 than in the previous five years. In our food and farming sector, exports to the EU have fallen by 22% since 2018, which is close to £4 billion in lost trade. The question for the House is, “What do we do now?” Ministers know that the relationship with Europe is the biggest lever available to them. Their response so far has been to make small adjustments around the edges of a bad deal. They have ruled out the single market and a customs union, drawing red lines around two things that would make a material difference. On fisheries, the Government have made things worse. The EU came asking for a five-year extension to the arrangements in the 2020 trade and co-operation agreement, and this Government agreed to 12 years. That is a loss worth around £6 billion over the period at today’s prices, down not only to the previous Government but to this Labour Government. Being timid is a political choice, and it has political consequences. When mainstream parties refuse to name the cause of a problem, the field is left to those who offer easy answers and no substantive solutions. The Lib Dems are offering something different. We want a growth and defence partnership with Europe. That would mean joining the single market and a UK-EU customs union, so that our businesses can trade again without drowning in red tape. It would mean a proper UK-EU defence pact. We currently sit outside EU decision making and outside funding streams such as the European Defence Fund and the Security Action for Europe loan programme, at the precise moment when Vladimir Putin is testing this continent’s resolve and the White House is reneging on international commitments. We want a new European security council, British participation in SAFE and a European rearmament bank to support collective rearmament. Our security does not stop at Dover, and it never has. We are also calling for the UK to join the EU’s migration and asylum pact, so that we can return people who arrive by small boat to the first EU country they entered, and so that we can see the biometric data that tells us whether someone has already been refused asylum elsewhere. That is how we actually take back control of our borders, rather than shouting about it on a beach. Finally, we should fix the politics that produced this. A system that hands total power to a party with a minority of the vote and then dares it to govern for everyone will keep generating exactly this kind of instability. The Liberal Democrats want proportional representation through the single transferable vote at local and general elections. We want a second Chamber with a democratic mandate. We want the big money taken out of politics. We want the Electoral Commission protected from ministerial direction and serious measures against foreign interference in our elections and referendums. From the cost of living to our broken public services, the result of the 2016 EU referendum stands in the way of making things better, and we have to fix it. Ten years on, it is clear that it has negatively impacted the UK, and I would be really grateful if the Minister could tell us today just what it would take for this Government to move their red lines.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
Rewiring the State
I thank the First Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement, and warmly welcome her to her place. The Liberal Democrats strongly agree that the political system is overly centralised. We believe that the best decisions are taken closest to the people they affect, but renewing communities must also mean giving councils the powers and resources that they need to revitalise our high streets, support independent businesses and improve local public services. After years of severe financial pressure, devolution cannot simply mean transferring responsibilities from Whitehall without the funding necessary to deliver them. The First Secretary mentioned national resilience. That is about whether the lights stay on, whether the shelves stay stocked, and whether a family in Hazel Grove can get through a week or more of serious destruction without losing their livelihood. The covid inquiry was blunt: it found that we were ill prepared for an emergency, never mind a pandemic. Those failures cost lives, and people deserve to know that lessons have been acted on, rather than filed away. There is certainly progress to welcome. We have the resilience action plan, the UK Resilience Academy, and Exercise Pegasus, which was the largest pandemic exercise this country has ever run. Those are steps that my party has long called for, but announcements are not preparedness. I would welcome hearing from the First Secretary what plans she has to improve public awareness and understanding of what the whole of society needs to do to be ready. We are in an increasingly uncertain world, so will the Government think again on digital sovereignty, so that the critical systems that our constituents rely on are not dependent on suppliers that this country cannot control? I strongly agree with the First Secretary that this country has a broken political system. Later this afternoon, we will debate the Representation of the People Bill, which is meant to fix that. It takes some steps in the right direction, but fails to rise to the moment. Does she agree that there is still so much more to do, starting with halting the scourge of big money that is poisoning our democracy by capping political donations and bringing in a fairer voting system? We need to fix our politics so that we can get on with fixing the country. I have heard her talk previously in this House about moving fast and fixing things. I urge her to crack on.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
Representation of the People Bill
I wonder whether the shadow Secretary of State sees a certain irony in attempting to legislate for linguistic purity in a language that, for over a millennium, has borrowed vocabulary ad hoc from other languages, such as Italian, Latin and French, and in a Bill that talks about elections, referendums, vetoes and manifestos. There is perhaps more than a little hint of irony in what she is proposing.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
Representation of the People Bill
Let me begin by putting on record my thanks to the Minister, who I very much welcome to her place. In particular, I thank her predecessor, the hon. Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who has shown with her comments today the grace and thoughtfulness with which she conducted herself throughout the whole process. We did not agree on everything in the Bill Committee—indeed, all members of the Bill Committee did not agree—but we conducted our discussions with good grace and occasionally a hint of humour. I am grateful for the work that the other members of the Bill Committee put in, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), who led for us on all matters to do with candidate safety and candidates, given her hugely relevant experience as a member of the Speaker’s Conference. It would be remiss of me not to share the gratitude of the House for Philip Rycroft’s efforts in conducting his review, the recommendations from which have given this legislation more teeth than it started out with. I do not think it will surprise anyone, however, that we Liberal Democrats think much more could and should be done. The political freedoms and assurances we have relied upon for decades are increasingly vulnerable to insidious, hostile actors. We saw an entirely unnecessary by-election over the summer. It was a waste of taxpayers’ money and was brought about by a resignation whose circumstances are under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Our rules should not permit a Member under investigation to trigger a by-election and then walk straight back in here at the public’s expense, and that is precisely what new clause 79 in my name would prevent. However, I do not believe it was selectable, so I will move on. That saga was yet another example of how big money is infiltrating our politics, with millions of pounds paid to politicians, uncapped donations and direct payments for inflammatory social media posts. It is totally disfiguring our politics. We have to tackle big money wherever it comes from, and that is a major omission from the Bill. New clause 88 would require the Secretary of State, within three months of Royal Assent, to publish proposals for a royal commission to consider a cap on political donations and the level at which that cap should be set, and whether existing limits on campaign expenditure and the period over which they bite are still fit for purpose. It would require those proposals to cover terms of reference, membership and funding, and the commission would have to report within 12 months. It is a straightforward request. It does not demand or impose limits without buy-in. It does not ask any Member to sign up to a particular figure. It takes a conversation that has been going on for the better part of 20 years or more, and gives it a proper remit, a proper deadline and a proper independent home. I want to be fair to the Government, because over the summer things have moved in a positive direction. I welcome the Prime Minister’s words about the defending democracy taskforce yesterday, but we need to hear more detail about how it will function, particularly around money coming into political parties in and around our politics, how its recommendations will come into force and, importantly, when they will come into force. The threat is real, the threat is now, and urgent action is vital. We have tabled further amendments on money in politics. New clauses 9 and 10 would introduce barriers on who can donate, preventing donations from those who are or have been members of, or political advisers to, foreign Administrations and those convicted of promoting or inciting political violence. New clauses 11 and 12 would require candidates and parties to declare and mitigate the risk of foreign-linked donations. Taken together, they are a natural extension of the “know your donor” scheme, which this Bill enhances. We should know exactly who funds us, and the public have that right, too. Money is not the only way in which influence is bought. We now live in a world where a handful of people own the platforms and write the algorithms that decide what millions of our constituents see about politics every day. When the owner of a social media platform can openly discuss handing tens of millions of pounds to a British political party, the danger is in plain sight, and the Bill does not meet the moment. The Government chose to reject sensible amendments on deepfakes, AI-generated content and the clear labelling of digital campaign material. Those were not wrecking amendments; they were an offer of cross-party work on a threat that is moving faster than we are legislating. I ask the Government even now to commit to the real-time disclosure of donations and a publicly searchable database of every pound spent on online political advertising, so that voters can see who is trying to influence them and with whose money. That will be more important as we extend the franchise. The Lib Dems warmly welcome the introduction of votes at 16. Indeed, we have campaigned on it for decades, but we are concerned that the current voter registration system does not work well for young people. If we want votes at 16 to be a success, we need the voter registration improvements that the Bill enables to be implemented in time for the next general election. I would welcome hearing some reassurance from the Minister, when she is winding up, that they will be in place for the next general election. My final point is the one that, I feel, matters the most. This Bill tidies the rules of the game, but it leaves the game itself untouched. There is no silver bullet for fixing our politics—it requires will, consensus and graft—but one thing that is shared by dozens and dozens of Members across the House is the understanding of the need for fairer votes. We cannot have a conversation about representing the people without addressing the elephant in the room: we have a voting system that handed one party two thirds of the seats in this House on barely a third of the vote. Millions of people cast ballots that changed nothing and elected no one, and then they are told to have faith in the result. I therefore tabled new clause 8 to bring in proportional representation for elections across the United Kingdom. It details the way in which a fairer voting system could be implemented, and it is disappointing that the Government have not taken the opportunity the Bill presents to rise to the occasion. First past the post is unfair and unrepresentative, and lets Governments take voters for granted. No amount of tightening around the edges fixes a system that was out of date a century ago. Despite identifying the crisis of confidence in our political system in their 2024 manifesto, this Government have yet to back even modest steps towards making our voting system fairer, such as a national commission on electoral reform, as detailed in new clause—
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
Representation of the People Bill
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for confirming that the Government are putting forward a piece of legislation written in such a way that it prohibits proportional representation and fairer votes from being discussed on the Floor of the House. We need to fix our politics so that we can get on with fixing the things we need to fix in our country, so we will support the Bill as a step forward. However, a step is not the final destination. Until this House finds the courage to give people a Parliament that actually reflects how they vote, we will not have restored trust in our democracy. We will keep making that case, and we will support this Bill as the beginning, but certainly not the end, of this work.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
Representation of the People Bill
It is welcome that the Government have asked the Electoral Commission to look at spending limits. I love a task-and-finish group almost as much as I love a taskforce or a sub-committee, but will the Minister put a little more meat on the bones, and say what she is doing on donation caps, specifically on timing, and on whether things will be in place ahead of the next general election? I would not want a Member to press for a separate Division on an amendment because there was not enough meat on the bone.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Lisa Smart
Representation of the People Bill
It has been a privilege to be part of this process and to listen to the impassioned contributions from Members across the House, from Second Reading through to Committee and Report. The contents of this legislation have been a long time coming, and owe a great deal to the hard work of the people who have campaigned tirelessly for improvements to our system and to clean up our politics, and of course, to those who do the work on the ground. Our returning officers and those who deliver democracy, often on shoestring budgets, so that we can sit here, rarely get the praise they deserve. We should be strengthening what they do and how they do it, and we owe them the resources to do what is needed. The Liberal Democrats will support the Bill tonight, and we will do so because it extends the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds—a measure that we have argued for over many years, and which I will be delighted to vote for this evening. We will also support the Bill because, without it, corrupt practices will only entrench further. The “know your donor” regime is not perfect, but it is a step that we welcome, and we will not obstruct it. We do not stand in the way of progress. The Bill will make it easier for people to register, safer for people to stand and harder for the wrong money to stay in our politics. Those are good things and will have a long-lasting effect. I look forward to the discussions with Ministers that were promised on further work that they are doing on donation and spending limits, which they outlined earlier. The true test of whether the people really are represented fairly will be whether votes count when they are cast. That argument has not been resolved yet, and I do not think it is an argument that will fade away any time soon. For tonight, though, I am content that this is a better Bill than the one that arrived, and that is down to the scrutiny and grit that this House has been supported to deliver. I look forward to seeing how our noble friends in the other place can make it even stronger. Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Layla Moran
Rewiring the State
I warmly welcome the First Secretary to her post. I also welcome her good judgment in taking one of the esteemed former members of our Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), to be her Parliamentary Private Secretary. I know the First Secretary has probably already had some of this in her ear already, but I cannot lose this opportunity. This morning, the Health and Social Care Committee, with the Education Committee, heard moving evidence about why death by suicide has now overtaken almost everything else as the No. 1 reason that we lose children in this country. Often when we dive into issues like this, we find that education is not talking to health or to the local authorities. It cannot be beyond the wit of man, or indeed a shared governance structure with the right fiscal flows, to stop these stories happening. Will the First Secretary of State meet me to discuss what we are seeing in the Committee so that we can unlock the potential in all parts of society, because without doing that, I fear that the devolution agenda might fail?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem John Milne
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), and I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for rural business and the rural powerhouse. This Government have rebuilt the local government funding formula and launched an ambitious devolution agenda, both in the name of fairness and moving power closer to the people. I question how that is working. Ministers say that the new funding formula matches money to need, and that by the end of the settlement, the most deprived places will receive 45% more funding per head than the least deprived. Nobody disputes that deprivation matters, but measuring deprivation in rural areas is not straightforward. According to the County Councils Network, county authorities will receive only £345 per head in grant funding against a national average of £526, and will therefore have to find more than 90% of any budget increase from council tax alone. That means they will receive roughly 2p of any additional Government money for every £1 of new cost pressure, while metropolitan boroughs will receive 42p. That is an enormous difference. Although individual councils vary, the Rural Services Network shows that rural residents already pay 70% more council tax per head than urban residents, despite lower wages on average. That gap is projected to widen every year of this settlement. As others have pointed out, the Government removed the remoteness indicator from every part of the funding formula except adult social care. How does a remote child cost less to reach than a remote adult? Part of the current recovery grant is also still allocated using 2019 deprivation figures, even though updated 2025 data already exists and is used elsewhere in the very same formula. That makes no sense and perhaps the Minister can explain. There is an unspoken assumption that needs correcting: rural does not necessarily mean rich. Research into so-called pretty poverty in Cornwall shows real deprivation hidden behind a scenic view. Measures built to track deprivation in cities simply fail to spot it. The Government’s new devolution programme has the same design fault. Evidence that I have heard this year from rural bodies and local leaders is consistent. Combined authority structures, funding pools and business rates growth incentives were all built around city region economics first and do not necessarily work in the same way in rural areas. One flagship funding tool, full retention of business rates growth, was piloted in Greater Manchester. Will the Minister say whether that model has been tested where the business rates base is small and slow growing, as it typically is in rural England? Again, in honour of my Cornish colleagues, Cornwall tried a version of full retention in 2018, and it had to give up its rural services grant as the price of entry. I would not want rural authorities steered towards a tool that rewards growth but lacks the tax base to successfully generate it. If the Government are serious about devolution, it has to mean something for parish and town councils, not just mayors and unitary authorities. There is no proper funding settlement and no training offer for the clerks and officers who will be increasingly asked to take on responsibilities that have been devolved down from a disappearing district tier, as in my area of Horsham. With the best will in the world, they are not properly equipped for that. The fundamental assumption of the fair funding formula is that more deprived, mainly urban authorities have had a raw deal compared with rural shire counties, but the clear fact is that every type of council has been struggling over a long period. My county council of West Sussex is carrying almost £200 million in debt under its dedicated schools grant for special educational needs. Even with the proposed 90% reduction in SEND debts, which is welcome, that still leaves £20 million to be stripped out of a general budget that is frankly already buckling under the strain. The Government’s policy risks forcing yet more cuts on services that have already been cut too far. Two thirds of spending in West Sussex is ringfenced, which means portfolios such as highways or buses—transport—have to bear the whole burden of any savings. The new funding formula risks condemning councils across the country to failure, but they are mostly not Labour councils and it is hard not to see a political angle. Does a pothole cost more to fix in a deprived area than in a wealthier one? No, it does not. The cost of many council services is not related at all to deprivation, so it is wrong to build an entire funding formula around that one criterion. Local councils are not the main cause of deprivation, and neither can they be the main fix. This Government promised to help working people and to devolve power. Rural authorities are still waiting. I hope the Minister will commit to using 2025 data consistently, to reinstating remoteness across the whole formula, and to properly funding and training parish and town councils so that devolution reaches the communities it is meant to serve.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Jess Brown-Fuller
Rewiring the State
On the subject of wildfires, the Prime Minister has said that he does not believe our fire service have the right equipment, and I could not agree with him more. West Sussex fire and rescue service currently does not have access to wildfire personal protective equipment, and its newest off-road vehicle is 26 years old. Will the First Secretary of State or the relevant Minister please meet me and the chief fire officer of West Sussex fire and rescue to talk about how we can ensure that we keep the services on a sustainable financial footing so that they can keep us safe and we can also keep them safe?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Helen Morgan
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for rural upper tier local authorities. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and I am extremely worried about the widening gap in opportunity, social mobility and economic growth between rural and urban areas. Rural areas are being held back and the futures of rural children are being limited by public services that are underfunded and overstretched, lamentably slow digital connectivity, the lack of public transport, and urban-centric perceptions based on misunderstandings about the nature of rural life. The last local government finance settlement laid bare that neglect in financial terms. It was a stark admission from this Government that their plan is to strip funding from rural areas to improve services in urban ones. The Rural Services Network has calculated that urban councils will receive 32% more funding per head than rural councils next year. Meanwhile, rural residents pay on average 17% more council tax per head than urban residents, out of lower than average wages, to plug the gap, yet the cost of delivery means that they receive a poorer public service. For Shropshire council, the funding situation is particularly grave, following 16 years of catastrophic management by Shropshire’s Conservatives. When the Lib Dem administration took over in May 2025, Shropshire was in the most difficult financial position of any council in England. The recent Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy report on the huge challenge in Shropshire reveals the details of the Conservatives’ poor management: unrealistic budgets and constant overspends that burned through all the remaining reserves; an obsession with unaffordable vanity projects, such as the purchase of Shrewsbury’s shopping centres and millions spent on an unaffordable road; a sloppy workforce restructure in 2024-25, which drove out the talented managers needed to transform the financial situation; and the “legacy impact” of five years of consecutive council tax freezes. All that was left as a parting gift for the new administration to pick up. The report describes the direction of the council under its recently appointed new chief executive and four-to-five-year improvement plan as a “positive step”, and a peer review by the LGA praised the “significant strides” made so far, but the financial position remains perilous and the challenge to restructure the council is huge. Eighty per cent of Shropshire council’s budget is spent on social care, an issue on which the Liberal Democrats have long called for urgent action. The cost of delivering social care in a rural area with the demographics of North Shropshire, where 25% of the population is aged over 65, means that the pressure is only set to rise. Adult social care spending has already been rising by about 5.8% a year, more than could have been generated by council tax increases, because people are living longer, needs are becoming more complex, and workforce costs are rising, with care providers consequently charging more. Demand for education, health and care plans has risen even faster. Shropshire now has 3,016 active EHCPs, a 21% increase in one year compared with national growth of 11%. The number of school-aged children with EHCPs has increased by 78% since before the pandemic. That puts more pressure on specialist education, school transport and family support. Last year, the council put up council tax by 8.99%. Although that brought in a massive £21 million a year, it covered only about a third of the extra cost from demand and inflation alone. Amid that financial turmoil, the Government have cut funding per head in Shropshire. It is projected to fall well below 90% of 2024 funding by 2028, while the national average is set to rise to around 118%. The exceptional financial support provided to balance the books bears interest and must be paid back; it worsens prospects for the future, and for a considerable time. Under the Government’s new devolution plans, there is a risk that the gap between mayoral and non-mayoral authorities could increase further. During the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, I asked him about the importance of power and resourcing being made available to all authorities, not just those that have formed a combined authority or have a mayor. His answer was in some ways encouraging, but in other ways it bothered me. He said that when Shropshire council could “stand on its own two feet”—[Official Report, 1 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 49.] it would be able to access devolution, but the Government’s own three-year financial settlement is forcing austerity on rural areas, making the achievement of self-sufficiency far less likely.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Helen Morgan
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I would need to see the detail of that proposal and what it would mean. Shropshire is already a unitary authority and is essentially at the bottom of the list for a devolution plan, so that seems too far off. There seems to be no prospect of stabilising the financial situation until there is a firm plan to ensure that the powers needed to turn the area around, and the resources to go with them, are firmly in place. We urgently need clarity on that. The hardship and austerity in rural areas has come about largely as a result of the removal of remoteness as a factor when calculating what it costs for a rural authority to deliver services across a vast area. The County Councils Network estimates that that has removed £300 million from its members’ budgets—an amount that the Government expect to be made up by increased council tax. Shropshire council has been squeezed at both ends—first by years of Conservative maladministration, and then by Labour cutting its funding, despite the obvious need —and it is far from alone. Rather than tackling the problem head on, the Government have underfunded rural councils, which has perpetuated rural deprivation. That is particularly acute where people lack access to services, and it is hidden, unlike urban deprivation. While door-knocking in my constituency, I met a delightful elderly gentleman living in a small cottage, and I was astonished to also meet his grandson, who was apparently living in his shed in the garden because he was unable to find anywhere else to live. Such cases go unnoticed in homelessness statistics, because families and communities find their own solutions to wrap around those individuals, but no one thinks a shed is appropriate accommodation for that young man. He should not have been allowed to fall through the net. A lack of funds for local transport perpetuates isolation and leads to a vicious cycle, stunting economic growth and creating further challenges for the council’s provision of services such as social care. When members of the Casey commission came to Shropshire to talk about the challenges of delivering social care in a rural area, they were astonished by the notion that carers must have a car because there is no transport in the evening or on a Sunday. Yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke of the importance of local transport and publicly provided services. We all agree with him, but Shropshire’s bus allocation has been cut despite the fact that it has lost more bus miles than anywhere else. Revenue funding is due to drop £175,000 in 2027-28. The Secretary of State for Transport, in an answer to me about step-free access at Whitchurch station, implied that the funds will be spent where the people are, not where the need is. She said: “When we are investing in the accessibility of stations in the future, we need to get maximum benefit for the travelling public.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 1059.] Previously, that has meant that the funds go to the most densely populated areas, not to those where there are no real alternative forms of transport. The patchy public transport network across North Shropshire means that it is almost impossible for most residents to manage without a car, and that brings further associated costs. Those who cannot access a car, whether they are young or old, become isolated and unable to access opportunities, education and services. Similar patterns of deprivation are reinforced through Government funding for education in rural areas, even though they often already struggle with teacher recruitment and retention. Schools in North Shropshire received an average of £6,460 a head last year, compared with a national average of about £7,910, but outcomes at GCSE and key stage 4 are consistently lower than the national average, and indeed the west midlands average. How can the Government justify lower funding when the outcomes are already lower? Surely every child deserves the opportunities provided by a properly funded education. That applies to capital spending in education too. One shocking example in my constituency is a primary school in one of the most rural parishes that still has outside toilets, in their original Victorian red-brick building. A lady told me during my summer tour this year that her granddaughter was too afraid to use the toilets because they are full of spiders and had an accident at school as a result. That is unacceptable. That is the kind of thing that people remember when they are 50 if it happened to them when they were seven at school. Young people in rural areas are having their horizons limited as a direct result of Government policy. That needs to change, urgently. In what way are the Government tackling inequality if rural and coastal areas are persistently underfunded, despite their worse outcomes? My constituents rightly perceive an entirely broken system in which every year they pay more and receive less. That is obviously unfair and is opening the door wide to populists and extremists who exploit the situation with divisive messages to divide our community and simple but unworkable solutions. The new Prime Minister has given us all hope by promising growth in every postcode. He will fail in rural areas if he does not address the obvious unfairness that Government policy combined with the pressures of ever-increasing demand for social care are delivering. Proper devolution will help rural councils tailor public services to the areas that they serve, but there must be acknowledgement of the need for a fair allocation of resources to go with those theoretical powers. I hope the Minister can provide details in his response.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Helen Morgan
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
The hon. Gentleman is making an important and fundamental point: everything costs more when it is spread out. For example, bin collections cost a huge amount more for unitary authorities. Home-to-school transport is not just for children with SEND but for children who cannot catch the bus to school because there is no bus. Everything costs a vastly significant amount more than when people just live down the road. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is really important that that is reflected in Government funding formulae, because it is crippling our councils?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Helen Morgan
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
The point of combined authorities is to derive economies of scale from placing urban and rural areas together. Some of those economies of scale can be driven by the density in the urban area. Does my hon. Friend agree that it makes no sense to split up the urban and rural areas in the way she describes?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Helen Morgan
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
I thank all hon. Members who have come along and made excellent speeches—particularly team south-west, who have turned out in force. They all highlighted the difficulties in delivering services in sparsely populated areas with vast distances to travel. They spoke about the impact on highways funding, the importance of generating economic growth, the cost of delivering SEND, and the proxy creation of district councils through the re-empowering of town and parish councils to deliver things that the unitary council can no longer afford to deliver because they are not a statutory requirement. They were really good speeches. I am very disappointed that the Minister wound up with a speech that kind of told us that everything is actually fine. On the day that the local government finance settlement was announced, I sat on the Opposition Benches, along with all my colleagues, without a clue about what my local authority had been awarded because it was not findable, we had not been told and it could not be googled, yet everyone on the Labour Benches appeared to know what their settlement was and congratulated the Minister on its delivery. That is symptomatic of a pattern of this Government. They tell rural areas, “Everything is fine. It looks pretty. Go away and stop worrying, and actually, we are going to focus on urban areas.” We all recognise that urban areas need investment and are not thriving as they should be—this is not about pitting one area against another—but rural areas need fair funding and devolution. In a council that has stripped back every single employee that it can, there is no capacity to generate economic growth or transform the underlying financial structure of the council, because nobody has the time in the day to do it. They need that devolution funding to rethink how they deliver services in a sustainable way for the future. I hope the Minister will take those points on board. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for rural upper tier local authorities.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Freddie van Mierlo
Rewiring the State
My summer tour took me to such wonderful villages as Forest Hill, Little Milton, Stanton St John and Warborough, and no one I met wants to be part of the new proposed Greater Oxford authority. These parishes have been pressganged into a new authority they do not want to be part of. Will the Government review the decision to split Oxfordshire into three—a messy solution—and support other solutions, such as the two-and-one local authority proposals?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Freddie van Mierlo
Representation of the People Bill
Is the right hon. Lady suggesting that all 3.5 million overseas electors should not be able to donate to political parties?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Freddie van Mierlo
Representation of the People Bill
Will the right hon. Lady give way again?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Freddie van Mierlo
Representation of the People Bill
I would like to speak to new clause 19, in my name, which concerns overseas voters. It would require the Secretary of State to conduct feasibility studies on improving voting arrangements. It has more than 50 signatures from Members from across the House, including many of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, but also Conservatives, Greens and Independents, demonstrating a clear call for change. It also briefly had a Labour Member supporting it, before the Government Whips presumably intervened. We are demanding change on behalf of the 3.5 million overseas voters, including members of our armed forces stationed abroad. Postal ballots all too often arrive too late for them to be returned to the UK in time. The postal ballot return rate was just 48% in the last general election. Proxies, which are a potential solution, are problematic to arrange if people no longer have contacts where they previously resided. The UK is lagging on the international stage. In France, voting is allowed at overseas embassies. In the Netherlands, constituents can print their own secure ballot, as I have previously done. Estonia permits the use of electronic voting, and New Zealand’s voters can download and return ballot papers online. Of course, any change to our voting arrangements would need to be secure, and to be adapted to the UK context, but if other countries can improve their participation of overseas electors, so can we. However, the Government have so far refused to act. In a recent meeting with the former Minister for Democracy, the hon. Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), I was disappointed by the lack of ambition. I was told that it is not possible to make the printing of ballots secure, yet other European and Commonwealth countries do it. What is so unique about either the UK electoral system or the British state that means we are incapable of enfranchising our overseas voters? Under a Bill that is supposed to ensure the representation of the people, the Government have made only negligible and limited changes to support the 3.5 million eligible voters abroad. The Minister’s response, if there is one, will refer to minor changes made to the timeline for registering for postal voting and the mailing of ballots, but this will not be enough. Half of all overseas voters were registered before the last election, and they still suffered from delayed ballots, so we already know that the changes proposed will not be effective. One voter got in touch with Liberal Democrats in Europe to share her story. Angela, a voter in Oldham living in France, was registered to vote before the election, but she received her ballot in the post the day after polling day. If this is the experience in France, what hope is there for those in Australia? Under the new leadership, can the previous Prime Minister’s incrementalism be dropped in favour of a solution that meets the size of the problem? As we have heard, there is interest in this Bill from Members from across the House, and not all amendments will be voted on, but I do hope that my new clause, or something similar, will be pursued in the Lords, and will, in the spirit of cross-party co-operation expressed by the Prime Minister, get a fair hearing.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Edward Morello
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate. My very good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), warned earlier against pitting different parts of the UK against each other. At the risk of flying in the face of that advice and angering the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), I will just say that West Dorset is the most beautiful place to live. My rural community shares a lot of the same difficulties as everyone else here. My constituents are spread across small towns and villages, so distances are longer, there are fewer service providers and councils have fewer opportunities to achieve economies of scale. Almost half of Dorset’s residents live in areas that are among the 20% most deprived nationally in access to services. Whether it is GPs, dentists, post offices, shops, primary schools, access is much more difficult than in urban areas. As has also been highlighted, waste collection is difficult, vehicles have to travel further, highways teams have to cover more miles, social care workers have to spend more time travelling with patients, and a child with special educational needs has to travel a larger distance to reach the right school. At the same time, Dorset has one of the oldest populations in the country: 31% of residents are aged 65 or over. Although I have repeated it many a time, and it may well not be true, my favourite fact about West Dorset is that if we were a country, we would have the oldest population in the world—we would be older than Japan. That matters because an ageing population creates additional demand for adult social care and other council services. The Government have increased funding for local government, which is welcome, but our councils are still dealing with years of financial pressures and cuts alongside inflation, demographic change, the national living wage and increased national insurance costs. That was compounded by the change in the fair funding review 2.0 to remove rurality from all grant formulas bar adult social care. The cost of providing home-to-school transport for children with special educational needs has risen 33% since 2016-17. Dorset has the seventh highest weekly cost for children with SEND of any authority in England. Children can live a long way from the specialist provision they need, with fewer available capable specialist providers, and transport costs more. The same applies to adult social care. There are fewer providers willing to operate across rural areas because travelling between clients takes longer. Those providers that do operate in rural areas can charge more to cover the additional time and transport costs. The council has more roads to maintain, more miles to travel and more dispersed communities to serve. A funding formula that treats rural and urban areas the same does not produce a fair outcome, as has been highlighted. In West Dorset, bus frequency has fallen by an astonishing 62% since 2010, and 10 of Dorset’s 14 towns have been identified as transport deserts or at serious risk of becoming one. Just over one in five people in large parts of rural Dorset cannot reach a town centre within 30 minutes by public transport, yet Dorset received just £3.8 million in the bus services improvement plan funding, compared with the £11.6 million allocated to our neighbours in Devon. The funding formula needs to recognise rurality, population age, visitor number increases and accessibility needs. We also need to look at the future of Dorset and the wider Wessex region. Since 2025, Dorset council has been working with Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, Somerset council and Wiltshire council through the Wessex Partnership. Wessex has a population of almost 2 million people, and it already works together across areas including defence, clean energy, digital and life sciences. The partnership has developed a shared regional vision and is preparing to take on greater devolved responsibility. The Government’s current devolution framework will create different levels of opportunity depending on which model an area achieves. It is estimated that mayoral strategic authority status could provide around £460 million in additional funding each year across the Wessex region, which is about £245 per resident, as well as an estimated £16 billion of additional economic output over 30 years. If other parts of the country receive powers, greater flexibility and greater funding, Wessex needs to be able to compete on a level playing field. I would ask that the Minister agrees to meet the Wessex Partnership to discuss devolution for Wessex. If the Government want economic growth in every postcode, funding formulas need to recognise the real costs of rurality, ageing populations and providing services across large geographical areas. Rural communities should not receive less because delivering services simply costs them more.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Ed Davey
Engagements
The Prime Minister said yesterday that Brexit ushered in “a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.”—[Official Report, 1 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 27.] He is right. Our economy is stuck in this mess thanks to the Conservatives—and the leader of Reform UK—and their terrible Brexit deal. Unless we grow the economy, there is no way that we can end the cost of living crisis or cut the cost of borrowing for the Government. The answer is staring the Prime Minister in the face: join the single market, get a new deal with Europe, and cut costs for families, businesses and Government. It is the bold step our country desperately needs. Will the Prime Minister take it?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Ed Davey
Engagements
I hope at that summit the Prime Minister will negotiate a good deal for our country, our economy and our defence, and that means rejoining the single market. North Devon’s maternity unit has been closed for three weeks due to staff shortages, so women now have to travel for up to two hours to give birth. I cannot imagine the extra stress and anxiety that would have caused us when my kids were born. Women are even being taught how to give birth in their cars—that should be unthinkable in our country. Will the Prime Minister commit to reopening North Devon’s maternity unit in days, not weeks? Will he stop maternity closures across the country so that expectant mums never have to face travelling such terrifying distances?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Dr Danny Chambers
Employer National Insurance Contributions: Small Businesses in Hampshire
A couple of weeks ago, I visited a business called Squeaky Clean in Winchester. What was striking about that business was the number of students, young people and sixth-formers it employs, giving them their first job, getting them a CV and teaching them what it is like to work—to turn up on time, to take responsibility—before they go on to university and do other things. The owner told me that the single biggest difficulty she faces in keeping that business going is the rise in national insurance. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be looking at this as a matter of urgency, not just for those businesses but for young people’s opportunities?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem David Chadwick
Strengthening the Union
I welcome the new Secretary of State to his place. Many of my constituents are reliant on cross-border healthcare, particularly in Hereford hospital. Indeed, many of them will end up stuck in Hereford hospital because we do not have enough community hospital beds in Powys. Powys teaching health board acknowledges that it needs 400 beds, but we only have 148, and it is considering cutting that number further. Can he please outline what are his priorities for fixing cross-border healthcare issues?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Clive Jones
EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for securing this debate. The Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal, backed by the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), continues to burden the UK economy. Back in 2016 he, Boris Johnson and others told us that Brexit would lead to a stronger and more prosperous economy. Today, we are confronting the reality that those promises were misleading, with no substance behind them. The botched Brexit deal has cost the Treasury billions of pounds in revenue, held back British business and left our young people without the opportunities they need to begin their working lives and careers. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said, Britain’s GDP is 6% smaller as a result of Brexit—a disaster for families across the country. In my Wokingham constituency, I have heard from businesses that once exported successfully to the EU but, since Brexit, have seen their profits reduced. It is small and medium-sized businesses that have suffered as a result of Brexit. The botched Brexit deal has created almost 2 billion extra pieces of paperwork for British businesses since we left the EU, enough to wrap around the Earth nearly 15 times. That is certainly not the freedom from bureaucracy that the hon. Member for Clacton, Boris Johnson and others promised. I know from speaking to businesses in Wokingham that they are eager to grow again and to rebuild partnerships with European businesses. That is why the Government should listen to the Liberal Democrats’ call for a growth and defence partnership with Europe. Such a partnership would cut trade barriers, reduce red tape and help businesses to grow. It would boost jobs and incomes while giving the Government more money to tackle the costs of living, strengthen the armed forces, and invest in our NHS workforce and hospitals. It might even help to fund a new Royal Berkshire hospital to serve my constituency. Beyond the economic benefits, a new partnership with the EU would bring much-needed stability and security. Trump has proved himself to be an unreliable and erratic partner on the global stage, while Putin has shown no signs of halting his expansion plans in Europe. Now is the time for the Government to show ambition and to rebuild security ties with our dependable European allies.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Claire Young
National Highways: M49 Severnside Junction
Just off the M49 in Severnside is a junction that has never carried a single vehicle. It was built six years ago and cost the taxpayer £40 million, but in those six years not a car, van or lorry has used it. The national press has dubbed it the “ghost junction”. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this matter before the House today, because the future of the M49 Severnside junction is one of real consequence for my constituents in Thornbury and Yate. I am here because I want the junction to be fixed and so do my constituents. I hope the Minister listens and acts: doing something about this kind of issue is exactly how he can show people he is here to serve them and not himself. We are all quite fed up with ineptitude. First, some housekeeping. In a response to my letter, the Department referred to this as the Avonmouth junction. It is not in Avonmouth. The Avonmouth spur lies some three miles down the motorway. This junction sits in Severnside. I raise that because a botched junction whose supposed name is three miles adrift from where it stands tells us something about how far the responsible authorities are from the reality on the ground. I would be grateful if the Minister adopted the correct description in his own dealings, so that there is no confusion in the future. I would not want the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) to think that I am in any way moving the boundaries of our constituencies. Let me set out the background briefly. National Highways built this junction in 2020, at a cost of £40 million to the taxpayer. It was designed to connect the motorway to the Severnside enterprise area, one of the largest concentrations of industry and logistics in the west of England, and it was forecast to support some 14,000 jobs. Yet in the six years since, not a single vehicle has used it. There is a reason for that. Ever since it was built, the junction has stood unconnected to the local network, because the short stretch of road linking it to the estate had not been built, and no one would agree who was responsible for building it. In a letter to me, the Minister blamed a private developer for this. Questions could be raised around whether National Highways and the previous council Administration could have secured an enforceable agreement, but I will not rehearse that whole saga tonight. It is at last being resolved. South Gloucestershire council has taken the work on itself, with funding from the Department. Construction is under way. The council expects it to be finished by the end of this year. I want to put on record my recognition of the councillors and council officers who stepped in to deliver what others would not. They have done their part. However, that issue is not the reason I have sought this debate. We have now learned that the junction itself is defective. National Highways has admitted that it has identified defects at the junction that must be repaired before it can safely open to traffic. A junction built by National Highways, completed six years ago and signed off as finished, cannot safely carry traffic until National Highways repairs it—is the Minister as baffled as I am? National Highways has set out no programme for those repairs and no timetable for opening. The council has been told that there will be no further update until later this autumn, and the Roads Minister echoed that to me personally in response to my recent letter. To enlighten the Government, the traffic that the junction would have carried has not simply vanished. Instead, it runs through my constituency’s small country lanes—heavy goods vehicles, day and night, on roads that were never built to carry them. Residents in villages and isolated homes live with the noise and the lights of lorries passing at all hours. How can residents feel safe crossing their own roads? A parent with a pushchair should not have to weigh up whether it is safe to step out of their front door. Cyclists and runners have to tread carefully through what should be peaceful country lanes. When National Highways told me about the problem, it saw businesses as stakeholders, but not local residents. My constituents vehemently disagree. It is not just the smallest roads that are affected. Councillors and constituents alike tell me that the A403, the B4461 and others are facing misuse by HGVs. Horse riders, agricultural vehicles and families are finding it difficult to access those roads—if the Minister is looking for a way to apologise to my constituents for this debacle once it is fixed, he could do worse than providing permanent safety improvements on roads such as the A403. One constituent has told me that, over just 15 minutes, he recorded multiple HGVs seemingly over 7.5 tonnes using the B4461 despite environmental weight restrictions. This is a regular issue in Hallen, too. My constituents tell me that it is difficult to report those vehicles, because the short time they get to see them is not enough to grab the registration and other necessary details. They feel that the companies using the roads pay lip service, but never take concrete action. I am totally against those vehicles breaching the weight limit in this way, but I understand the motivation: they have no direct access to the motorway. The businesses of Severnside continue to wait. This is a major logistics centre, and its operators depend on efficient access to the motorway and the docks. Every year the junction stays shut is a year of longer routes and higher costs. The economic case for this junction was made years ago and accepted by the then Government, but the delivery has lagged behind. I need not explain to the Minister why getting this junction functional is so important to the economic aims of this Government. Further costs are falling on the council and local people. The council spent scarce funds on repairing the very roads that this delay will now be damaging. HGVs continue to blitz through country lanes, and newly repaired roads will only be subject to the same continuous pressure for longer. The council expected the roads to be used by local people, which is why they repaired them now. From the perspective of both local people and the public purse, it is utterly farcical just how much money and effort is being wasted due to the delays in opening the junction. The council will now have to find the money to mend those roads once again after traffic finally arrives on the junction—I need not explain why the funds are not there. This is public money spent once, and needed again, to repair damage caused by a failure that was not of the local authority’s making. This Government’s devolution agenda will be undermined if situations like this are not put right for local communities. National Highways is not a private developer the Minister can gesture towards; it is an organisation answerable to the Minister’s Department. When it builds a junction that does not work and then declines to say when it will put that right, I must ask the Minister to justify its approach. My constituents and I find that approach unacceptable. I understand that there may be legal issues and investigations that the Minister cannot reveal, but the lack of communication from the Department has been shocking. I want to raise one further concern, which I raise as a question, not as a claim. I understand that this junction used a novel construction technique, and that one other location where that technique has been used has been identified as defective. The House deserves to know whether these are isolated faults, or two instances of something more systemic in how these structures were built and signed off. If it is the latter, that is a far graver matter than one junction in Severnside, and the Minister would be wise to get ahead of it. He may recall that National Highways already has something of a record in my area, because we have a large amount of motorway infrastructure that was built in the 1960s, and we recently endured a three-year road closure when a bridge over the M4 had to be closed for safety reasons and completely replaced. We already have an ageing infrastructure; if we are adding new problems, that is worrying. I will close with a few questions, and I ask the Minister to answer each of them directly. First, will he require National Highways to publish a clear timetable for the repairs, rather than the open-ended promise of an update at some point this autumn? Secondly, will he tell the House what the defects actually are and when they were first identified, given that the junction was declared complete in 2019? Thirdly, will he commit to a firm date by which this junction will finally open to traffic? Fourthly, will he establish how a newly built junction came to need structural repair before carrying a single vehicle, and whether the same fault affects other National Highways structures? Fifthly, who is responsible? Will this Government do what is right and launch an investigation so that the public and all stakeholders can properly scrutinise those responsible? Sixthly, will he provide additional funding for the council to repair the roads again, once the junction is finally open? My constituents have waited six years. They have watched a £40 million junction sit empty above a motorway that they cannot access using the junction, and they have carried the traffic and the disturbance in the meantime. They are not asking for much; they are asking for a date and for someone, at last, to take responsibility. I hope the Minister can give both tonight.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Claire Young
National Highways: M49 Severnside Junction
I thank the Minister for giving way. I would just like to clarify one point. He said that it would have been appropriate for me to be notified earlier. Probably more importantly, it would have been helpful for South Gloucestershire council, which is proceeding with the work, to have been aware of the work earlier. Will he take that point back to National Highways?
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Caroline Voaden
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing this important debate. Before moving to rural South Devon in 2007, I had spent all my life living in and around major cities: Edinburgh, Sheffield and then London. After nearly 20 years living in the rural south-west, I can honestly say that I had previously not understood rural life because I had not lived it. I have since come to realise that the rural-urban divide is possibly one of the deepest divides in our country and one that is too often overlooked, especially by Governments made up of city and urban MPs who simply do not understand the reality of rural communities and fail to see the deprivation that lurks behind the hedgerows. Those communities are often forgotten when spending decisions are taken despite a set of circumstances that mean we desperately need the Government’s financial backing. Incomes are lower due to the older average age, jobs are often seasonal and low-waged, people in rural areas travel almost twice as far as those in urban areas, and there is often no public transport. Healthcare is a challenge because community services have been cut, hospitals are miles away and hospital transport has all but disappeared. High-speed internet is crucial when services are scarce, yet broadband connectivity lags far behind urban areas. Banks, pubs and post offices are closing, hollowing out communities and increasing rural isolation. As the hon. Members for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham)—all of them from Cornwall—have said, the high number of second homes, high house prices and low wages massively exacerbates the housing affordability crisis. In Devon, the full-time salary to house price ratio is 10.6:1—well above England’s average of 8.7:1. Despite all that, funding is persistently driven into urban areas while rural communities are left behind. The previous Conservative Government forced councils to do more with less. Their policy to force local authorities to use their reserves to subsidise their revenue expenditure was deeply wrong and, as a result, six rural upper-tier local authorities are on the brink of issuing section 114 notices, which would effectively declare them bankrupt. The current Government have committed to providing multi-year funding settlements for local authorities, which we welcome, but for rural communities the 2026-27 to 2028-29 settlement falls well short. The withdrawal of the rural services delivery grant was a huge blow to councils in Devon, costing about £14 million, and no rural councils benefited from the replacement funding or recovery grant. The new formulas mean that local authorities in cities will have higher spending power than in previous years while rural shire districts will have less to spend. Under the local government finance settlement for this year, urban councils will receive 32% more per head in Government-funded spending than rural councils. Devon county council will receive £1,056 in core spending power per head compared to Hackney council’s £1,645 or Liverpool city council’s £1,598. It does not cost 50% more to provide services in Hackney or Liverpool than in Devon. In fact, I would argue it potentially costs less because of the rurality. Furthermore, the Government’s 2026-29 local government finance settlement does not include any explicit support for rural upper-tier authorities. The new formula has included remoteness only as an uplift in the formula for adult social care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) said, a rural child is not easier to service than a rural adult. It is utterly shocking that the Government do not believe that remoteness is relevant to the delivery of any other service, such as school transport or waste collection. It goes way beyond the additional time it takes to travel. Rural councils have several other considerations that urban councils simply do not have to contend with, including requiring more service centres due to the spread-out population and more professionals to cover visits across a huge rural area. They receive fewer responses to contract tenders, perhaps only getting one from the incumbent provider, which leads to a market with increased prices for services. There are physical constraints such as needing smaller refuse vehicles, especially on the narrow lanes near where I live in Devon. Those vehicles have to return to base to be emptied more often, and rural areas also need multiple depots for equipment and vehicles. Thus, they need more equipment to service the streets and more drivers. Pockets of deprivation, often hidden by prettiness, are particularly hard hit. Social mobility for young people living in deprived rural areas is one of the lowest in the country. None of this is considered in the new funding formula outside of adult social care. I urge the Minister to review that. Quite simply, the new system of allocation does not recognise that the sparse and isolated nature of rural areas drives higher costs for the delivery of essential services, creates challenges in recruitment of staff for key services and requires local authorities to provide a greater public subsidy for the provision of public transport. This is very much in keeping with a Labour Government that have persistently failed to acknowledge that every service is harder to deliver across rural areas. Let me use Devon to illustrate why this service delivery is so tough. Rural Devon is a drive of over 100 miles from north to south. It would take me 10 hours to walk across just my constituency, which is a fraction of the county, and nowhere near the biggest. I am not sure how Manchesterism will translate to rural areas, but we cannot apply the same principles to a city of 3 million people and villages with just 10 houses and expect to see the same results. The trajectory for rural councils over the next three years is deeply concerning. The very limited increase in Government funding will require service reductions or significant increases in council tax or business rate income to maintain core spending power. As has been said, rural residents will pay 17% more in council tax per head compared to urban residents this year, yet Government funding will be directed towards urban authorities. The Government are relying on a regressive council tax to fund services in rural areas that it was never meant to. As a result of this funding settlement, by 2028-29 urban councils will have seen a 20% increase in Government-funded spending power, compared to only 2% for rural councils. How can that be fair? These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; we are talking about people’s lives. From the growing number of children with SEND who cannot access the support they need to the closing of vital community spaces like libraries and leisure centres, this lack of funding has a real impact on people. We are concerned by the Government’s decision to allocate additional funding within the local government finance settlement on a need and demand basis. It will jeopardise the sustainability of rural local councils. The Liberal Democrats oppose the three-year local government finance settlement, which does not go far enough in providing a truly fair funding settlement to all local authorities across the board. We urge the Government to provide rural councils with a funding settlement that reflects the true impact of rurality and sparsity of the areas they serve through the application of the fair funding formula. The ability to provide services to people in my constituency and across rural Devon will only be made worse by the proposal for four unitary authorities recently chosen by the Government for the local government reorganisation in Devon. I urge the Minister to bear with me on this. That proposal from Labour-run Plymouth and Exeter will see those two cities massively expanded, to the great delight of their Labour MPs, and a new urban growth area based around Torbay, leaving a fourth authority—the bits that were left behind when the urban areas were gouged out—stretching 70 miles from Ilfracombe in the north to Salcombe in the south, but 100 miles by road. That authority will have to maintain a road network not dissimilar to the whole of Luxembourg’s with no major town to offer opportunities for growth and regeneration and the most deprived area of Devon to support.
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2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Caroline Voaden
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
I absolutely agree. It makes no sense to any of us in Devon. I have spent the entire summer listening to constituents who are deeply distressed about what has happened, which leaves them in a rump rural local authority with no option for economic growth or regeneration.
Hansard source
2 Sep 2026ParliamentLib Dem Caroline Voaden
Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities
I absolutely agree. The Government ignored local voices and went with the proposal that came fourth out of five in a public consultation, but was backed by Labour council leaders and Labour MPs who had the ear of Ministers and wanted to expand their cities. None of my constituents want it. I have spent the whole summer listening to distressed residents, as has my neighbour, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith). The chosen proposal was a blatant prioritisation of economic growth for the cities of Plymouth and Exeter at the expense of the economic and social cohesion of rural Devon. How do the Government expect this council to be financially viable when they deem remoteness irrelevant to the delivery of every service except adult social care, and when no one can even work out where the authority could be based? How can rural Devon expect growth in every postcode when there is clearly no consideration of the economic growth potential for rural Devon in the chosen proposal? The Prime Minister talked yesterday about supporting rural areas and not creating a two-tier country, but the Government have created a two-tier Devon. I urge the Minister to listen to the many Devon MPs and the local people, go back to the drawing board on the reorganisation in Devon, look at the alternative options that were on the table, and pick one that will not leave rural communities struggling even more than they are now. If we are to have any hope of bridging the urban-rural divide, a fair funding settlement for rural councils and local government reorganisation that works for rural areas must be the start. If the Prime Minister wants a political system and economy that works for every person in the country, the Government must change the way they value and recognise rural communities.
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