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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks

1. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Curtis

   Direction of Government

   When the Prime Minister travels up the west coast main line through Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire, he will be travelling through a bit of the country where there is a lot going on. We are building many new homes, we are building a new hospital, a new railway line and a new theme park, and we are expanding Luton airport. Without a devolution deal, however, we cannot make those projects a success for the area, and there is a fear that we will be left behind. Will the Prime Minister work with local councils and Members of Parliament to deliver a devolution deal as quickly as possible? Unlike many of the local MPs, including me, some local councillors are still not convinced of the benefits of devolution. What would the Prime Minister say to them about the benefits that it would bring to Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire?

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2. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Catherine West

   Direction of Government

   I thank my right hon. Friend for the work he has done to date on tackling the scourge of rough sleeping, which is so prevalent in many of our cities and towns and outside them. What vision does he have to include the voluntary sector in the crucial task of tackling rough sleeping?

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3. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Catherine Fookes

   Criminal Justice Reform

   I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and I am grateful that he has worked hard to exempt more criminals from early release, such as rapists and child sex offenders. The VAWG sector is clear that perpetrators of violence against women should not be included in the early release scheme. I know how difficult this is, because the Conservatives left us a complete mess to clear up. Welsh Women’s Aid is really grateful that the victims fund has been announced, which will help it to look after victims. Could the Secretary of State reassure me that no survivor will be harmed as a result of these releases?

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4. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Catherine Atkinson

   Criminal Justice Reform

   I thank the Justice Secretary for engaging with me and other colleagues over the summer and taking action to bring forward the point at which the victims hotline will be up and running, so that it is available next month for victims who are worried about their offender’s release. At present, offenders can be banned from a victim’s local area, but that still leaves victims worried about running into them when they leave their area. Restriction zones reverse that burden by confining offenders to specific areas. Will the Justice Secretary be more ambitious about the use of restriction zones, so that it is the freedoms of perpetrators that are curtailed, not those of their victims?

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5. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Callum Anderson

   UK Financial Services

   I beg to move, That this House has considered the future of UK financial services. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. Before turning to the topic of this debate, I congratulate the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North (Lucy Rigby), on her reappointment. In her first spell in the position, she was a formidable advocate for UK financial and professional services, so we are all very fortunate that we have her back for a second act. I wish her well for the time ahead. Today, I want to make a positive case for the future of the UK’s financial services sector. I will say why it should lie at the very heart of this Government’s strategy for backing Britain’s wealth creators, standing behind the entrepreneur with a bright idea and ensuring that we channel capital toward the innovators and builders who will drive growth in every part of this country, while also ensuring that the sector provides people, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances, with the tools to participate fully in a modern economy and a modern society through a bank account that works, savings and investments that build real financial security, and insurance that protects families, homes and businesses when life throws its inevitable curveballs at them. With financial and professional services employing around one in every 13 workers across the UK, two thirds of them outside London, they are no longer a niche interest in the UK or a City of London story alone. They are a genuine national endeavour. When I meet in Parliament the people I represent from Buckingham and Bletchley—from the owners of small businesses to the families who I also meet on the doorstep and the staff at Allica Bank or Santander UK, both of which have their headquarters in Milton Keynes while serving customers the length and breadth of Britain—I see the same thing: a national industry built for all of us. In the time available, I will set out five challenges and opportunities facing the sector in the years ahead. First, there is the need to go even further in mobilising a greater share of domestic capital toward domestic assets, in particular high-growth businesses and especially those aligned with the eight sectors set out in the industrial strategy and infrastructure development. I welcome the Mansion House speech in July by the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves), and the progress that this Government have made against the financial services growth and competitiveness strategy one year after its publication, building on the progress made by the previous Government. We have seen that £28 billion of equity capital has been raised in London since the start of last year. The Pension Schemes Act 2026 was also passed in the last parliamentary Session, which is expected to deliver an additional £29,000 in pension savings over an average career. Eight firms have now been authorised to provide targeted support to savers, benefiting around 18 million consumers—our constituents—over the coming decade. All of that is welcome progress in turning the overly cautious British saver into the responsible investor, but I believe that we can—indeed, must—go even further in unlocking our largest pools of pension, insurance and retail capital. When we were debating the Pension Schemes Act earlier this year, the case against mandating UK investment rested on two grounds: first, the principle that Government should not tell institutions or individuals where and how to invest; and, secondly, that if UK investments were good enough, funds would already be backing them. However, what I think that argument missed is the trend towards passive global indexing that we have seen over the last few decades, which has mechanically reduced UK equity allocations to around 4%, regardless of the underlying fundamentals. I suspect that without further intervention, that trend will increase, leading to further declines in the years ahead. That risks creating a self-reinforcing cycle of declining investment in British companies by funds, regardless of where they are domiciled, depriving UK plc of domestic patient capital, and it would ultimately weaken our public equity markets and the strength of the London stock exchange. In the light of that, I encourage the Government to look again at how they can actively incentivise our largest pools of domestic capital. For instance, we could build on the Pension Schemes Act by requiring default pension funds to adopt a UK-weighted approach to listed equity, with UK equities making up, say, 20% to 25% of listed holdings in order for them to continue enjoying the various tax reliefs on offer, but giving funds and individual savers full agency to opt out. According to the New Financial think-tank, that could unlock as much as £75 billion of additional investment into UK companies. I am aware that this idea is held by a number of right hon. and hon. Members in this House, as well as Members of the House of Lords. We could also scale up the British Business Bank’s British growth partnership so that it is more in line with the scale of France’s Tibi initiative, while giving the British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund complementary mandates to crowd in capital for the larger funding rounds. We could support UK scale-ups—which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister just mentioned in his statement in the main Chamber—with the British Business Bank focusing on those companies from series B to C, and the National Wealth Fund acting as a direct investor in later-stage companies. Finally, we should maintain our focus on unlocking some proportion of the £600 billion of retail capital currently held in cash, in individual savings accounts or other savings accounts. With the right mix of financial education, a simpler ISA product framework, tax incentives and, crucially, accessible investment research, we can ease access to capital from growing domestic companies while enabling British people to own a greater share of our economy’s future success.

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6. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Callum Anderson

   UK Financial Services

   I confess I have not read the Conservative party’s full recommendations in this regard. The Government are clear that the Financial Ombudsman Service needs reform; it is not working for the sector, consumers or the UK’s international competitiveness. The Conservative party will put forward its recommendations, and the Government will make their considerations as part of the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which will be debated in the House of Commons Chamber in October. I recognise the downsides that the hon. Gentleman identified in his intervention, so I thank him for it. The Minister already knows my views on retail capital. There is an excellent opportunity in the months ahead—certainly, in the run-up to the Budget in October—for the UK to establish a long-term retail investment strategy that is co-designed by industry, Government, civil society and regulators to be the best mechanism to realise the full potential of UK investors’ savings. The second challenge that I want to turn to lies in how we manage artificial intelligence, which I became very familiar with when I was Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the broader digital revolution in financial services. Distributed ledger technology and tokenisation are having an ever-increasing influence on the international financial ecosystem. The UK should continue to act as a global leader and embrace that change now so that regulators, industry, investors and consumers alike can benefit from lower costs, widen access to capital, deliver a more efficient industry and enjoy the benefits of more productive investment. At the same time, that requires us to fully build the infrastructure, regulatory framework and market confidence to allow innovators to scale safely and responsibly. I welcomed Chris Woolard’s first report as the UK’s wholesale digital markets champion. It marked an important step in delivering the Government’s wholesale financial markets digital strategy, but we now need to shift up a gear. I would focus on two immediate priorities. First, the Government should publish a clear road map for DLT-enabled capital markets. UK financial markets—and global financial markets more broadly—need certainty about the sequence of reforms, the regulatory framework that the UK proposes to put forward and how new infrastructure will connect with the systems that are already in use by market participants. Second, we should use DIGIT—the digital gilt instrument—to build momentum across the market by setting a clear timetable for regular, benchmark-scale digital sovereign bond issuance so that we are properly mainstreaming UK Government debt in the financial market system. On artificial intelligence, it is right that AI can transform productivity, investment management, fraud detection and customer service across the economy and society. But those opportunities also bring new and unfamiliar risks, from automated decision making that leads to unintended consequences to cyber-attacks by belligerent forces and operational disruption due to a greater dependence by industry on a small number of technology providers. With that in mind, I was proud to partner with Community trade union, which I should disclose that I am a member of, in May to launch its responsible AI charter for financial services; Zurich UK was its first signatory. The charter sets out practical principles for ensuring that AI is adopted responsibly, transparently and with people at the heart of its deployment. The Bank of England’s recent work makes it clear how quickly the risks that I just identified are growing. That is why we must maintain the urgent momentum on implementing the financial services AI adoption plan. The third challenge facing the sector, which I want to address briefly, concerns the clean energy transition. I will not discuss the benefits or otherwise of which energy sources we may like to prioritise, but in my view, net zero cannot be delivered by public investment alone, however committed the Government are to that mission—and rightly so. Long-term, patient private capital also has a crucial role to play in supporting tomorrow’s energy infrastructure, from onshore and offshore wind and grid upgrades to next-generation nuclear power. In order for that capital to be committed effectively, I would welcome an annual published pipeline of investable clean energy projects so that firms and asset owners can plan and deploy investment at the scale and pace that our net zero commitments demand.

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7. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Callum Anderson

   UK Financial Services

   I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. In this space and across many policy areas, what business and investors require and demand from us as policymakers—regardless of which party happens to be in power—is policy certainty. When we risk lurching in various directions, with various priorities and changing timelines, the only result is that investors withdraw or deploy their capital in other countries. Frankly, with regard to the clean energy transition, that will ensure that other countries, be they our competitors or our foes, will have a massive, global competitive advantage over us. I do not think it is a good idea for us to enable that. Changing tack, the UK also faces the challenge of our constituents accessing affordable financial services and products. We need to honestly confront the barriers that still prevent too many of our constituents from opening a basic bank account, building even a very modest savings buffer for when times are hard, and accessing safe and affordable credit or securing the insurance that protects people from life’s shocks.

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8. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Callum Anderson

   UK Financial Services

   I could not agree more. Since entering Parliament in 2024, my hon. Friend has been a leading voice for the role that co-operatives and mutuals can play in the broader ecosystem of UK financial services. He will know well that the Government are committed to doubling the size of the co-operative and mutual sector. Financial services should play a big role in helping to deliver that agenda. I started my career supporting the development of credit unions and community development financial institutions, which have many similar economic and social objectives to building societies, co-ops and mutuals. My conviction is as strong as it was 15 years ago that they have an important role, not to replace or be a substitute for mainstream high street banks but to be part of the integrated financial ecosystem described by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes). The UK has a lot to learn from other countries, such as Germany, Canada and Australia, about how best to do that in a sustainable way. The Government can already be proud of a strong record, from last November’s financial inclusion strategy to the commitment to roll out 350 banking hubs across the UK. My constituents in Buckingham and the surrounding rural communities greatly value the hub that opened just before I was elected in 2024, and the expansion of the reach of the Help to Save scheme to more than 3 million people through universal credit. Specifically on the financial inclusion strategy, although it is no doubt thoughtful and well considered, I encourage the Government to go even further and prepare clear, measurable performance indicators against all six of its pillars, so that we can see in a year or five years how far it has advanced the UK in being financially more inclusive or otherwise. Government, industry, regulators and civil society can then best identify where the barriers to inclusion continue to lie. I am conscious that I have spoken for almost 20 minutes, so my final point is about skills. Skills gaps in the financial services sector, if left unaddressed, not only threaten the sector’s productivity and future global competitiveness but, most importantly, its collective ability to innovate, grow and best serve our constituents, who are ultimately the customers of those companies. I commend the financial services skills compact, which according to my latest research is now signed up to by more than 20 firms, covering more than 250,000 employees. Although such industry-led initiatives are crucial and valuable, the Government also have an essential role to play. Two things would strengthen that essential private-public partnership. First, Government can be much more ambitious in using the flexibility of the growth and skills levy to fund dedicated conversion pathways into financial services for adults outside London, perhaps matched by employer-funded boot camps in regional clusters, be that in Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Leeds or Belfast. The talent pipeline should grow where the jobs already exist and are growing. Secondly, Government and industry, through the Financial Services Skills Commission, should build a shared live map of regional skills gaps, which would allow apprenticeship places, training, investment and further educational funding to target the specific shortages that each region faces, rather than rely on a slightly arbitrary national formula that takes no account of where the sector actually needs people. Those are just a few of my summer observations on the future of UK financial services. The underlying drive and rationale are ultimately the same, starting from a familiar place. The UK already has a lot of the ingredients that allow it to be a global leader in so many parts of financial services. However, if we are to stay ahead of the other great global financial centres, be that New York, Frankfurt, Singapore or Hong Kong, we need the Government and Parliament to work together with industry to provide the right regulatory framework, the spirit of innovation and the commitment to making our constituents’ money work better for them so that the financial services sector itself can further strengthen the UK’s economic, energy, industrial and national security and sovereignty. I look forward to the contributions from Members across the House this afternoon and I would be happy to meet the Economic Secretary later this autumn to discuss any of the points I have raised if that would be helpful.

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9. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Callum Anderson

   UK Financial Services

   I will keep it short, so that we do not overexcite ourselves on the first day back after summer recess. I can only thank right hon. and hon. Members from all parties for their contributions and for adding extra dimensions to the debate. I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard), the shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), and my right hon. and learned Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury for their constructive contributions. It is clear that we have a united front and a shared collective recognition, not only of the value of UK financial services in their own right, but of their importance for all our constituents. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the future of UK financial services.

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10. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Callum Anderson

    Topical Questions

    T2. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s decision to show personal leadership in acting as the UK Governor to the World Bank, given the wildfires that we have seen in Europe across the summer and the flooding in Nepal. Will he tell us how he intends to use the UK’s influence to ensure that adaptation and resilience finance is accessible much more quickly to those countries that need it most?

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11. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Brian Leishman

    Topical Questions

    Does the Foreign Secretary share my concern that the British company, Dana Petroleum, is involved in a consortium that has been granted licences for oil exploration in Palestinian waters off the coast of the occupied Gaza strip? Does he agree that it is illegal and amounts to the war crime of pillage? What does he intend to do to challenge this illegal action by a British-based company?

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12. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Brian Leishman

    Direction of Government

    The previous Prime Minister announced a £200 million fund to create a green industrial revolution in Grangemouth. My constituency needs to be reindustrialised, and my communities need to be re-energised. I know that the Prime Minister is as passionate as I am about both those things. Will he make it a top priority to reindustrialise Grangemouth, get good, secure jobs into the town, and build the industrial future that Grangemouth and all of Scotland need?

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13. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Brian Leishman

    Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

    Our society is grossly unequal. Local councils have been hollowed out by years of austerity, people need food banks to survive, kids go to school hungry and people are trapped in low-wage, precarious employment, all while corporations make record profits and the super-rich become even wealthier. Inequality destroys society and ultimately reduces people, places and systems to nothing more than commodities and assets to be used and exploited by the wealthy. That is obvious in our legal system. With SLAPPs, the law can be used as a weapon by the powerful and wealthy, making a mockery of things we like to believe are the foundations of our justice system: fairness, equality, transparency, and the notion that money should have no bearing on someone’s receiving justice. Every debate that we have in this place comes down to the fundamental issue in British politics and society, the same issue we have had for hundreds of years: class. SLAPPs are the embodiment of capitalism and the inequality it creates, because SLAPPs are used to intimidate people, restrict activists and campaigners, and exhaust their time, energy, emotions and, crucially, as we have heard from so many hon. Members, finances—all to suffocate freedom of speech. I wish now to speak about Lucy and Verity Nevitt, who in 2018 reported allegations of sexual assault and rape to the police. Following an investigation, at the end of January 2019 the police decided that they would take no further action due to insufficient evidence. After Lucy and Verity’s cases were dropped, the ladies decided to speak out online to warn others about him. Specialist Metropolitan police officers encouraged them to speak out online, but told them not to name him, to say “alleged” and to call it serious sexual assault instead of rape. However, the sisters decided to say who he was and what he had done. Their attacker responded by bringing a legal action against the sisters, based on accusations of misuse of private information, harassment and defamation. As legal action continued, the sisters became aware of cease and desist letters being sent to CrowdJustice, where they were raising money for the defence, and to supportive MPs. In May 2020, the High Court decided on a number of applications made by Lucy and Verity and by the claimant. The sisters were allowed to lift their anonymity order to allow themselves to be publicly identified, while the court allowed the claimant to remain anonymous. However, the court rejected his application for reporting restrictions. In its intervention to oppose this application, PA Media, then called the Press Association, argued that “the main thrust of the claimant’s application for anonymity is to protect his reputation rather than his privacy”. In her rejection, Justice Steyn stated that “a reporting restriction order is a peremptory order affecting the right to freedom of expression of the press and the public. It is a form of censorship.” After numerous hearings and, obviously, hugely increasing legal costs, all parties agreed on a settlement, allowing Lucy and Verity to speak about what happened to them, as long as they did not name their abuser. Lucy said, “It was a really difficult decision…If we had the money we would have gone the whole way…This wasn’t just about us, there are so many other victims out there.” After founding the Gemini Project in 2018 and fighting back against their attacker’s attempt to shut down the organisation during the legal battle, the sisters’ campaign in support of survivors against SLAPPs and other abusive tactics continues today. As legislators, we in this Chamber are not exempt from blame. We, the state, allow this practice to happen. Our inaction makes us complicit in this inequality. I say to the Minister tonight that we must stop wealth, both corporate and personal, from buying silence and evading accountability and justice. We must do everything in our power to equalise the legal system and wider British society. An end to SLAPPs would be a big step forward towards achieving that.

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14. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Bill Esterson

    Direction of Government

    I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to continuing Britain’s global leadership on climate action, including by going to COP31. I also welcome his focus on breathing space for people and businesses, but, as he said, it will take a lot more than that to deliver the growth and reindustrialisation that he is so committed to. I encourage him to read the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee’s report on the cost of energy, which includes our recommendations on how to bring down the disastrously high costs that are crippling the competitiveness of so much of British industry.

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15. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Ben Coleman

    EU Foreign and Security Co-operation

    At the moment, the European Union is taking big decisions to address the challenges it faces. Those decisions affect us, too, but we are not at the table—I am thinking of tariffs on steel made in Europe and the Security Action for Europe defence procurement programme. Will the Minister reassure my constituents in Chelsea and Fulham that the Government will press ahead with a summit this year, that they will get good deals for young people and on the price of food and energy, and that they will seek to be more ambitious and bold in getting us back a seat at the table so that we can play a part in making the decisions that affect us?

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16. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Becky Gittins

    Face-to-Face Banking: Rural Areas

    The hon. Lady’s description of using Link for a cash access assessment for banking hubs rings true in my experience of helping my community apply for one in the rural town of Holywell, which serves lots of villages. It is not properly understood how important access to cash is, not only for local people—and the age demographic point is also true of my constituency—but for local businesses, particularly rural ones. Does the hon. Lady agree that rural and semi-rural towns should be recognised in the outcomes of the review when it is published in October?

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17. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Barry Gardiner

    Science Facilities and Laboratories

    My hon. Friend is making a superb case for the importance of funding for her deep earth facility. I had the privilege of going to the National Oceanography Centre’s deep oceans facility, and the innovative science there on carbon sequestration is superb. Does she agree that the sustainability of that world-leading science is dependent on long-term funding certainty? The chop and change that goes on is damaging not just to the world-class science that we do in this country, but to our economy and our skills base.

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18. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Barry Gardiner

    Science Facilities and Laboratories

    The Minister will know that the grant structure on which UKRI is based gives out grants for a maximum of three to five years. Very few are for five years—most are for three years or under—yet the sort of long-term scientific development that my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) elaborated on depends on certainty into the future. Will the Minister and her colleagues give real consideration to changing UKRI’s structure so that there is long-term funding certainty for fundamental science in this country?

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19. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Barry Gardiner

    Direction of Government

    The Prime Minister has spoken powerfully about the devolution of power and giving back control. Will he therefore ensure that the proposals for commonhold and leasehold reform, for which 5 million leaseholders in this country are waiting with bated breath, do give that power and control back to those people, through the right to enfranchise and the right to manage?

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20. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Baggy Shanker

    Direction of Government

    Across the east midlands, persistently low apprenticeship start rates mean that loads of our young children do not get the opportunities they deserve. As the Prime Minister witnessed in Derby, there are some excellent examples of young people with good apprenticeships. Will he work across industry to make sure that we increase the rate of apprenticeship starts, so that more young people can get a start in life?

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21. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy McDonald

    Direction of Government

    I congratulate the Prime Minister on taking office and thank him profoundly for his tribute to the Cleveland police officers, PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, who were so tragically killed on 22 August. My constituents, and indeed constituents across Teesside, welcomed his remarks in the past week on support for Cleveland police, and I look forward to the Home Secretary’s statement later today. The Prime Minister’s remarks on greater public control of public service and public utility provision are most welcome, and I look forward to discussing the nature of that public control in more detail in the coming weeks and months. One core aspect of that is the continued waste of public funds through the continued use of outsourcing to provide core public services. I trust that he will engage with key stakeholders who have provided yet more evidence that it makes complete economic sense to insource provision of our services. Does he agree that we must ensure that the new public interest test does its job of economic transformation and delivers, as we promised, the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation?

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22. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy McDonald

    Policing in Cleveland

    I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough. I also pay tribute to all the officers of Cleveland police who, while grieving the loss of their two colleagues, have continued to serve with extraordinary professionalism, remaining visible in our communities, pursuing offenders and making arrests. My thoughts, those of my Middlesbrough and Thornaby East constituents and those of everyone across Teesside remain with the families of the officers, their friends and colleagues. That has been magnificently demonstrated by the overwhelming generosity shown in donations to the fund established to support the families of Matthew and Tom, and at the outpouring of love and solidarity at the Riverside stadium on Saturday, which reflect the decency of the overwhelming majority of people in our communities. We must, however, confront the reality of crime honestly. The latest figures show around 123 recorded crimes per 1,000 people across the Cleveland police force area—the highest rate of any police force in England and Wales. Yet Cleveland has experienced the largest percentage reduction in full-time equivalent officers since 2010, losing around 13% of its officers. Police numbers are not the only factor, but a force facing the highest demand in the country needs the resources to respond. I am truly grateful to the Home Secretary for the financial assistance she has announced for Cleveland today, and that will address the mutual aid bill and some. Will she meet me and my colleagues to discuss how that deficit in resources can be urgently and permanently corrected?

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23. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the direction in which I will lead our country. I come before this House having visited each of the regions and nations of the UK over the past six weeks, and Ukraine on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of its independence. The UK’s steadfast support has helped sustain Ukraine’s resolve over the past four and a half years, and particularly so in the last two. That was the achievement of my predecessor, and as he stands down from this place, I want to pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). He has given this country a lifetime of public service, particularly for those fighting for justice. When he delivered in this House on his promise to the Hillsborough families and everyone involved in the Hillsborough law campaign, it was a moment that I will never forget. His leadership took our party from one of its worst defeats to its best victories, and created a platform to change this country for the better. We will use it well, and we wish his family the very best for the future. The position that my right hon. and learned Friend took on Ukraine, building on the work of his predecessors as Prime Minister, is one that I will not change, whatever the threats that we face. We do not seek escalation, but instead will stand firm in providing what help we can to enable Ukraine to defend itself from this illegal invasion. Britain’s defence starts in Ukraine, and the defence of our nation will always be my first priority. On public safety, I know that the whole House will wish to join me in expressing our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, who were killed in the line of duty on the A66. We will do our best to support the Middlesbrough community, which is hurting and grieving right now, and we hear the call from the Members of this House who represent it for a discussion about investment in policing and police numbers. I know that I also speak for the whole House in expressing my profound shock and horror at the devastating scenes on the Nepal-China border. My sympathies are with all those affected, including the families and loved ones of those missing in this appalling tragedy. The Foreign Secretary is doing everything he can to support the Nepalese Government and British nationals in the region. This is what the climate crisis looks like. We have just ourselves experienced what is likely to have been the hottest summer on record. This Government will meet the climate challenge, and I can confirm to the House that I will attend COP31 in Turkey in November. I will build on the work of my predecessor in other areas. When I visited Dover in early August, staff from Border Force and HM Coastguard told me that extra police numbers on French beaches were beginning to deliver real results. I can report to the House today that that has continued throughout the last month, with the numbers arriving over the summer halved on last year, making this year, to date, the lowest for crossings since 2021. Tomorrow, when I welcome President Macron to the UK on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of the Bayeux tapestry, I will thank him for the co-operation that has enabled us to prevent more than 48,000 people from crossing. Where it is right to do so, I will build on what has been achieved. However, where necessary, I will not hesitate to make changes. One of the first things that I did after taking office was to review the plans to relieve pressure on prison places with the Lord Chancellor, who will provide a full update to the House following my statement. We took an early decision to exempt rape, grooming and serious child sex offences, and to fast-track work to see whether we could go further, after hearing the calls from the family of PC Andrew Harper and many others. As a result, we are now confirming that anyone convicted of manslaughter, death by dangerous driving or indecent assault will not see any change in their prison term. We will find additional prison places by deporting more foreign national offenders and finally grasping the nettle on an issue that the House has ignored for too long: indefinite imprisonment for public protection sentences—a now abolished policy, but one which to this day keeps people behind bars despite having already served more than their sentences. None of this is easy, but I did what I always do: apply my values to a challenging situation and a care for people, which I spoke about in Downing Street. I believe the public will support me in recognising the clear difference between those who have served their time and more, and those who have not. We will bring forward legislation soon, but we can find a solution to end this injustice that balances public safety and basic fairness, and I urge colleagues on both sides of the House to help us do that. This is politics done differently: problem solving over point scoring. It is what the country needs, it is what the public want more of, and it will characterise my time in office. I was pleased to begin cross-party talks over social care in the summer, and I thank the leader of the Liberal Democrats and the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew) for the spirit in which that endeavour began. I wish the latter well as he leaves the Opposition Front Bench. When it comes to the biggest issues facing the country—the economy and the cost of living crisis—people are looking for much more substantial change, as promised in our manifesto, and that is what I will bring. Britain is not where any of us would wish it to be. Things are not working as they should. Life is too expensive and too hard for too many. That is why this Government’s first moves were to give businesses and people a little breathing space. On tax, in my first week in office we cut VAT on electricity bills and cut business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues. We reinstated the £2 cap on bus fares for the whole of 2027. These measures will provide some relief. They were funded by reprioritising within Government, as the bedrock of our approach will be grounded in fiscal responsibility. But in the long term, lifting growth and living standards will require much more.

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24. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    What I bring back to the House after 10 years away is a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Let me lay it out clearly, particularly for the right hon. Gentleman, since he asked. From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised and the country deindustrialised. Austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of it, and then Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration. [Interruption.] Change begins with honesty, and I am not hearing much of it this afternoon. Unless we are blunt about what went wrong, we will not turn things around. Far from “taking back control”, the combination of those policies took control out of the hands of communities up and down Britain. For 40 years, too many places have been drifting. Too many British high streets tell the story of this decline. People yearn to see them restored to what they once were, as the Communities Secretary and I heard on our visit to Ilkeston in the summer, but they see no hope if we continue on the same path with a failed economic model, which does not trickle down much to places like theirs and instead allows wealth to be extracted and siphoned out. Britain’s water industry stands as a leaking monument to that approach—a country run in the private rather than public interest. That is now abundantly clear to voters of all parties, including the Conservative party. The Government I lead will be relentless in giving people and places what they were promised 10 years ago: ownership and control. From that control over their destiny comes change and growth. I say this with confidence. [Interruption.] I do, and let me explain why. It is backed by a decade of personal experience of turning around one of the UK’s former industrial heartlands and turning it into the fastest growing city region in the country, bucking the low-growth trend. It has given me a clear theory of growth and I will apply it to all parts of the UK, learning from what has been achieved in Greater Manchester. For a long time the country did not have ambitions for its regions outside of London. It even talked of the “managed decline” of Liverpool. It took the devolution of power out of this place to allow our big city regions the ability to set new ambitions for themselves. Now, I want every single place across our regions and nations to be able to do the same, creating the conditions for good growth in every postcode. In that spirit, I was glad to meet the Liberal Democrat leader of Cornwall council, with my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), on my recent visit. I know, like many rural economies across the UK, that Cornwall lacks a basic level of infrastructure, which in turn harms growth and holds back living standards and life chances, and I heard the cross-party call for a devolution deal. I understand concerns in this House about the potential emergence of a two-tier England—those with devolved power and those without—and I will not ignore them. So, I have asked No. 10 North to begin work with Cornwall council and its six MPs on a devolution deal with or without an elected mayor. I today extend the same offer to all parts of England without devolved power. The First Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) will today write to every Member of this House setting out how they can engage No. 10 North in the service of the places they represent. I extended the same offer to the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, and the First and Deputy First Ministers of Northern Ireland when I met them over the summer. As they rightly pointed out, their situations are different, but there is interest in what a local model of devolution could look like in each of the home nations, and we will discuss that with them at a special meeting of the National Economic Council next month. This Government will oversee the biggest redistribution of power this country has seen. In July, we published a statement on the next stage of English devolution. It will include powers long requested by mayors, such as: post-16 technical education; employment support; and fiscal devolution, starting with the ability to set an overnight visitor levy to commence towards the end of the financial year 2027-28. The driving force behind it all will be No. 10 North. It will oversee the rewiring of the British state, the rebuilding of resilience in our communities and the reindustrialisation of our regions. The creation of No. 10 North was one of the first acts of this Administration and I believe that in time it will be seen as one of its most significant. It is a clear answer to the question with which this country has long wrestled: who, in government, drives growth? My theory of growth requires it to be driven with the full authority of the very centre of Government, in close partnership with HM Treasury. No. 10 North has been set up with that full focus; the single front door on which regions can knock to get quicker, joined-up decisions from Whitehall, and through which power and resources will be passed to them. Resources will include human resources. This is because a state that has grown too large at the national level now needs to redirect civil service capacity regionally and locally, repairing the damage of austerity and making the service of place the state’s first priority. We can already see what is possible. I am glad No. 10 North was able to stand behind Mayor Richard Parker when he took urgent action in August to prevent the collapse of bus services across the west midlands, and I congratulate Mayor Steve Rotheram who this weekend, after four decades of deregulation, will see the first buses return to public control in the Liverpool city region. Taking back control of essential services such as transport is an enabler of a more productive economy, because it allows local areas to grab hold of the levers of power for themselves. But driving growth demands we go further. It is taking far too long for businesses to get grid connections and they are being quoted prohibitively expensive sums of money if they try to bring those dates forward, as I heard on my visit to a farm near Truro. Household energy bills are the highest in Europe, and the cost of energy is impacting business and inward investment. Too many areas have seen water supplies disrupted this summer due to a lack of reservoir capacity. Our tourism industry is damaged by too many sewage spills. [Interruption.] “Why?” the Opposition say. It is a question they should ask themselves. This summer has shown us very clearly that water companies are failing to rise to the climate challenge. It cannot go on. Later in the year, our 10-year plan for Britain will set out plans for stronger public control over these essentials, making them work for people and places again. Alongside that, we will empower all areas to expand the public housing stock, building on the first allocations from the social and affordable homes programme announced by the Communities Secretary last week. Bringing forward the biggest council home building programme since the post-war period is the Labour way to get the welfare bill down, as is reforming our education system, so that it balances academic and technical, and offers a path in life for all young people. Michael Gove calls this “bringing back stupid”, when in fact, for too many young people written off by his reforms, it is bringing back hope. Allowing mayors to shape technical pathways and provide work placements for young people, building back into colleges and schools from the needs of the regional economy, is the way to support more young people into work. So is prioritising more accessible, community-based mental health services, as we announced in the summer. That will be a major part of our response to the forthcoming Milburn report, which will follow its publication in the autumn. For it to work, a more intentional approach to the reindustrialisation of Britain is required. We will support all parts of the country to take more public control over investment strategy, learning from the Greater Manchester model of a consolidated good growth fund drawn from their own funds, prudent loan borrowing and fragmented budgets held by Government bodies. We will back local industrial strategies—a policy of the Theresa May Government I am happy to revive—by identifying priority sectors and developing the triple-helix approach to economic development by entwining business, academia and Government behind the plan. This is the way we will build a pro-business culture and an innovation-led economy in all parts of the UK, finally capturing the long-term benefits of the invention that is in the DNA of our nation, backing our start-ups and scale-ups to stay in the UK where they were founded. When I stood outside Downing Street six weeks ago, I said that Britain needs a circuit breaker after a decade of turbulence, negativity, point scoring and divisive politics. This is what I have outlined today: a clear, coherent and credible approach to growth that can unlock a feeling of positivity and possibility in every postcode in Britain. Our job here is to make it real by taking a place-first rather than a party-first approach. It starts with reasserting basic standards for Britain—that this is a country where no one sleeps rough and no community is blighted by an illegal waste tip—and, from there, working together to build a new sense of optimism around the country. We can make this next decade better than the last. We can lift the prospects of all our people and places. We can put more power into every postcode. We can let Britain believe again. We can bring back hope. I commend this statement to the House.

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25. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank the right hon. Lady for the welcome that she gave me and her kind words; I appreciate the tone of some of what she had to say. I do want to try to work with her across the Floor of the House where we can. She mentions my summer. I notice that she spent hers travelling all the way to Rome to be told by the Italian Prime Minister not to do a deal with Reform. If she had called me, I would have told her that and saved her the trip. The right hon. Lady was right to start with Ukraine, as I did. I mentioned the work of previous Prime Ministers in setting the right tone. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak—everybody played a role in setting that tone, and it has been carried on by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). It is a very challenging situation, but I was there to send a very clear message that with a change of Prime Minister there does not come any change in Britain’s approach. I hope that I speak for the vast majority of Members of this House in making that completely plain. The right hon. Lady said that the job of Prime Minister is different from the job of Mayor of Greater Manchester. I can vouch that I know that now, after six weeks in the role. She was wrong, though, to say that in that role I did not have to worry about national security. I did. Within two weeks of taking office, I had to deal with the appalling terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena. I send all my best wishes to those who gathered last night at the Heaton Park synagogue to remember our friends who lost their lives and the incredible efforts of Rabbi Daniel Walker and others to hold the attackers at the door. We all send them our very best wishers and reaffirm again, hopefully from all sides of the House, that antisemitism is a scourge that we should work together to remove from our society. The right hon. Lady mentions defence. She is right to, because it is a changing and challenging world in which we live, but I say to her directly: I appointed this Chancellor of the Exchequer precisely because of his commitment to the defence of our realm and the arguments that he has made. He will set out at the spending review the path to honouring our international commitments in full, as I said that we would when I was before the steps of Downing Street. Those listening at home will find it hard to accept what the right hon. Lady said about the boat crossings, which are significantly down—halved on last year. She said that had nothing to do with anything that this Government have done. That is plainly not the case. I heard an Opposition spokesperson on the radio this morning trying to find any excuse to justify the numbers going down—the weather and all kinds of things. Can they not just accept that the action that we are taking is making progress? That includes the co-operation with the French that I mentioned. The Home Secretary and I will continue to look at all measures, and will be relentless in making sure that we continue to make progress, but the Conservatives would do well to recognise that significant progress has indeed been made. On the early release of prisoners, I do not think there is any moral high ground for any party in this House. The Justice Secretary will shortly make a statement and lay out the timeline for the return of foreign national offenders. I hope that we can work together on the question of imprisonment for public protection sentences. Too often, issues in this House just get left. I left 10 years ago worried about this issue, and I come back to find that it is not resolved. Social care was something that I spoke about a lot when I left. I come back, and it is not resolved. We have to do better, don’t we? We have to find more ways of working across the House and not just leave issues unresolved with all the harm that that causes. On growth, I cut tax twice in my first week. I say to the right hon. Lady that I am committed to bringing down the welfare bill not through crude cuts but in a way that provides the right support for people—particularly young people—whom, in my view, the education system has let down. The right hon. Lady mentioned the 1980s, the legacy of which, I have to say to her, we are still struggling to reverse. It is the reason why—[Interruption.] Well, let us have the argument in this House. Why are people paying such high water bills, while the infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes? Why are energy bills in this country the highest in Europe? Why do Opposition Members represent constituencies where, year after year, bus services have been cut and the fares have gone up? They know the truth of what I am saying. Let us have some honesty so that we can deal with these issues properly. The right hon Lady raised an ideological point. I noticed that yesterday she appointed a new shadow Cabinet, with a new shadow Chancellor—the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith); I welcome him to his position—who I believe was the author of the mini-Budget. [Interruption.] I think at least half the shadow Cabinet supported the Liz Truss Government. The right hon. Lady said that I have been in my position for 43 days. Well, may I turn that around? In six days, this Government will have outlived the Truss Government, and we will be here for a lot, lot longer. I will work with the right hon. Lady where I can—we should make that commitment to each other today—but I will still point out where she is wrong. We will not take lectures when the country is moving in the right direction. You can see that on the economy, on small boat crossings and on the cost of living. We will continue to do that to turn this country around.

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26. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank my hon. Friend. I look forward to my first appearance before the Liaison Committee. On the question of public land, she raises a really important issue. We have got to look at how we build as many council and social homes as we can to bring down the housing benefit and temporary accommodation bill, which is ruinous in London for London councils. We must find ways of doing that within the public purse. Public land is one way in which we can achieve that. I will be looking at a programme for the release of public land to build council and social homes, and I look forward to working with her on that.

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27. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. There is plenty there that I can agree with and work with him on. Too much power in the wrong hands—that is what I was saying to the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) a moment or so ago. Can anyone in this House say that the water industry is sufficiently accountable to their constituents?

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28. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    Okay, Northern Ireland—[Interruption.] Scotland. My apologies. There are models elsewhere that we can follow. Can anyone say, with water in England, that the money that is siphoned out in salaries and dividends is justifiable when the system could not provide a basic service to people this summer? When sewage spills out on to our beaches and into our lakes, can anyone justify that? I am surprised that there is not more recognition of that from the Conservative party. Thirty years of privatisation has not left the system in a good state. Changing some of those big things will require the different approach that the right hon. Gentleman calls for. I was pleased that he came, while on his holiday, to the cross-party talks on social care. I give him a commitment that I will keep them going until Louise Casey reports next year with her options. I hope, even then, that we might be able to find a consensus option that we take forward. I do not want to leave this position without having put all my political capital into solving this issue. As Health Secretary 16 years ago, I could not defend leaving people to lose everything they had worked for, but often only getting in return care that was sub-standard and not good enough. I know from my own family experience that that cannot carry on any longer. Nor can we defend the poverty pay for those people who care for other people’s parents and give everything of themselves to those roles. We owe it to millions out there to fix that. This is a test for this Parliament—what remains of it—to see if we can do that. I will work with the right hon. Gentleman to do that. On the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion of a national commission, there is a democracy taskforce working out of the Cabinet Office and I could certainly involve him in the work that that is doing. I am interested in political reform. I am interested in looking at how we restore trust in politics. I am prepared to look at all those issues—alongside the voting system, too—and I think he knows that. I believe that this Parliament needs to be a circuit breaker for the country. I do not believe we can carry on as we are. We are losing the trust and faith of the public. We need to act together to turn it around, and I look forward to working with him, precisely on that theme.

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29. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank my right hon. Friend and agree with her very strongly that we need to restore trust, particularly when it comes to foreign donations that seek to influence our politics. I am pleased she recognises the amendments that have been brought forward to the Representation of the People Act, which will be debated in this House later this week. I mentioned the defending democracy taskforce, which has been set up in the Cabinet Office. It needs to continue to look at these issues, and this will not be the last chance. We can come back to these issues in this Parliament, such is their importance.

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30. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank the Father of the House for what he said about Ukraine. I saw the sincerity with which he said it, and I appreciate it. It was important for me to make the journey last week. I know it was appreciated by President Zelensky, and he asked me to relay to this House and beyond how much he and the Ukrainian people appreciate the support that we have provided. We will continue to do so for as long as it takes. On meeting our defence commitments and bringing down the welfare bill, I cannot defend a position where too many people in their 20s are on benefits, but what I say is, “Why is that the case?” I do not believe we have an education system that is setting up all young people for success. There is more that we can do to give young people work-related opportunity at 16, and there is more support we can provide for their mental health. Those are the approaches that we can take, I hope with cross-party support, to set our young people up for life, invest in their success and bring down the welfare bill in a sustainable way.

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31. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    May I thank my good friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) and say to him that I am looking at every facet of the cost of living crisis and at where people face unfair charges that they cannot avoid? This area of leasehold is absolutely in that territory. I make a direct commitment to him today that it is my intention, and the intention of the Government, to bring forward the commonhold and leasehold Bill, so that we can finally reform this unfair system. We will do that in this Session.

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32. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I say to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) that I am probably not renowned for spending much time on farms—I am more likely to be found in the northern quarter of Manchester— but I was on a farm in Cornwall in the summer, precisely to engage and understand the issues that they are facing. I heard very clearly the issues that have been presented by this very difficult summer for farmers up and down the country. I will focus on farming because, for me, farming and food production are part of this country’s sovereign production and manufacturing capacity, which we will need to strengthen in the years to come. We will need to depend upon it, and therefore we need to strengthen it more. That is a clear commitment. To give the hon. Gentleman some sign that I mean what I say, I did not go empty handed to Colwyn farm. I took a commitment to allow more flexibility over Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs funding, so that areas that previously could not be used for grazing can be used for that, and to funding to build reservoir capacity on farms, so that summer ’27 will hopefully be less painful than summer ’26. That is my commitment. I look forward to working with him to improve measures for farming.

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33. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank my good friend the Chair of the Energy Committee for that contribution. In the words of the Chancellor, we need to focus on the cost of living but also on the cost of business. We need to address those two things together and bring down the cost of energy, which is ruinous for households but also for businesses. As I said in my statement, the cost of grid connections can be huge, and the long wait that businesses can face is damaging for inward investment. We need serious reform to deal with those issues, and I look forward to working with him on that.

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34. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I am listening carefully to what the right hon. Member is saying. All these issues are on the table at this moment in time, but particularly public procurement. I have been working with the First Secretary of State and the Chancellor to consider how we change British public procurement to support our own production and manufacturing base. I believe that there is so much more we could do to make sure that food grown on British farms is served in our schools, hospitals, prisons and beyond. I do believe that we can do a lot more through public procurement before we reach to protectionist measures, but I hear what he has had to say today.

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35. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank my hon. Friend. I was really distressed by what I saw in his community following the tragic death of our two police officers, and the seven lives lost in total. I know it has sent shockwaves through the community. I know from my previous role about the unfairness in police funding—or that is how it is felt in some parts of the country—and I know he and his colleagues feel that. We do need to look at that question as part of the Home Secretary’s wider police reform programme. On the second part of my hon. Friend’s question, the manifesto commits us to the largest wave of insourcing in a generation, and my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State is overseeing that work. Taking one example that I mentioned in my statement, if we bring in employment support, often delivered through outsourced contracts, and put it under the control of mayors and combined authorities, who can spend that funding through the community, voluntary and social enterprise sector, I personally believe that money would achieve far greater results than it currently does.

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36. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    The right hon. Lady knows as well as I do the misery that her constituents have suffered on the west coast main line, particularly since her Government handed it over to Avanti West Coast. They should not be expected to put up with that. Manchester lost its services under her Government. We have to have a functioning railway line, and the agreement reached with the drivers will give that security of a good service to people in her constituency and across the north-west.

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37. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a doughty campaigner for improved services on our high streets, particularly pointing out the risks of the “aim to permit” regime, which has allowed the proliferation of adult gaming centres, for instance, in some of our more deprived communities. My whole approach will be to create an incentive regime that supports the businesses that are bringing good things to our high streets—hospitality businesses and others that give people a place to go and bring communities together—and to take action against those who do harm. In the summer we announced tougher action on vape shops, alongside adult gaming centres and other gambling venues. She deserves great credit for the campaign she has run, and I am pleased that she feels we can now begin to turn our high streets around.

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38. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank the hon. Lady, who I know well, for that question. She may have heard me speak before about leaving this place 10 years ago, standing for the first time under a proportional system and seeing how it changed the conversation on the doorstep, where all of a sudden there was an incentive to look for a point of agreement, rather than to score points, as I have been saying. That experience changed me. Where I disagree with her is in saying that we should do that ahead of any general election, because I believe there needs to be a mandate to make that change. There are different views in this House, but I believe that we will need to get a consensus at the next election, and if there is that consensus, a change can be made in the next Parliament.

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39. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    I thank my hon. Friend—I was going to say leadership rival, but I do not think she was ever fully in that category. She is absolutely right to point to the role of the voluntary sector in the mission that I have launched to end rough sleeping, if we can, by the end of this year. I do not think public funds alone will get us all the way; we will need to rely on voluntary contributions and the work of our charities. In the end, they are doing the work to tackle rough sleeping across the country. I believe it is incumbent on all Members of the House to put their shoulder behind this. I am looking at the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), because I remember the work he did and the private Member’s Bill that he brought forward. It should be a cross-party matter. In my view, nobody should sleep rough on our streets. We all have charities in our constituencies that are doing the most amazing work to support people. Any of us can find ourselves in that position, such is life these days. We should all get behind this drive. We should thank those organisations for their work, and let us see if we can give an offer to everyone in this country to come inside by Christmas.

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40. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Andy Burnham

    Direction of Government

    The right hon. Gentleman’s point is characteristically clear and he makes a good suggestion that I will take up. I meant what I said when I thanked him for coming to those cross-party talks in the summer. I have always enjoyed working with him and wish him well in whatever comes next.

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