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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
At the weekend, the Prime Minister stepped in to ensure that his No. 10 North railway service continued, so in that spirit of problem solving, will he use his office to ensure that rapid action is taken to restore a reliable service from King’s Lynn to King’s Cross for my North West Norfolk constituents, who had 380 trains cancelled in July and 280 in August?
The background to this motion dates from 1760, when the agreement was reached with George III to surrender the Crown Estate revenues to the taxpayer in return for Government support, but it was not until the Sovereign Grant Act 2011 that financial support was delivered through the sovereign grant. The purpose of the Act was to bring together a patchwork of funding streams and arrangements into a more transparent system with greater accountability to taxpayers. The motion that the Minister has moved proposes three important changes: it sets the baseline for the sovereign grant for next year, it updates the percentage and, finally, it creates a mechanism to allow the Treasury to set the grant in future years in certain circumstances, which includes potentially reducing the amount in the sovereign grant. Given that the grant funds the duties of the monarch and the royal household, we support this approach and the motion. It is worth reflecting that in an era when many institutions struggle to find public support and respect, the monarchy continues to play a unique role in our lives. Whether it is representing Britain overseas, supporting charitable organisations, strengthening diplomatic relationships or bringing communities together at moments of celebration or national reflection, the royal family performs an indispensable public service. We saw that in the response following the death of the late Queen and in the support that His Majesty the King has had as he has taken on the responsibilities of the Crown. I should note that His Majesty is a constituent when he is resident at Sandringham in my constituency—[Hon. Members: “He can’t vote!”] He cannot vote. Although Sandringham is a private residence, it hosts official events that are covered by the grant. The value of the royal family is not simply symbolic. Independent analysis has shown the substantial soft power and economic benefits flowing from the institution, whether it is trade, tourism, cultural influence or the prestige associated with royal warrants, which many firms in our constituencies are fortunate to benefit from. The grant enables those benefits to be realised. For this financial year, the sovereign grant stands at £137.9 million, with £97 million of that in core funding and £40 million as the final payment for the Buckingham Palace reservicing programme. When many construction projects—I could mention a number—seem to miss their budget and targets, it is right to acknowledge the National Audit Office’s finding that the 10-year programme has managed to remain in budget, despite challenges, by making trade-offs, actively managing risk and learning lessons. Despite the completion of the reservicing programme, without these proposed changes the funding would remain at the £137.9 million level in 2027, which clearly could not be justified. That is what lies behind the resetting of the baseline to £99.9 million, with the reference percentage raised to 20.5% for the period through to 2031-32. At first glance, that looks like a significant reduction from the current level, but it comes after the completion of the 10-year programme, and core funding has actually increased to £97.6 million this year, from around £52 million in 2024-25. According to the House of Commons Library, if it had simply increased with inflation from 2016, it would now be £59.4 million. We have to ask what lies behind that growth. The jump from £52 million to £72 million in 2025-26 was largely driven by property maintenance, higher payroll and other spending, alongside a top-up to the reserve sovereign grant after a period of largely flat grants. More than half the total grant was allocated to the preservation of the occupied royal houses, which must be right. The further rise to £97.6 million appears to mainly relate to royal travel, digital services, housekeeping and hospitality, although I would welcome the Minister shedding some more clarity on where the remaining costs come from. As we move forward, there is a considerable backlog of maintenance at the occupied royal palaces, a need to modernise ageing systems, to improve cyber security and to invest in more energy-efficient infrastructure. I am grateful to the royal household and the Keeper of the Privy Purse for the constructive conversations I have had with him on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition regarding the settlement, which does two things: preserve the historic national buildings and run a modern, secure, fit-for-purpose operation. I have a few points that I would like the Minister to clarify. First, ahead of Second Reading, when we will be able to get far more into the detail than we can this evening, will he commit to writing to me with a breakdown of the planned expenditure behind the new £99.9 million figure? For example, why is payroll expected to rise by £7 million between 2026-27 and 2031-32? Core property maintenance rises by 25%. The case for addressing maintenance, particularly in stateroom areas, is clear. Is he confident that the broader programme reflects value for money? Can he confirm that any capital expenditure above £6 million, such as replacing the boilers at Windsor, would require Treasury approval of a business case? Encouragingly, income supplementing the grant is forecast to increase by a quarter over the period. How confident is the Minister in those projections? It is important that there is a focus on efficiency. What external benchmarking of the royal household cost base has there been? Which comparator organisations were used, and what specific efficiencies have resulted or are planned as a result? The reserve, as I have mentioned, fell with the impact of covid and now stands at £21 million. Is there a formal target reserve level that the household is managing toward for resilience purposes, distinct from the statutory 50% reduction trigger threshold? If so, over what timeframe is that expected to be reached? The motion provides for the reference percentage used to calculate the grant rising from 12% to 20.5%, as the Government have set out. That is described as being calibrated to the household’s expected costs for that five-year period. What specific cost forecast underpins that rate? Has it been independently tested or benchmarked, or is it effectively set simply by reference to the household’s own submitted budget? For those who may be concerned that this settlement is too generous, the reality is that there will be a real-terms reduction as the grant remains flat in cash terms over the period. One of the significant parts of this motion, which we will scrutinise carefully in the legislation, is a mechanism to allow the sovereign grant to decrease when circumstances warrant it. This reforms a long-standing feature of the existing system, the “golden ratchet” provision in section 6 of the 2011 Act, under which funding cannot decrease in cash terms. The Government’s briefing note on the King’s Speech tells us that the proposed change means that “the Grant can be reduced from one year to the next, preventing inappropriately high funding”. Of course it is important for all taxpayer funding to represent value for money, but can the Minister elaborate on the rationale for that, given that the settlement is expected to be flat cash over the period? In what circumstances would a reduction be considered appropriate, and what role would Parliament have in scrutinising any such decision? We support the motion and the resetting of the sovereign grant following the completion of the Buckingham Palace works. It is important that we establish a sustainable funding framework for the years ahead. However, there are important questions that I have raised about the increases in the last year ahead of the setting of this new baseline, and in what circumstances the Government may look to reduce the funding. Those questions are asked in the spirit of supporting both the institution of the monarchy and the principle of responsible stewardship of public money.
Given that Chequers is in my constituency, may I welcome the so-called king of the north to his new Buckinghamshire residence? Next time he is at Chequers, before he heads off to enjoy the wonderful pubs in Wendover, as I know he has, could I persuade him to take a drive to the Buckinghamshire villages on the Oxfordshire border—villages like Ludgershall, Marsh Gibbon, Oakley, Long Crendon, Boarstall and Brill—and see for himself just how inappropriate it is to put an asylum centre just over that border at MOD Bicester? He can then make an intervention with the Home Secretary to ensure that a more suitable site is found for such a centre. While he is talking to the Home Secretary, could he ask her to respond to my letter containing a series of very detailed questions about this site that my constituents have been asking, which I sent to her over six weeks ago?
I have initiated this Adjournment debate on behalf of my late constituent and his family. It concerns a tragic case that raises serious questions about emergency response, clinical training, information sharing, and whether the systems meant to save young lives are fit for purpose. On 31 January 2024, Adam Ankers, aged just 17, collapsed while playing football for the Wycombe Wanderers Foundation’s under-19 development team. He was a much-loved son, brother, friend and team-mate. He dreamed of a career in professional football, and on the captain’s armband that he was wearing that day he had written the words “strength, inspiration, leader, desire.” Despite the presence of first-aid-trained coaches, despite a defibrillator being brought straight to the pitch, and despite multiple calls to 999, no one recognised that Adam was in sudden cardiac arrest. No cardiopulmonary resuscitation was started. The coroner found that Adam’s brain had been was starved of oxygen for about eight minutes because no one had attempted CPR, and heard evidence that for every minute without CPR, the chances of survival decrease by 10%. South Central Ambulance Service’s serious incident review reached the same conclusion independently, acknowledging an eight-minute period in which CPR should have started and did not. The ambulance arrived within 11 minutes of the first 999 call, at 2.31 pm, but by then the critical window in which to act, having been led by telephone, had already been missed.
I do agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I will explore many of those issues later in my speech. When paramedics arrived, they found Adam cold, blue, not breathing, and without a pulse. They immediately started CPR, and took him to Harefield hospital, with the support of Thames Valley Air Ambulance. Despite the best efforts of clinicians, Adam was declared brain-stem dead on 4 February—in law, that was the moment of his death—and his heart stopped for the final time on 5 February, when life support was withdrawn. His parents, Alastair Ankers and Naomi Wakefield, both work in healthcare. Through devastating experience, they came to the conclusion that Adam’s death could have been prevented. Adam’s parents fought for more than two years for a proper, in-depth inquest, rather than the four-hour online hearing first offered. They were represented by a single barrister, paid for by remortgaging their house, against an array of solicitors and counsel for the NHS bodies and the Football Association. That is not a fair fight. The underlying condition was arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy—ARVC, a genetic heart disease, the first sign of which can be sudden cardiac arrest. This was a failure to identify a life-threatening emergency in real time, and it is why recognition, escalation and response matter so much. The inquest raised serious concerns about the handling of 999 calls and the ability of call handlers to recognise abnormal breathing and cardiac arrest. Ambulance services in England use one of two systems: MPDS—the medical priority dispatch system—and NHS Pathways. NHS Pathways is used by just over half of 999 services and by all 111 services in England, and it was the system used on the call that day. The inquest heard expert evidence from paramedic David Davis—not the one of this parish—who told the court, “I am unable to say that NHS Pathways as is currently configured can always properly support members of the public to identify agonal or ineffective breathing. I am also uncertain as to whether NHS Pathways can adequately identify potential out-of-hospital cardiac arrest where there is seizure-like activity at the outset.” That is about as serious a warning as an expert witness can give. If the system cannot reliably recognise the signs of cardiac arrest, people are being put in danger, and if the public are left uncertain about whether to follow the advice they are given or to act on instinct, that is a public safety problem. The coroner issued a five-point prevention of future deaths report on 16 April this year. It was addressed to 13 bodies, including NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Football Association, South Central Ambulance Service, the UK National Screening Committee and Cardiac Risk in the Young. Responses were due by 11 June. There is a pattern in those responses: every organisation expressed sympathy and described some work under way, but almost none attached a date to anything. NHS England says that a genetic service specification is “currently being revised”, but with no timetable. Staff at Resuscitation Council UK say that responsibility sits with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care, not them. The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives says that it is “not constituted to mandate or instruct ambulance services”. Everybody has pointed to somebody else, and there have been warnings for years about call handlers and cardiac arrest, sepsis and other conditions, with no clear public evidence of improvement. Why? I therefore ask the Minister to instruct the Care Quality Commission to urgently and regularly assess ambulance services on call-handler skill in detecting and managing abnormal breathing and suspected cardiac arrest. A CQC inspection of South Central Ambulance Service before Adam’s death had already found call handlers struggling to recognise abnormal breathing, with serious incidents leading to patient harm as a result—this is not new information to the trust. South Central Ambulance Service’s own response to the coroner’s report suggests that the public should understand that call handlers follow a fixed script, and that callers may need to act independently of the advice given. If it is genuinely the Government’s position that people in the worst moment of their life should second-guess the emergency services, the public deserve to hear that plainly, not discover it buried in a filing after a child has died. Training alone will not be enough. NHS Pathways plays a central role in how millions of emergency and urgent care calls are handled every year, yet there is strikingly little publicly available data on its safety and effectiveness. That is not good enough. Will the Minister commit to a fully independent review of the effectiveness and the culture of NHS Pathways—not simply a restatement that the National Clinical Assurance Group already provides oversight? That body assures the clinical safety of dispositions; it does not examine culture. Its terms of reference are set by NHS England and it reports to NHS England, which is the body that runs NHS Pathways. I want to press further on one other point, because it speaks to whether the Government can even get the basic facts right in responding to a dead child’s inquest. NHS England’s own prevention of future death response states that Adam was triaged through “Protocol 12, Convulsions/Fitting”—an MPDS reference. However, the coroner’s findings state that NHS Pathways, a different system owned and run by NHS England itself, was used as the script for that call. Why did NHS England’s response point to the wrong system entirely, rather than confront the failings of the system it actually runs? Did national leadership check its own response against the coroner’s findings before sending it? Will it now formally correct the record and explain how that error ever happened? Moving on, there is the question of how genetic risk is communicated within families. Distant relatives in Scotland had known since 2018 that a genetic variant, PKP2, which is associated with ARVC, ran in the family, but that was not passed to Adam’s immediate family in full until after his death, and only then because Adam’s parents themselves had to go back to that distant relative and ask directly whether there was a letter he had not shared. There was. Once the risk was confirmed, the genetic service’s answer for cascading that information further to the wider family was a brown paper envelope containing 10 photocopied letters, which the family were left to hand round themselves—a grieving family doing the NHS’s job of tracing and warning their own relatives, with no support offered. Adam’s grandmother had, in fact, raised the family history with her cardiologist at Papworth hospital, who accepted that it was recorded in three places in her notes but said he had not seen it. A 2022 referral from the GP was read by this doctor but never followed up due to an administrative error. Separately, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, which held the original genetic records, refused to disclose them to the English coroner’s inquest as it fell outside its jurisdiction. The coroner considered applying to the Scottish High Court to compel co-operation, but decided against as it was not a proportionate use of public funds. No family should be told that it is not proportionate to pursue the truth about their son’s death across a devolved border. I ask the Minister to raise this issue with counterparts in the devolved health systems, so that no hospital anywhere in this United Kingdom refuses to co-operate with an inquest into a child’s death ever again.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I agree with him on that point and I will come on to screening in one or two moments. Families should not be left to act as their own caseworkers in the aftermath of grief. We need to review how genetic findings are communicated to all relatives, and how families can be properly supported in doing that work; we should not simply be told, as NHS England and the British Society for Genetic Medicine have both said so far, that a service specification is under review with no date attached. The coroner also asked whether there is adequate sudden cardiac arrest training for coaches and referees at organised football matches. If young people are taking part in organised sport, those supervising them must know how to respond when something goes wrong. I welcome the fact that the Football Association is exploring improvements and that Adam’s parents have engaged constructively with that work, but this should not depend on a grieving family campaigning after a tragedy. It should be standard for every club, not just the accredited ones. I am also concerned that the English Institute of Sport, Sport England and the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK—all recipients of this prevention of future deaths report, and all in receipt of public or national lottery funding—did not respond to it at all. Public funding should carry a basic obligation to engage when a coroner writes to them about a child’s death. Finally, I come on to the point made by the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) about screening, and here there is a specific, checkable gap. Cardiac Risk in the Young estimates that 12 apparently fit and healthy young people die of undiagnosed cardiac conditions every week in this country, with no prior symptoms in about 80% of cases. These are not abstract numbers; they are lost sons and daughters. The UK National Screening Committee is currently consulting on the evidence, and the Government should be guided by that work. However, I have checked directly what that evidence map actually contains, and I want the House to hear this clearly. Its literature searches were conducted on 10 April 2025. On 24 February 2026, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology published the largest and most relevant UK study ever conducted on this exact question. With outcomes from over 104,000 young people screened by Cardiac Risk in the Young over a 10-year period, led by City St George’s, University of London, it had real-world data on what actually happened to people after a positive result, which is precisely the evidence the 2019 review said was missing. That study did not exist when the map’s searches were run, and I have confirmed directly against the published document that it is not in it. If anyone reaches tonight for the map’s citation of an unrelated 2022 cricket screening paper by a different MacLachlan study, I want it on the record now that that is not the same study. So my question is direct: will the Government confirm that the evidence map has not considered the February 2026 JACC study, and commit tonight to its being formally included in the deliberations of the committee when it meets in November, rather than filed away for a further three-year wait, as the map’s own conclusion currently recommends? If the committee does not recommend population-wide screening, will the Minister commit to implementing the FIFA 2025 consensus statement, which recommends screening young footballers aged 12 to 18 as best practice? This is football’s home country and football is our national sport. We should be asking whether we do enough to protect the young people who play it.
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend and commend his constituents’ wonderful fundraising, but his master point that it should not be left to individuals to have to fundraise for that is absolutely correct and well made. To conclude, I have seven requests: first, that the CQC regularly assesses call handlers’ skill in recognising cardiac arrest and abnormal breathing; secondly, a fully independent review of NHS Pathways’ effectiveness and culture; thirdly, a correction to the record on which triage system was used, and how that error occurred in Adam’s case; fourthly, a dated review of how genetic findings are communicated to relatives, including funding—currently dependent on British Heart Foundation charity money—to embed genetic testing into coronial pathways; fifthly, proper consideration of the FIFA 2025 statement and the JACC study by the National Screening Committee before it reaches its conclusion in November; sixthly, a statutory duty requiring NHS hospitals in one devolved UK nation to co-operate with coronial inquests in another, so that no hospital anywhere in this United Kingdom can again refuse to disclose records relevant to a child’s death; and seventhly and simplest, a meeting between a Minister and Adam’s parents. The Football Association has already met this family, and I struggle to see why the Government cannot manage to do the same. Adam’s family deserve answers, and they deserve action. Every organisation that responded to the coroner has been sympathetic, and I believe that sympathy is sincere, but sympathy did not bring Adam home and it will not stop the next 17-year-old collapsing on the next pitch this winter. What will stop it is somebody in Government saying, “This is mine to fix and here is the date.” Adam’s family have shown extraordinary patience throughout an inquest, a prevention of future deaths process, and now this debate. What they are asking for is not extraordinary: that the Government read the evidence, tell the truth about what their own agencies have and have not done, and commit—with dates—to ensuring that no other family buries a child because a system could not tell the difference between a boy fighting for breath and a boy breathing normally. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate. The timing is fantastic: we have a dynamic Minister at the Dispatch Box, we have an imminent Government review from Richard Lloyd in response to this and we have the opportunity to listen to this cross-party call for change. After a review, the Conservative Government recognised the need for cash and legislated for it; the introduction of banking hubs, and eventually cash hubs, was all part of that. I am very proud of what the Conservative Government did there, but, as the hon. Member for South Devon set out and other Members have supported, face-to-face banking is an important part too. I hope and expect that we can move forward in the right way and get the balance right between being overly prescriptive to the banking industry and setting a clear sense of direction to make sure that no one is left behind, as so many Members have set out. It is a happy coincidence that we are having this debate today, because it is the day that Lloyds customers can once again deposit a cheque at a post office or banking hub. Mr and Mrs Proctor came to see me in Withernsea with a simple problem: they could not pay a cheque into their Lloyds account at their local banking hub, which surprised me. I wrote to Lloyds about it, but nothing came about. I then raised it with the Chancellor, and colleagues from right across the House signed a joint letter to the chief executive of Lloyds Bank. I am pleased to say that Lloyds listened and, as of this morning, people can deposit cheques at those places. These issues being raised by Members across the House today are important. I trust that given the timing of the Richard Lloyd report, the Minister in her seat will make sure that they are be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
Banking hubs themselves came out of an industry response from the NatWest executive. Does the Minister agree that we must present the information from the Lloyd review to the banking groups, be clear about what we want, and give them the opportunity to respond and provide a solution, as they did with banking hubs, so that we can perhaps avoid a more heavy-handed governmental approach?
Can the Minister confirm whether the Government’s intent is to maintain this—albeit on a six-month rolling basis—for the entirety of this Parliament?
If I may further ask the Minister, I find it—
Is my hon. Friend as astonished as I am that the Minister—I know she is new to her post—has come here to propose a six-month extension of the movement of costs from bills to the Exchequer and cannot tell the Committee how much money that will cost? That is the most basic question a Minister would ask when drafting the instrument—hopefully refreshment has arrived for her and she will be able to tell us in due course. She cannot turn up to this House with a proposal like this and not know the basic money she is adding to the national debt. As I read this morning, which my hon. Friend may have seen, this comes at a time when we have record levels of costs on gilts—5.88%.
The Minister is being most generous in giving way. There was a clear manifesto promise to reduce energy bills by £300. Is that manifesto promise still extant? Is she intent on delivering it, and if so, how and when?
The Minister is being most generous again. I did not ask her about protecting consumers from energy price shocks; I asked about a clear, unequivocal manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills by £300. She, like her predecessors, refuses to address it directly. It was a clear promise. She and her colleagues were elected on the basis of delivering that, and this Government are not delivering it. They are delivering higher bills at a time when people are struggling with household finances. Those people demand and expect that Ministers in the Government account for that promise and tell us whether it will be delivered, and if so, how.
Could the Prime Minister explain what was so particularly deserving about the Avanti train drivers that they warranted such a pay increase, or was it done just to avoid the embarrassment of the Cabinet not being able to get back and forth to his “No. 10 of the North” vanity project? Or do we take it that this Prime Minister will cave in to every trade union demand that comes across his desk?
Cheshire police estimates that the additional cost to man-mark criminals who are back on the streets due to Labour’s early release scheme will be £1.4 million a year. Can the Minister reassure police forces up and down the country that those extra resources will be handed to them?
I will not keep the Committee long. I am very pleased to see the hon. and gallant Gentleman, the Minister, still in post, as this is a policy area that he has cared deeply about throughout his life. I share the broad support for the instrument expressed by the shadow Minister, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East. I have only two questions, and I appreciate that the Minister may want to write to me afterwards for clarification; I am perfectly content for him to do so. On paragraph 5.3 of the explanatory memorandum, I would be grateful if he could set out to the Committee, now or subsequently, what the definition of “competent person” is and what that constitutes. I appreciate it may be set out in the 2006 or 2025 primary parent legislation to these draft regulations, but if he can, I would be grateful for a little clarification. Finally, paragraph 10.1 of the explanatory memorandum refers to the legislation being continuously monitored. If the Minister can offer a little more flesh on the bones as to how that monitoring takes place—whether it is by serving officers, his Department or Ministers—I would be grateful. Like my hon. and gallant Friend, I support what the Minister seeks to do with this statutory instrument.
19. What diplomatic steps he is taking to support Ukraine. [R]
We know that the Kremlin uses disinformation and misinformation to thwart Ukraine’s effort and that of its allies in the fight against Russian aggression. In recent weeks, there has been evidence that Meta has permitted Russian state propaganda, including threats that Britain should be punished for its assistance to Ukraine, to be targeted at individuals. What steps are the Foreign Office and the Government more widely taking to hold Meta to account?
There is no dispute that the IPP topic is a difficult challenge. There is also no dispute that many of those IPP prisoners have been deemed a high risk to society by the Parole Board. Is it the Government’s position that the Parole Board is incorrect, or are the Government willing to lower the threshold of risk?
2. Whether his Department has budgeted for future spending on the UK-Mauritius Treaty on the Chagos archipelago.
We have heard that line for the last two years. The question that the public want answered, and the one I asked the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), before the summer, is: where is the case? The former Defence Secretary said that he was looking at the details closely. Six weeks on, can the Minister confirm that the deal is now dead, as it should be?
We know that Labour’s NHS policy on mandatory advice and guidance and single point of access has led to deaths. We on the Opposition Benches warned about it, doctors warned about it, and patients warned about it, and we were told repeatedly that it was total nonsense, misinformation, opportunism and even conspiracy theories. Now the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, the Government’s safety watchdog, has produced a report linking this system to deaths and asked for a rapid review. The right hon. Gentleman has been a Health Secretary before. Will he commit to that review, to ensure there are no further delays in diagnosis and no further deaths as a result of this policy?
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing it and the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on his previous efforts. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for his long-standing work in this area. It was helpful that he set out in his contribution that the issue is not new and that similar attempts to use the law in such a manner go back quite some time. Free speech is not simply a “nice to have”—it is one of the foundations on which free society is built. It allows whistleblowers to come forward, victims of abuse and misconduct to tell their stories and be heard, and journalists and campaigners to hold the powerful to account. However, free speech is not real if it can be exercised only by those wealthy enough to defend it. When people are frightened into silence not because what they have said is false but because of the cost of being right is too high, something is fundamentally wrong. That is the danger posed by SLAPPs. At their worst, SLAPPs are not really about winning in court but about using the process itself as a punishment. They are designed to make the journey to court so expensive and exhausting that the journalist, campaigner, whistleblower or victim gives up before a judge ever considers the merits of the case. That chilling effect is not accidental—it is the point. Claims that go all the way to trial can cost an enormous amount in legal fees. Even a defendant who wins can be left with thousands of pounds of unrecovered legal bills. The threat being made is not always “We will win”; very often, it is “We can afford this for longer than you can.” Asymmetry is the weapon. We have seen that in some of the most high-profile cases involving British journalists and publishers. Catherine Belton and her publisher faced multiple legal actions after the publication of “Putin’s People”; Tom Burgis and HarperCollins faced litigation over “Kleptopia”; and Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat were pursued through the courts by Yevgeny Prigozhin. I pay tribute to those publishers and businesses who resisted that pressure and were willing to pay those legal bills that enabled those publications to survive, when we know others do not. These cases show how wealthy and powerful overseas actors, including Russian oligarchs, Kremlin-linked figures and large foreign corporations have been able to use or threaten to use English courts to put pressure on British journalists who are investigating corruption, kleptocracy and misconduct. That should concern every Member of this House. We have to have a situation in which journalists can continue to act without fear or favour. We want charities to be able to raise concerns about wrongdoing and survivors of abuse to speak publicly about what happened to them. I have spoken in the House before about how the UK is the most frequent international origin of legal threats against journalists, accounting for 31% of all such cases. There are lots of things that we can be proud of about our judicial system and its popularity around the world, but that should give us pause for thought. Around 30% of SLAPPs in 2023 were used to prevent reporting of sexual misconduct. We cannot think of that as an intangible threat to freedom of speech alone: it is being used to silence victims of some of the most personal violations imaginable. The shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), put it plainly in a previous debate on this subject: “SLAPPs have been deployed by those with deep pockets against company employees, non-governmental organisations, campaign activists, survivors of abuse and people from many walks of life.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 423.] He was right. This is experienced not only in Fleet Street, but by charity workers who have documented wrongdoing at care homes, by campaigners who have published evidence of environmental harm and by the victims of sexual violence. Let me be clear about the Conservatives’ position: we support the principle of regulating further to stop abusive SLAPP litigation. It is not right that wealthy individuals, foreign oligarchs or large corporations can use disproportionate spending power and the threat of financial ruin to silence legitimate public interest. Any legislation must be well drafted and carefully considered. People must still be able to defend their reputations in court. If a person is genuinely being defamed or false allegations have been made against them, they must have access to justice. I am sure we have all had our own experiences. During a previous election campaign, a so-called journalist decided that my record as a volunteer policeman was entirely fantastical and made up, and that I was a criminal, and I had to get a solicitor involved to get that taken down. I am sure that we have all had similar experiences. Clearly, at the moment the balance is wrong. The question is whether the courts should be used by those with the deepest pockets to intimidate critics, bury investigations and frighten others into silence. They should not. It is important, as many hon. Members have already done, to recognise the progress to date. The previous Conservative Government introduced the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 that provided the first statutory definition of a SLAPP and created a power to strike out abusive claims at an early stage in cases relating to economic crime. We recognise, as the motion notes, that those provisions were narrow, but they were a start. The previous Government also ran a call for evidence in 2022, covering the wider landscape of SLAPP abuse, and supported the private Member’s Bill from the then Member of Parliament for Caerphilly that would have extended those protections significantly. That Bill fell before the election and a new version of it was not proposed by the new Government. The current Government’s record on the issue has been underwhelming. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), described the abuse of courts by the rich and powerful as intolerable. In October 2024, the Justice Secretary promised legislation as soon as parliamentary time allowed, but it did not appear in the King’s Speech. We then learned that plans had been drafted and were ready to go, but they were reportedly shelved due to fear of the backlash from some lawyers. Some 111 peers, including eight former Cabinet Ministers, signed a cross-party letter in April demanding action. In its 2022 model law, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition set out a possible clear legislative framework and has been waiting for a response ever since. The co-chair of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition described action on SLAPPs as “a relatively easy win”, not only for a Government, but for the protection of public interest speech and the overall health of our democratic society. I acknowledge the work done in the other place by Baroness Stowell of Beeston. For some time, the Lords have been an important advocate of legislation in this area. The point I make to the Government is simple. They do not need to start from scratch; they have years of cross-party debate, expert testimony and the lived experience of victims. They have campaigners, journalists, lawyers and Members from across both Houses calling for action. The building blocks are there, and the Government have accepted the principle. The previous Prime Minister has called SLAPPs intolerable. The Justice Secretary has said that legislation will be brought forward, but the King’s Speech has been and gone, so what is the Government’s plan? If the answer today is only warm words, I think the 111 peers who signed the cross-party letter, the editors of The Times, The Sun and The Guardian, the National Union of Journalists, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition and every Member who has spoken in this debate are perhaps entitled to a little something more. People must be free to defend their reputations in court, but wealthy individuals and corporations must not be able to abuse that freedom and use disproportionate legal firepower to silence legitimate free speech.
Towns and villages across my constituency are often besieged by utility and engineering works. Will the Prime Minister look at and personally respond to my campaign for a statutory duty to co-ordinate those works to keep Runnymede and Weybridge moving?
I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place? What more can be done to advise discretionary travellers on the risks they run when travelling to some of these exceptionally challenging locations, and particularly to advise them in advance of the finite nature of any consular support that may be forthcoming if they get into trouble?
The Prime Minister spoke earlier about deindustrialisation. That is exactly what is happening in my constituency, but that deindustrialisation is being caused directly by Labour’s energy policies. The energy profits levy, the ban on new licences and the delay in approving Jackdaw and Rosebank are all having a huge impact on thousands of jobs. Will the Prime Minister take a different approach from his predecessor and protect jobs in the oil and gas sector?
I thank my near neighbour, the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), for bringing this important subject to the House. Like her, I have seen many of these problems in my constituency. We have had a number of problems in Budleigh: every major bank has left the town. Importantly, there are a number of smaller surrounding villages, such as East Budleigh and Colaton Raleigh, meaning that the town supports around 6,500 people, yet we have no access to cash whatsoever. The area is a tourist economy, with people coming down during the summer, but there is no access to cash for tourists. On multiple occasions, people have tried to take out money from the cash machine on the side of Tesco, but the money has simply run out. That is not good enough for a place that relies on tourists. We have seen a similar problem in Exmouth, where our post office is closing and we have one remaining bank. Exmouth is one of the largest towns in Devon, so that is just not acceptable. Looking at the demographics, we are a largely elderly constituency where people have mobility issues, and access to transport is not the same as in London, Manchester or other bigger cities, so this needs to be sorted out rapidly. We have heard strong calls for a banking hub, and we have been trying to work with Link for the past year but have been rejected twice. From what we have seen, Link does not incorporate the geographic and demographic issues that I have just raised. I strongly call on the Minister to reassess the criteria that Link is using to make sure that constituencies like mine are not left out.
The service complaints system is a vital safeguard for members of the armed forces and those who have served. It has been brilliant to be on the Armed Forces Bill Committee over the past year with Members from the Liberal Democrats and many Government Members. It is nice to be able to touch on this in a consensual way, and those on the Government Front Bench will be happy to know that we will not seek to divide the Committee. This statutory instrument gives people who believe that they have been wronged in a matter relating to their service a route to seek redress. Everyone who serves or has served has an interest in a process that is fair, accessible and efficient. There has been progress, but serious pressures still remain; the Armed Forces Bill Committee heard that repeatedly when we visited the service justice unit down in Portsmouth. In her 2025 annual report, the Service Complaints Ombudsman, Mariette Hughes, assessed the system as efficient and effective for the first time, but not yet fair. The report also records that the tri-service timeliness targets were not met, and that staffing problems across all three services hindered progress on cases. The Royal Air Force, in whose outfit the Minister served, illustrates the pressure. Its workforce review identified under-resourcing of all four full-time case management roles. Under the new timeliness measure, 42% of RAF complaints were closed within the 24-week target in 2025, against a 90% target. The average resolution time rose from 22 weeks to 28 weeks, and the number of open RAF cases increased for the third year running. Against that backdrop, the Opposition believe that the instrument replacing the term “appropriate officer” with “appropriate person” is a good change. It allows for administrative roles, following a referral from the commissioner, to be carried out by a competent civilian as well as by military officers. The role includes informing the individual that the allegation has been referred, finding out whether they wish to make a service complaint and notifying the commissioner of the outcome. Those are referral and notification functions. The instrument does not give a civilian a new power to determine the merits of the underlying complaint. This reform will streamline the system, ease resourcing pressures and deliver better value for money. The second change enacted by the instrument concerns a decision on whether an appeal was brought on a ground permitted by the applicable regulations. The instrument adds that decision to the list of matters about which a person may make a service complaint, and the 2025 annual report gives useful context. Between 2021 and 2025, admissibility applications to the ombudsman increased by 72%, from 108 to 186, while substance and maladministration applications increased by 5%. In 2025, 37% of the admissibility applications concerned appeal admissibility reviews, while only 15% of the admissibility review cases were upheld—by far the lowest proportion of all applications being upheld. We know from having heard directly from the service justice unit that the wider system is already under pressure, and it is an issue we have tried to resolve through the Armed Forces Bill. A complaint received in 2025 that was not appealed took an average of 20 weeks to close; where an appeal was admitted, the average was 33 weeks. It is therefore reasonable to prevent the specified decision on valid appeal grounds from becoming the subject of fresh service complaints. The instrument will help to relieve pressure on the complaints system and increase the resourcing available to deal with other complaints, and it will not touch the right to appeal on applicable grounds. The risk of injustice, we believe, is minimal, and as such, the Opposition support this instrument.
T4. As bond yields climb sharply and turmoil in the middle east revives inflationary pressures, how is the Foreign Secretary reassuring international partners that Britain can pay its way? More importantly, is he warning the new Prime Minister of fresh, non-essential spending?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I know that you like good news, so I will start with some. Last week I met Stuart Miller, the chief executive of the Cumberland building society. He confirmed that the building society will keep all its branches open indefinitely —including those in Dumfries, Lockerbie, Langholm, Annan and Gretna—and that it is already seeing an uptick in customers coming from banks that have closed. My constituency—which, as you will know, Mr Wishart, is larger than any consistency in England—has seen the wholesale closure of all Lloyds and Bank of Scotland branches. We have only one Royal Bank of Scotland NatWest branch left. The branch in Biggar is about to close, and there is no real arrangement in place for what will replace it. There is very poor mobile reception, as I experienced yesterday, and there is no commitment to a free-to-access cash machine. The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) made an important point, which I have also raised with the Minister’s predecessor: Link abides by the rules—it is a rules-based organisation. In Moffat in my constituency, there are technically two other cash machines—one is in a shop and never has any money in it, and the other is in another location that is not open 24/7—so we are unable to get a free-to-access cash machine in the centre of what is a very busy town. That issue needs to be looked at. As the Minister and others may know, Henry Duncan founded the world’s first savings bank in my constituency in 1810. It seems rather ironic that it was easier to access banking 200-odd years ago than it is now.
Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that some people who would otherwise be willing and able do not have access to these services? Many of my constituents do not have good enough mobile service to operate apps.
I welcome the Prime Minister back to the House of Commons and genuinely wish him well in his endeavours. I gently point out, however, that No. 10 North is three hours south of my constituency; I hope his view of the north involves a whole-of-the-north approach. One measure that would not cost him anything and would be popular in the north, and across the whole of the UK, would be to rule out something that appeared in the previous Prime Minister’s Green Paper on the future of television: the suggestion that terrestrial free-to-view television could be switched off in 2034. That would mean that everyone would have to pay to watch television, which particularly affects the elderly, vulnerable and those who live in rural areas.
I welcome the new Prime Minister to the Dispatch Box. I note that in his statement he referred to the biggest issues facing the country as being “the economy and the cost of living crisis”. Will he accept that one of the things that has damaged our economy and caused prices to be higher is the tax-and-spend Budget in November 2024? He has cut taxes twice—two small tax cuts—since he became Prime Minister. Will he commit that in the Budget there will be no further searching for new things to tax? The biggest message of hope he could send to the country today would be to rule out further tax rises.
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. I know that the whole House will join the Home Secretary and me in paying tribute to those brave officers tragically killed in the crash on the A66 in the early hours of 22 August. Our thoughts are with the families of PCs Matthew Blades and Tom Clough, whose lives were cut short by a car recklessly driven on the wrong side of the road by criminals. Those brave officers made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. They will never be forgotten. Every day, police officers up and down the country risk their lives to keep us safe. We owe them all a deep debt of gratitude. This tragedy has sent shockwaves through Cleveland police and the public more widely. The Home Secretary has set out some of the steps being taken to support local police, but will she confirm that every request for extra assistance made by Cleveland police has been met? In the aftermath of 22 August, I was shocked to see so-called tributes staged for some of the men directly responsible for PCs Blades and Clough’s deaths that included cars being driven dangerously and set on fire. Criminal activity of that kind is wrong in principle and deeply offensive in these circumstances. Will the Home Secretary join me in condemning that activity and calling on the police to ensure it does not happen again? Organised crime was allowed to take hold in whole parts of Middlesbrough. Criminal gangs ran rampant and engaged in retaliatory attacks on one another. Homes and properties were attacked with no consequence, and that escalated even further in the days after 22 August. Although it is welcome that 27 people have finally been arrested, such lawless gang chaos should never have been allowed to take root in the first place. The police need proper resources to stop that. Many campaigners, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), the shadow police Minister, who I see in his place, have raised concerns for some time that there is a multi-million pound shortfall in funding for Cleveland police in the current financial year. Even the local Labour police and crime commissioner, Matt Storey, said this Government’s financial settlement this year “completely fails to deliver the resources required to meet the demand faced by Cleveland Police and falls far short of what is needed.” Does the Home Secretary accept her own police and crime commissioner’s assessment that the funding she put in place for Cleveland police this year is inadequate? Lawless chaos followed that underfunding, and I think the Home Secretary should apologise for that. The £2 million just referred to is only 0.5% of Cleveland’s budget and is clearly wholly inadequate in the circumstances. I am afraid that that reflects a wider national trend that goes beyond Cleveland. The last Government left behind record ever police numbers, but there are now 1,800 fewer police officers under this Government. As a result, crime has increased by 10% and antisocial behaviour has gone up by 15% in just the last year. The Home Secretary must accept that cutting overall police numbers was a mistake. Will she take steps to reverse that decline? The truth is that only zero tolerance of crime and disorder will ensure that criminals are the ones who are afraid, and not the law-abiding public. We have seen the consequences, with the rampant gangs going unchallenged in Middlesbrough, and it is clear now that a zero-tolerance approach is required to keep the public safe.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I call the shadow Minister.
I call Alex Sobel, who will speak for up to 15 minutes.
I call Alex Sobel to wind up the debate, briefly.
I am conscious that another Member has risen, but we have only 10 minutes left. The hon. Lady might prefer to confine her comments to an intervention on the Minister in the interests of time.