partytracker.uk — a sourced record of what Britain's political parties say and do, party by party, with every entry linked to a primary source

12,832 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them

1. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   The hon. Member has made a series of important points. I join her in thanking the emergency services for the extremely important work that they do in communities throughout the country. She was right to mention volunteers. I am aware of the very good work being done in Finland and Scandinavia, which have taken a more forward-leaning approach to campaigns of this sort than the United Kingdom, but I will look more closely at her specific point about how things are working in Finland. I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of the priority services register. We are working with utility companies to ensure as much awareness as possible, at household level, of the need to sign up for the register. As I said, the criteria are quite broad, and I urge Members to encourage their constituents to check their eligibility. The hon. Member made an important point about sovereignty. I work closely with colleagues across Government—from the Cabinet Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and elsewhere—to ensure that our digital infrastructure and critical national infrastructure are as resilient and as protected as they can be. As she knows, we face a range of threats on that front, and it is important that the Government are properly geared up to stand against them. We work closely with our international allies to that end.

   Hansard source
2. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   I am grateful to the Chair of the Defence Committee for his question, and I agree with his broader point about the importance of wider societal resilience—he is absolutely right about that. That work is taking place through the home defence programme, on which we lead through the Cabinet Office, though we work with partners across Government, including the Ministry of Defence. He referred to Albiston Shadow, which is due to be the largest home defence exercise run in the United Kingdom for many years. We are still working through its precise design, so I will reflect on his comments, and we will look at whether we can accommodate some of the points that he has helpfully flagged.

   Hansard source
3. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   I certainly agree with the Father of the House that it is best to be prepared. It is interesting that he reflects on a time when there was greater awareness of the risk of conflict, but he is right to say that the threats we face today are very significant, and the world is more dangerous than at any point since the period that he describes. I hope that he will understand that the Government take these matters incredibly seriously. I hope that he will see that we are working across Government to ensure that we have the appropriate defences in place, and the appropriate resources to underpin those defences. We need to focus people’s minds on a range of different threats to our national security. The Be Ready campaign will better insulate households and communities, and I hope that he will agree that there will be a broader, wider benefit, in terms of our national security and keeping the country safe.

   Hansard source
4. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, and I absolutely join him in praising Ben Brook and his team in Warwickshire; they did incredibly important and difficult work over the summer. My hon. Friend may have seen that last week the Prime Minister hosted our inaugural wildfire summit, at which he announced that military planes and helicopters will take to the skies to fight wildfires for the first time, as we prepare for future extreme weather driven by climate change. In his announcement, the Prime Minister paid tribute to those who put on a uniform and serve in our fire and rescue services for the incredibly important work that they do, including, clearly, in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

   Hansard source
5. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   I broadly agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s rule No. 2, and he is right to stress the importance of having back-up systems. Essentially, a guiding principle in this campaign is making sure that households have their own back-up systems, but he is right to say that the Government need to think about the bigger picture, and to ensure resilience across our critical national infrastructure and in the areas of business and commerce to which he refers. I can give him an assurance that the Government work very closely with partners in the private sector, and various forums provide opportunities to engage on these matters. We take them very seriously, but I will look more carefully at the point that he has made.

   Hansard source
6. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I will make sure that colleagues in Government have heard it. She is right to emphasise the wider industrial issues at play here. She will know that tin cans were included on the checklist, and she is right to talk about tin production. I give her a reassurance that I will raise that with colleagues in other Government Departments.

   Hansard source
7. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   The hon. and gallant Gentleman makes a really important point about subsea infrastructure. It is something in which I have taken a particular interest, working with colleagues across Government, including those in the Ministry of Defence. He is right to mention the threat from Russia, which is well understood. I know he will understand that there is always a balance to be struck, both in recognising the threat that we face and in ensuring that we are properly prepared to defend against it. At the same time—the director general of MI5 made this point—we should not make the Russians out to be better than they are and do the propaganda work on their behalf, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Let me look more carefully at the detail, and I will come back to him with a more precise response.

   Hansard source
8. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   My hon. Friend makes a really important point. She speaks about the kind of group that all of us will have in our constituency—those local groups that come together to provide support. On a recent visit to Leicestershire, I saw the excellent work done by a local flood action group to protect their community following floods. We have been very careful to ensure that the design of this campaign has been worked through with local authorities, local resilience forums, and a range of voluntary and charitable organisations. I believe very much in the public and community spirit found right across the country. We want to encourage and enable activity of this kind, so that when an everyday emergency does strike, communities can come together and look out for each other.

   Hansard source
9. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

   Strengthening Community Resilience

   The hon. Member makes a similarly important point. I reiterate what I said a moment ago: the design of the campaign has been worked on in conjunction with community and voluntary groups, which we all know from our constituencies do an incredibly important job. The launch of the campaign has been warmly welcomed by a range of community and voluntary organisations right around the country. We want to work through local authorities and with local resilience forums—those kind of organisations—so that they feel both empowered and enabled to support their communities, but all of us as Members of this House have a responsibility to work with and support them at the local level.

   Hansard source
10. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who speaks with great authority on these matters, not least from her own time in government, and she is right to make the point in the way that she does. I know that she will understand that a lot of work takes place in local authority areas and with local resilience forums on the issues she has raised to ensure that there is visibility of where there are more vulnerable households. That is precisely why we are taking this opportunity to encourage members of the public to check—and to encourage Members of this House to get their constituents to check—their eligibility for the priority services register. That is a really useful document in this regard, but I know that local resilience forums will be working on the issues she has raised, and we in the Government will of course keep a close eye on them.

    Hansard source
11. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that mobile networks are very important. I saw for myself, in the aftermath of Storm Goretti in Cornwall, the impact of losing the mobile and digital signal, even for a relatively short period. A lot of work is taking place in Government, led by the DCMS, to ensure that there is that resilience and that, in the aftermath of any extreme weather event, there is urgent and ongoing work to restore capabilities that have been lost. He makes an important point, and I know that, again, local resilience forums will be looking at the particular challenges in their areas and working with utility providers to ensure that, where coverage is lost, it can be returned as quickly as possible.

    Hansard source
12. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I think he raises an important point. I am limited in the time I have to respond, but I can update him that there has been positive progress on that area of work. It sits adjacent to the discussion we are having, but he is right to raise it. At points of everyday emergency, or where particular communities are subject to emergency circumstances, there are those who may seek to use it as an opportunity to sow misinformation and disinformation. The Government are of course extremely mindful of that, which is one of the reasons why the Prime Minister recently announced the creation of the national centre for information defence.

    Hansard source
13. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue. He and I have discussed it previously, and he explained with great clarity the impact of the loss of that capability on his constituents. I hope he gets a sense of the seriousness with which we take it, but I will write to him and the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) with more details of the work we are doing.

    Hansard source
14. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, and he has basically asked a series of good questions that lend themselves more to a longer debate, so I may not be able to do justice to them now. However, let me emphasise that, as I said earlier, this campaign is about taking the simple, straightforward steps to be ready for everyday emergencies such as severe storms or flooding. At the same time, there is significant bandwidth across Government to talk about the other threats we face as a nation, and I think that is what he is referring to. Ultimately, what we have to do, and this is done from the centre, is to make sure that we are preparing communities at the local level for the everyday emergencies we have been talking about today, while at the same time making sure that we are properly prepared for the very severe threats we face from countries such as Russia.

    Hansard source
15. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    My hon. Friend makes an important point about engaging businesses. We are certainly doing that. We are also working closely with our allies, including the countries to which he referred. Trust is important. The polling we have done shows that 84% of the public expect the Government to provide this information and only 13% of households think that they are properly prepared. It is important that we establish that honest conversation with the public to give them good, common-sense, practical advice that will make them more resilient in their own households. That is what we are doing.

    Hansard source
16. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    Let me say to the hon. Gentleman how much importance we attach to doing this right around the United Kingdom. This is a UK-wide campaign and we have worked closely with partners in the devolved Governments to ensure that it can be as simple and as joined up as possible. The relationship with colleagues in Scotland is a really important one, not least because of the challenges he alluded to. I hope he will see that this is the beginning of a campaign. Fundamentally, we want to engage the public about simple measures they can take in their own lives. This is a first step. I hope he will join with us and support it.

    Hansard source
17. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is about people playing an active part in their own communities to ensure that collective resilience. She is also right to refer to the example of Spain. Spain has been doing this work for a considerable period of time and it has been able to build more of a culture of resilience. That is common practice among our neighbours in Europe and further afield, and that culture of resilience is something we are seeking to build here.

    Hansard source
18. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his broad welcome of the campaign. I listened very carefully to what he had to say and I do not think there is much disagreement between us. Let me say to him that the Government are constantly reviewing and updating our response to a wide range of threats and scenarios to ensure that we are prepared for every eventuality. He will know that, through the home defence programme, we have been running a variety of security and resilience exercises. There are more of those to come. That is important work, but the Be Ready campaign sits as a strand of that activity, alongside other work we are doing with other colleagues, including in the Ministry of Defence.

    Hansard source
19. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    The Chair of the Select Committee raises an important point, which I know was discussed at the Prime Minister’s inaugural wildfire summit just last week. It is absolutely on the Prime Minister’s mind and it has been raised with me on a number of occasions at a local level. I know that colleagues in other Departments are looking, along with my own Department, at what more we can do.

    Hansard source
20. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I understand why the hon. Gentleman will want to raise concerns about his own area; that is absolutely his responsibility. He will, I hope, have heard the comments I made earlier about the amount of money that has been invested in flood defences. These are matters that we take incredibly seriously. I know, as a former metro mayor, the importance of issues relating to flooding and of working across local authority boundaries to make sure that, along with the Environment Agency and water companies, we have a proper response and a proper defensive posture is put in place. I discuss the matter regularly with my colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If the hon. Gentleman has any specific concerns, or anything specific that he would like us to look at, I would be very happy to do that on his behalf.

    Hansard source
21. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, not least because the Cornwall experience and the experience of Storm Goretti has been genuinely important in shaping this campaign. I am grateful to her and her Cornish colleagues for the important role they play. A storm summit will be taking place in Cornwall towards the end of November. I have asked the director of Cobra and his deputy to be there. That will provide a really important forum for discussing the kinds of issues my hon. Friend has raised today.

    Hansard source
22. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    The hon. Member makes an important point. Communication is key. I know he will understand that I was responding to a specific point about where a particularly capability had been lost and how it could be restored as quickly as possible, but I take his point about areas that do not have connectivity in the first place. I am sure that that is a conversation we want to have across Government, to look at what more we can do, working with colleagues in DCMS, but let me take that away and I will come back to him with some further thoughts.

    Hansard source
23. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    We are determined to learn lessons from our neighbours, and Finland, which has been mentioned previously, is a good example of that. My hon. Friend will understand that this campaign brings the UK into line with many other countries across Europe and further afield. It builds on the existing guidance that has already been published on gov.uk. My hon. Friend makes another important point, which is that the actions that people take in their own households to be ready for one emergency can also help in the context of other emergencies.

    Hansard source
24. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that there is a reasonably obvious correlation between resilience at a local and community level and national resilience. Our national resilience will only be as strong as it can be if we have underpinned it with work that takes place at a localised level. It is work that we have not done previously as a Government—we need to build that wider societal resilience. We are starting bottom up, by investing in individual households to ensure that there is localised resilience. There will be wider and deeper benefits to our national security as a consequence of that. NCID, which the Prime Minister recently announced, will mean that we are much better placed to deter and defeat the misinformation and disinformation that we have seen for too long.

    Hansard source
25. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    My hon. Friend is right to raise his concerns in the way he has. Our telecommunications networks are a vital part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and our emergency response in weather-related crises supports the functioning of essential services, keeping people connected when they need it most. My hon. Friend will understand that there is an important role for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; I have listened carefully to his comments, and I will speak to colleagues in that Department.

    Hansard source
26. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member, but I am not going to use the occasion of talking about Be Ready to get into matters relating to cyber attribution, not least because those are complicated processes that need to be done in a certain way, as I know he understands. The House will be well-versed in the challenges that Jaguar Land Rover faced last year. There is a lot of work across Government to ensure that there is resilience among both the public and private sector organisations in the United Kingdom. I will have more to say about that with the launch of the national cyber action plan, which is coming later this year.

    Hansard source
27. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words and his observation about the importance of drawing the campaign together from across Government. There needs to be a response that is balanced across Government Departments in order to ensure wider societal resilience. My hon. Friend is right to reference AI. I tend to focus on the significant challenges that AI brings, but there are also significant opportunities, including in this area. I work closely with the Minister for Artificial Intelligence in this endeavour, and I would be happy to discuss that with my hon. Friend further.

    Hansard source
28. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    Fundamentally, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I agree with him. He is right that preparedness needs to be driven at a national level, which is precisely why we have launched a national campaign. But he is also right that it needs to be delivered at a local level, which is why, for some time now, there has been extensive consultation with local authorities through the Local Government Association, and with local resilience forums. The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely reasonable challenge on ensuring that there is coverage in every corner of the United Kingdom. We are working closely with metro mayors in England, and the devolved Governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but it is my job to be satisfied that we have got that response right around the country. It is a responsibility that I take seriously.

    Hansard source
29. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I agree with the hon. Member that Cornwall is on the frontline when it comes to our resilience. I am personally determined to ensure that we not only learn but implement lessons post Storm Goretti. There has been extensive consultation between officials in the Cabinet Office and in Cornwall. As I referenced earlier, the storm summit that will be taking place later next month provides an important opportunity to discuss those issues further.

    Hansard source
30. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s concern, but I would again take this opportunity to emphasise the importance of the priority services register.

    Hansard source
31. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    I think that is a little unfair, as I have been at pains to emphasise the important work that local authorities and local resilience forums do in that regard. That is certainly my view. We have been very careful to ensure that local authorities have been involved with the design of this campaign, and we have been in regular contact with the devolved Governments and the metro mayors. The hon. Lady’s fundamental point about the importance of local government is absolutely right. Local resilience forums, which have long championed the need for a campaign like this, do a really important job, and we will continue to work closely with them in its delivery.

    Hansard source
32. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    Absolutely. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his long-standing interest in these matters. He is right that this is about ensuring that the public are alert, but not alarmed, and that they are ready. That is the purpose of this campaign.

    Hansard source
33. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dan Jarvis

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this particular issue. I know she will have seen that there is specific advice on the checklist with regard to medicine and health. The design of the campaign has been worked up closely with a range of different organisations, with a range of different stakeholder cohorts in mind, including people who are medically vulnerable for a range of different reasons. We are acutely conscious of the risk to those particular people, and the campaign has been carefully designed with them at the forefront of our mind to ensure that they will be best protected in the context of an everyday emergency.

    Hansard source
34. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Nia Griffith

    Strengthening Community Resilience

    Tinned food is key to being prepared for an emergency, as it can be eaten when there is no power to cook it. Does the Minister recognise that Tata’s Trostre steelworks, in my constituency of Llanelli, which makes the tin plate used by big-name manufacturers to can their products, is of strategic importance to our national resilience? Will he stress to his ministerial colleagues the absolute necessity of ensuring that conditions, such as energy prices, are competitive, so that we can secure a viable future for tin-plate production in Llanelli?

    Hansard source
35. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Meg Hillier

    Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

    I declare that I am a leaseholder whose home did have cladding, though happily that has now been resolved. I represent one of the largest concentrations of new builds with cladding, and there are serious issues, as the Secretary of State has begun to highlight. Back in 2020, the Public Accounts Committee issued a report about the need to improve skills and make more contractors available, so I appreciate the grip that she took of the situation in 2024 as Secretary of State. Will she flesh out a bit more what work she is doing with other Departments to ensure we get the necessary skilled workforce? That is one of the biggest factors that slows down my constituents’ getting the justice that they deserve.

    Hansard source
36. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Meg Hillier

    Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

    I thank the Secretary of State for being so generous with her time. Picking up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), a number of my constituents are stuck in blocks that are not high priority. They do not have as much cladding to be removed, but they are down the list because there are not enough skilled people to do the work—it is not always that the developers are dragging their heels; sometimes that is an issue as well. Therefore, for the sake of a small amount of work, their lives are on hold. They are unable to sell their properties and find it challenging to get a mortgage—all the issues that we know people are still facing, many years on. Could she take that away for the Department to revisit some of the priority issues and get some of those blocks that could be done quickly up the list?

    Hansard source
37. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Meg Hillier

    Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

    This is a rare opportunity to get direct answers from the Secretary of State in the House. That is not a reflection on her, but that is what we are here for. I have a constituent who is an expert on fire safety. We know that the Adam Kiziak forged EWS1 form has been a real issue, and that fire safety is now considered by measures of tolerability, rather than to the set standards. I raised that in a Westminster Hall debate with the Minister for Homelessness, because it is a real concern, and the Bill does not address all of it. Is that in the Secretary of State’s mind? Will she meet interested Members of Parliament—cross-party, because a number of us have this issue—and my very able constituent, Ian Abley, who is an expert on the matter, to discuss how we can future-proof the system? We cannot afford mistakes made as we try to solve the problems of the past.

    Hansard source
38. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Meg Hillier

    Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

    I do not want to be party political—I think we all know that this was one of the biggest failures of regulation in many generations, and it has affected many people very badly—but this is a disappointment. I wonder if the hon. Lady can reflect, as she is new to her post and new in this Parliament, on how decisions sometimes need to be made early. James Brokenshire, a previous Secretary of State—sadly, he is no longer with us—made some bold decisions in the early days after Grenfell, but then there were delays in things like getting fire safety surveyors trained up, which takes three years. If those decisions had been made earlier, we would be in a better position now. In the spirit of trying to improve things, will she reflect on why those decisions were not made and why we need to back this Government Bill to make sure that we move as fast as we can?

    Hansard source
39. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Meg Hillier

    Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

    I concur with my hon. Friend’s tribute to those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tragedy and to their loved ones. I remember the shock in this place when that tragedy happened. I have a real concern about tolerability and how fire safety is assessed. This is something that built up over generations, and my hon. Friend gave a summary of it. Decisions on building safety were left to the wrong people; there was no outside inspection. Tolerability is a subjective standard, rather than a safe set of fixed standards. Does my hon. Friend have anything to say about that? We need to be clear as we go forward about fixing that problem and ensuring that it is not down to individuals. Some developers cherry-pick who will assess the building safety of a block, knowing that some people will pass it when others would be more rigorous. That is not an acceptable situation.

    Hansard source
40. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Dame Meg Hillier

    Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

    My hon. Friend is generous in giving way. The insurance issue is a big concern—it is something the Treasury Committee is looking into. Does he not agree that there is a problem with the industry? The premiums have gone up exponentially, and although there is an increased risk, the likelihood of it crystallising has not been proved to be as high as the insurance industry has said. Does my hon. Friend have any further thoughts on that?

    Hansard source