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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
The Leader of the House, in his reply to me, suggested that I had cost my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) her job as Chief Whip when, like him, I found myself embarrassed at the Dispatch Box because I was given an instruction. In fact, it came from No. 10 and told me that I must announce that, contrary to what had been said all day, the vote was—
I am normally a temperate man, but this is a farcical situation. I have huge respect for the Leader of the House, but I suspect that he has come here with gritted teeth, because the reality is that our constituents want to hear from the new Prime Minister. In fact, the Leader of the House has given a compelling reason for Parliament to sit for a further day next week. If the situation in the middle east is as precarious as he suggests, and if there are challenges facing our country, for us to have a Prime Minister who was elected not by the majority of this country but by one constituency, on a mandate that he has not set out, and through a leadership contest that has had no scrutiny whatsoever, is an affront to democracy.
The previous Health Secretary told The Times before the election: “I’m minded to phase out the whole system of GP partners altogether and to look at salaried GPs working in modern practices alongside a range of other professionals.” He later clarified, saying he would “sort of” phase it out over time. He has now gone, but is that perspective shared by the new Health Secretary?
I am very grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for giving the time. I thank the Minister for his answer, but he did not quite clarify the position. I have asked him this question before, in a Westminster Hall debate. He said: “I do not think it is right to say that there are any specific plans to change the partnership model, but we recognise that there are a number of other ways, and we will always keep the way in which the contract is delivered under review.”—[Official Report, 25 June 2025; Vol. 769, c. 293WH.] Given the profession is looking at balloting for a plan B for general practice akin to NHS dentistry, will the Minister clarify whether this model is under consideration by the Government?
On Tuesday 24 March 2026, the Leader of the House tabled a statement by the Chancellor on a Conservative Opposition day. So it does happen: he has done it himself. More to the point, however, I have always held him in high esteem for representing both sides of the House, and he has made it incredibly clear that this Iranian debate is super-important. Will he therefore undertake to write to the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) to ask him to come to the House and take part in that debate, so that at least the country has a hint of an understanding of the momentous and important discussion that is to take place tomorrow?
I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for throwing the spotlight on the challenges that many of our communities face. More than 20% of Bexhill’s neighbourhoods are among the most deprived in England. Many of the speeches this morning have focused on what central Government can do, but I will use this opportunity to recognise and thank the organisations that do amazing work in my community to tackle the challenges we face, right here, right now. For example, funded by the previous Government’s levelling-up fund, Heart of Sidley has shown what can be achieved through years of grassroots work, local partnership and community leadership, developing a vision for a brand new community hub at the heart of Sidley. I thank Tanya and her team, the chair, Jay Carroll, and all the volunteers involved in that project. The Pelham is helping to tackle the causes and consequences of social isolation and poor mental and physical health through youth work, counselling and volunteering. It is also home to the suicide prevention-focused running group RunningSpace, founded by Jacky Youldon, who has direct experience of how exercise helped her. The Bexhill Family Collective provides a local nursery service, Dragonflies, as well as a community pantry, and outdoor learning and gardening activities for families. Bexhill Caring Community has for decades provided affordable and vital support to older, housebound and lonely residents. Freedom Church in Sidley provides a community marketplace, which redistributes food that would otherwise go to waste to households that are struggling. Many others, including Bexhill Foodbank Advice Service, Warming Up The Homeless, and Bexhill and Rother Homelessness Unity Group, are all doing their best to tackle the challenges in the community, and they provide hope, advice and support to so many people. The Government have a role and I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West about the funding formula and the challenges it has created. Of course, as a coastal community with a lot of hospitality businesses, the damaging jobs tax and the increase in business rates have made things difficult. However, in Bexhill we are looking ahead to our £20 million town deal, which was awarded by the previous Government. I know that residents are excited about what we can achieve with that money, because Bexhill, at its heart, is a community of positive people who want to get things done and want to improve their lot in life. We will do everything we can with that money to support them in doing so.
That is fantastic rhetoric, but the reality of the funding formula is that it does exactly that—it creates hierarchies, inefficiencies and unfairness in the funding. Given that so many Members have raised it in the debate, will the Minister pledge to look again at the funding formula and how it negatively impacts on so many of our communities?
Let me begin, as I have throughout the passage of this Bill, by placing at the forefront my admiration for the campaigners—the families and friends of the 97 who lost their lives in the Hillsborough tragedy. On 15 April 1989 their lives were changed forever. Nothing could be done to bring back their loved ones after they were gone. Anyone who has lost someone close to them suddenly like that knows the experience of their world changing in an instant, when at one point the person they care deeply about is there, and suddenly, in the next moment, they are not. Afterwards, everything—everything else—is different. While those deaths could not be undone, what could have changed and what could have been different was the truth about what happened to their loved ones being told to them, and it was not—not just as an act of omission, but as part of a deliberate cover-up by the police and others to protect themselves from the consequences of their failings. What might have been solely a tragic experience of grief that would of course never leave them, with a gap in their lives where their loved ones were supposed to be, was in addition turned into decades of torment as they fought so hard for that truth that was kept from them. The Bill is born of that fight and of that torment, and it is a tribute to their determination. That is why, when I faced the Prime Minister across the Dispatch Box eight months ago, I made clear the good-faith desire of the Opposition to engage constructively with the Government on this Bill. I have sought to live up to that throughout its passage, not just for the Hillsborough families, but for the many others let down by the state and its institutions—the postmasters, the infected blood scandal victims, and those lost in the Grenfell Tower fire and other tragedies and scandals, as Members across the House have highlighted throughout the passage of this Bill. I feel still the keen interest of the families as we reach Third Reading, but it is our job—mine, the Opposition’s and all MPs’—to both hold in one hand, sincerely and clearly, the experiences of all those people who have suffered so greatly and, on the other, our duty and responsibility to legislate carefully and in a considered way. I am deeply disappointed that this Prime Minister and this Government have made that task much, much more difficult than it needed to be. [Interruption.] I would challenge any MP—[Interruption.] Any MP, no matter—[Interruption.] I would challenge—
No. I would challenge any MP— [Interruption.] Not yet, not yet. No matter how supportive of this legislation, with far-reaching—[Hon. Members: “Give way!”] No, I will finish this moment. With far-reaching consequences—[Interruption.]
I would challenge any MP, no matter how supportive of this legislation—which has such far-reaching consequences for the operation of the Government—to say that its progress, particularly over the last 24 hours, is anything like careful and considered.
If the Prime Minister wanted to truly live up to that promise, he would not have introduced legislation with less than 24 hours’ notice on an issue of national security. As the House has alluded to, I would have wanted the opportunity to make this moment a purely positive one, but I am afraid that the Prime Minister has made it impossible for me to fulfil my duties to the House. To give less than 24 hours’ notice for consideration of a Bill before its Third Reading is simply unacceptable. The House, those families, this Bill deserve greater respect than that. There is simply no excuse for the series of mistakes made by the Prime Minister’s Government that have led us here—led us to a place where those of us who engaged in good faith, as I did, cannot possibly be expected to have any trust left on a Bill that has trust at its heart. The Prime Minister announced this Bill at his party conference in 2024. The media were briefed and told that the Bill and how it would operate had the full support of campaigning families and their legal advisers. They were so supportive, in fact, that they had released statements to that effect—and we now know that that was not true: they had already explained their misgivings. Then, after the introduction of the Bill, a Minister told me directly that the families were entirely happy with how the Bill was being legislated. And that also was not true.
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that point. It was on that basis that I sought sincerely to engage properly with the Bill, and the Ministers and officials who met me repeatedly would be able to attest to that. That cannot be sustained when a Government bring forward legislation with 24 hours’ notice of important matters of national security. The Government say that they have now resolved the central tension that led to the Bill being pulled. After months of negotiations, the central claim made by their Ministers that it needed particular safeguards for the agencies working in national security has now disappeared—apparently no longer needed. A Government who have wilfully misled us repeatedly on this Bill now want us to set aside—[Interruption.]
A Government who have, inadvertently, repeatedly misled us on this Bill now want us to take them on trust. I heard personally and directly from Ministers and officials repeatedly that independent safeguards were needed, and now, apparently, they are not. Supposedly, over the weekend, those concerns have evaporated, and that is totally unacceptable. We are suddenly setting aside in a matter of days what the security services have told us for 18 months, in consistent, sober, professional warnings, which coincides perfectly with the Prime Minister coming here to give his final speech on this matter. Are we really going to suggest that that genuine professional opinion has changed overnight? I do not think that it has.
If the Government were so concerned about this Bill passing, they should have organised it. We have just listened to a raft of amendments to the Bill being nodded through in this House, with absolutely no scrutiny. [Interruption.]
As I have said, this could have been a Bill that we supported without reservation, but I am afraid that we maintain reservations about it, entirely as a result of its mismanagement by the Prime Minister. I want to conclude by saying that none of this takes anything at all away from the families. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not want to hear this. It does not take anything away from the Members who have done so much to bring this legislation forward, but what is clear is that the Bill is the legacy of the campaigners and MPs—nobody else is responsible for our being here. I welcome their campaigning over many years and thank them for it.
One measure that can be helpful in tackling inequalities across the country is independent feedback. Currently, Healthwatch collects independent feedback right across the country. Does the Minister agree with this Government’s plans to abolish Healthwatch, or does she share the concerns of the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) that it will reduce the independent voice?
I am not sure that it is just Opposition Members who are saying this. In Staffordshire and right across the country, more doctors can help to reduce inequalities, and many Labour Members, from the Cabinet to Back Benchers, promised that this Government would double the number of medical school places. The former Secretary of State and the current Minister for Care repeated that promise at the Dispatch Box. We were then told in a ministerial correction that the Government had never committed to doubling the number of medical school places. How can this be accurate? Is it Government policy to double the number of medical school places, or is this a promise that they intend to break?
The middle east has been in a state of rolling crisis for months and months, yet the Leader of the House comes to this place and says that things have got so bad that we need to do this extraordinary thing—which is unprecedented in my 25 years in the House—in order to discuss it. This is from a Government who have a marginal impact on the conduct of affairs in the middle east. Will the Leader of the House commit to a very low bar for a recall of this House over the summer recess to discuss the middle east? What he is saying is that there is such a low bar, and that if anything happens in the middle east beyond background, we need to come back to this place to debate the matter.
Obviously I welcome this deal, but the Minister recently told CNBC’s Ritika Gupta that he believed that this country’s “historic destiny” was to rejoin the European Union. Last December, the Deputy Prime Minister said that we should rejoin the customs union. Do either of those things represent Government policy?
Air ambulance charities like Devon Air Ambulance are vital to easing pressure on ambulance trusts and A&E, yet they receive no direct Government funding and rely almost entirely on public donations. Their operational costs are rising—fuel duty alone adds over £200,000 a year to what they will now need to find. Does the Minister agree that services delivering NHS-level care should not depend on public generosity to survive, and will he commit to assessing how to support their continued sustainability?
The Leader of the House knows that I have enormous respect for him, and I am sure that this is quite a difficult statement for him to make, particularly as the right hon. Member for Makerfield will face unfavourable comparisons with Boris Johnson, who did come to this House and make a statement before the summer recess. However, can I change the subject? We are expecting a statement on local government reorganisation on Thursday. Now that tomorrow is not an Opposition day, could the Leader of the House find a way for that statement to be made tomorrow, rather than on Thursday?
Order. The shadow Minister must be heard.
Order. I think that the shadow Minister needs to be very careful in his use of language.
Order. I will hear the shadow Minister. I appreciate that temperatures are running very high, but it is important that voices are heard in this House.
I can inform the House that nothing in the Lords amendments engages Commons financial privilege.
With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 2 to 18.
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Order. The hon. Gentleman should be aware that interventions should be short, spontaneous and perhaps not pre-typed and three pages long.
Order. The hon. Gentleman means to say, “the former Secretary of State for DEFRA, the right hon. Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed).”
The hon. Member is making a really important point about the need for consumers to be clear about where their food is produced and reared. I draw his attention to my private Member’s Bill on that very topic. I hope that he and others across the House will support it.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) on securing this debate. The financial pressures facing pig farmers—indeed, farmers in every sector of our rural economy—are serious. Independent producers have seen prices collapse and contracts withdrawn, and it is important that we take time to recognise those challenges. I will focus on something that is fundamental to the future of the pig industry and indeed to the health of our nation: biosecurity. Last month I asked DEFRA whether it had met the National Pig Association since the last recorded meeting, more than nine months ago, the response confirmed that Ministers have not met the NPA directly for a bilateral meeting. Perhaps if they had, they would be more aware of the NPA’s stark warning that the UK remains poorly protected when it comes to biosecurity. An outbreak of disease here would devastate British agriculture and our supply chains, impacting the taxpayer to the tune of billions of pounds. We must learn from the past. The 2001 foot and mouth outbreak cost the public and private sectors the equivalent of almost £15 billion in today’s money. An outbreak of African swine fever would immediately close export markets worth around £500 million each year. Yet despite those risks, the NPA warns that large volumes of illegally imported meat continue to enter the UK from countries where those diseases are present. I hope that the Minister recognises the severity and urgency of this matter. I urge him to set out what steps the Department is taking to ensure that staff at borders and checkpoints are appropriately resourced and trained to manage the risk of imports, and how DEFRA Ministers are working with colleagues from across Government, including the Home Office and the Cabinet Office, to ensure a cohesive and joined-up approach. As the Government negotiate a new sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the European Union, we need reassurances from the Minister that the Government will not cave in any way on our world-leading biosecurity standards in an attempt to placate and pacify the EU. Reduced border checks under any future SPS agreement could undermine our market and increase the risk of animal diseases entering the UK. Does the Minister recognise that risk? Would he consider providing multi-year funding for the Dover Port Health Authority and other agencies that protect our borders, to strengthen enforcement and deter criminal activity? British pig farmers have shown real leadership: they have reduced antibiotic use by almost 70%, invested in higher welfare standards and continually improved animal health. They are doing their part. DEFRA must now step up, match their commitment to our food security and wellbeing, and act accordingly.
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. We Conservatives warmly welcome this excellent agreement and congratulate the Ministers and officials who delivered it. I was pleased, when I was the City Minister, to have been part of the team behind the forerunner, the Berne—[Interruption.] Would the Minister listen for a moment? The Berne financial services agreement with Switzerland was signed by the then Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt). That was one of our first ever post-Brexit agreements based on mutual recognition of each country’s regimes, and Conservative Ministers, including my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) and my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston), were involved in the commencement of the planning for the negotiation that we are discussing today. The benefits of this deal are what taking back control looks like in practice: British lawyers advising in Zurich without requalifying, British firms winning contracts that an EU customs union would have blocked, and British travellers enjoying e-gate access and lower roaming tariffs. As the Minister said, this joins a growing number of such deals, including our accession to the CPTPP and agreements with Australia, New Zealand, the Gulf, India and the United States. This is Britain once again charting its way in the world, engaging directly with the leading or fastest-growing economies on the planet. Britain could strike this deal only because of our independent trade policy. Without that, the Government could never have launched the consultation this morning on deepening our trade relationships with Indonesia, the Philippines, the UAE and Uruguay—all countries with whom the UK should seek closer ties. The next Conservative Government will go further and faster on trade. We support deeper trade agreements with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, following the recent agreement with the Gulf Co-operation Council, and we will seek a trade agreement with Mercosur. We will boost rather than cut the number of Department for Business and Trade boots on the ground in Asia, Africa and Latin America. We will reintroduce a revised investment visa for those seeking to create wealth and jobs here in the UK. As part of a “trade first” culture change in the Foreign Office, the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), and I have agreed to make ambassador appointments among leaders in business, the City and former Lord Mayors of London. I gently point out one glaring omission in the Minister’s otherwise very positive statement about this excellent enhanced Swiss free trade agreement. In nearly 1,400 words, he did not mention the words “Brexit benefit” once. That is a curious insight, since this deal exists only since and because we left the European Union. A nation inside the customs union cannot cut its tariffs on sparkling wine, win tariff-free access for British lamb, gain mutual recognition of professional qualifications, or secure better access to Swiss public procurement. Finally, I look forward to hearing an unabashed welcome for the benefits that will flow to his Maidenhead constituents from the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mr Reynolds). Had his party’s policy been in force, this agreement could not have been struck at all. The Liberal Democrats’ settled ambition is to march Britain straight back into a customs union, turning it back into a rule-taking vassal state, with none of the freedoms that, for example, the Canadian Parliament enjoys. The hon. Gentleman’s cheerleaders on the Liberal Democrat Benches would have legislated away every benefit that the Minister has described to this House. We warmly welcome this deal—no ifs, no buts. It is a win for Britain, a win for growth and a win for friendship between our two great nations. I have been very generous in praising the Government today, and on what I hope is not, but may be, the Minister’s final outing, I hope he will reciprocate by being honest with the country about why the deal was possible. I have just one question, and the interests of time a yes or no answer will suffice: does the Minister agree that, as a point of fact, it was only Brexit that made this agreement achievable?
Your legacy!
Or deviate!
I am grateful to their lordships for their work on the Bill. We support the amendments before the House. Let me be plain from the outset: our objection has never been to steelmaking, or to the men and women who make steel; it is to a Government who have crashed around and used blunt instruments without ever having a detailed plan. Hope is not a strategy, and a blank cheque is not a plan. Nationalisation is a bad idea, and nothing that has yet been said at that Dispatch Box has told the House where the spending stops. The Government are taking us down a fast and expensive road with no idea where the exit lies. Even members of the Government concede in private that they rushed into something that they now repent at leisure. Let us look at what we have learnt over the passage of the Bill. The Government and their Lib Dem little helpers in the Lords voted against a Conservative amendment in the name of the noble Lord Hunt to limit support to £2.5 billion over three years. That is almost £2.3 million every single day. The cap was not plucked from thin air—that £2.5 billion was the Government’s own figure. In their refusal to accept a cap, the Government concede that the figure is likely to be more. That could have been 35,000 new police officers, eight brand-new hospitals or more than double what the Chancellor raised over the course of this Parliament by destroying the livelihoods of British farmers.
The Leader of the House will know that I hold him in great respect, but over the two years for which I have been in this place, I have seen a pattern of behaviour in the final week before the recess—business is announced at the very last second, particularly when it concerns local government reorganisation—and we are seeing an increase in that behaviour in relation to this important issue. The Leader of the House is being disingenuous. He is suggesting that this is a binary issue: that either we ask the new Prime Minister, as of Monday, to come to the House one extra day late, or we discuss Iran. I think that that is an insult to my constituents, and I ask once again that the Leader of the House reconsider his position.
Will the Home Secretary give way on that point?
The Home Secretary refers to the “gaming of the system”, but will she clarify the basis on which she says that? Around half of Home Office initial asylum decisions are overturned on appeal, so there is a huge issue about the quality of Home Office decision making, as various National Audit Office reports have shown. It would be useful to know the proportion of appeals that are actually, in her words, abusive.
I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I will focus in the short time that I have on part 1 of the Bill on immigration appeals reform and specifically on whether it will cut the appeals backlog. I start by making the point that Home Office decision making is a significant driver of appeal numbers. The Home Office’s internal quality checks show an error rate of around 48% in the most recently published figures, and around 45% of Home Office refusals were overturned on appeal, according to MOJ statistics for the year ending March 2025. It is important to make the point that if those decisions were right first time, there would be substantially less pressure on the appeals system. I fundamentally agree with the Government that the asylum appeal backlog must be addressed urgently. They were right to enact a six-month target for asylum appeals in accommodated cases in section 49 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025. Since then, around 70 first-tier tribunal judges have been recruited. My first question for the Minister is this: given the increase in FTT numbers, the increase in sitting days and the impact of section 49 and other measures, where can we find the Ministry of Justice and Home Office assessment that explains why the FTT is unable to clear the backlog? Without that kind of assessment, and in particular an estimate of how much it will cost, it is impossible to understand why these far-reaching reforms are better than improving the existing system. My second question is, why are the Government bringing forward a new model for appeals, when the Home Office’s impact assessment says that it will have an “uncertain” effect on the appeal backlog, with no evidence that the appeal reforms will actually work?
I completely agree. Another hon. Member referred to the importance of evidence-based policymaking. When I look at the impact assessment, it is not clear to me that the case has been made. I think it fair to say that the only evidential basis for these reforms is a hope that they will be better than the current system, but that, I suggest, is not a basis on which to abolish an arm of the judiciary of this country and undertake major structural changes to a key part of our asylum system. There is evidence to suggest that a lay adjudicator system will not work. Last week the Justice Committee heard evidence that Denmark tried to bring in lay adjudicators about 15 years ago, but, as non-lawyers, they struggled to apply the law to the facts. They made numerous errors and ended up being either too sympathetic or too harsh, and they were got rid of. Danish asylum appeals are now heard by a judge, a lawyer and a civil servant. As another Member pointed out, Australia tried the same system some years ago, but it too was got rid of because it increased the backlog. That brings me to my third question to the Minister: what assessment has been made of the impact of this new system on the upper tribunal? I believe that the new appeals body will simply shift the backlog, or a major part of it, from the first-tier tribunal to the upper tribunal, because lay judges will make more legal errors that will have to be corrected on appeal to the upper tribunal. I say that on the basis of 18 years of full-time practice in the courts and tribunals of this country, when I appealed against decisions made by both lay decision makers and judges. However, that is not just my view but the view of witnesses who came before the Justice Committee last week, including a former judge of the upper tribunal itself. Let me add that the way in which the Bill has been sold—for example, its purpose is said to be to crack down on abuse of appeals—is incorrect, given that about half those appeals are allowed. The idea that all unsuccessful appeals are abusive, as was suggested at the outset of the debate, is wrong. A case that was clearly unfounded would not go to appeal. We already have a filter to get rid of weak cases before they start. To end, I quickly point out that in respect of every element of the reforms, the Home Office’s own impact assessment says that the effects are uncertain. There is, I suggest, scant evidential basis for believing that these measures will actually work.