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A UN report from March last year laid bare the evidence of Israel’s systematic use of rape and sexual violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Israeli settlers are committing sexual violence in sight of Israeli forces, according to a recent report by the West Bank Protection Consortium. Given the Government’s commitment to the safety of women and girls, will the Secretary of State commit to publishing a response to both of those reports?
May I associate my party with your tribute to the life and work of Jo Cox, Mr Speaker, and extend our thoughts to her family and her many friends? The prospect of a two-state solution rests on at least two essential conditions: the protection of Palestine’s territorial integrity, and political reform within the Palestinian state. This weekend in London, we saw the selling of properties in illegal settlements. The expansion of such settlements must instead be reversed by cutting off their finance at source. Will the Foreign Secretary commit to withdrawing the licence to operate of any UK financial institution facilitating credit or services for illegal settlement activity? Given that President Abbas has now announced that legislative and presidential elections will be held in early 2027, what measures are the Government taking to ensure that those elections will be free and fair?
The terms of the US-Iran deal that have been briefed to the press look like a huge win for Iran. Above all, Iran has strengthened her position by showing the impact of closing the strait of Hormuz. This spectacular failure of Trump’s foreign policy has made us poorer and less secure, so what plans does the UK have to work with reliable allies to contain Iran’s malign influence, and will Ministers back the Liberal Democrat amendment to the National Security (State Threats) Bill, which would ensure that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is proscribed without delay?
In March, my constituents in North Leigh and Eynsham went without water for nearly three days due to the collapse of a major waterpipe. They are angry that one third of their bill payments go towards Thames Water’s ballooning debt, and to paying vulture funds, like Elliott Associates, instead of maintaining and replacing ageing infrastructure. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) was right to challenge further borrowing by Thames Water in the Supreme Court. Does the Secretary of State now agree with the Liberal Democrats that Thames Water’s financial model is broken?
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. There are reports that a Russian warship has today fired warning shots near a UK-registered yacht in the English channel, south of the Isle of Wight. If verified, this action would be of grave concern to the House and would represent a significant escalation in the hostilities shown by Russian actors towards UK interests. Can you guide me on how the House might seek to be urgently updated by a Defence Minister on this development and guided as to the Government’s proposed response?
This morning, we held an informal International Development Committee meeting with Professor Wim de Villiers and Richard Gordon of the University of Stellenbosch on the Ebola outbreak in the DRC. The University of Stellenbosch’s disease identification unit has been involved in working on strategies to combat this outbreak, and the team commended the FCDO and its involvement so far from Pretoria, citing the £100,000 funding committed locally. They made the point that in a situation like this, being fleet of foot is vital, and that much can be done locally in Africa to develop diagnostics and monitoring of the disease and, in the medium term, vaccines. Can the Minister confirm that all is being done to further support these local responses and initiatives—
I commend my hon. Friend on an excellent speech. Some of my residents still travel to their NHS dentist clinic in Nottinghamshire, which is a more than 500-mile round trip from Cornwall. Does my hon. Friend agree that Cornwall integrated care board needs to sort out its underspend? This year, there was a £1.2 million underspend that could have been invested in vital NHS dental services. I understand that West Sussex is a good example: it has managed to reinvest any underspend money on the services that my hon. Friend is talking about, which are so desperately needed in West Sussex and in Cornwall.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for securing this debate. I will talk largely about Frome community hospital, but a lot of what she has said about test and learn and trial closures applies to Frome as well. I will also talk about the issues that occur when communities are served by organisations in different health authority boundaries and the impact of a lack of communications there. Community hospitals, as we have heard, are the backbone of local healthcare. They keep people closer to home, ease pressure on our general hospitals and allow families to support loved ones through recovery without the burden of long journeys. That is especially so in more rural areas like my constituency, where travel times can be long and public transport is limited. For many of my constituents, Frome community hospital is an important community hub, where people access lifesaving care for themselves and their families. In fact, my husband’s life was saved by a team at Frome hospital earlier this year when he went into anaphylactic shock and was able to get to the urgent care department in Frome much quicker than he could have got to the general hospital in Bath. I put on record my thanks to the nurses who treated him that day. Last summer, Somerset ICB cut the number of beds at Frome hospital as part of a test and learn consultation, the criteria for which seem very unclear to me. I know from visiting the Royal United hospital, our general hospital in Bath, that one of the biggest challenges facing it is getting patients discharged to appropriate community settings. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds talked about ambulances queueing; as I understand it, one of the main reasons that ambulances queue at our general hospital is because, at the other end of the hospital, patients cannot be discharged to community settings, yet we are cutting beds in those settings. I am therefore unconvinced that those cuts can be justified. I have continued to push for the restoration of the beds at Frome hospital, but I have also spoken to the ICB about the possibility of the hospital becoming one of the community hubs that the Government have rolled out, which I think could be a really good opportunity for semi-rural areas. Across the country, ICBs are taking very different approaches to consulting MPs on the roll-out of these hubs. Some have engaged constructively and early, but in Somerset there was unfortunately no consultation with me at all. Instead, I was given a list of locations that had already been chosen, none of which were located in Frome and East Somerset. I do not believe that that is how engagement with elected representatives is supposed to work, which matters particularly for constituencies like mine. Much of east Somerset sits across different local authority and health boundaries. Many of my constituents’ usual experience of hospital care is at a hospital that until recently was outside of our own ICB area altogether. When that hospital does not have proper joint working arrangements with our ICB, those patients find themselves effectively pushed to the back of the queue, simply because joined-up planning between the two systems is not happening. That is no fault of the patients or of the staff trying to care for them. It is a structural failure that leaves whole communities at a disadvantage because they happen to sit on the wrong side of a line on a map. However, in the Somer valley in my constituency, things are working rather differently. There, the relationship between Bath and North East Somerset council and the ICB appears to be working well, with genuine collaboration shaping local services. It shows what can be achieved when councils, communities and ICBs sit down together as equal partners from the outset. I ask the Minister to ensure that the Department reinforces to ICBs, including Somerset, that consultation with local MPs and councils on community hub proposals is not optional but essential if communities are to be properly heard. My constituents deserve a community hospital that reflects the needs of a growing town and a process that treats them as genuine partners in shaping it. At a time when the Government are closing down Healthwatch, I welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how we can prioritise patients’ voices in health provision.
The Secretary of State says she is looking at options and that she wishes to work in partnership in the international sphere. She must accept that the UK has significant history and responsibility in this region. Does she not listen to the words of her Back Benchers? It is incumbent on her to take action now—not simply to look at things and to seek partnership—to have real effect on this appalling, continuing outrage.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship on Sussex Day, Sir Desmond. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) on securing this important debate on access to dentistry services in West Sussex. I also thank my fellow West Sussex MPs, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) and the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths), for taking part in the debate. Of course, I particularly thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart), and my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire), for their interest in the debate and for making links between our experience in West Sussex and their experiences in their constituencies. My constituents in Mid Sussex know all too well about the challenge of accessing dental services both for them and their children. An incredible 133,560 children covered by the NHS Sussex integrated care board did not see a dentist last year. That is 41% of them. The figure was even worse in 2024, with more than 140,000 children not seeing a dentist. Dozens of my constituents have contacted me to say that their local dentists are no longer taking NHS patients, leaving them and their children without the vital preventive dental care that they need and that we know saves the NHS a fortune down the line. Recently, a constituent contacted me after spending months trying to find an NHS dentist. Practice after practice told her the same thing—that no NHS places were available. Faced with either a long wait or private fees she simply could not afford, she was left with nowhere to turn. Sadly, as we have heard during the debate, that story is anything but unique.
The hon. Lady makes a really good point. We know that cancer treatment is a real priority for this Government and it certainly makes sense that her suggestion is considered. I hear from parents who are worried about finding appointments for their children; I hear from pensioners who are living with pain while waiting for treatment; and I hear from families who are forced to choose between paying for private dental care and paying for other essentials. There is currently only one dental practice in Burgess Hill accepting under-17s and the same is true in Haywards Heath; they are the two main towns in my constituency. For too many people in Mid Sussex, access to an NHS dentist feels less like a right and more like a lottery. When discussing this crisis, we often hear the phrase “DIY dentistry”. Its use has become so commonplace that we risk forgetting what it actually means. It means people pulling out their own teeth with pliers, or gluing crowns back into place. It means people attempting to treat serious dental problems themselves, because they cannot access professional care. A recent survey found that around 7% of UK adults had attempted some form of DIY dentistry. Over a third of those had tried to extract a painful tooth themselves; others had attempted to drain abscesses or repair fillings at home. People are doing these things because they are in pain and because they feel that they simply have no alternative. The scale of the challenge to turn that situation around is enormous. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester noted, recent NHS figures show that around 60% of adults have not seen a dentist in the last two years, and over 5 million children did not see a dentist at all in the year to June 2025. Tooth decay remains the most common reason for hospital admission among children aged six to 10. That is truly shameful. The previous Conservative Government left NHS dentistry in a deeply fragile state. Years of neglect and a fundamentally flawed dental contract drove dentists away from NHS provision, leaving patients to pay the price. Although the current Government inherited this crisis, they simply cannot inherit the excuses. The public were promised 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments, yet only around 100,000 have been delivered so far. Ministers might point to commissioning figures, but patients judge success by whether they can get an appointment when they need one. Far too many people across West Sussex still cannot do so. I welcome any increase in dental places, and the Government have made moves in that respect. However, I am sure that we all accept that there will be a long pipeline before the trainees of today become the fully fledged dentists who are able to carry out work doing NHS contracts. More importantly, training more dentists alone will not solve the problem. The dental contract remains broken, as we have already heard today. Dentists continue to tell us that the current system discourages them from doing NHS work and fails to reflect the complexity of the treatment that they provide. Unless the Government are prepared to commission and fund more NHS dentistry, increasing the number of dentists will not automatically increase access for patients. That is why contract change is so important. In April, Ministers announced a consultation on changing the contract, with proposals expected before the summer. Midsummer’s day is next week. Patients waiting in pain cannot afford further delays, and dentists who are considering their future in the NHS cannot afford further uncertainty. The Government must set out a clear timetable for reform and ensure that implementation is not kicked into the long grass. The Liberal Democrats believe that there is a better way forward. We have proposed a £750 million dental rescue package to end dental deserts and restore access to NHS dentistry. We would guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone requiring urgent or emergency care. We would fix the broken dental contract, expand training places, continue recognition of EU-qualified dentists and put proper workforce planning into law. We would also guarantee free dental check-ups for children, pregnant women, new mothers and those on low incomes while investing in prevention and oral public health, because if we are serious about solving this crisis, we must stop treating dentistry as an afterthought. This debate is about real people in Mid Sussex and across West Sussex and the country. It is about the parent in Haywards Heath who cannot find an NHS dentist for their child, and the older resident in Burgess Hill who is living with pain while waiting for treatment. It is about families who are doing everything right, but finding that accessing basic NHS dental care is increasingly impossible. No one in Mid Sussex should ever be forced into DIY dentistry, and no child should end up in hospital because routine dental care was unavailable. I would be grateful if the Minister could address three points. First, when will the Government publish and implement proposals for dental contract changes? Secondly, how will Ministers ensure that additional training places result in greater NHS capacity, rather than simply increasing the number of dentists working outside the NHS? Thirdly, what specific action is being taken to tackle unmet dental need and dental deserts in areas such as West Sussex? People in Mid Sussex and across our region deserve access to timely, affordable NHS dental care. I hope the Government will respond to this crisis with the urgency it demands.
I have had loads of emails from staff who were worried that Crewkerne community hospital was shutting down, because the communication from local NHS leaders has not been good enough—a problem we also had with the maternity unit. Does my hon. Friend agree that communication from NHS leaders needs to be a lot better?
I would like to start by joining you, Mr Speaker, and colleagues across the House in paying tribute to the memory of Jo Cox. Her words about seeking what we have in common, and working to counter the politics of division, are today more relevant than ever—for all of us. The Secretary of State set out piecemeal and entirely inadequate measures last week in relation to west bank settlement activity. It was raised with her then that the UK would be hosting the Great Israeli Real Estate Event at the weekend, and she undertook to look into it. That event took place, with properties in illegal settlements being marketed on British territory—the Government have been sent the evidence. How is it that this Government fail even to prevent the marketing of illegal property in this country? How is it that they still fail to take action? The Secretary of State continues to tell us about the meetings that she has had, but what we want is leadership. The UK has a particular responsibility, so will she step up and ban trade with illegal settlements?
As the Secretary of State pointed out, Thames Water has 16 million customers. It does not serve them; it fails them. That is nearly a quarter of the entire UK population and they do not get any choice—this is a natural monopoly. We are all stuck with the water company that supposedly serves the area we live in, but what do customers get? They get bills going up through the roof, pollution in our rivers and seas, and crumbling infrastructure. In her statement, the Secretary of State nodded towards special administration, which would be an improvement on the status quo, but is it not time to come clean with the British people and admit that the privatisation experiment has totally failed, and to take this struggling, failing company back into public ownership, where it belongs?
First, I echo the Secretary of State’s comments in remembrance of her dear colleague Jo Cox. Her loss was felt across the House and across party political lines, and I send all of our very best wishes to her loved ones and friends. I thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement and for a briefing call on this announcement. As you know, I have been trying for months to coax the Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box to explain major events within her portfolio, from the Government’s EU handover negotiations to their lack of support for farmers. Finally, she emerges into the light. We all assumed that it would be to announce progress towards resolving the many issues facing Thames Water and its customers; instead, it is to make a statement about a letter to the regulator. There is nothing new in this statement—no change in the situation of Thames Water, and still no certainty for billpayers. Thames Water has repeatedly failed its customers and the environment with a record of pollution, leakage and chronic under-investment. The latest figures lay this bare. The company is responsible for around a third of the nation’s worst pollution incidents, even as billpayers face steep increases in their bills. These are not abstract failures; untreated sewage has been poured into the rivers and chalk streams that local communities cherish, while customers are asked to pay more for less. The priority now must be a financial arrangement that keeps the company afloat and protects billpayers and taxpayers. While the Secretary of State’s Government are in chaos, paralysed by the Prime Minister’s weakness and the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s leadership ambitions, Thames Water continues to fail. If no deal is reached, Thames Water could collapse—again, at enormous cost to taxpayers. The Secretary of State has said that she does not want a scenario where customers “pick up the bill for the company’s failures”, but when the Conservatives tried to amend the Water (Special Measures) Act to prevent consumers from being on the hook in the event of a company going into special administration and tried to impose a lending ratio limit on water companies to prevent this situation from happening again, Labour voted it down. Why? I also remember that under the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), an investor pulled out of a previous rescue deal, partly due to political risk—in other words, the former Secretary of State had talked himself out of a deal. How is the current Secretary of State avoiding the failures of the now Secretary of State for Housing? There are those who are urging nationalisation, a word that is thrown around carelessly by Labour Back Benchers and by Reform—in fact, I think I heard it just now. None of them ever explains that nationalisation would be extremely expensive, potentially costing the taxpayer up to £20 billion. For those who are wondering what that means, it is roughly equivalent to the defence funding shortfall we have heard so much about in recent days. However, there are reasonable concerns about how Thames Water’s failures will be managed during the Government’s restructuring of the sector and the abolition of Ofwat, so can the Secretary of State please confirm that the existing penalty regime will not be downgraded or diluted, which has been briefed to the newspapers? What safeguards will be put in place to ensure Thames Water remains fully responsible for its environmental and operational failures? How will the Government ensure that billpayers are not left bearing the cost of past mismanagement, and have they offered or begun any process to recommend an alternative deal? Ministers have still not explained how investment in the sector will actually be paid for. Indeed, the Secretary of State’s predecessor had to admit that so-called private water industry investment is in reality paid for by higher bills, and the Secretary of State has repeated that today. Families already struggling with the cost of living should not become the safety net for a company that rewarded its executives while letting its infrastructure crumble. This is an important moment for the Government to show that they can balance financial stability with strong regulatory oversight and put accountability and the interests of billpayers and the environment at the heart of water reform. The Government must now deliver on the big promises they made during the election for the water sector. Public trust in the water industry is already at rock bottom.
It is tempting to say that there is a particularly bad smell about this company, but that would be a statement of the obvious. Although I am not normally a friend of nationalisation, I have a feeling that this company is on a one-way journey to bankruptcy. Am I right in presuming that if that point ever arose, there would be no question of compensating shareholders for a bankrupt company that eventually had to be taken over by the state?
Order. I thank the hon. Lady for opening the debate, and remind all Back-Bench colleagues who wish to speak that they should continue to bob—not right now, but as the debate continues—so that I know they want to speak. I am hoping we can avoid any time limits this morning. We have five Back Benchers wishing to contribute, and if they limit themselves to about seven or eight minutes each, we should be fine.
I am grateful to all Back-Bench contributors to the debate. We now move to the Front-Bench speeches, beginning with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
In 2017 there was appalling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and Facebook was used to recruit civilian death squads. Atrocities continue to this day. The UK holds the pen on Myanmar at the UN. At the General Assembly this year, will the Foreign Secretary hold a high-level meeting to look at this issue and shine a spotlight on the human rights abuses that continue to this day in Myanmar?
The hon. Lady was very prescient then, and it has got worse since. There was lots of talk under the previous Administration about Downing Street cars being searched for IOTs. We know about the huge imports from bad actors, such as China and other countries—that is really what we should be worried about. Many of them contain kill switches, which would devastate some of our industry, such as energy. That would be a disaster. She is right to have raised the issue and to continue to raise it.
It is always a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), who talks common sense most of the time she gets up, which may be one of the reasons why she is still on the Back Benches. If we listened more to those who know something about things, rather than talking as though we know things, and saying things that are invariably wrong, we in Parliament would obviously be better off. The greatest threat we face is that bad actors out there are using this level of technology to get across to countries such as the UK. This is not a party political point, because both Governments have failed to face up to it to the degree that they should have—that is why this Bill is welcome, but it is not everything, as the hon. Lady says—but we think that we can treat the bad actors as though they were normal actors in a commercial sense. However, China is using slave labour to undercut markets and regularly puts IOTs into cars. It gets away with it because we think that we need China more than it needs us. That is the big problem. The hon. Lady is right to raise it, and I congratulate her for again making an excellent speech. I will in due course beg to move my amendment on anti-refoulement, because although this is a good Bill, some bits are missing and others have been skated over. This is one area about which we will come, again and again, to regret that we had not done more. The issue is British citizens abroad ending up under the rule of Governments that do not believe in the concept of freedom before the law, in a fair trial as part of that process, or in habeas corpus, which is an English common law right that has gone around the world. The amendment seeks to prohibit data sharing with jurisdictions that cannot guarantee a fair trial. It maintains the current legal approach, which generally restricts the sharing of sensitive information outside the EU. Currently, information sharing of a type enabled by proposed new regulation 6, which is in clause 18, is prohibited outside the EU. The proposed new regulation is therefore weaker than what is going on in the European Union. Sadly, it paves the way for such sharing, rather than restricting it. The amendment therefore seeks to prohibit information sharing with places where the Secretary of State believes that a fair trial simply cannot be obtained. It would require the Secretary of State to consult civil society and human rights experts to identify jurisdictions—this would apply universally and not just to China, although China is a big player in this—where the right to a fair trial cannot be guaranteed, with all decisions subject to mandatory annual reports to Parliament. That is important: Parliament should be part of this and make decisions about whether it agrees with the Government. Beijing is a good example. It has frequently used seemingly legitimate criminal complaints to target dissidents. Proposed new regulation 6, if unamended, therefore raises transnational repression risks rather than solving them. The amendment is necessary to close that loophole in the Bill, which currently fails to anticipate politically motivated requests from such totalitarian states. I often say that we should stop speaking about countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as authoritarian states. They are not authoritarian states; they are totalitarian states. Why do I say that? Because everything in those countries is owned and run by the state. Authoritarian states are often dictatorships, but they are not the same thing as totalitarian states. They are brutal and nasty, but totalitarianism is a complete system. This is about totalitarian states. Proposed new regulation 6 is predicated upon helping other Governments obtain justice. The argument of my amendment 3 is that—quite apart from the transnational repression risks—justice as we understand it cannot be served in a country where essentially there is no rule of law, no right to a fair trial, and a judicial system that serves the party. As I often say, it is a matter of pride that perhaps the greatest gift this country has given to the world is the concept of freedom in the face of the law. That is the point I made earlier: habeas corpus came from English common law and dominates so much of the free world’s thinking. It was not until the 1970s that some countries in Europe actually practised habeas corpus, so it was not just the case that it was produced by Britain; it was also owned by many other countries. That is what is at risk here, and we should be the greatest defenders of that right to a fair trial anywhere in the world. Let us take a few of these countries as examples for why amendment 3 is needed. Let us look at China. Requests were made by authoritarian states—totalitarian states in this case—regarding Interpol notices, as has been the recent pattern, and this happens a lot. The People’s Republic of China and other countries have a troubling recent history of very significant transnational repression, hounding dissidents in the UK and cloaking their political persecution in superficially legitimate criminal charges. The PRC is not alone in requesting information on political opponents in the UK, and it does it a lot. We can confidently speculate that China will make requests of the UK almost immediately should the Bill be passed. Let me look at the single biggest case that confronts us in China at the moment: that of Jimmy Lai. He is a British citizen. I cannot tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, how endlessly in debates, even under the previous Administration, we had to fight to get the Government to state that he is a British citizen, not a dual nationality citizen. He is a British citizen, is proud to be British, has been British all his life and has only ever owned a British passport—he has never been a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. The special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, in her 2024 and 2025 reports, specifically flagged concerns that evidence obtained through torture is still widely admitted in Chinese courts. She also expressed concerns in late 2024 regarding the case of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, noting that evidence allegedly secured through torture in mainland China was and is being used in the trial. On 15 November 2024, the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention published its opinion that Jimmy Lai is “unlawfully and arbitrarily detained” and called for his immediate release. The proposed new regulation will not go far enough and therefore does not deal with this, and that is what my amendment 3 is all about. On the risk of extradition to China from safe third countries, currently the UK does not have a bilateral extradition treaty with the People’s Republic of China, and it has suspended its bilateral extradition treaty with Hong Kong—something that many of us were calling out for at the time in 2020. In 2025, proposed changes to the Extradition Act 2003 would allow co-operation between UK and Hong Kong authorities on a “case-by-case ad hoc basis”. The trouble with that is that it begins to open the door. The risk of sharing NIS data is not confined to the physical removal of individuals; it also poses a profound threat to national security and the safety of the diaspora within the UK—how often have we heard about that? These totalitarian states not only seek to extradite dissidents, they seek to silence them through transnational repression and to compromise the UK’s own digital resilience. Sharing NIS data with an adversarial jurisdiction is akin to providing a road map for a state-sponsored cyber-attack. For dissidents and human rights defenders living in the UK, NIS data can be used to demonise and de-anonymise their activity. This information is frequently used to identify and harass family members remaining in their home country, to conduct targeted phishing and surveillance against the individual’s private devices, and to coerce the individual into becoming an informant under the threat of criminal charges based on the shared technical data. Let me deal with another case: that of Ryan Cornelius in the United Arab Emirates. Ryan Cornelius is a British citizen who has been arbitrarily detained in Dubai for 18 years, despite well-documented evidence of an unfair trial and inhuman treatment. Ryan’s detention has been found to be arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. His case arose from a high-profile financial dispute involving loans connected to a major Dubai development project. Although he and his associates had reportedly complied with restructuring agreements with Dubai Islamic Bank, he was arrested without warning, transferred by plain-clothed officers to a police facility, where he was held incommunicado, denied access to a lawyer and subjected to aggressive interrogation. During this time, he was coerced into signing documents in Arabic—a language he does not understand—under the false premise that this would give him his release.
I am not quite certain that I understand the Minister’s reasons for why he cannot accept my amendment, tweak it or work with it in the other place. The reality is that with this Bill, we are opening the door in a way that we would not have otherwise done to the use of information that may predicate a failure for some British citizen sitting in a country where the rule of law does not protect them in the courts. The Government are taking a risk of making it worse, not better. While the Minister agrees to some degree with the principle of what I am saying, surely this is the time to put it right in the Bill.
Patrick Hurley, you have two minutes to wind up.
Order. The sitting is suspended for 45 minutes.
Order. I haven’t any proposals.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your wonderful words about Jo Cox and for the brilliant debate we had last Thursday as the main business of the House. Following acknowledgment by the Development Minister, the noble Baroness Chapman, that Labour’s horrific development and aid cuts undermine the response to the Ebola crisis, and that funding is only 5% of the help provided for the last Ebola emergency a decade ago, will the Government make it clear that these pandemics cross borders and are a serious danger to all of us unless they are contained? Is that not the essence of the case for international development?
I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s use of the term “settler terrorism”. She is absolutely right; the phrase “settler violence” does not do justice to what is happening. She will be aware that settler terrorism is often enabled and encouraged, or at best a blind eye is turned, by both the Israeli police and the IDF. She will know the damage perpetrated by that terrorist activity. If Israel wishes to remain the villa in the jungle it has always wished to be, can she at least remind her Israeli Government counterparts of the importance of the rule of law and the separation of the duties of the IDF and the police when it comes to protecting the citizens of both Israel and Palestine?
I echo your sombre words about Jo Cox, Mr Speaker. Her memory and her family are in our thoughts today. The United Kingdom’s long-standing strategic, security, defence and intelligence relationship with the United States is crucial for us and for our allies. Can the Foreign Secretary tell us what role Britain has played in the negotiations between the United States and the middle east in relation to Iran, given our historic links to partners in the region? Have the Government seen the US-Iran agreement, and what is Britain’s role in shaping future foreign policy and the security architecture in the middle east?
What steps are being taken to investigate Daesh fighters who have returned to Britain and prosecute them for their crimes, including sexual violence and rape against the Yazidis and others? Given the importance of ensuring that there is accountability and reform of institutions to root out the risk of exploitation from the UN, charities and even the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, what is the Government’s response to the suspension of Karim Khan from the International Criminal Court for allegations of sexual misconduct?
China’s human rights record is appalling. Did the Foreign Secretary know, while she was enjoying the hospitality of the Chinese Communist party earlier this month, that Chinese slave labour is being used to supply solar panels across UK schools and hospitals to meet Labour’s net zero targets? How has the Foreign Secretary allowed this to happen, and does she think it is acceptable for her Government to be turning a blind eye to Chinese slave labour and these awful human rights abuses?
The Foreign Secretary will know that a secret camera was found in an office block where the plans for the Chinese spy hub super-embassy were approved. No one knows yet where the camera came from, but it raises serious questions for the Government about their approval of this Chinese spy embassy. Can she say whether this act of foreign espionage will be investigated, and does this incident not once again highlight why China must be placed on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme?
My intervention is about the age for access being lowered to eight years old. Perhaps the Minister could reassure us on what assessment has been done of safeguarding. That would make me very happy.
I recognise the importance of sovereignty, but there are real challenges. How can we deal with the prevalence of, for example, Taiwanese chips in our tech market?
The hon. Gentleman is giving a typically excellent and passionate speech. No person living with dementia should be removed from their family or support network. Does he agree that as the NHS is restructured, there needs to be a proper focus on outcomes for dementia sufferers right across the country?
I did not have time to congratulate the Minister, a fellow Brummie, on her promotion. It is good to see those from Birmingham here in the Chamber. Question put and agreed to.
What assurances can the Government give my constituents across Bexley that the £88 million of investment that is under way in our community to secure our fresh drinking water supply for the next 50 years is not derailed by this Government announcement, which means further uncertainty for Thames Water and its customers?
We pay tribute to our armed forces for their courage and bravery in boarding and seizing the Russian shadow fleet vessel at the weekend. We also welcome the further sanctions announced today, including those targeting the shadow fleet. We urge the Government to put pressure on those who buy and refine Russian oil, as the freedom of Ukraine depends on cutting off the funds that finance Putin’s illegal war. Given the urgency on the battlefields of Ukraine and the inflated revenue Putin has recently had from Russian oil, does the Minister think that the situation can wait until 2027 for the introduction of the ban on Russian-originated diesel and jet fuel imports?
We both agree that this is important. While Putin uses globally inflated oil prices to fund his war machine, our own defence investment plan is in tatters. The former Defence Secretary’s shocking resignation letter said that the Prime Minister was “unable”, and the Chancellor “unwilling”, to provide the funding for the defence investment plan. That is absolutely damning. Astonishingly, the very next day the Government announced £4.5 billion to paint 10,000 new zebra crossings. Given that the FCDO made a big cut to its own budget to fund defence last year, does the Minister share my anger that other Departments are refusing to contribute to keep our country safe?
Last month, along with other members of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar, I visited the Rock in order to assess responses to the proposed treaty at first hand. Will the Minister give us an update? When does he anticipate that the treaty will be finalised?
I was going to bang on with a very long and intelligent speech, but in the interests of brevity and keeping everybody happy, I will not. I am delighted that the Minister is introducing legislation relating to the glorious regime of the strong and stable Conservative Government of 2020 and the 2023 Budget. This policy was slightly bonkers. We need to do everything we can to encourage people to save and not put a cap on their savings. I am tempted to go on about salary sacrifice, but I will spare the Minister the embarrassment of reminding him about that. We will certainly not oppose these regulations.