Jury Trials
3. What recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of proposed changes to jury trials on the criminal justice system.
Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,731 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
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Jury Trials
Will the Minister confirm that the Deputy Prime Minister’s legacy is that he will be the first Justice Secretary in the United Kingdom to restrict the centuries-old right to jury trials?
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Prison Smuggling: Drones
The use of drones by criminal gangs to smuggle contraband into prisons is of particular concern, especially in open prisons such as Kirkham prison in my constituency, where there is a vast amount of open estate to be able to drop it off. While I was the police and crime commissioner for Lancashire, we invested in counter-drone units. The brilliant thing is that they use signals to jam the drones, which forces them to shut down and return to the point from which they were deployed, often leading the police to the place where the criminals are hiding. Will the Secretary of State consider working closely with police forces deploying this technology to use it more broadly in countering the drone threat in the UK?
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Defence Investment Plan
Following on from my constituency neighbour, I am obviously very disappointed to see that a Typhoon order for the RAF is not in this document. That would be worth around £8 billion, which is the single biggest way that the Government could invest in British jobs through this plan and through the aerospace industry. There is a line about £5.4 billion for Typhoons on page 44, but on page 45 it says that only £1.1 billion of that is new funding. What is the other £4.3 billion attached to the Typhoon platform in this document actually for?
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Knife Crime: Custodial Sentences
12. What assessment he has made of trends in the number of people receiving immediate custodial sentences for knife crime offences.
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Knife Crime: Custodial Sentences
I thank the Minister for that answer, but the latest figures show that the average custodial sentence for an adult knife or offensive weapon offence is just over eight months. Under the Sentencing Act 2026, there has been a presumption since March that any sentence below 12 months should be suspended, so what action is the Minister taking to ensure that that presumption does not effectively decriminalise many knife offences?
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Defence Investment Plan
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey)—a man with honour, integrity and principle —for ensuring an extra £15 billion for the defence budget, and to the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who is a man of a supreme gallantry. I respect the fact that they resigned on a point of principle, but we are still £13 billion short, of course. What reassurance can the Defence Secretary give to my constituents at RAF Cosford who are looking to see their housing refurbished and replaced over the next few years that that programme is still safe, and to those working on the Boxer and Challenger 3 vehicle programmes? I understand moving to autonomous vehicles, but are those programmes safe at Telford?
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Department for Work and Pensions
I thank the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), for securing this debate. I offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Douglas Lumsden) on a great Conservative gain and to the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Lara Bird) on an SNP hold, and I congratulate them both on their maiden speeches. I welcome the opportunity to challenge the Minister on her Department’s spending policies and performance. We cannot pretend that welfare reform is not difficult to achieve. As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), said recently: “When I speak to former Welfare Secretaries, I hear the same thing again and again. Welfare reform is hard. You will be hated.” That is why we offered our support to the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), when she attempted to bring down the benefits bill, because it was the right thing to do. Everyone is paying more in tax to pay benefits to others. That is not fair, and it needs to change. When it comes to our welfare system, we need to be clear what we want from it. The system should be there to help people when they fall into difficulty; at the same time, it should help the most vulnerable people in our society. There are many people who simply cannot work, and they must be protected. However, we have got to a state in which too many people are reliant on the benefits system. Let us take a look at where we have got to today. When we left office, inflation was at 2%. Unemployment was at 4.1%, and youth unemployment was at 14%. Some 6.8 million people were claiming universal credit, and 3.5 million people were claiming personal independence payments. Twenty months later, after Labour came to power, inflation has risen to 2.8%. Unemployment has risen to 4.9%, and youth unemployment has risen to 16.2%. Some 7.9 million people are claiming universal credit, which is 1.1 million more people, and 3.9 million people are claiming PIP—that is 400,000 more people. That is unsustainable. How have we got to this position? Part of it is down to the Government’s policies around employment. The increase in employer national insurance contributions to 15% has added more costs to businesses. That means that many businesses have had to make redundancies and are hiring fewer people than before. That is especially affecting young people, hence why we now have higher youth unemployment than the European average. That is not a good thing after 20 months in power. At the same time, the Government introduced the Employment Rights Act 2025, adding even more costs and complexities to businesses. These costs to businesses are estimated at £5 billion. When the Minister closes the debate, I am sure she will talk about the increased funding in apprenticeships, which is of course welcome. It is all well and good increasing funding for apprenticeships and employment, but it is ultimately pointless if there are no jobs available. That is what this Government seem to fail to understand. This is a crisis of their own making, and they are putting their head in the sand and pretending it is all fine. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, if it is all fine, why is the Prime Minister resigning? When it comes to welfare specifically, we are at a point where more than half of all households are net beneficiaries of benefits. Again, that is unsustainable. The Government had the chance to reduce the benefits bill, and the Leader of the Opposition pledged our party’s support in doing that. However, the Government could not face down their own Back Benchers, so we are left waiting for the Timms review of PIP to report in the autumn, which may not even suggest making the necessary savings we should all make on PIP. In this year alone, PIP will cost the Department an extra £3.5 billion, and universal credit will cost nearly £9 billion extra. If we stay on this trajectory, the health and disability-related benefits bill could reach nearly £100 billion by the end of this Parliament. We should be acting now; instead, we are left with dither and delay. Finally, we need to talk about fraud, which is becoming ever more pervasive—the National Audit Office found that it cost the public sector between £55 billion and £81 billion in 2023-24. That figure continues to increase year on year, so there is a real need to tackle fraud and ensure that public money is allocated correctly.
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Department for Work and Pensions
I am not going to give way, because I have very limited time—my apologies. When it comes to fraud and error in the DWP specifically, the Department’s own statistics estimate that around £9.9 billion is overpaid in benefits each year. Two thirds of those overpayments are for universal credit claims, so I hope the Minister will explain why fraud and error are particularly high for universal credit claims and what steps are being taken. In 2017, there were 7,840 convictions for benefit fraud; last year, there were 461. That is a 94% decline in convictions, and fewer than 600 individuals have been convicted in total since the general election. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) that we should be making an example of benefit cheats in the courts to disincentivise others. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be delighted to hear that I am coming to the end of my speech. Under this Government, hard-working taxpayers are being asked to pay more. Many people would hope that that money would be going towards—for example—increasing the defence budget, but as this estimates day debate has highlighted, it is going to the DWP budget instead. The Government know that this is not right; indeed, the previous Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was right when she said that the Government “must not…duck the big challenges facing this country”.—[Official Report, 1 July 2025; Vol. 770, c. 164.] However, when it came to making the tough decisions, they bottled it every time. Maybe the next Government, led by the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), will do better. In his speech yesterday, he said that he would control the welfare bill, and told us to “imagine”. We on the Conservative Benches hope that his promises do not turn out to be imaginary.
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Defence Investment Plan
More money for defence is a good thing, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s defence investment plan. He has just said that he is confident that we will make good on the commitment to 3.5% in the next spending review. I do not know why he is so confident about that. The current Prime Minister will not be Prime Minister; the current Chancellor will not be Chancellor; and—dare I say it—he may not be Secretary of State. He would give us, industry, the markets and the whole country a great deal more confidence if he answered the question from the shadow Secretary of State and told us whether the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) had signed this off.
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Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I have great respect for the Minister. I hope that he remains in post or gets a promotion in the upcoming reshuffle. I did not plan to speak today but, although I have heard some good points made in this Committee, I have also heard some nonsense. This is a terrible idea: I do not think a national scheme of delegation will work across the country. It puts too much power in the hands of planning officers, who do not always get it right. We often fail to talk about how we have to create communities, but when someone makes a bad planning decision, that building is there for generations. There are issues that should be thought about within the planning process, and they will be difficult to solve if an officer has recommended the approval or refusal of a specific application and they have got it wrong. Officers are less likely to live within the council area, so they are less likely to know the place as well as councillors. Councillors should be around that table and should be able to call in planning applications. Lots of councils do have a scheme of delegation, but it is important that they retain flexibility, because there will be certain applications where local circumstances apply. For example, an application for a house may have to be called in because there are specific issues down a road, or because lots of people have replied to the consultation. Councils need to have that flexibility. The national scheme of delegation will not help the Government in meeting their target of building 1.5 million homes. This is not the problem within the planning system. As I have said before, the reason that hardly any homes are getting built in this country is developers themselves. Most applications that go through the planning process get approved. It takes such a long time for developers to get their planning application not because the approval process is slow, but because they actively go against what the council is seeking to achieve within its local plan or what local people want. If, when they originally bought the piece of land and wanted to create their development, they came around the table and worked hand in hand with the council, they would get through that process a lot quicker. As leader of Broxbourne council, I had loads of experience of dealing with developers who would take ages to get through the planning system because they would not do what the council asked them to. The idea that this legislation will speed up the planning process and solve all the issues, and then 1.5 million homes will be built over the course of this Parliament, is just utter nonsense. This is not the right part of the process for the Government to be attacking. This is an incredibly bad idea. It is not well thought-out. It will create issues down the line, when officers approve lots of planning applications and people do not understand why they have been approved, and it will cause fundamental issues for parking, healthcare facilities and education that will have no democratic oversight. I hope that the Minister will reflect on this and try to improve the planning system, because I do not think this piece of legislation does that. It is an attack on democracy, and it is all about concreting over the green belt.
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Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026
The Minister mentions local plans and schemes of delegation. If a developer comes forward with a planning application that is not allocated within the local plan, how will that be dealt with? Will it be deal with through schemes of delegation, or would it automatically go to committee?
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Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026
The Minister is being very generous with his time. How can the public deal with planning officers who get it wrong? At the moment, if a planning committee gets it wrong, the public can go out to the ballot box and vote for someone else. They cannot do that with planning officers who make the wrong decisions.
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Draft Supply of Machinery (Safety) (Amendment etc.) and the EU Machinery Regulation (Enforcement etc. in Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026
I am grateful to be called, Ms Jardine. I do not want to detain the Committee too long, but I have some points of clarification for the Minister. First, will the Minister confirm that the regulations concern the enforcement of machinery standards that flow into Northern Ireland by dint of the Windsor framework without any parliamentary scrutiny whatsoever in the UK, and that Northern Ireland will be forced to comply with the regulations without having any say in them whatsoever? On that note, did the UK Government have any beneficial influence over the EU production of the regulations, or will we just get what we are given? The Minister will understand that one doubt about the Windsor framework arrangement with Northern Ireland was the democratic deficit—the fact that we would be rule takers rather than rule makers—and this instrument looks like an example of that, so it would be great if the Minister could confirm that that is the case. Secondly, will there now be much reverse engineering of wider GB machinery safety regulations to conform with what has been handed down to Northern Ireland? We obviously want to maintain the free flow of goods across the whole of the United Kingdom but, as I read it, in order for that to happen and for the convenience of business, UK businesses as a whole will have to conform to that which has been handed down to Northern Ireland by the EU. If we have had no say in that, it would be helpful to have the Minister’s assessment of whether the regulations are satisfactory for the whole of the United Kingdom or whether they increase the burden. I, too, was disappointed by the lack of any impact assessment in the explanatory memorandum to look into the wider domino effect on the whole of the United Kingdom. I would be grateful for the Minister’s view on that. Thirdly, unless I have this wrong, it is implicit in the way the structure works that businesses in Northern Ireland will now have to comply with two labelling regimes. They will have the European CE labelling regime and a UKNI labelling regime. That is an added burden, particularly for smaller manufacturing businesses, yet we see no assessment of the impact in the explanatory memorandum. Has the Minister spoken to businesses about what dual labelling will represent? What inconvenience and cost will that put on small businesses? Finally, as the Minister will know, the regulations include quite draconian penalties. What is the parliamentary accountability for the enforcement regime? We will be enforcing regulations that have been imposed on part of the United Kingdom without any democratic scrutiny. What will be the accountability mechanism for their operation and enforcement? I recognise that much of this comes out of the fact that we exited the European Union in a particular way, but it is, in microcosm, quite an interesting example of some of the conflicts that were highlighted to us during the Brexit process, which some of us attempted to solve. My overall concern is that this change might be a crack in the door to required general UK alignment with EU regulations, which might not suit us overall and might put us at a disadvantage, not just for our internal market but for a wider market in the world more generally that looks to the British machinery-manufacturing industry with some hope of buying quality goods.
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Draft Supply of Machinery (Safety) (Amendment etc.) and the EU Machinery Regulation (Enforcement etc. in Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026
To be honest, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West makes a good point. Presumably, he will vote in favour of enforcing the underlying regulations, but none of us know whether they are any good. In fact, we have had no say over whether they are any good—we just have to take them as handed down. I asked the Minister earlier whether the UK, knowing that we have to accept them, whether we like it or not, has had any influence on trying to ensure that they actually do what they are supposed to do. To a certain extent, both sides of the House are blindly voting on the regulations, because we have had no hand in putting them together.
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Draft Supply of Machinery (Safety) (Amendment etc.) and the EU Machinery Regulation (Enforcement etc. in Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026
I am finding it hard to understand how the Minister can claim that there will be no impact on businesses in Northern Ireland. To give a practical example, many production lines nowadays have built-in AI safety monitoring systems. At the moment, companies in manufacturing have to certify that AI against a national standard, and they can self-certify. As I understand it, the EU regulations around AI and cyber-security would mean moving to a notified body certification system. If I had a production line, I would have to go out and find a recognised body to come in and independently certify the software behind the safety system in my manufacturing line as compliant. That has to be an extra cost—how can going from self-certification to external certification by an outside body not have a significant impact? As far as I can see, these regulations are riddled with those kinds of changes, which must impose a significant cumulative burden.
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Antisemitism: University Campuses
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. How did we end up here again, in another debate in Westminster Hall, just like debates in the Chamber, that is full of warm words calling for action? We have heard that the Union of Jewish Students has reported a shocking 400% increase in antisemitism incidents on campuses following the 7 October attacks, and about the rise of antisemitism in our universities and on our streets that our British Jewish students are experiencing on a daily basis, and we seem unable to tackle the issue. Half of Jewish students have heard chants glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah, with protests disturbing learning for 65% of them. The stories Jewish students and staff members share are harrowing, with physical attacks, antisemitism normalised in lecture theatres, and protests outside exam rooms. Although many would like to blame that on the current state of geopolitical affairs, it is difficult to do so when one need only look back at the history of the interwar period. I do not want to drag in my educational background, but that period plays a vital role in why we need to clamp down on antisemitism today. In the interwar period, there was no Israel; there was just the rise of antisemitism. We had the same kind of economic situation we have today, and we had people looking for someone to blame. Week after week on university campuses, we saw protests by many different movements. At that point, there was a large Jewish population in Germany. They were fully integrated: they were German of the messianic faith. They had fought in world war one and had received the Iron Cross for bravery. The protests began, and the antisemitism rose on university campuses first. Jewish students assumed that they could argue, debate and find a logical way through the situation to allow common sense, reason and decency to prevail. They had been German in the era of modernity —through the Romantic period—and they believed that they were German. They believed that, through rational argument and debate, they could quell the antisemitism on university campuses. That was not the case. The protests grew for weeks and weeks and then months and months, until violence finally erupted and Jewish students were killed. Then protests erupted throughout Germany, followed by the night of broken glass. The rise of antisemitism and the first ghettoisation of German Jews was a 10-year process; it was not a quick process, but a slow, incremental one that started on university campuses. The reason I am so adamant that we stop the rise of antisemitism in our universities is that they are where future leaders—the next generation of British men and women who will go on to lead in Parliament, business and commerce—are being trained. The United Kingdom has always exhibited fair play and decency to the rest of the world; when the rest of the world has lost its mind, the United Kingdom has held decency and morality at the heart of its judgment. I do not want our country to go down the route of rising nationalism, as Germany and even the US did in the interwar period. Stopping antisemitism at university level is vital to protect the next generation from making the mistakes made in generations past. It is not a case of thinking, “Oh, well—we should probably be just a little more fair-minded.” No, every student deserves equality of access to education, and every student, when they go to university, deserves to feel safe in their exams and when walking about. They should not be harassed, bullied, shouted at or attacked because they are wearing a Star of David or any kind of religious symbol. I would say the same for any ethnic minority. The reason I know about the interwar period and the rise of antisemitism is that I worked in Kosovo with Muslim Albanians who were attacked, so I studied the rise of nationalism and how it affected European countries. In recent times, we had a similar thing happen in Europe, in the Balkans: a 10-year slow creep of people turning against their neighbours, who they had lived with and been perfectly fine with for centuries. Then, all of a sudden, they developed feelings of hatred and division. I love this country—I came here as an immigrant and was welcomed—and I do not want us to lose the fabric of what makes our society great: tolerance and inclusivity. British Jewish students are being excluded and treated with a level of hatred because of a country many of them have no connection to and have never been to. Before these issues came to the forefront, most of the members of the London Jewish community I spoke to had very few views on Israel: they were not involved, they did not care and it did not concern them. They have been dragged into this, and they have been treated with racism and hatred because of something that does not involve them. They are British citizens and are a part of British culture, but they are being treated with hatred and disrespect because of a war that is happening in the middle east. I ask that politicians look at the gravity of this situation and take seriously the recommendations of Jewish university students. They have brought forward a number of very good proposals, and there are six recommendations that I think we should accept. Will the Government insist that universities adopt the Union of Jewish Students “Best Practice Guidance”, which sets out practical recommendations for universities to tackle antisemitism? I hope the Government will strongly take into consideration those recommendations and actually use them, because they are from the students and by the students, and are a very good solution. If we fail to act now, we fail the thousands of British Jews. We will set our country on a course to a future in which antisemitism is not just normalised, but is the norm. We will make our universities seats of hatred, not seats of learning. I hope we will come together in this debate and send a clear message to Jewish students and staff: we are with you, we see you and we will take the action needed.
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Defence Investment Plan
The Secretary of State will be well aware of the central role that Porton Down has played in our nation’s security and history through the UK Health Security Agency and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. I welcome the announcement of an additional £580 million to build a new biological lab to protect against biological threats, but will he undertake to examine how that aligns with his Government’s decision to move the UKHSA out of the vicinity of Porton and the announcement last year on biosecurity centres, to ensure that the money that has been invested will be spent wisely and aligned with other commitments?
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
Will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that, even if the Government get through the combined mayoral authorities they are trying to in this Parliament, there are still great swathes of England where there are no active plans for a mayoral authority at all. Even if the Government get their own way, some areas will not have a mayor for many years—if they get one at all.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. There is a consensus—not just in this room, but within Parliament and going back several decades—that we want more integration and partnership working, particularly to bring together health and social care services, but this clause drives a coach and horses through that, and does so in a way that weakens rather than strengthens the Government’s plans to replace the system. Local authorities bear responsibility for social care and public health in their areas, but they will no longer have a direct voice when it comes to integrated care boards. What we have seen to date is not an ideal system, or even a system that works particularly well, so I understand that the Government want to strengthen it, but we should not do that by removing the local government voice or making it indirect via a mayor who does not have the direct responsibility for delivering social care locally. Mayors may have some strategic oversight, but that is different. Just last week, the Minister of State for Care appeared before the Health and Social Care Committee and was questioned on this very issue by me and others. His view was that the mayoral strategic partnership would be more than sufficient to make up for the local authorities losing their seat, but he faced particular scrutiny from the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), who made some excellent points, which I will not repeat or paraphrase as they are on public record. The gist of his argument was that local authorities have been ignored for too long when it comes to joining up health and social care services. This measure puts local authorities in an even weaker position and threatens what the Government are trying to achieve with social care, particularly for areas such as mine that have an older population and a relatively small unitary authority with so much responsibility to deliver on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon has already said, the combined area of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight—or the Solent, as the Government like to call the Isle of Wight, despite the fact that fish cannot vote—is not set to get a mayor for a couple of years, but it will be at the vanguard of the Government’s plans. What about those areas for which there is no date, or even no plan for a mayor at all? It seems extraordinary that the Government would do away with the current set-up, imperfect as it is, and replace it with something that does not yet exist. The Government have time deal with this problem. I am sure they quietly understand that there could be a problem. It is now on their shoulders to deal with it. I welcome the Minister’s reflections.
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Department of Health and Social Care
Given that there are so many unanswered questions and such little information, rather than estimates day, wouldn’t the better name for this debate be “a complete stab in the dark” day?
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Department for Work and Pensions
I congratulate both hon. Members who gave their maiden speeches a few moments ago. We know that the outgoing Prime Minister wanted to cut welfare spending—or at least he did a year ago when he brought forward some pretty rough and ready proposals to cut it by £5 billion—but, of course, his plans withered in the chill winds of the Labour Back Benches and the Minister literally tore up the proposals at the Dispatch Box during that debate. The messiah from Makerfield may be here in just a few weeks’ time, but he faces the same Back Benchers in this place, and that same environment within the Labour party exists even if the new Prime Minister actually wants to do something about the welfare bill. The situation we find ourselves in today is that youth unemployment—among those aged 16 to 24—is over 16%, which is 729,000 people. Those not in employment, education or training stand at nearly 1 million. That is not good for them, it is not good for the economy and, crucially, it leads to the welfare bill that we have today. The Government’s response to their failure to get their legislation through their own Back Benchers a year ago was to put the questions to the Timms review. But of course, the Timms review is there to consider, in the words of the Prime Minister and the Government, “fair and fit for the future” funding for personal independence payment. It does not have a remit to look at future savings and reductions in the spending on PIP, so the aspiration has gone. The Milburn review into youth unemployment makes it clear: we are not talking about getting young people back into work—six out of 10 are not in work and have never had a job.
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Department for Work and Pensions
I do agree with the hon. Member. Indeed, it is in the tourism sector that a lot of young people in my constituency and, I am sure, in his—and in constituencies up and down the country—find their first job. It is the flexibility in the tourism sector and the fact that there is work to do when young people have the time and want to do it that make it such an enabler. The changes to the rate of national insurance and the fact that it now applies to part-time working are major disincentives to work, as are the cliff-edge incentives for young people and, frankly, people of any age to remain on welfare. Of course, the Government came into office without a plan to deal with those cliff edges, which inevitably develop over time. Any Government will bring in welfare reform—they should plan for it in opposition—but over time, loopholes and cliff edges emerge that were unintended. When a new Government come in, we expect to see them implement their plans for welfare reform. Of course, this Government had none. They tried to develop plans on the hoof, but failed to do it. It is not just young people; more than 2 million people over the age of 50 but of working age are now not working either. Most of those people would like to work—they are looking for the opportunities and the Government support to help get them back into work.
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Defence Investment Plan
It is quite clear the Secretary of State knows that we need to be spending a lot more on defence than he has been able to announce in the defence investment plan. In writing the DIP, what assumption did he make about the status and future of the Chagos islands? Does he agree that the more than £30 billion that his Government intend to pay to the Government of Mauritius would be better spent on our defence?
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Defence Investment Plan
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. After months and months of delay, we finally have the defence investment plan, but it is quite simply a case of too little, too late. It is too little because there is virtually no more cash than there was in the plan that led the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), to resign because he believed that it would make the country “less safe”. It is too late not just because the plan is months overdue, but because much of the capability that it contains will not be in service until the 2030s, when the threat we face is right now. If Labour Members do not agree that this plan is too little, they do not need to take my word for it. The Chief of the Defence Staff said he needed £28 billion to fund the armed forces over the next four years, but this plan fulfils barely half that requirement. The right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, who was the Secretary of State for Defence until a few weeks ago, said that the proposed spending “falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”, because “it rises to just 2.68% of GDP in 2030”. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, under his revised plan, the GDP figure for defence in 2030 remains unchanged, at 2.68%? That begs the obvious question: if reaching 2.68% by 2030 was a resigning matter for the previous Defence Secretary, why is it good enough for him? This DIP is not just too little financially; it is too late. If Labour Members do not agree, they should remember that it was promised for last autumn and is now 10 months overdue. Most importantly, the drones that Labour promised in today’s headlines mainly enter service in the 2030s, when the threat we face is today. Autonomous drones to fly with the Apache, uncrewed surface and underwater vessels, and the prototype for the RAF’s autonomous fighter jet will all enter service in the 2030s—far too late in this fast-changing world of tech-driven warfare. On that subject, it was ironic that the Prime Minister announced the DIP at Malloy Aeronautics in Maidenhead, where I launched the MOD’s first ever defence drone strategy back in February 2024. Back then, we were world leaders in drone warfare, having supplied Ukraine with cutting-edge drone capabilities that were not on a press release. It was real kit used on a real frontline against Europe’s peer military threat, the Russian armed forces. So what happened? Labour came to power and put all that progress on hold, which paralysed procurement while we waited for the strategic defence review and then for the DIP. But the big question is, why all the dither and delay? In a word, money. Is the harsh truth not that the drones could come into service far sooner, but the Government are unwilling to commit the cash before the 2030s? Is this not the inevitable result of having a Prime Minister who is unwilling to cut welfare, and who is prioritising a bigger benefits bill over properly funding defence? That begs the next big question: where is the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) in all this? Can the Secretary of State tell us whether the putative Prime Minister has been consulted on the DIP? Most importantly, has he given it his blessing? If not, is the DIP even worth the paper it is written on? It is rumoured that the current Prime Minister may have ambitions to be the next Secretary-General of NATO. If that is true, might it have been advisable to include in the DIP a funded plan to get to 3% on defence? Can the Secretary of State tell us in which financial year Labour will spend 3% on defence? For all the focus on drones, our people—not just our regular personnel, our reserves and their families, but our cadets and our veterans—remain our most important capability. I was proud to make the decision to buy back the defence estate from Annington, a deal that the previous Labour Government left untouched. Given that I thought we all wanted to deliver homes for heroes, can the Secretary of State confirm—this is a critical question about the accommodation of those who serve our country—that the defence investment plan includes cutting hundreds of millions of pounds from the budget for forces housing, shifting it from this Parliament into the 2030s? Can he confirm that, and can he also confirm that he is cutting cadet funding at the same time and over the same period? On veterans—I hope he has had a chance to think about this after my previous question—does the Secretary of State agree that a top priority for the new Prime Minister must be to back our former soldiers, and scrap the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill? To conclude, after months of dither and delay, it has taken the sudden end of his premiership for the Prime Minister to finally publish the DIP in a desperate search for a legacy, but it is a legacy of failure, with an underfunded defence investment plan that is too little, too late. The men and women of our armed forces deserve much better.
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Prisoner Releases in Error
14. What estimate he has made of the number of prisoners released in error since July 2024.
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Prisoner Releases in Error
It is a disgrace that hundreds of prisoners have been released in error under this Government, but more concerning are the thousands it will have been an error to release early. The Secretary of State did not answer the previous question, so let’s try another. As we heard in this House yesterday, child groomers and rapists are due to be let out years early, with their victims being informed by letter, so will he tell my constituents exactly why, under this Government, dangerous criminals will be in their communities rather than in prison?
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Nationally Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making an important point about the fact that we need not just the minimum but the maximum. We need really strong commitments. The Cleve Hill solar development in the village of Graveney in my constituency is huge. It has obliterated 900 acres of agricultural land and marshland. While it has been in construction, there has been enormous disruption to the local village and schools, and damage to the roads and to people’s properties. I want my constituents to get proper compensation and ongoing economic benefit—not just lip service in the form of a playground or cycle path, but something that recognises the massive impact of the development on their lives.
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Nationally Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects
On the point about considering the community benefit, what counts as a community is really important. In some circumstances—this has come up in my local area—a large geographical area is considered as a community, even though the number of households that are very substantially affected is very small. It is what they want that should really matter. Yes, of course I care about what the wider community wants, but we need to think about the small number of households in which there has been a real impact on people’s day-to-day lives.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I want to pick up where the shadow Minister left off. Essentially, she said that the cart is being put before the horse in terms of mayoral authorities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East outlined, many areas have no plans for a mayoral authority; our area of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is some way down the track. As I expressed last week in Committee, we have a strange anomaly in the new Surrey and Sussex ICB, because Sussex will get a mayor and Surrey will not, so Sussex residents will have representation on the ICB whereas Surrey residents will not. I hope that the Minister has had a chance to reflect on that strange paradox over the weekend and that she will now be able to answer specifically, as she did not last week, how that lack of representation for Surrey residents will work locally. The abolition of the integrated care partnerships and their allied strategies continues a theme whereby the Government, under the veneer of slimming down, are actually decoupling—or weakening or whatever terminology Members wish to use—health and social care. For many years, all parties have regarded the bringing together of health and social care as essential, but the Bill not only looks like it is not trying to encourage that bringing together, but in fact is doing the opposite of that—it seems to be looking to pull them apart and decouple them. That is strange, because it does not appear to be the expressed policy of the Government, but it is the only logical explanation for many parts of the Bill, including the abolition in clause 23. The shadow Minister pointed out that a number of areas will keep the ICPs in some form or other. I ask the Minister, does the Government support that feature? Was it the Government’s intention to remove the statutory footing of the ICPs and strategies in the hope and expectation that they would continue on a non-statutory footing? If so, we come to the paradox: if the Government support local authorities and health services continuing to work together in informal ICPs, why is the Minister trying to get rid of them? If they do not support that, is it now stated Government policy to separate social care and health services?
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
Will the Minister give way?
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
I am not convinced that clause 24 delivers the transformation that the Minister claims. At its core, it appears to be little more than a rebranding exercise. It replaces joint local health and wellbeing strategies with neighbourhood health plans, but does remarkably little to strengthen the underlying duties on local authorities or integrated care boards. Merely changing the name of a document does not improve patient outcomes, reduce waiting lists or deliver more integrated care. The duty created by the clause is also remarkably weak. Local authorities and ICBs need only prepare a plan and then “have regard” to it when exercising their functions. That is one of the least demanding obligations available in legislation. It requires consideration, not compliance. An ICB could acknowledge the plan, but decide to depart from it and still satisfy the legal test. If neighbourhood plans are genuinely intended to drive local health policy, the Bill should do a lot more to require decision makers to act in accordance with them, or at the very least to explain publicly why they have chosen not to. I am also concerned that the clause creates additional bureaucracy without any clear accountability. It requires the production of another planning document, another consultation exercise and another set of reporting expectations, but provides for no—for want of a better phrase—enforcement mechanism or measurable outcomes against which success can be judged. There is a risk that local systems will spend their time drafting plans rather than delivering services. Public involvement is of course essential, and indeed welcome, as we have heard, but the clause offers no detail about what meaningful involvement looks like and contains nothing to prevent a token consultation from satisfying the statutory requirement. If the objective is genuine neighbourhood-led healthcare, the legislation needs to be drafted much more tightly. Moving on to new clause 70, I do my absolute best not to be flippant when it comes to Lib Dem amendments and new clauses, but once again we have an idea that is fine in principle—in fact, I think we would all support it in principle—yet the hon. Member for Winchester could hardly articulate how the new clause would work and whom it would involve.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification. It is helpful to understand that the Liberal Democrats will not press the new clause to a vote, but if we are to use probing amendments effectively, they need to be drawn much more tightly, so that a Minister does not have the opportunity—I am sure that today’s Minister would not do this—to wriggle out of it because it is so poorly drafted.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
We can go back to the record in Hansard, but I do not remember mentioning anything to do with hospitals in what I just said; I may have had some sort of amnesia at that point. If the hon. Member is referring to the plan of the last Government, which was fully costed, for 40 new hospitals, then I am afraid I did not mention that. On his wider point, Conservative Members want to understand how local authorities and deliverers of primary care—dental services and so on—will be included and can have influence over the plans and strategies that ICBs draw up. I fully support that ambition; I just feel that, if we are to have that ambition, we need to table amendments and new clauses that the Minister might actually accept, so that we can go forward.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
Very briefly, on clauses 27 and 28, I am sure the Committee is aware that special health authorities were initially established under the National Health Service Act 1977. Since then the number of special health authorities has expanded and contracted a number of times over the years to leave us with, currently, NHS Blood and Transplant, and the Business Services Authority, which covers pensions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham mentioned—I should declare that I have an NHS pension, albeit a very small one—as well as the NHS Litigation Authority, also known as NHS Resolution, and the NHS Counter Fraud Authority. The mood music and the direction of travel, certainly since 2006, has been to reduce the number of special health authorities. On my reading, clauses 27 and 28 suggest that the Government are potentially looking to expand the number of special health authorities, given the Secretary of State’s direction under clause 27 and the practical steps for staff transfers in clause 28. Is the Minister looking at, for example, a special health authority to deal with artificial intelligence? Clearly that is something the NHS will have to embrace—or deal with, depending on which end of the AI argument one is on—rapidly over the coming years. Is that a potential area for a special health authority? Perhaps the Minister could outline where she sees the special health authorities acting and what their remits might be.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
On clause 29 and the relevant amendments, the membership model and the council of governors were originally introduced to give patients, staff and local communities a formal voice in the governance of NHS organisations. I worry that by removing them the clause concentrates power in the hands of the trust board at a local level and, potentially, the Secretary of State at a national level, while reducing opportunities for local scrutiny and public participation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said, there is a real danger that organisations will be independent in name only. That brings us back to the never-ending tension in the Bill between the centralisation of power in the Secretary of State, through the abolition of NHS England and all the other bodies we have talked about, and the Government’s stated desire to have more accountability for decision making at a local level.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
The hon. Gentleman’s intervention neatly brings me to my next point. I have some sympathy for his viewpoint—and apparently the viewpoint expressed to him by governors—that in many cases, if not most, governors do not have the teeth, the influence or the ability to change things in the way they would like. My argument is very similar to the one we will expand on later regarding the abolition of the Healthcare Services Safety Investigations Branch and Healthwatch: the Government’s response to something not working as effectively as it could is to abolish it, but why not give those organisations the teeth—the powers—to achieve the things they were set up to do, unless the hon. Gentleman and the Government feel that there is no need, in Healthwatch’s case, for that level of independent scrutiny or, in governors’ case, that level of independent influence on boards? There is a fundamental difference here: the Conservatives would take something imperfect and make it better; the Government’s response is to take something imperfect and abolish it. That is the wrong way round.
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Health Bill (Eighth sitting)
My hon. Friend is right that there will be a gap in local decision making on these issues. It goes back to that tension I described some moments ago: the Government’s stated intention is to devolve powers locally, but they seem to be pulling so much power up to the Secretary of State that we will lose the ability to make local decisions for the benefit of local populations where appropriate. We have a stated ambition for neighbourhood health, but those neighbourhoods are rapidly expanding in this legislation to become areas of millions of people. Local people who are interested in their local health delivery or local hospital trust would not see that as local decision making, and there is the gap that my hon. Friend describes. I do not think that amendments 74 and 75 have been moved, so I will not talk about them. Government amendment 19 will require “NHS foundation trusts to have at least one executive director who is a registered medical practitioner or a registered dentist and another who is a registered nurse or a registered midwife.” As also stated in the explanatory note, and as the Minister mentioned, regulations may create exception—for example, for ambulance trusts. That is the right decision, and it is important that we have medical experience on foundation trust boards. I am interested in understanding from the Minister, first, why she has chosen a medical practitioner or registered dentist. Does she see some equivalence in their expertise that could be substituted? I have great respect for doctors and for dentists, but they have potentially different clinical expertise. If a foundation trust does no oral healthcare or maxillofacial reconstruction, and does no dentistry or allied specialties, would it really satisfy requirements to have a dentist on the board? Likewise, given that the amendment also refers to a registered nurse or midwife, if a trust has no maternity services, would having a midwife on the board really satisfy the requirement of that trust to have nursing care input? I ask those questions, and I would be interested in the answers. Likewise, there is the exemption for ambulance trusts. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, I would be interested to understand from the Minister why she thinks ambulance trusts do not need a medical practitioner on their boards, given that they are doing medicine. Plenty of consultants work alongside paramedics and in ambulances, so again I am not quite sure why she is making that exemption. I would be interested to hear from her on that. I understand the intention behind Liberal Democrat amendment 36. Once again, it is trying to soften the Secretary of State’s power grab over decision making—like the hon. Member for North Shropshire, I am not saying anything against the current Secretary of State, but a future Secretary of State could be different. The aim is to try to temper that in some way. Unfortunately for the hon. Member—I have sympathy for the amendment—the stated intention of the Bill is to pull more power to the Secretary of State. The Minister may surprise me, but I fear that the amendment will not find favour with the Government, because the whole Bill is about pulling more power to the centre, certainly when it comes to appointments, and to the Secretary of State. However, the Minister should think about how future Secretaries of State may have to go through some process whereby their decisions are checked and justified, especially at local level. If we want local people to have influence and say over their local health systems and trusts, there needs to be some sort of bridging legislation or bridging process to ensure that whatever a Secretary of State decides, it has the confidence and support of local people and local service providers.
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Health Bill (Ninth sitting)
My hon. Friend is making a prescient point. Has she thought about the word “limits”? To me, it is not clear from the clause as drafted—perhaps it is clearer to her—whether that is an overall limit on capital and revenue expenditure, or whether the clause is saying that the Secretary of State could impose limits on individual line items or departments. The word “limits”—plural—suggests that he or she may be able to do that.
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Health Bill (Ninth sitting)
I want to touch briefly on clause 39, Government new clause 20, and new clause 26, tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon in her role as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. I recognise the intention behind clause 39. Greater collaboration between the NHS, local authorities and other public bodies has the potential to improve the co-ordination of services and deliver a more integrated approach to population health, which I think we all welcome. However, it sits slightly uncomfortably with other clauses we have debated that appear to draw local authorities and the NHS further apart. In this case, it looks like they may be brought together. As the clause expands delegation and joint working powers, I would be interested to understand from the Minister where the oversight and safeguards for accountability for spending the joint budgets would sit. Would it be with the NHS, local authorities or somewhere else? We hope that everything goes well, but if services fail or financial problems emerge, the public deserve to know who precisely is accountable for those budgets. As I have said in debates on numerous other clauses, I continue to be concerned by the broad powers that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State. I have the same concerns about this clause. On Government new clause 20, bringing health services and wider local government functions together is really important, particularly where combined authorities have responsibilities that affect the wider determinants of health. However, once again, I am concerned about the fact that the new clause further complicates an already crowded accountability landscape. As more functions are delivered through pooled budgets and joint arrangements, it becomes harder to identify who is responsible for outcomes, spending decisions and—hopefully not, but potentially—service failures. I welcome the flexibility, which I think has value, but it must be balanced with transparency and democratic accountability. I am not convinced that the new clause gets that right. On new clause 26, as I have said before concerning amendments and new clauses that have come from the Health and Social Care Committee, it is often difficult to get entire agreement on these things because of the cross-party nature of the Committee. Therefore, new clauses and amendments that come out of the Committee are in some ways aspirational, rather than ones that hit the nail on the head. The new clause suggests that the Secretary of State carry out a review of how effective section 75 arrangements are—the hon. Member for Winchester outlined evidence that in some cases, the use of section 75 arrangements has not always been effective—consult NHS bodies, local authorities and anyone else considered appropriate; consider whether existing powers should be used to improve those arrangements; publish a report and lay it before Parliament; explain whether the Government intend to use their powers to change regulations or guidance and why; and complete all that within 12 months of the Bill passing, which I think is a reasonable timeframe. Section 75 arrangements already play an important role in bringing together health and social care. It is reasonable to ask, as the hon. Member for Winchester did, whether they are delivering the benefits in the most effective way possible. I would potentially say that this proposal does not go far enough. The new clause would require a review, a consultation and a report, but would not require any action to follow that. The Secretary of State need only “consider” whether existing powers should be exercised and explain the reasons for any decision. If the review identified significant weaknesses, there is no obligation in the new clause, as far as I understand it, to implement those changes. I agree that the new clause is well-meaning. It has some good recommendations, and I hope the Minister takes on board its sentiment, but it probably does not have the teeth and the power to make it an effective part of the Bill.